Episode 209: The secret LinkedIn tool MSPs don't know about

Episode 209 November 14, 2023 00:33:42
Episode 209: The secret LinkedIn tool MSPs don't know about
Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast
Episode 209: The secret LinkedIn tool MSPs don't know about

Nov 14 2023 | 00:33:42

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Hosted By

Paul Green

Show Notes

Episode 209

Welcome to the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This is THE show if you want to grow your MSP. This week's show includes:

Featured guest:

Thank you to Jim Haney, Vice President of Marketing at Novatech, for joining me to discuss marketing best practices for MSPs, and how getting your marketing right can help increase your relevance to your target audience. Jim brings over 25 years of experience in the MSP, VAR, and IT Services sectors. Focused on trust-based marketing, he specializes in SEO, lead generation, and marketing automation. His dedication to transparency and results-oriented strategies consistently propels business growth and bolsters customer engagement. Connect with Jim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimhaney

Extra show notes:

Transcription:

NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is. [00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This Paul. Paul. Paul Greens, MSP Marketing Podcast we go with a brand new show and this is what I've got for you this week. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Hey everyone. I'm Jim Haney, vice president of marketing at Novatech. We're going to dive into some marketing best practices for MSPs to really propel you and be relevant to your target audience. [00:00:24] Speaker A: And on about that interview with Jim. Later on in the show, we're going to talk about a very cool and clever thing that you can do within LinkedIn messaging. Now, no one is really using this right now, which gives you a massive opportunity to stand out to your prospects. Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast I have this great friend called Andy Edwards who frankly, I don't get to spend enough time with. Andy was actually my second ever guest. So if you go back to episode two from November 2019, he was my guest. And it was a bit of a cheat because I knew I was going to be starting a podcast. And I happened to go to see him. He's about 3 hours drive away from me in a place called Bournemouth in the UK. And we were sat in his garden enjoying just a chat and some food. And I kind of grabbed my phone and said, hey, I'm going to be doing this podcast soon. Can I record you for the podcast? And that was how he ended up on episode two. But Andy and I, because we're sort of three odd hours drive apart, we never really spend enough quality time. And you know how COVID changed all of that. And you see people differently these days, don't you? One of the things I like about Andy and I met him when we were both speakers. So over the last 20 years, I've gone and talked at marketing conferences and talked about various marketing things, not so much within the MSP world, but sort of just within the UK. And that's how I met Andy. And one of the things that I used to love doing was when I'd done my talk about marketing stuff, I would sit in the audience and hear him talk about people stuff. And this is what makes Andy so great. He's very much the kind of guy who the kind of person who understands how other people tick. And his talk from memory was called something like, why isn't everyone like me? Or something like that. Now, Andy teaches how to assess other people through a four color system. And you can kind of Google this if you Google personality colors, it comes up with where people can be sort of categorized, whether they're red, yellow, green or blue. And actually this links directly into the disk system. So you might not have heard of the color way of sort of putting people into a box, but you may have heard of the disk system dis. And we'll talk about that in a second. Now, the reason I'm talking about this, and the reason I love listening to Andy talking about this is because it's all about creating better sort of harmony within your business and also figuring out why clients don't buy the way that you do. So for example, I am a red and I'm going to describe what these colors are in a second, but I'm a red. I'm a fast decision maker. I'm like, come on, let's do it, let's go for it. I don't need to sit and think about it. You tell me something. The switch inside my head says, Yep, let's do it. As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the conversation. I say, yes, we do it. That's it. Whereas someone who is a blue, which is blue, is kind of like the direct opposite of that. Someone who needs to hear lots of stuff about it, they need to think about it a lot more. They will then have lots of information, lots of pondering. They can't make a decision without a ton of information and time to process that information. And as you're out selling and you're marketing and selling to these different kind of people, you need to understand how these different personalities work. Someone like me when I used to do my own sales, which is like in 1872, and I didn't enjoy it, as most business owners don't enjoy it. But when I was out selling and I didn't really understand that different people bought in different ways, I couldn't understand why people weren't listening to me for five minutes and then going, Yep, let's do it. And I thought perhaps I was doing a bad job until I met Andy and he taught me about different personality types. So let me run through the four colors and then I'll link them up to the disc profile that you may be more familiar with and you may even use. So you start off with red and the typical traits of reds is they're