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Welcome to Episode 281 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• MSPs: Why April Fool is NOT a marketing opportunity: MSPs should avoid April Fools’ Day like the plague. Same with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and any big national or international event. Marketing on these days is just adding to the noise.


• Why would a business pick YOUR MSP, rather than a competitor?: Ordinary decision makers pick an MSP based on how they feel about them. Make their life easy by giving them a clear, emotional reason why they should pick you.


• MSPs: How to uncover opportunities you didn’t know existed: My special guest has a unique way of looking at marketing and how you can use human relationships as a powerful marketing weapon.


• Paul’s Personal Peer Group:  This week’s question is about website traffic and how to track where it’s coming from – does your MSP do this? Find out my 3 easy implementation ideas.

MSPs: Why April Fool is NOT a marketing opportunity

Happy April Fools’ Day. Have you ever wondered if you’re missing out by not doing marketing for your MSP themed around today? I mean, loads of big companies do April Fools’ jokes, that makes it an opportunity right? In my opinion, no. I believe your MSP should avoid April Fools’ Day like the plague, the same with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and any big national or international event. And let me tell you why.

This podcast episode and YouTube video has been released on the 1st of April, 2025, and when I was younger, I always used to really look forward to April Fools’ Day. As a child, it was to play jokes on my family who never found the jokes funny, but then as a young adult, I really used to enjoy the big April Fools’ jokes that companies would try and pull and they would do full page adverts in newspapers.

If you were around in the nineties and naughties, you might remember this.Things like Taco Bell in the US, they announced that they bought the Liberty Bell and they were renaming it, the Taco Liberty Bell, it’s Genius. Or Burger King, they actually launched a left handed burger, so clever. The big tech companies have done this very well in recent years. Samsung said it was going to launch the Galaxy Blade Edge, a phone that’s so thin and sharp that you can also use it as a kitchen knife. And then Tinder, the dating app, they launched a fake height verification tool on April Fools’ Day, although as a former Tinder user, a nutter spotting tool would actually be much more useful.

You might look at all of these gags put together by marketing departments of these big companies and ask yourself, I wonder what we should do to promote our MSP on April Fools’ Day? And there is an easy answer to this. Nothing. And it’s the same answer I would give you if you asked Paul, what should I do to promote my MSP around Thanksgiving… Valentine’s Day… Christmas… the Super Bowl? In fact, any big event that millions of people celebrate at the same time.

The reality is when you do something at the same time that everyone else is doing that thing, then you’re just adding to the noise.

It’s very hard to cut through when everyone is doing the same thing at the same time. And that’s why I never recommend that MSPs jump onto awareness weeks around cyber security, stuff like that, because you have exactly the same problem. If many MSPs are doing the same thing at the same time. It’s impossible to stand out unless you have a massive budget or a massive marketing department, massive marketing resource, something like that. And you don’t have that to what’s the answer?

I believe you should ignore big things that are happening and instead focus your small amount of marketing time and resource into setting up a good solid marketing system for your MSP. If you are constantly building audiences, growing relationships and converting relationships, then you will generate more leads, prospects, and clients in the long term, than if you were to do the odd marketing stunt now and again. And I know that that’s not the sexy, exciting answer that you were hoping to hear, but this is the reality of marketing an MSP in 2025. You can only do exciting, wow, standout things once you have the basics in place. And the vast majority of MSPs simply do not have those basics covered.

Having said that, there is one thing that you could do which can be fun and it can also really make you stand out, and that’s to celebrate a big event many, many months before it happens. So for example, if you send a Christmas card to your clients or your prospects at Christmas, you’re just part the noise. But if you send a Christmas card to them in March and the whole message of the Christmas card is, Hey, we are so on top of tasks that need to be done, that this is the first Christmas card you’ll get this year. Imagine if we were applying our approach to your technology. I mean, that would be a really cool card to send out, right? You could do a Valentine’s card in September because love for technology or good technology exists all year round. You can have some real fun with that, but caveat, that is just a gimmick and something like that will never be as powerful as getting that marketing system set up, so you’re constantly generating new leads for your MSP. That’s the thing to do first. That’s where you should get started.

Why would a business pick YOUR MSP, rather than a competitor?

Perhaps one of the hardest questions that I could ask you is what makes your MSP different from all of your competitors? And I don’t mean in terms of operations or tech stack, I mean from the point of view of the prospect, what makes you a better choice than all your competitors?

Let me share with you three key differences that you can turn into a competitive weapon to make sure you are never scared by this question ever again.

MSP Alliance estimates there are 150,000 MSPs in the world, and as you and I know, an MSP can support any business anywhere in the world, in theory anyway. Which means that when an ordinary business owner or manager has finally given up on their incumbent and they’re ready, willing and able to switch, with so much choice, why would they pick you? This is really a question about differentiation. What makes you a better choice than the other MSPs that they could look at? The problem with differentiation is that you must look at it from the prospect’s point of view and not your point of view. You know that you offer very good strategic advice that your team’s technical superpowers are better and that you have a superior tech stack, but the prospects don’t care about these things.

Instead, they want to know stuff like, Will everything just work? Will my staff stop complaining that their computer is slow? Can I get support if I’m working late at eight at night? Ordinary decision makers pick an MSP based on how they feel about them, and they do this because their brain cannot judge which MSP is better just by fact alone.

Non-technical people find it very hard to assess the competency of a technology company. Make their life easy by giving them a clear, emotional reason why they should pick you.

Here are three ideas to help you do that:

Idea number one is to be the face of the business. Now we know that people buy from people, so give them an authentic person to buy from. This is what I do with my MSP Marketing Edge. There are actually 13 of us on the team, but I’m the pretty face of the business. I’m all over the website. I do the podcast, I do the YouTube videos, I write all of our content so it’s in my voice. And you can do exactly the same in your MSP. And it’s more than just putting your photo everywhere. You want every little bit of communication and content that comes out of the business to reflect your own authentic personality.

When you use your personality to guide your marketing, something special happens. First, your marketing becomes utterly unique. There’s no one else like you and never will be. And another MSP using their personality to guide their marketing will always get a different end result. When prospects consume personality driven marketing, they very quickly decide that either you’re not for them, which is okay, or better, they form a bond with you before they’ve even met you, which is insanely powerful. They get to know you, to like you and to start to trust you months or even years before they consider buying from you. This, just off the back of authentic personality marketing. In fact, their business becomes yours by default and there’s nothing any of your competitors can do to beat that.

Idea number two is to pick a vertical or a niche. Now the power of a vertical can be summarised in three beautiful words, PURE MARKETING FOCUS. When you market to a specific niche, you reach more people and you can have more influence with less effort. Let’s say your MSP’s marketing positions you as an expert in technology for CPAs – accountants, and you show this with a website that’s just about technology for accountants. You’ve got testimonials and case studies from accountants. You’ve got downloadable guides about the software they use every day, a LinkedIn profile that’s only connected to other accountants and only posts about technology for accountants and regular blog content and LinkedIn newsletters, again about technology for