Marketing is a crucial aspect of any successful business, and managed service providers (MSPs) are no exception. In a highly competitive market, MSPs and other IT Service companies need to stand out from their competition and attract new clients in order to grow their business.
However, many struggle with marketing and fail to understand its importance. This article will explore the reasons why marketing is essential for MSPs and IT Service companies and how it can help them reach their business goals.
Whether you are a seasoned company or just starting out, this article will provide valuable insights and practical advice on how to effectively market your managed services and drive business growth.
Why Get Into Marketing?
In a word... Scalability.
As an MSP or IT Service company, you may have experienced growth through word of mouth, referrals, or sales, but marketing introduces scalability to the equation. While these traditional methods of growth have their benefits, they are limited by their reach and can only take your business so far.
Marketing, on the other hand, provides a scalable way to reach and attract new customers, allowing you to grow your business quickly and effectively. By utilizing a variety of marketing tactics, you can reach a much larger audience and generate leads that can turn into paying customers.
Additionally, marketing also provides you with the ability to target specific segments of your audience, increasing your chances of attracting new customers.
Marketing provides an efficient and scalable way for MSPs and cybersecurity companies to reach new customers and grow their businesses. Whether you are looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales, marketing can provide the tools and strategies you need to achieve your goals.
Strategy vs Execution
We'll give you the answer up front... you need both.
As an MSP, having a well-rounded marketing strategy is crucial for your success. Having just a strategy is not enough, you need to be able to execute it effectively as well. Here's why:
Clarity of goals: A clear marketing strategy helps you set specific and measurable goals for your marketing efforts. Without a strategy, your marketing efforts are likely to be disjointed and lack focus.
Allocation of resources: Having a marketing strategy helps you allocate resources, such as time and budget, effectively. This ensures that your marketing efforts are well-coordinated and focused on achieving your goals. Of course, this drastically shifts when you partner with an outsourced agency, just like your clients alleviate their internal resources needs when they work with you.
Consistency in messaging: A marketing strategy ensures that your messaging is consistent across all of your marketing channels. This helps you build a strong brand and create a cohesive customer experience.
Measurement of success: A marketing strategy helps you measure the success of your marketing efforts. Without a strategy, it's difficult to know what's working and what's not, which makes it challenging to make informed decisions about your marketing efforts.
Scalability of efforts: Having a marketing strategy and executing it effectively allows you to scale your marketing efforts over time. This can help you reach a wider audience, generate more leads, and ultimately grow your business.
Having both a marketing strategy and effective execution is essential for the success of an MSP. In the rest of this post, we'll focus on the tactical execution, but you can find other great content in our resources that provides strategic guidance like:
Top 3 Channels used by Successful MSPs
In today's digital age, it's crucial to carefully select the right marketing channels and tactics to reach your target audience and grow your business. With so many digital channels available, it's important to consider factors such as your target audience, your marketing goals, and your budget when selecting the right channels to focus on.
Selecting the right marketing channels will help you to maximize your reach and ensure that you are reaching your target audience effectively, saving time and resources, and allowing you to achieve your marketing goals more efficiently.
Here are 3 main channels that we would recommend you cover if you're interested in boosting the growth of your MSP, although there are of course other great options.
Blog Posts: The Why
Blog posting is still a valuable marketing channel that provides you with several benefits for your business and customers. An overwhelming 77% of internet users regularly read blog posts. Here's some reasons why:
First, it provides a platform for you to showcase your expertise and knowledge in IT Services, thereby establishing yourself as a thought leader and building trust with your target audience.
Secondly, blog posts can improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts by providing valuable and relevant content that can rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), increasing your visibility and driving organic traffic to your website.
Also, blog posting can help you to foster engagement and build relationships with your customers by providing them with valuable and relevant information.
Finally, blogs can also be used to drive conversions and sales by incorporating calls-to-action and promotional offers within the content.
Blog posting remains a great marketing channel as it provides you with a platform to establish your expertise, improve your SEO, build relationships with customers, and drive conversions.
Blog Posts: The How
We'll keep it simple, as there are many tactics to assist in traffic and lead gen from blog posts, but the top 4 tactics of blog posting are:
Targeting keywords: Utilizing relevant keywords in your blog posts can help improve your search engine optimization (SEO) and increase visibility in search engine results pages. This of course aligns up with your content strategy and planning.
Providing valuable content: Creating high-quality, relevant, and valuable content is essential to keep your audience engaged and attract new visitors to your blog.
Including imagery/photos: Incorporating visually appealing and relevant imagery or photos can make your blog posts more engaging and help convey your message more effectively.
Including calls to action: Encourage your audience to take action by including clear and compelling calls to action (CTAs) in your blog posts, such as signing up for your email list, downloading a resource, or making a purchase. CTAs help turn blog readers into leads and potential customers.