extroverts, they're very ambitious, they're confident, they're thrill seekers, hard workers, and they're innovative. And as I say, I am absolutely 100% red. Although Andy tells me that everyone sort of has a primary color and then a more secondary color as well. And you can go back and listen to his interview in episode two if you want to listen to that. So you've got your reds and then you've got your yellows. And your yellows are kind of like diluted down reds. So they're still extroverted. They're very optimistic, but they're a lot more social. I'm not as social as I could be and that's why I know I'm not a yellow. So given the choice, I will stay on my own and have my own company rather than go out and go to an event or go to something. So yellows are a lot more social. They're very persuasive, they're very entertaining and they're very idealistic. It's almost like yellows are better versions of red. That's my words. And as a red I feel I can say that. Then we go into the sort of the introverted colors. So green and red are both introverts. Greens are very helpful. They're very easy going, very cooperative but very regimented and very patient. And blue again almost a more extreme version of green where again they're introverted but they're much more obedient still very organized, very meticulous, very cautious and very private. And you can see why it would take. I will make friends with someone in seconds. Blue, which is obviously the direct opposite takes a lot longer to build up some kind of trust. Do you see how that would directly affect any kind of marketing and sales that you're doing? Isn't that interesting? It's fascinating, isn't it when you sort of put all these things together? Let me link this to disk for you because you can go and get free disk profiles on the interweb disk dis dominant is the D of disk and that typically relates to red. So they're very much driven by the desire to dominate or lead others. Don't know if I like that. As someone who fits within that then you've got the I which is inspiring. That matches up with yellow. Inspiring is driven by the desire to inspire or influence others. The S of disk is stable and this is green. This links up to green which is driven by the desire for stability. So routine security is really important to these people. And then you've got C which is compliant. Again, this is blue driven by the desire to comply or do things as they are meant to be done. Now you and I don't have to spend tons of time studying this. Not in the way that Andy andy is an expert at this. His whole life is this and teaching people how to influence other people by understanding their personality. We don't need to spend all that time says Mr. Red who wants to get things done and move on. Maybe you want to spend more time looking at this. My point is all we need is a basic understanding that all people even though we're so diverse and we're so many different types of people we can ultimately all be categorized not fully but in a certain number of ways we will fit into certain boxes. And here we've got just two ways of doing that. If we can take some time to understand other people are not always like us and therefore we need to communicate and influence them in different ways then ultimately that's going to help us get a better sales and marketing result. Here's this week's clever idea. It's not very often that something marketing wise happens to me and completely blows me away and makes me think how did I not know that? But that did happen to me a couple of months ago when I received a LinkedIn message from someone who works for an MSP called Elena and she'd messaged me to ask a question. We're not working together yet, but she'd messaged me just to ask a question about something to do with marketing. And I saw that I'd got another LinkedIn message from her. So I went to look at that message and I was genuinely gobsmacked when I realized the message was this. [00:08:15] Speaker C: Hi, Paul, so thanks for connecting with me here on LinkedIn. I've been a long term fan of yours and just wanted to tell you a little bit more about us. [00:08:26] Speaker A: So, as you can hear there, it was a voice memo from Elena and that completely blew my mind. The reason that completely blew my mind is because I didn't know up till that point that you could send a voice message via LinkedIn. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not as green as I'm cabbage looking. I know that in your phone, you can send voice notes here in the UK. WhatsApp is the biggest messaging app? It's pretty much the default messaging app in the UK. And I know I send voice messages and voice memos to my friends all the time. I'm sure you do it in your messaging app of choice, but I didn't know you could do it in LinkedIn. Do you know what? I hear something that's really embarrassing as well. It's embarrassing for me is this functionality was introduced in 2018. So for five years now, you've been able to send a voice message in a LinkedIn message and I didn't know about this. I'm going to go easy on myself. I can't be expected to know absolutely everything. So, anyway, thank you, Elena, for sending that voice message to me. I didn't actually specifically ask your permission to play it out on the podcast. I know that you listen, so I hope you don't mind. You know, that whole thing of it's better to seek forgiveness than it is to ask permission. So thank you very much for letting me play that out. Now, let me tell you how exciting this is, because the main reason I didn't know this, apart from the fact I missed the announcement in 2018, was Elena was the first person ever to send me a voice message on LinkedIn. And I get a lot of LinkedIn messages, like, a lot of LinkedIn messages, as I'm sure you do. So if that was the first one I've received