Every year, MSP owners promise themselves they'll market more consistently. They start with good intentions, a list of ideas, and maybe a spreadsheet. By March, client needs and emergencies take over, and marketing falls to the bottom of the list.
The solution isn't a more complicated plan. It's one you can actually follow.
Ask an MSP owner if marketing matters, and almost everyone says yes. Ask what happens to marketing the moment a big project lands or a technician quits, and the answer tells you what they actually decided.
Most MSP marketing plans don't fail because the tactics were wrong. They fail because no one ever actually decided marketing gets to survive a busy month.
The risk that one of your clients is being actively pitched by a competitor right now is higher than most MSPs want to admit. Not because your service is lacking… because your competitors are making calls, sending emails, and showing up consistently, silence is an easy opening to walk through.
You don't lose clients to better service as often as you lose them to better presence.
Most marketing dashboards will show you a hundred numbers. Follows, clicks, impressions, opens, bounce rate, and sessions. Almost none of them answer the question you actually care about: Is my marketing working?
When it comes to B2B marketing, many small to medium-sized businesses feel like they are rowing against the current with no compass. You’ve likely tried the "spray and pray" approach—buying lead lists, posting sporadically on LinkedIn, or sending out generic emails—only to find the silence on the other end deafening.
It’s an especially common story in the IT world: the complexity of the service in question gets lost in all the technical jargon, and the core message fails to land with the right people. The secret isn’t working harder; it’s working with precision.
Have you been frustrated by your marketing, either because you feel it lacks direction or simply isn’t worth the investment? This isn’t uncommon, as many people tend to see marketing as a series of individual efforts and actions (like posting on social media or running an ad) rather than the interconnected system it must be to support your success.
If done correctly, this system has seven steps to follow whenever you’re promoting your business and its services. Let’s explore what they look like, why things often fall apart, and how to fix that tendency.
Standing out in today’s very loud and congested marketplace is tough. You offer excellent service, you know your tech, but your marketing feels... generic.
It’s a common problem, especially amongst managed service providers. Many MSPs focus so heavily on the what (services) that they forget the how (communication). The solution: developing a unique, consistent brand voice. This isn't just marketing fluff; it's how you turn prospects into customers and customers into raving fans.
When starting with outbound marketing, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on lead list providers…quite the opposite. With a few simple tools and a clear process, you can build a targeted, high-quality list on your own.
Let’s go through a few best practices that will help you do so.
Managed service providers face a challenge that should resonate with businesses and organizations of all kinds: they often know their products and services too well, and therefore focus too much on the minutiae—instead of the benefits a product or service brings—when trying to make a sale. While this is never ideal, it can be particularly dangerous for your audience when you’re trying to educate them about cybersecurity, as they’re vulnerable without it.
Therefore, you must position your services not as impressive technological feats, but instead, highlight how they solve your prospect’s problems and assuage their fears. Let’s discuss how you can do so.
In business, it’s easy to get tunnel vision. You’re so focused on your clients and your day-to-day operations that you might as well be wearing blinders.
Here’s the thing: while you’re head down, grinding away, your competitors are out there making moves. Ignoring them isn't just a missed opportunity; it can be a one-way ticket to falling behind.
Marketing managed IT services, much like marketing any service offering, largely depends on the quality and applicability of your content and the topics it discusses.
As a result, it is essential to produce good content and address the topics your audience is most interested in learning about. Let’s discuss a few things that this could—and really should—entail.
A major point of your website is to attract prospective clients to your business, educate them about your services, and entice them to contact you for more information (or even sign up!). Of course, for this to happen, these prospects must first visit your website, contributing to the all-important metric known as traffic.
This is where your content can prove its worth. Let’s discuss using it to attract as much organic traffic as possible.
Little can be more frustrating than thinking you’re doing everything right, only for your desired outcome to elude you… for instance, if your marketing prospects aren’t being drawn in.
Let’s explore some potential reasons why your prospects aren’t converting and how you can resolve the issues that may be present.
When you’re trying to advertise your MSP services, your content—the materials you share with your audience, like service pages, blogs, deliverables, social media, and others—and its quality will be critical to your success. You need your audience to be informed, engaged, and even excited about what you have to offer.
Of course, for your content to have a chance of inspiring these reactions, you need your audience to read it first.
To develop a strategic marketing approach, it helps to know where your strengths and weaknesses lie and how your opportunities compare to the threats you’ll face. This is the purpose of the SWOT analysis… it allows you to assess your internal and external factors so you can refine and improve your marketing of the managed services you offer.
Let’s explore what goes into a SWOT analysis and how to use it to your advantage, beginning with a breakdown of its most basic parts.
Managed service providers can get real, quantifiable value from hosting an event for prospects or existing clients. Stick around because, by the end of this blog, you’ll be able to track the value your MSP receives from properly utilizing event marketing to pursue your goals.
“Content is king.”
This is a relatively common piece of marketing advice, but what does it really mean?
Simple: Regarding your marketing, your content will communicate most of your message with your audience. It pulls traffic to your website, gives visitors a reason to be there, and gives them ample opportunity to reach out to you. That said, your content also represents your business, so let’s discuss how to ensure your content puts you and your company in the best possible light.
If there’s one thing marketing needs to be successful, it’s consistency. Sure, it needs to be informative, engaging, and convincing, but if your audience doesn’t see it regularly, it just will not be as effective as you need it to be. Of course, to create this level of consistency, you need to be consistent in your activities.
That’s why we’ve outlined five things that you should do each and every day to help make your marketing as effective and impactful as possible.
Modern marketing is essential to any business’ operations, making it even more critical that all marketing efforts are as effective as possible. Images can play a significant role in accomplishing this goal.
Let’s talk about how you can (and should) use images and other visual elements to make your content more engaging.
There are a lot of decisions to make in any marketing effort you put out, many of which could be the difference between success and failure. Even more common, however, are the decisions where the difference is between success and great success. Obviously, the latter option would be preferable…so how can you identify the right path?
Simple… by utilizing something called A/B testing. Let’s discuss what it is and, more importantly, how to do it.
