Specialize in one service first, offer them all later

If you're a freelancer, this is great advice — do one thing really well. But as you grow into an agency, I think it's pretty bad advice. Listen to your customers. If you're offering SEO services and lots of customers are asking for copywriting services, it makes complete sense to hire a copywriter.

Caveats: 1. It should be related (don't offer both SEO and plumbing services). 2. One client needing a new service is not enough. It needs to be multiple clients — follow the trends.

His advice lines up with the "productized service" route that many agencies are now taking (essentially, niching way down and offering something very specific rather than trying to do it all).

@brettwill1025 of DesignJoy is raking in over a million ARR as an agency of ONE offering productized services, which is absolutely incredible imo.

Oooh this is fascinating. Great example of how to use audience personas to drive growth.

They employed a variety of audience personas — digital marketing pros in edtech, fintech, adtech, "WhateverTech" — to serve as various ideal customer profiles across marketing functions. That allowed them to map ideal “customers” to their marketing objectives.

This SparkToro piece jumps into this idea more but the basic process is to "distill your audience persona findings into lists — enough information that allows your team to refine pitches and source inspiration." Include:

• Who they are
• Their motivations
• 5-10 influential social accounts
• 5-10 influential website and/or press
• 3-5 influential podcasts (or other influential content type)
• Their target audience
• 3-5 trends or topics that are likely to be top of mind

I think this makes sense if you're an agency because obviously, you start off with one or a few people and build the number of people within the agency as you grow...so the more people you bring in the more different skills they bring with them and the more you can offer. But I'm not sure it would apply across the board to all businesses.