Over the past 5 years I’ve tested services + products for Spruce Rd. behind the scenes. Some “tests” resulted in zero leads, but I’ve finally found a method that booked 100% of my open spots (and then some) and generated $10k in just a few days work.

I’ve tried everything from:

• Cold emailing

• Blog posts

• Emailing my newsletter list

• Posting on Instagram

• Getting a waitlist for new services

And you know what?

NONE of those worked for us. 

Not to say success can’t be found through these channels, they just haven’t served us well in pitching new service offerings.

So what do you do when you’re ready to offer a new design service, but want to avoid crickets?

In the last few months I did a test of our own. If you’re new around here, Spruce Rd. is known for our one service package of complete brand identity design. No web design. No smaller projects. Unless they went through complete branding with our team.

It’s served us well over the years, but I’ve recognized a gap where we can better serve clients.

Rather than debuting a new service publicly, I did some testing behind the scenes.

We debuted a new service where clients could book a day with our team for their design needs. I’ve hired my photographer for a similar service, and really enjoyed the process. Why couldn’t it work for us as well?

For this new service I pitched our new service through three different channels:

• Instagram stories (for a couple weeks)

• My design services email waitlist (no longer active)

• A handful of my existing clients

The results?

Literally ZERO spots booked from Instagram or my email waitlist.

What surprised me most is that I only booked our new service through my existing clients. On top of that? In a matter of weeks, I sold out all of the 6 spots I opened and actually ended up booking a 7th spot for a completely new client.

Here’s a few screenshots showing the audience numbers for each channel:

Packaging + pitching new services can leverage income where there might have been a gap elsewhere. In my case, earning over $10k through beta testing with just a few days of design work.

Ready to test a new service for your business?

I’m sharing the exact emails I used to book out spots for our latest service offering (emails + client names omitted for confidentiality, of course).

Watch the video to get a deeper look into how I pitched our new service:

Email #1: Booking an existing client

One of the best ways to sell any product/service is to your clients that already have worked with you and built that trust. In this situation, a current client came to us with a new design need. For ongoing design work I typically will spend quite a bit of time estimating the value + how long our team would need to design. I still stand by this pricing method for some projects, but realized when a new design collateral request came in it was a great time to pitch our latest offering.

The result was a quick “YES” let’s do it. This client has since booked 7 spots for our new service.

Here’s the email below showing how we introduced our latest offering: 

Email #2: Following up + creating urgency

If you’ve ever sent a quote or pitch to a client, you know what it feels like to eagerly await their response and never hear back. It happens to every business! I’ve learned that often this is unintentional ghosting, and there’s a way to remedy it that’s fairly simple.

Follow up.

Reminding the potential client about the service they were interested in will bump it back to their inbox. You’d be surprised how effective this is to send a gentle reminder!

Here’s a series of emails where a previous client I hadn’t worked with in a few years reached out for upcoming design needs. Since we hadn’t collaborated in a while, I scheduled a call to catch up, learn more about her needs, and if I thought it was a good fit I would pitch her on our newest service. Turns out it was in alignment with our offering so I shared the process, investment and limited availability.

After we concluded the call, I followed up with next steps.

A few days went by and I didn’t hear anything so I followed up and let her know that another client was interested in the day she showed interest in earlier. This resulted in a booked spot and a great experience :).

Email #3: Pitching to a brand new client

Over the years we’ve received quite a few inquiries from potential clients interested in working with us, but not in need of a complete new brand. So… we’ve had to say no to many opportunities in order to stay true to our specialty in branding.

While I still stand behind having a solid brand before investing in collateral design, there have been a handful of exceptions I’ve made that turned out to be some of my favorite clients and projects! 

With this clarity in mind, I wanted to test our newest offering working with a completely new client who had a solid brand already in place. 

Lucky for us, the perfect fit dropped in our inbox within our testing service window! 

Here’s our email conversation below, which after a quick call catching up on his design needs resulted in a booked spot on our calendar and a lovely experience. Hope to continue supporting his brand as it grows over the years! 

Finding gaps in the market + testing new services can produce great results for your business.

If I stopped testing our new service when it resulted in zero leads from my email waitlist + Instagram, I would not have known how effective our new offering is.

My recommendation: If you’re developing a new offering, focus on one-on-one connection. Be willing to try multiple channels when marketing a new service. Listen to your clients as you test the service to see what works with both marketing + client experience in the process.

When you test a new service, add a comment on my Facebook video and let me know! I’d love to know how it went and even include it as a case study in this article :).