in five years, to me, this is an opportunity, right? This is something that you can use to stand out to the leads and prospects that you're working on LinkedIn. So the cool thing is, it's so easy to send a voice memo, a voice note within LinkedIn. You have to do it on your phone. That's the only thing you can't do it off your laptop. It has to be done on the phone, but it's super easy to use. So now that you know you could do this. Why don't you become the only MSP that actually, while you're chatting with leads and prospects on LinkedIn, you become the only MSP to just send them a quick voice note. And it could be something as simple as, oh, hi, Paul. This is Dave here. I know we've just been chatting about this. I'm fascinated to hear more about your accountancy business and it would be great to have a chat with you, blah, blah, blah. And I would do it like that. I would do it like a personal voice note that you send to someone. Because if you did this to, like, two or three people a day, that's not a great deal of work, is it? Right for you? And actually, you've got an opportunity to cut through the clutter, the digital clutter, because until everyone's sending voice notes on LinkedIn, which they're not, the opportunity is there for you to be one of the few people doing it. So here's how you do it. Grab your phone. I'll talk you through it. It's so easy. It's embarrassingly easy. So the first thing you do is, obviously you create a new message, or obviously, if you're in the thread with an existing message, then you just go into that message. But on your phone, there is a voice messaging icon at the bottom of the phone, at the bottom of the thread. And obviously, the first time that you click that, depending on your device, you might be prompted to allow LinkedIn to connect to the device microphone. Certainly on iPhones, they do that, don't they? And then you just simply hold down the microphone image to record your message, right? And when you finish recording it, you release it to stop the recording. And then you just either cancel it or you send it. And it's as simple as that. It really is as simple as that. So why don't you give this a try for the next week? Work your LinkedIn contacts. Why not drop three people a day, a personalized voice message via LinkedIn just to see what happens? And by the way, if you do do that, I would love to know what the results have been. Could you send me a voice message on LinkedIn with an update? That would be so cool. Do you know what? Talking of LinkedIn, it would be super cool if you and me were to connect on LinkedIn. If we're not already connected, then please go and find me, and I will accept your connection requests. So long as you are an MSP or you work within the channel. Just go into LinkedIn and search for paul Green, MSP marketing. [00:12:54] Speaker B: Hi, everyone. I'm Jim Haney. I'm the vice president of marketing at Novatech. [00:12:58] Speaker A: And Novatech, I believe, is based in Nashville in Tennessee. Is that correct? [00:13:02] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. We're headquartered here in Nashville. We also have a sub headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. [00:13:07] Speaker A: Okay. And the fact you're in Nashville, if I go and tell my 13 year old that I'm interviewing someone in Nashville, she will go crazy. You're probably aware there's a TV show called Nashville, which ran for about six seasons, and she discovered it about three weeks ago and is currently just about to hit season three. And we've just found that the platform, it's on here in the UK, there's only ten days left to watch it before it comes off the platform. And that's been a bit of a crisis in our house today. So thank you so much for joining me, Jim. And I am going to go and tell her about the Nashville connection in a second. I'm sure she thinks that you'll be a country singer of some kind, because that's what that show is about. Jim, I've got you on to talk about marketing and how you market your MSP and what you do that works well and what you found that doesn't work well. Because there is nothing more fascinating than getting on someone whose job is to market their MSP day in, day out. And that's something I know that you are overseeing. So let's just get a little bit more context from us. So tell us a little bit more about the business. What kind of clients do you serve? What kind of size are you? Just so we get context to add that into the marketing that you're doing. [00:14:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So, Novatech was founded in 1998. We are a nationwide MSP, so we do everything we service coast to coast. Our offering, we like to call it the managed office. And Paul, that's not usually a known term, but we do everything from managed It services right. Managed print, as well as the hardware aspect of It as well. So copiers and printers, cloud integration and technologies. And then everything we do, everything we do has a security element to it. So we like to call that managed security. So there's really four pillars of our business, and we service nationwide. Like I said, it's primarily enterprise accounts, small, medium sized businesses and so forth. And there's not one cookie cutter solution for a business. Every business has its own unique needs and business problems. So we're really sitting down with them and finding out how we can be of best service to them. [00:15:08] Speaker A: Sure. And do you have a sales team that's active on the ground, or are you doing all the selling remotely, seeing as you're covering a vast, huge country? [00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah, no, we do. We have sales reps, business technology advisors spread out throughout the country. [00:15:26] Speaker A: See, that in itself. I