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Welcome to Episode 302 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• 3 mistakes MSPs commonly make with Google: This is one of the most overlooked tools in your marketing toolbox – your Google Business Profile. Make sure you’re getting it right to get the most out of it for your MSP.


• Why MSPs should send personalised videos: Discover how these videos really can help to secure new clients for your MSP. And how when you open your mind to it you can spot opportunities to send them every day.


• What does great marketing look like in a mature MSP?: If you want to be successful, find someone who’s achieved the results that you want and copy what they do to achieve the same. And my guest this week has 25 years of MSP marketing expertise to share with you.


• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Ever wanted to know your MSP’s true search position in Google?  Find out how in one simple step…

3 mistakes MSPs commonly make with Google

There are three mistakes that MSPs commonly make with Google. And when I say three things, I really mean four things because the first is assuming that AI is now your new focus for getting search traffic. Well, it’s not. It’s currently sending only about 1% of traffic to your website. So the focus right now still has to be doing better on Google. But why and how do you do this? What are the three other things that MSPs are getting wrong?

We’re talking about one of the most overlooked tools in your marketing toolbox – your Google Business Profile. Now, before you skip this or zone out, do stick with me. Google Business Profile isn’t just for coffee shops and hair salons. Your Google Business Profile shows up when someone googles your MSP’s name or even if they just Google MSPs .

Your Google Business Profile is like your digital shopfront and it can make you look trustworthy… or not, if you get it wrong.

So let’s look at three common mistakes that I see MSPs making and how you can fix them quickly and easily:

The first mistake is to have a boring generic business description. If your profile says something along the lines of “We offer IT support and services to businesses”, oh, you’re not alone. Loads of MSPs do this, but it’s bland and it’s costing you clicks. So here’s the fix. Speak like a human and not a robot. Use the first sentence to make it clear who you help and what problems you solve. So try something like “We help businesses worry less about IT with fast friendly support, bulletproof security and advice with zero jargon.” I mean that alone, just using that sentence instantly sets you apart from other MSPs.

Mistake number two, no photos or photos from the year 2005. Did you know that businesses with photos actually get more clicks and more calls from their Google Business Profile? You don’t need to go and hire a pro photographer, just pull out your phone, grab a team photo, maybe grab some photos of your office, your vans if you’ve got vans, you could do a behind the scenes look at your setup, it could be your help desk, someone answering a phone, it could be your security dashboard with obviously the sensitive stuff blurred out. People just want to see people, they want to see who they’re dealing with. And even one new photo added like today or this week can boost engagement. If you added a new photo every week or at least once or twice a month, that could be huge.

And then mistake number three, letting your reviews go stale. Google Business reviews are like gold dust. They’re a critical step in social proof, where people are more easily influenced by seeing what other people like them are doing. Who are they buying from? Who are they trusting? If other people like them trust you, then they can trust you. That’s how they feel about social proof. But lots of MSPs stop asking for reviews once they’ve got a handful of them. And yet Google loves fresh reviews and so do prospects. So here’s the fix. Make this a weekly habit. Every Friday look back at your tickets and look at who you’ve helped that week. Pick one happy client, send them a one-to-one email, “Hey, would you mind leaving us a quick Google review, please?” It really helps. Because most people want their trusted suppliers to do well and just send them the direct link to your review page to make it easy.

Now, one step up from this is to add an automation to your PSA, which emails happy clients after the successful resolution of a ticket. And maybe you’d put some kind of condition in there so they’re not being emailed and asked for reviews all the time, but perhaps every specific user at your client is asked no more than once every three months for a Google Review until they’ve left a review, at which point you can switch that off in their PSA. However you do it, adding new reviews all the time really do stack up and they really do make you stand out.

Look, your Google Business Profile doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need to be active. Avoid these common mistakes, rewrite your description, add fresh photos and make review requests part of your ongoing routine. It’s all low effort stuff, but it really pays off.

Why MSPs should send personalised videos

Tell me, have you had one of these… a personalised video message. While it can be quite common for vendors to send them, what about MSPs? Well, I’ve heard from some that are regularly recording and sending personalised one-to-one videos as part of their marketing, but is it worth it? Can these kinds of videos really help to secure you a new client for your MSP? Let’s dig into the pros, the cons and what you need to get started.

So do you send these personalised videos? I’m talking the kind that you record on Vidyard or Bonjoro BombBomb or some other platform. It’s kind of just you sitting down talking one-to-one to someone else through a video rather than through a text email. And when you open your mind to it you can spot opportunities to send these every day. To say hi to someone who’s just connected with you on LinkedIn. Or perhaps thank a client for their patience while you cleared a problem. Or maybe show another client how to do something with a screen share. Or you could explain a proposal to a prospect. Or maybe even introduce your team to a new vendor.

I do this. I send an individual video welcome to every single new member of the MSP Marketing Edge. I have a standard script and on Tuesdays every week I record several of these in a row because even though it’s scripted and it’s the same script for each person, I record an individual video for each person saying their name, just mentioning them, saying hello to them, and then getting across the points I want to make. And that’s why I use a scripted video. That can be quite painful, by the way, that approach when you’ve got like 10 new members at a week. As you can imagine, that’s a lot of videos to film, but it’s worth it. I want each person to feel like I’ve taken the effort, which I have, to do a specific video to them, even though it’s scripted with the specific points that I want to get across.

And I do think that that kind of personal attention really pays off in the long-term. It shows that you care if you’re willing to invest the time to do that. Now, the complete opposite of that is an unscripted video that you do much more informally. It’s just you sat in front of your laptop in the office or on your phone just talking about something that’s of interest to the person who’s going to be watching that video. And those kind of informal, almost more off the cuff videos where perhaps you are not in a great environment like a studio or your office – I’ve done them in Starbucks, I’ve done them in McDonald’s before – sometimes recording something like that in that impromptu environment can be very, very powerful.

As AI generated content becomes more and more widespread, we’ve got to be working harder and harder to be seen as human and real.

So let me give you three of many reasons why I believe MSPs like you should be sending personalised videos to prospects and clients:

Reason number one, is that they still have huge impact. People really do not receive personalised videos as often as you’d think. Even though the tech has been around for years, the average person might only get a couple a year. So anything that rare just stands out. Most of the platforms will create an animated gif as the thumbnail, and often it takes the first two or three seconds. So here’s an idea, do something smart like starting your video, holding up a card with the recipient’s name to really catch their attention and peak their interest.

Number two, you can track if they’ve been watched. Most of the platforms will tell you when a video’s been watched. Sometimes my videos that I send out are watched seven or eight times, and I interpret this as the video link being passed around the business, which is great. From a sales point of view you want to know if a prospect has watched your video, right?

And then number three, they help you to stand out and look real. As I said, most MSPs aren’t doing this. Anytime you realise, hang on, the vast majority isn’t doing this, that is an opportunity for you to stand out. Don’t do what most other MSPs are doing, do what most other MSPs aren’t doing.

So are you going to start using one-to-one personalised videos