How to scale your agency services (the right way)

When your agency’s core proposition is clear and you feel more confident in exactly what you’re great at, it’s natural to start thinking about what comes next. Perhaps it’s increasing the value of each client relationship, opening new ways to reach your ideal prospects or reinforcing your position in a market that seems to get more crowded every month. Expanding your service offering can be a great way to achieve all of those things, but it’s also one of the easiest ways to lose focus if you don’t approach it deliberately.

How it starts

I’ve seen it happen a lot — and I’ve been there myself. It often begins with a client asking if you can help with something that sits just outside your core services. You trust the client, you can see the commercial logic and it doesn’t feel like much of a stretch, so you agree.

The work goes well enough to mention in the next proposal, then in your credentials deck, and before long it’s on your website as part of your offer. That one small “yes” becomes something you’re now expected to deliver, even if it’s not quite aligned with what you set out to do.

Sometimes that’s a positive evolution (you’ve found a new thing - something you’re great at and adds a lot of value to you and the client). Other times, it’s the start of a problem. You begin to take on more of that type of work, the team finds themselves working in areas that aren’t their strongest and the clarity that once made your positioning sharp starts to fade. It doesn’t happens overnight; it’s a gradual shift, fuelled by good intentions but leading to a diluted proposition, stretched resources and, in some cases, thinner margins.

The point isn’t to avoid new services entirely — far from it. Some of the most successful agencies I’ve worked with have grown by introducing complementary services that made their client relationships stronger and their market position harder to compete with. The agency world absolutely is becoming more competitive, more commoditised and more challenged due to the rapid pace of change with ‘the ‘AI’ word’.

The challenge is knowing which ideas to develop and how to do it in a way that builds on your strengths rather than undermines them. Over the years, I’ve found a few questions that help to filter these decisions.

Five questions to ask before adding a new service

1. Is there genuine demand?

The fastest way to find out is to speak to the people who already buy from you. Ask what problems they’re still trying to solve, whether they’d trust you to handle those areas and what a valuable solution would look like to them. This isn’t about selling there and then — it’s about understanding whether the appetite exists before you invest time and resources in building something that may not land. And if they’re interested, would they buy it from you and how much would they pay? Imagine having that information before you spend a penny yourself on new people, processes, software etc.

2. Could you deliver it to the same standard you’re known for?

Your reputation rests on the quality and consistency of your work. If a new service can’t match that from the outset, there’s a real risk it will weaken the trust you’ve built. Be honest about whether you have the skills, processes and experience to deliver it well — and, if you don’t yet, whether you have a realistic path to get there without compromising current commitments. There’s a phrase - ‘Reputations are hard fought, but easily lost’. Or something like that.

3. What’s the most sensible way to resource it in the beginning?

Jumping straight into permanent hires and new infrastructure is rarely the right starting point. Using your existing network of trusted freelancers, exploring partnerships or running a limited pilot gives you a way to test demand and delivery without taking on long-term costs before the revenue is proven. You need to de-risk and aim to ‘fail fast’.

4. Does the commercial model work beyond the first project?

It’s easy to be excited by headline revenue but sustainable services depend on healthy margins and efficient delivery. Factor in all the costs — including the additional strain on leadership and operations — and check that the service can be profitable on a repeatable basis. Scaling services can mean building out whole new departments - that takes time, money and focus, so you have to be honest and weigh up the opportunity cost too.

5. Can you test it without changing your story?

Not every new service needs to be launched publicly from day one. Trial it with a handful of clients who will give you honest feedback and space to refine the approach. If it works, you can scale it confidently. If it doesn’t, you can step back without confusing the market about what you stand for.

Scaling without diluting

Scaling your services is one of the most effective ways to grow revenue, deepen relationships and make your agency harder to replace, but only if each addition reinforces your positioning rather than dilutes it.

The right ideas will feel like a natural extension of what you already do well and will create opportunities for your team to thrive. The wrong ones will pull you in too many directions and erode the focus that helped you grow in the first place.

When you’re clear on your core proposition, growth is about depth as much as breadth. Expanding the right way means building from a strong foundation - with a brilliant core and a (select) set of (complementary) services that you can deliver to an exceptional standard.

The more intentional you are about how you scale, the more confident you can be that each new service strengthens the agency you want to run — now and in the future.

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