A managed services provider (MSP) may have the best technologies and services on the market, but if it doesn’t invest in marketing strategies and tactics, the world may never know about it.
However, marketing is not easy for many MSPs. Marketing and sales continue to be the top two pain points of MSPs around the world. This could be due to cost, lack of expertise or overall stiff market competition. That said, there’s an incredible upside for those MSPs that are able to successfully establish themselves as trusted advisors to current and prospective customers. The opportunity for MSPs is greater than ever before, with the market expected to grow to $356.24 billion by 2025 (up from $186 billion in 2019).
In reality, marketing for an MSP involves many of the same techniques that any small, medium or large enterprise might use. This includes both traditional marketing techniques, as well as digital and internet-based efforts. What sets MSP marketing apart from other businesses is that trust and experience stands above all other key messages, especially given that many customers won’t understand the complex technical elements that make an MSP so successful.
For MSPs ready to take the plunge into marketing to capture this immense opportunity and ensure their services are reaching the customers that need them, here are seven elements to consider as part of their overall strategy.
Having a great product or service
It perhaps goes without saying that the foundation of every good marketing plan is a great product or service. For an MSP, this could be its technology offerings or perhaps a service that it does better than anyone else in its area. From there, the MSP can build differentiated branding, as well as an analysis of acquisition costs for new customers.
Get clear on your audience
Once an MSP finds clarity around what its differentiator is, it can then identify its target buyer. These demographics could include type of customer, geographic area, vertical, company size, or even the particular buyer inside of the company itself that should be targeted. In doing this, an MSP ensures that spending on marketing is as efficient as possible towards potential and existing customers.
Telling stories about problem solving
One of the unique challenges of marketing MSP services and other offerings is that the target audience often won’t understand the technical intricacies that might make the MSP so successful. For an MSP, it's often more successful to focus their marketing efforts on the problem that these technologies can solve, versus the speeds and feeds that may be inside the technology itself. MSPs should make sure that they are marketing what successful outcomes their services can create for customers, as well as instilling the trust that they are the best provider to deliver that value.
Digital optimization across all platforms
In today’s digital world, more customers than ever are finding and even making purchasing decisions based off of a business’s digital presence — even before they interact with the business themselves. That means that an MSP needs to ensure that their website, social media and other digital platforms are updated and provide clear, relevant information on their products, services and problem-solving capabilities.
A key part of this digital strategy is search engine optimization (SEO), which is the process of optimizing a website to be found through search engines like Google (where 93 percent of all online interactions begin). Some website platforms have built-in SEO tools to help with this, but there are also specialist consultants who can help implement SEO best practices and ensure they’re fully optimized to reach potential customers looking to find their products and services.
Further reading Crash Course in SEO for MSPs
Email marketing outreach
Email marketing is one of the mainstays of marketing in today’s world, allowing businesses like MSPs to generate new leads, as well as stay connected to current customers. This fact remains true, even as many of us get dozens or even hundreds of emails a day to our personal and professional inboxes. It also has a typically high rate of return, with estimates saying email marketing can deliver on average $38 in revenue for every $1 invested.
Further reading Guide to Email Marketing for MSPs
However, email marketing can easily have the opposite effect and turn into spam if not done thoughtfully and strategically by an MSP. Business leaders should make sure that content is relevant and useful to the audience, as well as consider email marketing strategies like triggered emails (sent after a set period of time or a specific user action), behavioral emails (sent based on interaction with previous emails), and email drip campaigns (a series of nurturing emails to try and convert a lead into business) to optimize their strategies.
Check out these marketing templates that we created to help MSPs sell backup services, including a promo email, customer presentation, and a leaflet:
Get creative with content
Content marketing is a way for an MSP to highlight its capabilities, expertise and success stories in new and interesting ways to potential and existing customers. It also provides fresh content to promote across email, social, web and other digital channels — potentially further expanding its reach. It’s also an extremely cost-effective marketing technique, with estimates finding that content marketing costs 62 percent less on average than other outbound marketing methods, while also delivering three times the number of leads.
Further reading The Power of Content Marketing for MSPs
Content can take a lot of different forms, from a blog post, to a case study, to a white paper, to online reviews and testimonials, to a guest post at a local or industry publication. MSPs can either develop this content in-house through their technical or marketing teams, or it can be easily outsourced to a third-party provider who can support content creation.
Further reading Guide to Content Marketing for MSPs
Social media marketing
Social media is one of the quickest-growing places to find new customers, as well as interact with existing ones. LinkedIn, for instance, has more than 740 million members, 40 percent of whom check it on a daily basis. Social media marketing can include paid advertisements, as well as organic content created by the MSP to reach target audiences.
Further reading Guide to MSP Social Media Marketing
There are a number of different platforms that could make sense for an MSP business. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are some of the more traditional platforms, but there are also newer platforms like Instagram and TikTok that could prove valuable for the right type of content. For businesses that invest in social media marketing, there can be significant payoff, with 73 percent of marketers saying that their social media marketing efforts were either somewhat or very effective for their business growth. The key is for the MSP to identify where the most effective place to reach their target audience is, as well as only choosing the number of platforms it can fully commit to supporting with quality content.
Conclusion
It’s an incredible time to be an MSP business owner, with immense growth opportunity available today and on the horizon. Implementing even a handful of these techniques as part of an overall marketing strategy can go a long way to ensuring that your business is making the most of this opportunity, as well as ensuring that critical technology services reach the customers that need them.
In this package, you will get five guides helping to create marketing strategies and tips on:
- Dealing with on-site SEO
- Creating web advertising properly
- Email chains for MSPs
- Content marketing for an MSP blog
- Social media marketing