Marketing 101 for MSPs

Introduction

When it comes to marketing strategies, MSPs are among the most unique businesses out there, as they have a broad catalogue of services on offer. Having those services effectively reach the eyes of your ideal client is what defines great marketing.

To do this, you need a really solid plan in place. Going in blind with a huge catalogue of services is essentially setting your business up for disappointment. Creating a consistent flow of leads — generated via paid advertising, search-engine-optimised website copy, content creation (landing pages, articles and newsletters), and an active social media presence — will convert your company into an ever-growing and profitable business.

While your business may currently be thriving on referrals, it will be the fruits of a strategic and optimised marketing plan that take your business to new heights. ‘How do I get started?’ you might ask. Let’s begin with the first step.

It’s no use driving a whole bunch of people to your website if those people don’t fit the profile of your desired customer. When you have a great product that provides a solution to a need or problem, finding the customers who require that solution is literally like fitting two blocks together perfectly in a game of Tetris. Half the work is done for you when you put your advertising efforts in front of the eyes of those who need it most.

We call this need their pain points — and it is the pain point itself that establishes your position in the market and highlights exactly what your business is solving for your target demographic.

The first step to identifying your ideal customer is collecting demographic information about them — age, gender, location, occupation, and interests. With this information, you can begin to create your buyer persona avatar. Once you understand your customer in greater detail, you can align your marketing messages to solve their pain points.

Sample buyer persona

Noah

Sample buyer persona

Demographics & psychographics

38-year-old CEO of an SMB with 10–20 staff. Three years in the rental and real estate trade. Prefers phone calls and face-to-face communication. Active on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. An innovator who likes to attend industry conferences and seminars.

How he finds us

Referrals; online through search engines and social media.

Pain points

Investing time on leads but not securing them; accumulated stress.

Why he buys from us

Pricing and support.

One of the greatest acronyms to learn for your marketing strategy is SMART — specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. These steps will serve you well in designing and crafting your marketing goals (and keep you accountable). Let’s look at each a little closer.

Developing a successful marketing campaign begins with identifying your goals and desired outcomes. When developing a campaign, think about where your customers are in your marketing funnel:

The marketing funnel

Campaign ideas by funnel stage

• Awareness: Paid advertising, trade shows, events, blogs, social media and more.
• Interest: Targeted content, newsletters.
• Consideration: Offers/discounts, free trials.
• Intent: Product demos, whitepapers/e-books.
• Evaluation: Sales work — prove your product is the best.
• Purchase: Customer service and experience, after-sales campaigns to keep them coming back.

The next step is to identify the deliverables and the timeline to create accountability and ensure you hit the targets set for the campaign. Assessing your buyer persona and their pain points — as well as buying habits, business needs, and the current market — gives you detailed information to design the message surrounding your campaign. An article might solve a problem the customer is having, while a social post supports and promotes the article and drives your audience to it. Both work in synergy, so your planning and timing should be carefully thought out for maximum exposure, cohesive messaging, and meticulous execution.

Marketing channels to consider

Website

A potential customer’s initial visit can be make or break — they want a sense of who you are, which builds trust. Publish consistent, relevant blog articles and focus on SEO to keep driving traffic. An outdated blog makes gaining trust that much harder.

Email

Email is still a thing. Plenty of emails go unread, but there’s still room in a customer’s inbox for a carefully crafted email. People are just tired of being sold to in an old, outdated way — humanise your message to reach more people.

Social Media

Your business’s online business card — an overview of who you are, and a way for customers to contact you. Increasingly it’s a customer service tool too, as customers ask questions via social. Nurture your channels.

Events / Webinar

One of the best things you can do is offer value. Virtual events and webinars are much appreciated and help customers get to know you. A webinar is most effective when followed by a landing page or a follow-up email campaign.

Types of promotion

Inbound Marketing

Draws in the right clientele through education, quality content, and optimised SEO — blogging, email, social, SEO, online videos/podcasts, webinars/eBooks.

