This is the only MSP marketing guide you’ll need to read on the internet.
Seriously!
What follows is an in-depth, step by step process of generating leads for MSPs and IT companies.
The best part?
The author of this post is an MSP insider with over 15 years of MSP marketing experience.
All you have to do is implement the strategies highlighted here, and you’ll be on your way to growing your MSP business and, most importantly, smiling all the way to the bank. Sounds like a deal?
Great! Let’s do this!
#1. Set Your Marketing Budget
Before you start marketing your IT company, you must determine the minimum and maximum amount to spend on your campaign. \Your budget can be monthly or annual.
Your budget can be monthly or annual.
How To Determine Your MSP Marketing Budget
Ask yourself:
What Service Am I Offering?
Document what your ideal offer would look like. Then think about your target audience.
How big is the portfolio of your customers? How can you best reach them? How much do you need to set aside to get to as many clients as possible?
The point is, when you determine your offer from the get-go, you can know how much to allocate for your marketing campaign.
What Is My Revenue Goal?
You know your offer and the amount of money you need to sell the idea. It’s time to set a revenue goal.
How much are you expecting in terms of ROI? The best way to determine your revenue expectation is to look at your recurring revenue, and the percentage increase you’re hoping to achieve.
If you’re doing $500K and would like to top that up by 20 percent, then your goal will be to earn an extra $100K by the end of your financial year.
Again, set a realistic revenue goal based on your marketing budget.
Can My Target Audience Help Me Achieve My Goal?
When it comes to MSP marketing, you must get your target audience right.
Who do you need to target to reach your goal? For example, if you want to earn $50K at recurring revenue of $100K, you must target at least 500 leads.
If you target private doctors with about 25 employees, for instance, you must convert at least 20 doctors to achieve your revenue goal.
Most managed network companies fail to accomplish their marketing goals because they target customers randomly and hope that one or two new clients will help them spur growth.
How Will I Measure Success?
You have the budget and revenue goal in place. You must now determine your success.
Of course, your marketing campaign’s primary aim is to achieve your revenue goals and hopefully gain repeat customers.
Still, how do you know if you’re on the right track?
Well, you have to break down your marketing plan.
That way, you track small wins and, most importantly, trace mistakes that may hinder growth.
If you’re promoting your business via content marketing, for example, you can measure success by the number of your subscribers or social shares.
#2 Collaborate With SMB Influencers To Create Content
According to a report by Influencer Marketing, up to 40 percent of marketers run six or more influencer marketing campaigns.
On top of that, 57 percent of marketers say they intend to increase their influencer marketing budgets as per the findings of the same study.
For MSPs, this type of marketing type is super-effective, especially when you’re trying to create awareness around your brand or products.
But, how do you find someone to collaborate with and give you the results you want?
When scouting for an influencer to help showcase your MSP company, here’s what you need to look at.
Relevance
Check to see how the influencer’s content aligns with your brand’s messaging.
Just because a blogger is tech-savvy doesn’t make them a sure match for an MSP company specializing in legal IT, for example.
Engagement
Engagement shows how interactive an influencer’s content with his/her audience. How’re these readers responding? Are they commenting? Sharing?
The level of engagement indicates how meaningful the relationship with a specific influencer will be to your MSP business.
Reach
As an MSP brand, you want to attract new visitors to your site frequently.
Therefore, it is essential to consider an influencer’s reach as it translates to more traffic and, by extension, more exposure for your company.
Frequency
You want to work with an influencer who posts regularly and one who attracts return visitors.
Remember, it requires multiple exposures to entice a potential customer to click and check your website, so you want to ensure they return.
#3 Increase Your Product Awareness With Existing Customers
Picture this:
You have a product that’s already in the market.
You approach an existing customer to offer a security add-on. The client responds, “why didn’t you inform us about this sooner.”
That right there sounds like months of lost revenue caused by low product awareness.
Now, if you’ve just upgraded your product and are waiting for the next half-yearly business review to tell your customers about it, you may want to reconsider your decision.
You see…
Informing your existing MSP clients about add-ons as soon as they happen forces them to make quick decisions that will play out in your favor.
There are several MSP marketing strategies you can use to keep your clientele informed about your service regularly, including:
Attaching helpful links regarding product updates in your email signatures
Leveraging social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook to display targeted ads to your existing customers
Send a product-focused education newsletter to your email subscribers.
Retarget clients based on your website’s activity
Connect and interact with your customers on LinkedIn. Speaking of LinkedIn, here’s an in-depth guide to help you master marketing on the platform.
#4 Use Tools To Create Customized MSP Marketing Content
Content marketing will increase your website’s traffic and get potential customers to know about your brand.
According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), up to 91 percent of B2B marketers use content marketing to reach customers. In essence, this means that as an MSP business owner, content marketing should be at the center of your overall marketing strategy.
Sure, creating enough content to put your brand on the map is time-consuming and expensive.
But, we’ll let you in on a little secret.
When generating your MSP business’s marketing content, using the right tool can make a lot of difference. We’re talking about tools that can help you create professional-looking and attractive banner ads and social media posts.
You must be thinking … isn’t creating content all about educating my readers? Sure, your content must be of high quality and provide value.
Still, including images is within your content is essential. For starters, pictures make content more digestible. On top of that, cleverly-placed graphics go a long way in complementing your text.
