Boxed - Offer Design

Founder

Positioning & Messaging Consultant

Chief Niche Builder

LEFTFIELD

Finding and communicating your product's difference.

Treacle - Positioning your agency as the obvious choice

Strategic Director

Chief Operations Officer

Head of Creative

Founder & SaaS Onboarding Consultant

Myself

I write better emails for SaaS companies.

Freelance Writer

Receptive.io

Leading B2B SaaS companies use Receptive to build winning products by managing product feedback from their customers, their teams, and the market.

I'm in charge of Receptive's content marketing efforts - creating content for our site, and turning visitors into leads.

Head Of Content

Your confusing offer is costing you clients. I’ll help you fix it with a blend of positioning, productisation, and messaging.

You've got a problem with your agency's positioning if:

□ Prospects don't get what you actually do.
□ Your website sounds like everyone else’s.
□ Every project ends up being messy and bespoke.
□ You end up competing on price, speed, or both.
□ Sales cycles drag on for what feels like forever.

So you need to position around your agency's core use case.

Your prospects don't think in terms of fancy abstract positioning. They think in terms of use cases. They think: "How can this agency help me solve my problem?".

So we work with you to figure out your agency's own use case — your winning combo of client, problem, and solution — so that your value is instantly clear to your ideal clients.

Get our Positioning Clarity Sprint...

A 2-week process to sharpen your agency's positioning and write a new homepage that makes your value obvious.

What you get:

□ Intake questionnaires and analysis
□ 3 hours of remote workshops
□ Agency use case canvas
□ Homepage messaging on a lo-fi wireframe

Pricing: £2,500
(or £1,500 for solos)

DM me to chat about working together.

Here are three types of product your agency could offer...
(and the pros and cons of each)

01 — Projects

First up, projects. This is what people usually think of when I talk about productising, and it's probably the most common type. 

Ultimately it's a one-off engagement that usually solves a specific problem in a relatively quick timeframe. It might also be packaged up as a sprint (like I do at Boxed).

Pros:
□ Easy to communicate boundaries
□ Low barrier entry point for your prospects
□ Allows you to work with a lot more clients

Cons:
□ Need high volume of leads
□ Often priced lower

02 — Programs

A program kinda sits between the two ends of the spectrum (projects and retainers). In a way it's a longer-term project and so usually tackles a bigger problem. 

It's as much about the overall transformation and journey that the client goes on from start to finish. Programs are often several months long (as opposed to projects which might be a month or two max).

Pros:
□ Positions you more as a partner
□ You get to have a wider impact on your clients
□ Develops a stronger working relationship

Cons:
□ Can be confusing to communicate
□ May still need volume depending on program length

03 — Retainers

Most agencies are familiar with retainers, but most simply swap time for money (the cardinal sin in my book). Instead, a productised retainer promises a pre-defined offer that you provide each month.

In other words, you're solving a problem that constantly needs solving. An example might be a retainer in which you interview SMEs for LinkedIn content. The same thing each month, over and over.

Pros:
□ Less leads needed as can more easily hit capacity
□ More predictable revenue and cashflow
□ Can develop very strong relationships

Cons:
□ Harder to sell in initially
□ May lead to financial over-reliance on a handful of clients (heh that rhymed)

So which is best for your agency? Well it depends a lot on your situation. Do you feel like you can generate a healthy pipeline? Do you enjoy working with a lot of different clients? What's the nature of the problem you want to solve? What's your agency's superpower?

These are the kinds of things we'll discuss when we work together to productise your offer. So if you need a helping hand, let me know and we can get cracking.

Joe Daniels 📦

My second attempt at vibe coding has been wayyyy more successful than my first.

For starters, I switched to Figma Make and it's insane.

Totally understood what I wanted and got me very close right away. Any tweaks could be made quickly.

And I can even amend the design of it in Figma like normal.

