Scope creep is one of the most common profit problems I see in digital agencies.
And one of the least talked about.
Most agency owners know it exists, but because it creeps in so gradually, and in such small amounts, it rarely feels worth addressing in the moment.
Until it adds up.
What is scope creep in a digital agency?
Scope creep is what happens when a project expands beyond what was originally agreed, without a corresponding increase in the fee.
Maybe its an extra round of revisions that wasn’t in the brief.
Maybe it’s an additional deliverable a client requested in a “can you just” email.
Or perhaps a meeting that wasn’t scoped, or a feature that got added mid-project.
On its own, each one is small and the impact goes unnoticed. But add them together and they can represent a significant chunk of lost revenue every month.
Why scope creep is harder to spot than you’d think
The tricky thing about scope creep is that it often comes from good intentions.
You want to keep the client happy. You want to be flexible . You don’t want to seem difficult over something small, and you want to build “Goodwill”
So you say yes, and the extra work goes down as ‘relationship building”
Before long, you’re delivering 20% more work than you quoted for, at the same price…..Ouch!!
What scope creep actually costs a digital agency
The actual cost of scope creep can come as a massive surprise, once it’s been quantified.
When we run a Scope Creep Audit, we calculate the exact financial value of unscoped work delivered over a given period.
For a typical agency billing between £500k and £2m a year, that number is often between £30,000 and £80,000 per year
That’s the sum of lots of small extras that haven’t been charged for….and it’s all lost profit!
How to stop scope creep in your agency
The first step is always visibility. Just how much are we losing? You cannot fix a problem you haven’t measured.
If you’ve been feeling the effects of scope creep but haven’t sat down and quantified it, that’s the place to start.
We help digital agencies do exactly that through our Scope Creep Audit. It costs £250, and gives you a clear picture of where your profit is going and what to do about it.
If you’d like to know more, Book a Scope Creep Audit and we’ll talk you through it. You can read more about how it works here
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