Outbound Marketing

Requires you to directly reach out to potential customers — telemarketing, cold-calling, direct mail, trade shows, seminars, TV commercials.

Paid Digital Marketing

Any advertising you pay for — PPC campaigns, sponsored social posts, or paid publications. An effective way of micro-targeting the right lead and capitalising on search engine technology.

Podcast

An active subscriber is an active listener — highly engaged in your content, which can be carefully designed to meet their needs. A great way to convert a highly engaged audience.

Video

An informative, easy-to-digest piece of content. Now that you have your customer’s full attention (briefly), capture them with your greatest message about why they should buy — or describe the need for it.

When your leads are in the consideration and intent stage, it’s very important to nurture them. Let’s dive deeper into how you can do this.

A. Education

A great way to offer information and be of value to your customers is through education — whitepapers, free courses, or informative articles. Each of these can help you convert engaged readers when you include a CTA (call to action) at the end. By offering quality content and being intentional with your strategy, you not only solve a problem and offer education — you gain their trust and help them decide on purchasing your product or service.

B. Free Trials

Free trials are a great lead magnet in any advertising and marketing campaign — and a show of confidence in your product. When you have something tremendously great to offer, the best way to convert potential clients is by letting them have a taste of what you offer.

Acquiring new clients is simply one step in the greater picture of your business plan. So you have new clients coming your way — but what about the clients you already have, and how do you convert new clients into repeat customers?

Strengthening your customer service plan will help you retain more customers who are very valuable to your business. Customers who stay become repeat customers and your greatest asset on social media — it’s by nurturing the relationship with your existing clientele that you strengthen your brand presence. When a lead becomes a customer, offer them exceptional after-purchase support: ensure they understand their purchase, know how to use it, and get the greatest benefits from your product.

Other Tools for Your Marketing Strategy

Google Analytics

Track website traffic — where your traffic came from, your search engine rank, and your bounce rate. You can also segment your audience to micro-target each segment based on key demographic points.

AdRoll

Banner retargeting and more. Collates all your data and channels into one place so you get a bird’s-eye view of everything you need to effectively target and market for the right results.

MailChimp

A free, easy-to-use newsletter automation program. Editable templates you can personalise and schedule, plus import/export audiences, landing pages, and built-in analytics.

Outsourcing

Sites like Fiverr and Freelancer offer inexpensive services from experienced freelancers who provide quality content when you want to outsource parts of your strategy.

If your budget allows, some of the greatest marketing tools out there that come with our tick of approval include Salesforce, Pardot, and Marketo. You can also automate your marketing with tools such as HubSpot or AutoPilot — simple, easy to use and cost-effective. Once you’ve gone through the initial set-up, your automation program does the work of capturing leads while you nurture and convert them.

How Can Hosted Network Support You?

Market Development Funds: We provide a range of Marketing Development Funds to partners looking to bring in new business. If you have an idea, reach out to your account manager.

Marketing Assistance: Our marketing team can also assist you with a range of marketing services, often at no cost to you:

• Graphic design
• Copywriting
• Marketing campaign development and execution
• Ready-to-go marketing assets

Our Partner Portal has a range of ready-to-go marketing assets such as website and EDM content, social media posts and more.

About Hosted Network

Everything we do is based around building solutions for our partners to enable them to grow and succeed.

Starting off as a traditional MSP in 2003 and launching a number of direct to market cloud offerings, we quickly gained traction in the SMB market and were approached by a number of other MSPs asking if we could provide our services at a wholesale level.

We quickly realised a gap in the market for wholesale cloud services designed for MSPs to grow their service offering and reach new markets. In 2013, Hosted Network transitioned to an entirely channel-only model, working hand-in-hand with MSPs to grow their business and win new deals.

Since then, our success is credited to and driven by the success of our partners. This has led to us adopting a simple mantra of BUILD – GROW – SUCCEED. Building successful partnerships and solutions, growing together, succeeding together.