(this is not a sponsored post btw, I'm not famous enough for that)

Basically I used it to create my own sprint planner to keep track of projects that are booked in.

Exciting to you? Probably not.
Exciting to me? You betcha.

You can play around with it yourself if you're interested at planner.boxed.agency

And if you wanna chat about building your own thing I'm happy to share my (limited) knowledge.

Positioning, offer design, and homepage messaging for agencies.

okay this might be a crazy idea but I'm thinking it would be cool to have a lil group of consultants and advisors who work with agencies.

like an avengers of agency aiders who can support each other, collaborate, that sort of thing.

is there anyone in my network who'd be up for it or knows someone who might be?

i'm thinking some of this list might be interested...

 Steve Fair Steve Vincent Ryan Hall Freia Muehlenbein Roland Gurney Kelly Molson Gabe Whitehead

"What are you replacing?"

This is one of my go-to questions that I ask when auditing an agency's proposition.

Because the majority of the time, they don't have a clear answer.

And that's a shame because once you can answer this question everything falls into place.

Here's how I think about it...

1) What problem are we solving?

You HAVE to get clear on this to have a compelling proposition. It's a must. You're looking for a problem that your target clients a) know they need to solve and b) are unable to currently solve.

2) How are they trying to solve it?

This is the important bit for this post. Because if you've chosen a juicy problem to focus on, then it stands to reason that your ICP is currently trying to solve it. 

If they aren't trying to solve it, then maybe it's not that important.

So how are they currently trying to solve it? By themselves? With a tool? Using another type of agency? With a competitor?

Once you know this, you know what you're replacing.

3) Why doesn't it work?

And this is where you deliver the final blow. You've acknowledged their problem. You've explained their current way of solving it. Now you explain why this current way falls short.

Because when you do that, you're essentially proving why your prospect needs to replace their current way of doing things.

Which blasts a hole in the wall for you to stride through and save the day.

If you can work through these three steps and be clear on what you're replacing, then communicating your positioning, proposition, and offer becomes wayyyyy easier.

So go ahead, leave a comment and tell me what you're replacing. If you dare. Mwahahahah.

things agencies say that give me (and prospects) the ick:

□ "sea of sameness"
□ "we deliver results"
□ "we go the extra mile"
□ "we'll 10x your growth"
□ "our core value is honesty"
□ "here's our head of barketing"
□ "we'll supercharge your sales"
□ "we're not like other agencies"
□ "we work with ambitious brands"
□ "we specialise in [proceeds to list 100 services]"
□ "look at our proprietary framework: [explain the average agency process]

what else would you add?

Imagine climbing halfway up Mount Everest, deciding the view isn't good enough, and then heading back down to go and climb Kilimanjaro instead.

Because that's what a lot of agencies do with their positioning.

The cold, hard truth about positioning is this: It takes time.

It. Takes. Time.

If you think you can roll out new positioning and instantly see success, then that's simply not true.

If a positioning or new biz guru is telling you the opposite, they're lying to get your money.

On average you're looking at around 12 months for new positioning to actually bed in. 6 months if you're lucky.

In other words, if you reposition your agency and expect to see it working perfectly after just a few months, you're going to be disappointed.

Sure, there'll be some signs it's working. But you won't see the big shiny results that quickly.

And this is where a lot of agencies go wrong.

They redo their positioning, turn it into new messaging, and then decide after two months that it's not working and rip it all up and start again.

But if you keep climbing mountains halfway, you'll never get the view.

I'm always trying to find ways to better communicate what I do and how it helps my clients.

Not just for when it comes to marketing Boxed but also for when I'm actually doing the work with clients.

I find a lot of positioning frameworks and concepts are slightly too complex for most agency owners to properly grasp.

I'm probably guilty of creating and sharing some of these myself.

So here's my latest attempt:

The Positioning Box.

Each side corresponds to a core positioning question. Answer each of those and you have your very own positioning box for your agency.