Expanded Content Development : The Why
As an IT service company, you can showcase your thought leadership and gain leads by developing "expanded content" such as white papers, infographics, checklists, and more. To showcase a positive stat about this type of content, 71% of B2B buyers have used white papers in the last 12 months to research purchasing decisions.
These types of content can provide valuable insights and information to your target audience, demonstrating your expertise in your field. By creating high-quality, informative content, you establish yourself as a trusted resource for your industry, which can help to build brand awareness and generate leads.
By developing white papers, you can delve into complex topics and provide in-depth analysis and recommendations. White papers can serve as a valuable resource for your target audience and provide them with valuable information that they can use in their own decision-making processes.
Infographics are a visually engaging way to present information and can be used to simplify complex concepts, making them easier to understand. They can also be used to showcase data and statistics, providing insights that may not be immediately apparent through other means.
Checklists, on the other hand, can provide step-by-step guidance for completing a specific task or process. This type of content can be particularly useful for your target audience as it provides them with a clear, concise, and actionable guide that they can follow.
By demonstrating your expertise and building trust with your target audience, it can lead to increased brand awareness and lead generation, helping you with MSP marketing.
Expanded Content Development : The How
Developing expanded content needs to be strategically and tactically sound to pull off your showcasing of expertise and to generate leads. Here are the top tactics to keep in mind when developing this type of content:
Focusing on a specific topic: When developing expanded content, it's important to choose a specific topic that is relevant to your target audience and that you have expertise in. This will help you create content that is valuable, informative, and credible.
Including relevant research and data: In order to make your expanded content credible and persuasive, it's important to include relevant research and data. This will help you back up your claims and provide your target audience with valuable insights they can use to make informed decisions.
Making it visually appealing: To grab the attention of your target audience and make your content more memorable, consider incorporating visuals such as images, graphs, and charts. This will help you convey complex information in an easy-to-digest format.
Providing actionable insights: Your expanded content should not only educate your target audience, but also provide them with actionable insights they can use to solve problems or make decisions. This will increase the chances of your content being shared and used by your audience.
Expanded content development is a powerful tool for IT service companies to showcase their thought leadership and generate leads. It's time to leverage the power of expanded content development today to take your MSP marketing strategy one step further.
Engaging LinkedIn: The Why
As an MSP, you can use LinkedIn to build your business by posting relevant content, engaging with your network, making new connections, and using lead generation outreach. 80% of LinkedIn users drive business decisions.
Source: The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn
By posting relevant content on LinkedIn, you can showcase your expertise and thought leadership in your industry. This can help you to build brand awareness and attract new followers who are interested in your services.
Engaging with your network on LinkedIn can also help you to build relationships and establish yourself as a trusted resource. By commenting, liking, and sharing posts from other users, you can increase your visibility and drive engagement with your own content.
Making new connections on LinkedIn can help you to expand your reach and connect with potential clients. We use a specific 2nd > 1st Connection tactic in order to enhance the network and potential lead generation of each profile.
Finally, you can use lead generation outreach on LinkedIn to reach out to potential clients and promote your MSP. By creating targeted campaigns and sending personalized messages to potential clients, you can increase your chances of generating leads and growing your business.
By using LinkedIn posting, engagement, new connections, and lead generation outreach, you can build your IT services business and attract new clients, establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, and grow your business.
Engaging LinkedIn: The How
As an MSP, using LinkedIn can be a valuable tool for reaching potential clients, building your brand, and showcasing your expertise. Here are some tips for using LinkedIn effectively:
InMails vs Connecting: When it comes to reaching potential clients on LinkedIn, you have two options: using InMails or connecting with them directly. InMails are direct messages you can send to people you're not yet connected with, while connecting with someone involves sending a connection request and waiting for them to accept it. Align your process with these two options effectively.
Searching for engagement: Consider searching for people based on their interests, topics they post about or their industry. This can help you find people who are best for you to review and engage with their posts. This will help them find your brand, as organic page posting these days has some pretty low initial reach percentages (ie. 2-4% of your audience sees organic posts up front).
Liking vs commenting: When engaging with other people's posts, you have the option to like or comment on them. Liking a post is a quick and easy way to show that you've seen it, while commenting allows you to start a conversation and build a relationship. The latter is recommended.
Building relationships: When reaching out to potential clients on LinkedIn, it's important to keep in mind that you're not just trying to sell them something. Instead, focus on forming a relationship with them by offering value and advice, asking questions, sharing your own insights, and sharing resources.
In conclusion, marketing is an essential aspect of success for MSPs and IT Service companies in a competitive market. By utilizing effective marketing tactics, MSPs can reach a larger audience, attract new customers, and grow their business quickly and efficiently. A well-rounded marketing strategy, along with effective execution, is crucial to ensure success.
Ultimately, finding the right marketing channels and tactics that align with your business goals and target audience will help you to achieve your marketing goals more efficiently and drive business growth.
