Why MSP Prospects Need a Minimum of 7 Touches to Buy

A prospect’s journey from "Who are they?" to "Yes, I'll sign the contract" is less of a straight line and more like a high-stakes, multi-stage treasure hunt. The secret to bridging that gap for your MSP lies in a marketing concept almost a century old: The Rule of 7. This rule states that a prospect needs to see or hear your marketing message at least 7 times before they truly remember it and take action. 

Forget one-and-done marketing, because this principle is absolutely vital for selling the complex, high-value services that a managed service provider delivers. Let's unpack how sustained, consistent exposure is the key to building the trust and familiarity that closes deals in the IT space.

The Psychology Behind Consistent Exposure

So, why seven, specifically?

The number itself isn’t actually that specific. Instead of a concrete requirement, seven is just a vestige of the golden age of Hollywood, when the movie studios discovered they had to market their films. As we’ve all become more accustomed to—and saturated in—marketing, this number has only gone up, with many suggesting 8 to 12 touches over a few weeks. 

The familiarity and trust you develop is thanks to something called the mere-exposure effect, AKA the familiarity principle. In summary, people prefer things they are more familiar with. In the context of your business, a prospect becomes more likely to trust you the more often they hear or see your name, or read your content, or recognize your logo. 

It all comes down to psychology, and the impression you’re trying to cultivate:

• Boosting familiarity - Every one of the people you’re trying to reach is also being bombarded with messaging thousands of times each day. Since the human brain uses familiarity to filter out what is important, making sure your brand is known is critical to your success. The more your brand is seen, the more familiar it becomes. This is what you want to happen, as it makes your audience more receptive to what you’re trying to say.
• Creating credibility - Oftentimes, the thing you are trying to sell as an MSP (let’s assume it’s a cybersecurity tool) inherently requires your audience's trust before anyone will buy in. You can hardly expect a rational business owner to hand over the keys to the kingdom to someone they barely know. Repeated marketing touches give you the chance to introduce your business and its potential to your prospects.
• Milking timeliness - By spreading these marketing touches out, you increase your chances of catching a target when they are also feeling the pain you can assuage. It isn’t as though a business will simply drop everything that’s working and switch providers when things are hunky-dory… but they’ll be much more receptive to the idea when they find themselves up the creek with no other paddle in sight.

The 7-Part Multi-Channel Strategy for MSPs

Let’s make something abundantly clear… running the same ad seven times is not what we mean by seven touches. Doing that will get your audience to remember you, but not in the way you want. Instead, you need a variety of messages, presented in different formats and delivered through varied channels.

Guiding Your Prospect Throughout Their Journey

The key to a successful customer journey is simplicity. Each and every step they take—from initial awareness to repeat business with your company—should provide them with not only a clear path forward, but also something of value they can bring with them. Keep in mind that this journey is often one that spans numerous channels over extended periods. Let’s consider how one such customer journey might play out:

1. Awareness - A prospect is sick of dealing with outdated and overcomplicated IT. They hop on Google and see your Google Ad after searching for “business IT support near me.”
2. Interest - They click through the ad to your website and come across your blog. They take a moment to read a blog post about managed services and the benefits of proactive outsourced IT support.
3. Engagement - This prospect then sees an ad pop up on their LinkedIn feed from your business, offering a free guide to business continuity planning.
4. Lead Capture - Interested, they visit your website and download the guide in exchange for their contact information. Behind the scenes, your customer relationship management platform creates a ticket for sales to reach out to them.
5. Nurture - A few days later, they find a printed newsletter from your company in their mailbox, along with a case study detailing how you solved a similar problem to theirs.
6. Re-engagement - The following week, they receive (provided you have already secured permission to email them in exchange for the business continuity planning guide) an enewsletter that provides some context about the cybersecurity services you offer.
7. Conversion - Soon after, your business follows up with a call or personalized email that references everything already sent, offering to schedule a meeting or assessment.

Automation Makes Your Marketing a Lot Easier

Let’s face facts… the average small to medium-sized business has a small number of employees doing their regular jobs; these tasks aren’t easy to accomplish. This is especially true if no one on your team has marketing experience.

That’s why we’ve set up our proprietary marketing platform for managed service providers, JoomConnect, which helps you automate these and other key activities. Say a prospect fills out a form on your website. Our platform works with ConnectWise and Autotask to automatically create an opportunity and schedule follow-ups for the appropriate team members. In addition, it allows you to plan your marketing campaigns in advance, activating emails and content marketing based on triggers activated by prospect behaviors, ensuring the prospect gets the right material at the right time.

As a result, you ensure your new clients enjoy a positive experience filled with efficient follow-through and a healthy dose of cohesion. Trust us, we use it ourselves for our own MSP marketing efforts, using our own business as a test case for it all.

Ready to See What Else Automated Marketing Can Do for You?

Repeated touches have been shown to be the most effective marketing tool, and our platform is built to help you make them.

Find out more about what our decades of experience can do for you. Reach out to chat or to schedule an appointment for a free demo. Give us a call at 888-546-4384.