The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Welcome to Episode 273 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• “Why does my MSP’s marketing NEVER work?”: Discover how to pinpoint what’s holding your marketing back, how to turn it into a system that works, and why this approach could unlock new growth for your business.


• Which is better for MSPs: Syndicated blogs or original content?: Up-to-date blog content on your website shows your MSP is active and it’s also great for demonstrating expertise and authority in technology. Aim to post a blog article at least once a week.


• Why technicians procrastinate… and what to do about it: Have you ever wondered why we sometimes choose to do something easy rather than something that’s urgent? My guest shares some great insights on combatting procrastination.


• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: This week’s question is about billboard advertising – is this a good idea for MSPs?

“Why does my MSP’s marketing NEVER work?”

Have you got a cold, sinking feeling because no matter what marketing you seem to attempt, none of it seems to be working? You’re not alone. Many MSPs get the chills about this. When nothing seems to be working, it’s hard to know where to begin fixing it. But here is the good news. Right now, you are going to discover how to pinpoint what’s holding your marketing back, how to turn it into a system that works, and why this approach could unlock new growth for your business.

One of the most common complaints I hear from MSPs is that their marketing just isn’t working. It doesn’t help that what you’re trying to sell has one of the most complex and longest sales cycles around. Managed services is very difficult to market and sell compared to many other things. For example, if you were running a business that sells widgets, it would be a lot easier for you to get traffic to your site, to get leads, to get inquiries and of course sales and get those widgets out the door. But you don’t. You sell managed services. And by the way, the flip side of this is that you keep your clients longer and they spend a lot more money with you. You have the kind of stats that widget manufacturers would be very, very jealous of. But why does an MSP’s marketing typically not work? And if you feel like you are doing lots of marketing, but you’re seeing little return, where do you start fixing it?

You have to break all of your marketing down into its component parts and examine each one. And ask yourself two very big questions…

The first of those is whether or not you are using the right marketing strategy? Let’s look at strategy. Sometimes I’ll be talking to an MSP who says they’re doing loads of marketing, but what they’re actually doing is creating a lot of disjointed noise. Just because you’re posting regularly on LinkedIn, that has no power unless it’s guided by a marketing strategy. Now my favourite strategy, which I talk about all the time, is very, very simple to communicate. It is just six words, but it’s the most powerful marketing strategy that any MSP can use. In fact, any B2B business, because I use this for my own marketing as well. The strategy is – build audiences, grow relationships, convert relationships. It’s a three step strategy, which you can also use as a three-step marketing system. In fact, we built our entire MSP Marketing Edge service around this. So you build up audiences of people to listen to you, then you grow a relationship with them using content marketing, and then you convert that relationship into them having a sales meeting with you. And that is typically done on the phone.

Let’s say you’re building an audience on LinkedIn, which I do recommend, and then you are growing relationships by posting content on LinkedIn. The difference between doing that with a strategy powering it, versus just doing it for the sake of doing something, is vast. If you know that your goal is to add connections every single day and post content several times a week, with the express goal of building a relationship with them, that makes the work you are doing on LinkedIn suddenly more powerful. Particularly when you remember that for managed services, people only buy when they’re ready to buy.

Also when you know that the strategy dictates that down the line, someone in your office is going to pick up the phone and call these people you are connected to, to talk about their business and see if they’re frustrated enough with their incumbent MSP to have a conversation with you. Does all of this make sense? When you’ve got a strategy, it makes all of the little things that you’re doing, even if they’re the same things you’re doing now, all of the little things you’re doing come together and work together to give you an outcome.

Now, I said earlier on that you need to ask yourself two big questions. The first was, do you have a marketing strategy or are you using the right marketing strategy? The second question to ask yourself is, are you using the right marketing tactics? Because the beauty of that six word strategy I was just telling you about is that you can use an almost unlimited number of tactics to implement it. So I mentioned LinkedIn because today LinkedIn is a very good place for MSPs to go farming for new leads, but that may change. We might be doing this in 2035, hello future Paul, and LinkedIn has gone off the boil because they broke it with some stupid decision somewhere. But if that happens, there’ll be a new place to go looking for leads. A good marketing strategy rarely changes, but the tactics do need to be updated now and again.

So in summary, if you’re doing a lot of marketing activity and it just doesn’t seem to be generating leads who turn into prospects, who turn into clients, then break it down into the component parts. And for everything you’re doing, check that you are A) being driven by the right marketing strategy and B) that you’re using the right marketing tactics. And by the way, I’d be delighted to help you with this. I have a free Facebook group, which is just for MSPs. It’s a vendor free zone, and it’s a place where you can ask me and 2000 other MSPs for help with your marketing. Just go onto Facebook and look for the MSP Marketing Facebook group.

Which is better for MSPs: Syndicated blogs or original content?

Ready to rip up the rule book? When wanting to make more money for your MSP, they say you can’t take shortcuts. They say shortcuts come with downsides. They say you’ve got to do things properly.

Well, what if they are wrong… what if there are some shortcuts to finding new clients and making more money?

For the next few minutes let’s ignore them as you find out about the marketing shortcut being used right now by thousands of MSPs around the world. You’ll find out how to use this shortcut safely and why it’ll enhance your marketing and not damage it.

There are lots of different ways to get new blog content onto your MSP’s website. Let me give you the answers to the most frequent questions that I get…

Why do I need blog content? Up-to-date blog content on your website shows your MSP is active. It can also be great for demonstrating expertise and authority in technology. Blog content can also sit at the heart of a regular marketing system. For example, you can send out emails and post things on social media driving traffic back to your blogs. Another question is, how often should I post new blog content? And the best cadence for this, I believe is at least once a week, more if you can do it but never less than once a week.

What is syndicated content? This is content written by a business such as my own MSP Marketing Edge where one piece of content is used on many different websites. What you do is the producer, that’s us, we add a little bit of code onto the blog, which tells Google it’s an authorised copy of the original blog, and that means that Google doesn’t penalise you for using duplicate content. The flip side of this is that there’s very little SEO (search engine optimisation) benefit for you, but at least you get regular content going onto your website.

Which is better, syndicated blogs or original content? I see it like this, original content is always better than syndicated content, which is always better than no content.

What’s the best way to get original content written? Write it yourself of course. Or if that’s a distress activity for you, find a writer on Fiverr or Upwork and get them to interview you over Zoom about a specific subject. They can record it, they can suck the knowledge out of your head, and then they can write that for you. And of course, ChatGPT can also do the same thing. It can interview you on a specific subject. Just remember, you do need to double, triple, quadruple check and edit what it outputs before you put it anywhere near your website.

Where do I get content ideas from? The answer to this is simple. It’s your clients and prospects. Listen to the questions that they most frequently ask you and then just write answers to those questions. That’s how I write all the content for my own blog. Anytime an MSP asks me a question, I write it down in a massive file of questions I’ve been asked. And at some point it becomes a new blog article.

Why technicians procrastinate… and what to do about it

Featured guest: Chris Abdey is a seasoned Procrastination Coach, podcas