Besides, did you know that 67 percent of customers say the quality of a product image influences their buying decision?
With that in mind, here are tools that can help MSPs create stunning ads and images.
Social Media Graphics
Adobe Spark
Canva
Snappa
Video Templates
Wavve
Raw Shorts
Powtoon
Blog/Website Design
#5 Build And Nurture A Lead List for Managed Network Companies
Indeed, creating and nurturing a list of sales opportunities is nothing new.
Even so, 61 percent of marketers say generating leads tops their list of challenges.
And, because only 8 percent of your site’s visitors are ready to buy, MSPs should concentrate on generating quality leads and traffic.
Why is list-building a crucial component of marketing for MSP strategy?
Because the concept is not going out of style any time soon. Plus, it is the control of your audience once you have acquired enough subscribers.
Look at it this way…
When you send emails, you already know what percentage of your target audience will open and how they’re likely to react. In other words, a list helps your marketing campaign remain consistent.
How can IT Providers Build a List that Allows them to Own Their Audiences?
Here’s how:
Choose an Email Platform
While there are many email marketing platforms, we recommend MailChimp. It is free and offers a host of features without overlapping with other paid services.
Pro Tip – Start with the “readily Available” contact information
Look, building an email list takes time. However, you start by finding “loose” contacts.
Here are a couple of places to look.
Past form completions – the “contact us” form on your site
Email inboxes
Appointment setting systems – Calendly, etc
Invoicing systems
Business cards
Professional service automation – Here, you’ll find most of your client’s information. Simply run a report of contacts in your PSA and export it to a spreadsheet.
Tag And Upload Your Leads
Once you have created a reasonably long list, upload it to your email marketing platform. Be sure to come up with different tags and tag your customers as you upload them.
The idea is to get your contacts in a central place before starting to nurture and convert them into business opportunities … and that takes us to our next point.
Improve Your Unsubscribe Rate
Building a subscriber’s list is one thing but nurturing MSP leads is entirely different.
As a B2B company, you’re certainly going to lose subscribers, albeit unintentionally. People are going to vacate positions or change their email addresses.
And when a person unintentionally unsubscribes from your list, your sales funnel decreases, further hurting your conversion rate. But, you can reduce the number of people leaving your email list.
Here’s how:
Review your Opt-in Form
How did the person subscribe to your email list? Did you entice them with a gift or voucher?
Or did you promise that you’ll enter the subscriber into a competition where they can win something?
The last thing you want to do is to over-compensate visitors for joining your list. If the subscribers don’t get what they were hoping for, you can rest assured that most will hit the unsubscribe button.
Go Easy on Your Email Frequency
What happened the last time a brand whose email list you’ve subscribed to sent you five emails in a day?
You felt irritated, right? Did you unsubscribe to their email list? You sure did give it a thought.
How often you send emails is one of the reasons people will unsubscribe from your list. Nobody wants to receive a ton of emails within a short period.
Put differently, sending too many emails may put off a significant number of your subscribers, making them opt-out of your list.
So, how often should you send emails to your subscribers? While there’s no specific timeline, consider how long it will take a customer to digest 100 percent of your email.
Create High-Quality Content
The truth is…
It can be challenging to generate high-quality content to send to your subscribers every day.
And, when your emails’ quality is poor or irrelevant, people will opt out of your subscriber’s list.
For instance, if company A subscribes to your list for security threats update, but all you send them is marketing stuff, there’s every chance they won’t stick around for too long.
Segment Your List
One of the best ways MSPs can please subscribers is to implement segmentation.
As you continue to grow your list, you’ll notice that not every customer shares the same interest.
Your subscribers will be from various industries with different needs.
Therefore, you cannot send one generic email to all your subscribers. Segmentation allows you to curate emails suited to customers with a shared interest.
Implement An Exit Strategy
People will, at one point or another, want to unsubscribe from your email list.
When this happens, be sure to find out why they’re leaving through an exit survey.
The idea to use the feedback to implement changes that might lower the rate at which your audience exits the subscription list.
For instance, if the subscribers say they’re receiving too many emails, you’ll want to go easy on the email frequency to see it that has a positive impact.
The Bottom Line
There you have it, MSP marketing explained in plain English. When implemented correctly, these strategies will propel your MSP business ahead of the curve and result in a positive ROI.
Want to step up your overall marketing strategy on a budget? Check out this blog post for 5 Ways To Improve Your Marketing On A Budget.
Growth Generators – Helping You with Your MSP Marketing Campaign
Growing a successful MSP business requires having a well-thought-out marketing strategy.
Besides, converting cold MSP leads can be frustrating if you don’t know how to implement your growth strategy – and that’s where Growth Generators comes in.
We have years of experience helping MSPs create and execute growth plans to generate more leads and increase revenue.
We will help with content creation, social media marketing, and content marketing. With us by your side, you can rest assured that your target customers will start to notice your brand and attract customers who will buy.
We will curate an MSP marketing strategy that suits your budget. In essence, this means we accommodate a wide range of MSP business, even those with a tight budget. What do you need to do?
We’re a click away.
Simply hit the Contact Us Button and let us know the nature of your business.
We will then get back to you will a tailored-made marketing strategy based, of course, on your budget.
Get in touch today – let’s take your MSP business to the next level.
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