I think it's a useful way of focusing on what really matters to your agency's target clients. Because these are the key questions they're asking.

Why don't you give it a try for your own agency and let me know how it goes?

There are two main parts to agency positioning.
And you need both for it to actually work.

The two parts are:

1) The Framing
2) The Offer

Let me break each down...

1) The Framing

This is how your agency is perceived in the market. Who you help, the problem you solve for them, and how you compare to others solving that problem.

2) The Offer

This is the actual thing you're selling. What you deliver, how you deliver it, how much it costs, etc.

Here's why you need both...

Clear framing without a packaged up offer is just a nice idea with no substance behind it. And prospects will see right through it.

But a packaged up offer without clear framing is all steak and no sizzle. And prospects won't understand why they need it.

So you need both.

That's where I come in...

I start by helping you choose a positioning direction. This handles the framing. Then I help you figure out what your actual offer will be. This handles the offer.

And then I bring them both together into something I call an Agency Use Case.

The core thing that your agency becomes known for, and the reason prospects come begging to work with you.

Choosing your agency's positioning is a bit like betting on a football game.

You can never be truly sure of the result.

In fact, if the result was guaranteed, there'd be no use making that bet as everyone else would be and the odds would be pointless.

Same with positioning.

If there was a surefire way of knowing which direction was "correct" or "the best" then everyone would do that, and it would lose its power.

But like with football betting there are some things you can do to increase your chances of choosing the right option for your agency...

□ 1) Base your decisions on actual data

In this case, the most useful data is from speaking to your target clients. Most of the time you won't be making a big swing so you'll already have conversations with them you can mine for the kinds of problems they talk about.

This helps you base your positioning in what the market actually wants and needs.

□ 2) Work with an agency expert (ahem)

People like myself have been doing this a long time and seen all kinds of agencies and therefore have an instinctive feel for what's good or bad when it comes to positioning.

Even putting aside the rest of the value an expert brings to the table, this intrinsic knowledge of the agency landscape is a massive help.

□ 3) Look at your competitors

Ultimately all positioning is relative. You're heading in a direction relative to the direction of other competitors. So look at what they're doing, analyse it, and use that to help guide your thinking.

Like I said, you can never truly know in advance whether it's going to work. You just can't.

But you can do some prep to at least slightly pre-validate it before you take the plunge and make that bet.

Oh, and if you need an expert, I'm taking on clients for November and early December before I start to quieten down before Christmas. So if you want it done before next year get it booked in soon!

linkedin loves hot takes? how about this:

the new taylor swift album is awful

One of the main issues I see with agency positioning is a failure to join the dots.

What I mean by that is agencies often have all the pieces of the puzzle there in front of them, but they don't do a good job of bringing them all together.

So they might have a big differentiator, but fail to connect that to the value it provides for their clients.

They might have a tight ICP, but fail to link that to a problem they often solve.

The issue is most agency owners are too close to that puzzle to see the whole picture. They don't see the gaps.

My job is to give that zoomed-out view and point out those gaps. And then I can help them join the dots and complete the puzzle picture.

Because that's how you create a clear and compelling argument for choosing your agency.

Chances are, you already have the pieces. You just need my help putting them together.

Good positioning =

Take an existing service or solution, figure out the best market for it, and then try and sell it in to that market.

Great positioning =

Start with an existing market, uncover an unmet need, and then design a solution that meets that need.

See the difference?

One is very much agency-centric. It's starting with a service line that already exists and then trying to shoehorn that service into your target market.

The other is client-centric. It starts with what they need, what they struggle to achieve, and then helps them achieve that.

The first one might help you sell a bit more of your existing services, but that's all.

The second one helps you build instant trust and rapport with your clients, and sets you apart as doing something different.

In all the positioning work I've done with agencies over the years, the second one has always been my aim.

Is it harder? Oh yeah. Wayyy harder.
But is it more impactful? I'll let you work that one out.

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