7 Recurring Revenue Models to Retain Clients | Accelo

April 2, 2014
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For digital agencies, and other professional service industries, recurring revenue is a must. 

“It costs 6-7 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.”

The benefits are clear: predictable revenue, not having to rely on personal salesmanship, natural up-sell opportunities, avoiding feast & famine cycles and being able to sleep at night. Rather than focusing on selling, businesses can spend time delivering high quality services and doing the creative work they enjoy. Along with benefiting agencies, recurring revenue models also deepen client relationships - retaining their business means keeping their satisfaction and loyalty.

Here are some examples for how web agencies can build recurring revenue streams.

1. Monthly maintenance & support retainers

Unfortunately, web projects never have a fairytale ending. There are always emergency issues, bugs and other content updates that need to be addressed on an ongoing basis. Many freelancers and agencies still do this work for free.

However, setting up a pre-negotiated monthly support retainer allows clients to effectively 'reserve' services as they need it. Although maintenance & support retainers aren't as profitable as large projects, retaining clients over the long-term means not losing those clients to competitors the next time they need a design or web project.

2. Hosting services

The hosting retainer is obvious for most web agencies. Web projects will typically require hosting and can be billed for on an ongoing basis. On top of that, there are up-sell opportunities in the realm of backup services, software upgrades and more.

3. SEO services

Many digital agencies offer SEO services because of the inherent proximity to the web project itself. Ongoing SEO services is an easy retainer to sell and provides substantial recurring revenue for minimal effort. Some examples of SEO services are:

  • On-site SEO
  • Keyword research
  • Information architecture strategy
  • Content strategy
  • Link-building strategy
  • Blog campaigns
  • Measurement & analytics

4. Marketing services

From a more consultative angle, agencies can provide services that cover an entire department. Marketing services might include crafting an overall strategy, producing content for a defined target audience, running online advertising campaigns and ensuring success with measurement.

5. Content production services

As a bite off marketing services or even on its own, agencies can produce monthly content for clients. Content services can include:

  • Blog posts
  • Infographics
  • E-books
  • Videos
  • Images

6. Social media management

Many businesses don’t have the time to keep up a social media presence, or worse, don’t know how to use social media for marketing purposes. This is another potential for recurring revenue, where routine services can be completed on a monthly basis. Some of those services include:

  • Consultation on branding and design
  • Daily status updates and tweets
  • Networking on popular industry pages
  • Management & creation of social media ads
  • Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Yelp management
  • Campaign consultation with promotions, sweepstakes, contests, etc.

7. Premium technical support

Along with standard maintenance and technical support, agencies can sell a premium for faster, more prioritized service. For example, rather than having tasks and issues completed within 72 hours, clients can pay a premium to have them completed them within 24 hours.

Challenges to recurring revenue streams

Often, the reason why many digital agencies don’t offer recurring services is because the time and effort it takes to manage the processes involved is not worth the revenue they provide.

  • Ongoing work is inherently more difficult to plan, manage & assign.
  • Tracking time and cost is critical but difficult.
  • Manual admin means high minimums for subscriptions or limited discounts on usage
  • Poor management, tracking & billing or a lack of productivity can mean client dissatisfaction/churn

The solution: recurring revenue management

With the right tools, businesses can streamline & automate ongoing services in order to make recurring revenue possible. By using a retainer management system, businesses can:

  • Track usage, cost & allowances in real-time
  • Automate recurring tasks & business processes
  • Easily approve & invoice based on usage
  • Automate billing with rollover for subscriptions

Along with the benefits of higher revenue, businesses can effectively lower admin costs and create long-term, loyal and profitable relationship with clients

If you’re ready to start streamlining your workflows and work more collaboratively than ever before, click here to start your free trial of automated software today.

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