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Welcome to Episode 286 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• How to get your MSP recommended by ChatGPT: Ordinary people don’t just use Google for search anymore, many searches are being done using generative AI platforms. Are you ready to find out about GEO and how to leverage it for your MSP?


• 3 marketing priorities for your MSP in May: Want to do something to speed up your MSP’s growth as we near the middle of the year? Here’s some marketing ideas for May.


• 99% of MSPs do no proactive client retention: MSPs generally hold on to clients long-term, but not necessarily by design. My guest tells us why we should build an “intentional” retention programme to help improve customer experience and drive growth. 


• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Would your MSP survive without you for 3 months? Find out how you can prepare your business in the event of your absence.

How to get your MSP recommended by ChatGPT

I’ll admit this could be a contradiction. You need to market your MSP so you can find new clients, and no doubt you want to hear about specific tactics that are going to work for you. Now, normally my advice is to ignore shiny new things because most of the time they’re just unproven ideas and a complete waste of time. But this really is different. Have you heard about the tactic that could be huge for early adopters? Are you ready to find out about GEO, the evolution of SEO? Find out about the huge potential for MSPs, what the main advantage is and why you can’t afford to ignore this day one alert.

More and more MSPs are starting to wake up to the fact that ordinary people don’t just use Google for search anymore. There are no hard stats about how many searches are being done using ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms. There are certainly lots of predictions that traditional search traffic will be down by 25% by the end of next year, but even without hard figures, there are times where a generative AI search does produce more useful results than a traditional Google search.

Google is still great for looking up something quick, but generative AI is great for doing research into something complicated that you don’t really understand.

And if we look at managed services from the point of view of ordinary decision makers, well that’s something complicated that they don’t really understand. Do we think it’s possible that business owners and managers are already using generative AI to research which MSPs they should switch to in their marketplace?

If they’re not doing that already, then they’re certainly going to do it in the very near future. And this is where you have an opportunity to get into something right at the beginning. You see, just as the rise of search engines saw the birth of SEO, search engine optimisation, so the rise of generative AI has seen the birth of GEO, generative engine optimisation. It’s designed to help your website appear in the research results output by generative AI.

Now, I’ve been reading a ton about this in the last few weeks, and there are three simple things that you can do to your website today, which will help to give the generative AI platforms answers. And if you can give them answers about your MSP, they’re much more likely to recommend you to people asking them which MSP should they look at.

The first is to make your website crystal clear about what you do, how you help, and what makes you different. But crucially, this must be written in plain English. So here’s an example: We help businesses in your city save money and be more efficient with technology. That line or your version of it, well it needs to go on your website. And the good news is that in this instance, what’s good for generative AI is good for humans as well. The more easily they can understand what you do and who you do it for, the more likely they are to start a conversation with you.

The second simple thing you can do then is kind of similar to SEO, and that’s to get your MSP business mentioned across as many trustworthy websites as possible. In SEO, you are trying to get links back to your website In GEO, you just want references to your business and obviously getting a reference and a link in one package will be fantastic. The generative AI platforms are looking for evidence that yours is a business that should be spoken to. So if you are being talked about by other people, that gives them really high levels of confidence that you are trustworthy.

And then the final thing you can do is ask for detailed positive reviews everywhere you can, but especially on YouTube. AI tools are looking everywhere for reviews and again, it’s part of them cross-referencing to see which of the best MSPs to speak to. For a long time now, YouTube has been a place where people go to find wisdom and you can help demonstrate this wisdom by having your clients talking about you on camera, on YouTube. And of course once it’s on YouTube, then again it’s helping to persuade the humans. You can embed it into your website, you can turn it into written case studies, you can do all sorts of things with it.

So there are three simple things you can do to get started with your GEO. And if you go off and do your own research, you will discover lots more things out there you could do. But let me just caveat that up, this is very much day one, well, in fact it’s hour one of day one for GEO. So a lot of those clever little tricks that you’ll see reported across the internet that might not be good long-term strategies. The three things I’ve just spoken about there, they are three good solid basics to help generative AI platforms to understand what you do, who you do it for, and why you can be trusted. And that’s why I think you should implement these three things as quickly as you can.

3 marketing priorities for your MSP in May

Alright, there’s every chance I’m going to put my foot in it.

There you are happily and hungrily trying to run and grow your MSP and there’s nothing more annoying than someone suddenly reminding you where you are in the calendar and the fact that time’s passing faster than Superman late for work.

So yeah, it’s nearly the middle of the year already and yes, it was Christmas just yesterday, but don’t get stressed. Are you ready for something that’s going to speed up your MSP’s growth?

Let’s talk MSP marketing in the month of May.

3 priorities to help you wrestle back control of your time, change your way of thinking, and grow faster for the rest of this year.

Number one, stop selling to people and start building a relationship with them instead. Everyone hates being sold to and yet we love to buy. Most buying decisions are made by the heart and not the brain. And yes, that especially means B2B decisions such as which IT support company to use. The worst way you can sell your business is to be kind of like a photocopier salesperson, and you know what I mean by that, right? No one trusts photocopier salespeople, even if they exist these days, but it’s why our hearts sink when we meet them. Instead, you should aim to become a trusted advisor.

Most people who buy managed services don’t know what they don’t know. And as they realise this and become conscious incompetents, they seek out people to educate them, guide them, and help them. If your business can provide that education, guidance and help, you stand an exceptionally good chance of picking up their business at the point that they are ready to buy.

The way to do this is through a well thought through educational lead generation system. You find out who’s in the market for buying IT support or consultancy. You get them to tell you who they are and give you their permission to market to them. And then you teach them how to buy from you. You are there in front of them at exactly the moment that they are ready to buy. And for some people this is days after they meet you, for others the most, this is years and of course there’s everything in between.

Number two, start using 80/20 thinking about prospects and clients. Clients are not made equally. You’ve probably noticed that most of your hassle and stress comes from a very small number of your clients, and it’s the same with profit, right? You get the most profit from the smallest number of clients. This is Pareto’s principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. And the rule declares that input and output are not equal. So if that’s the case, why treat all of your clients the same way? Have you got a nightmare client who your staff hate? Just fire them. It’s the best staff retention action that you can take, and I’m serious. Toxic clients kill staff and they kill profits and it’s highly cathartic to ask them to find a new supplier. Plus, trust me on this, a new client will soon turn up to replace them. In fact, I’m sure you’ve got a great client who generates loads of profit. Well, don’t ignore them just because all of your time is taken up with the worst client. Go and super serve your best client instead. Give them some love, watch them buy more and watch their profitability go up.

And then finally number three, and it’s kind of along the same themes, which is to sell more to your existing clients. One of the best retention tools you have is to increase the amount of stuff that people buy from you. And your s