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Welcome to Episode 311 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• Is your MSP wasting time on marketing?: Here’s a tactic that all pro marketers use, yet very few MSPs are even aware of. It’s going to save you time and it could even help you find a brand new client.


• 7 MASSIVE mistakes that stop MSPs generating leads: Most MSPs make a series of huge mistakes that hobble their lead generation. Here’s how to change that.


• This old MSP lead gen tactic never fails: Let’s look at an older way of finding clients for your MSP. My guest is going to explain why this still works and how you can beat the other MSPs who don’t even know that this is still a thing.


• The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss these two questions that will add power to your sale pitch.

Is your MSP wasting time on marketing?

If you want nothing more than a new client for your MSP right now, just be careful that you’re not wasting your time in the way that you go about it. Because some MSP’s marketing is a complete waste of time, often because a vital element has been missed out.

Wouldn’t you love to hear about a massive time saver that all pro marketers use, yet very few MSPs are even aware of? You are going to love this because it’s going to save you time and it could even help you find a brand new client.

So what I’m talking about here is repurposing content, and this of course means taking something you’ve already created, let’s say a blog post, and then you turn it into other bits of content so you get more mileage out of it. You’ve already done the hard work once, so why not squeeze every bit of value out of this? And here’s the thing, it’s something that some people frown upon, but trust me as a full-time marketer of 20 years now, it’s an essential thing to do.

The only person who is consuming all of your content across all of your platforms, is you. Different people consume content in different ways.

Some like reading blogs, other scroll LinkedIn, some just glance at Google when they’re looking for a new MSP. So by repurposing content, you can meet people where they already are without having to reinvent the wheel every single time.

Let me give you a few practical examples of how this works. Let’s say you write a blog article about a new ransomware threat. First, you publish it on your website as a blog article, which is great because now Google can find it, it might have some SEO benefits, search engine optimisation etc. But next, you can take that exact same blog article and you can then adapt it into a LinkedIn newsletter. And that way the people who are subscribed to your LinkedIn newsletters get a notification in the feed, they also get an email copy of it as well, and it’s great for authority. You’re seen as the helpful, local, knowledgeable IT expert.

Then you can take that LinkedIn newsletter and you can cut it down into a shorter version and post it on your Google business profile. Now that’s really powerful because when prospects do Google your MSP, they’ll see fresh, helpful content right there on their profile. It’s also really good for your Google Juice. In fact, I suspect that Google sees more of your Google business profile content than humans do, but ultimately, anything that helps you perform better in search results is good, right? And you could also record a short video on this same subject where you just talk through the same advice that you were giving in your blog, in your LinkedIn newsletter, and of course, in your Google business profile. Same content, it’s just repurposed, it’s changed in some way.

You could take that video that you’ve just created, you could put that on LinkedIn, you could put it on YouTube as a short, it doesn’t have to be Hollywood quality. People just want to see you and see the real you. And then finally, you could take that content and you could break it into bite-sized social posts to go on LinkedIn. Now, let’s say you did five pieces of advice within that blog article. Each of those five pieces of advice could go on to be a standalone post. In fact, you could use them as a standalone post, and then you could take those five posts and you could repurpose them into five graphics, or you could repurpose the whole thing into a PDF carousel or just stick with plain text or do a video on each one or do an image and a bit of plain text on each one.

Can you see how this is almost limitless? From one single blog post, from one idea, you’ve suddenly got a whole week’s worth of content to go across multiple platforms, or you could take it even further and you could take that content and you could spread it out across a couple of months. So you have a variety of different types of content across different types of platforms all the time. And all of that can be organised by something called a content calendar, which is literally planning in I’m going to do this on Monday, I’m going to do this two weeks on Tuesday, I’m going to do this 3, 4, 5 weeks on Wednesday. It’s as simple as that. It’s just a plan of how you’re going to use your content.

Now, this is the magic of repurposing content, and the key thing for this is please don’t think that you need to constantly come up with brand new ideas. You’re not a full-time media company or a full-time marketer. You’re running and trying to grow an MSP. So repurposing content saves you time, gets your message seen in more places and positions you as consistent and reliable, and as the local tech authority, which is exactly what clients want from their IT provider.

7 MASSIVE mistakes that stop MSPs generating leads

If you’re pulling out your hair because you just can’t generate leads for your MSP, this could be the reason why. Most MSPs make a series of huge mistakes that just hobble their lead generation. Don’t you do the same?

Let me tell you the seven biggest mistakes that MSPs make that stop them from efficiently generating brand new leads.

Massive mistake number one: You are not 1000% clear on what kind of clients you want. You’ve heard the old joke, haven’t you? The one that says, I’ll work with anyone who has a pulse and a wallet. But actually, do you really want one-person-band businesses running Windows 7 for budget reasons? Will your MSP thrive servicing lawyers? Can you cope with the out of hours demands of hospitality businesses? The most successful MSPs build something called an ideal client profile, an ICP. It includes very specific details about your dream clients, such as their industry, size, pain points, budget, IT maturity, and how they make buying decisions.

Massive mistake number two: You struggle to tell prospects what makes you better than all the other MSPs. Now, I’ve got another acronym alert here, but you should know this one. Do you have a USP, a unique selling proposition? It’s a reason why you ideal client would buy from you. Most MSPs struggle with this because the answer has nothing to do with the service you offer and the way that you deliver it, or the vendors that you work with, or your tech stack. In fact, all of these are internal things that don’t affect the decision-making process of ordinary business owners and managers. They don’t care what services you use, they don’t care which vendors you choose. What they care about is what you can do for them. And this is most easily put across in your USP.

Massive mistake number three: Your marketing messaging is inconsistent. And this mistake happens because of mistakes one and two, if you haven’t figured out your ICP and your USP, the messages you send out will have little consistency, and that makes it hard for you to build up messaging momentum. To be the MSP that your ideal clients keep coming back to in their minds and their hearts when they’re thinking of leaving their current MSP.

Massive mistake number four: You’re not building audiences of people to listen to you. Once you know what you want to say, you need lots of people to say it to. And that means building audiences. For most MSPs just start with your LinkedIn connections and your email list. Building audiences is unsexy and sometimes tedious work. My LinkedIn newsletter has come out every single Thursday for three and a half years. That’s an audience for me. My MSP marketing podcast has come out every single Tuesday for nearly six years. It’s a treadmill, I tell you, but it is worth it as it’s exactly the same work to put content in front of 10,000 people as it is to put it in front of 10 people, only of course, the results are a lot better.

Massive mistake number five: You’re not growing relationships with people. The purpose of collecting all of those people in all of your audiences is to build a relationship with them. Ordinary business owners and managers don’t know what they don’t know about technology, and that means they make buying decisions with their hearts, not their heads. And the heart doesn’t buy on facts, it buys on feelings. They’re picking you, or not, based on how they feel about your MSP. If they’ve spent two years reading a little bit of your content on LinkedIn, a few of your regular emails and some of your blog posts, then in a very, very small way, they’ll feel as though they know you. They’ll certainly be more likely to respect you as a technology authority. This is how you get a place at the sales table.

Massive mist