CharTec Knows Marketing for MSPs

Marketing for Managed Service Providers can be fun, though challenging. Some MSP owners are afraid to market their businesses because they just don’t know where to start. They don’t have a list yet, there are way too many tactics out there for them to choose from, and they’re not exactly sure what they would say. If you don’t market, you’ll be left in the dust by other competitors that do. By the time you realize you need to market, it’s going to be too late. Here are the first things I’d do if were to kick up my marketing efforts tomorrow:

1. Marketing for MSPs – Update Your Website

I talked with somebody recently that said, “I don’t think a website is important because people aren’t going to my website anyway.” That is very shortsighted thinking. If your marketing works, people are going to go to your website. Whether you’re doing a billboard, radio ad, or email, people are going to hit a landing page. They’re going to find you on Google. When they arrive on your site, it better be good. If you have an awesome marketing message, but an an old, jumbled up, never updated, made by someone in house as a pet project website, fix it. You’ve got to get better.

Here’s the thing. Yes, we’re managed service providers. Maybe your company doesn’t build websites. People will judge you like you do, though, because, to them websites are technology. A quality website is the curb appeal to what you’re offering.

You don’t have to include mountains of content or resources. Keep content streamlined. You just need to update it. It needs to show off current modern techniques of web design. You need to make sure everything about what you do is clear. Don’t include your pricing on the site. Make sure you update/remove dates on blogs if your last published date was way back in 2018. Research what search terms make your site pop up. Using SEMRush or Google Keyword Finder. Some of the old content you have up may be pointing people to things that are way outside of your current focus.

2. Marketing for MSPs – Optimize Your Web Presence

Here’s the deal. Your web presence is no longer just your website. You need to make sure that you’re optimizing all citation, social media, and review sites for SEO purposes. Your whole presence online needs to shine.

Everything needs to match identically from your address down to whether or not you put a comma in front of LLC for all citations online. Your social media profiles must contain quality images and consistent posts. Before you start marketing, you want your presence to reflect the quality that you are going to provide.

One of the first steps of our Premium Marketing program is reviewing every element of your web presence, launching citation campaigns to ensure that your listings are accurate, updating your social media pages, and ensuring that your Google My Business page is operating effectively. There are a plethora of software out there to help with this effort, or you can reach out to us.

3. Get People Interested

Well, this is a pretty big topic. Of course, getting people interested is the goal of marketing, in general. Now that you’ve taken care of the housekeeping items, it’s time to push out marketing messages.

First, create lead magnets. Put out enough lures (resources, webinars, ads, infographics, guides) that you are attracting people. Interest people enough to put in their information to learn more about what it is that you do, or at least make it on your email list.N

If you have a working email list already, deploy emails. We’ve got a ton of campaigns on CORE, including blogs and emails. Use them. If you haven’t emailed them in a while, you’ll probably want to scrub the list first and then slowly build up to a full list send to reduce bounces, unsubscribe rates and red flags for your email provider.  If your list is showing low interaction, work on building a new list.

Finally, be involved in your community. I get it, right now it’s hard, people aren’t having in-person events. Everything’s moved to virtual. The quality chambers, the quality organizations have also moved everything they do to virtual. Figure out a way to take part and be engaged.

So, these are the top three things you need to do if you’re just getting started with marketing. Marketing for MSPs can be a challenge. If you’ve been marketing for a long time and you’re seeing things not really work out so well, revisit these three things as well. We’re happy to help through our Consulting Help Desk and our involved MSP Marketing programs.