love that there's a moment of genius just there a Business Technology Advisor, because no normal business owner or manager wants to talk to an It salesperson business Technology advisor. It's the same thing, but it's positioning in It, and that shows that's a smart piece of positioning there. So let's talk about your overall marketing strategy, because in the four years this podcast has been running. We've talked about so many different things and we could do this podcast till the end of time, till humanity wipes itself out because there are so many facets to marketing and so many different strategies. There comes a point where as a business, you have to pick something and you have to commit to that. So without giving away any secret sauce or commercial secrets, what's your broad marketing strategy for generating leads for the, you. [00:16:16] Speaker B: Know, the number one goal of my team is generating know, obviously there's a lot of levers that we're pulling to accomplish that. But the main thing on that, Paul, is producing content and that is relevant to the persona and the buyer that you're out there for. And that starts with the website. That starts with your blogs, your social media, everything that you're putting out there, making sure that you're answering the questions that customers are actually asking. I know you have on your resource of books, one of the books that we love and I use as a cornerstone and foundation is they Ask, You Answer. Right? It's a great book, but using that philosophy and making sure that the content that we're putting out there is relevant and actually answering those key questions that people are coming to the site for. So we're doing a lot of that. We're very active online, very active on social, a lot of blogging, making sure that the website is optimized. We're doing a lot of strategic outreach to customers, both in email, direct mail, webinars, live events. It's a full breadth of strategies that we're out there approaching the marketplace with. [00:17:29] Speaker A: And I'm going to come back and ask you for a little more detail about those in just a second. But you mentioned something called buyer persona. Now obviously I know what that is, but could you explain for the benefit of our audience, what is a buyer persona? Why did you put it together in the first place? And actually, practically, how does it guide you on a daily basis with your marketing? [00:17:47] Speaker B: Yeah, so a buyer persona, that's who are you trying to market to right within a company? Who is the typical individual that is buying your service or interacting with you on a day to day? So that might be a CIO. A CEO, a marketing director, an It director. It just depends on the industry and the vertical and then understanding what messaging resonates with that type of individual. So what we do is we identify those personas, understand the vernacular that they're using and the key phrases that they're searching for online. And a lot of that is grassroots. We're asking these individuals, what are you Googling? What are you searching for? And then we're building buyer journeys for those personas. And each journey is a little bit different based on the persona. Again, that's relevant to them and it's giving them some gated content, free content. And all along the way, we're nurturing them along the buyer journey with information that's relevant, that's useful, and we're kind of nurturing them along throughout the cycle till they get to the point to where they want to engage. [00:18:58] Speaker A: And that buyer journey, have you planned all of that out in advance, or was that a case of getting something basic set up and then you've added to it and added it to it as you figured out what works and what doesn't work for that persona? [00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think it's ever a one and done. I think marketing is always learning, right? So we set up these personas, we see how they engage, we do some A B testing on what's relevant, what's actually converting, what are they downloading, what are they not downloading, and then we go back and continue to massage it. We listen to voice of customers, so we're reaching out to them, hey, is this content worth relevant to you? Is it useful? And then if it's not, we're updating and modifying it along the way. [00:19:39] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a truism there about all marketing, isn't there? Which is it's not one and done. It's a constant thing, which I know is distressing for many MSPs because they want to just do marketing, tick it off and say, we've done marketing. But unfortunately, things change. And as you said, there's always an opportunity to improve it. What we typically find is that it's not that your marketing performance degrades, it's typically that your competitors are getting better. And certainly in SEO in search engine optimization, that's very much the case, which we're going to come on to later on. Now you mentioned as well. They ask, you answer, which is an amazing book by Marcus Sheridan. Jim, did you actually know that Marcus Sheridan has been on this podcast? [00:20:17] Speaker B: I did not know that. That's amazing. [00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you go and find there's an episode from early January this year, it was a special episode because I've been a fan of they Ask, You Answer. Actually, only for a few years, because I only read it a few years ago, and I knew I had to get Marcus on this show. And it took some time, but he's so generous with his time, and he tailored all of his answers to MSPs. And in fact, the answer he gave about why you need to put your prices on your website is something I'm using with my MSP Marketing Edge members all of the time, because it's such a powerful and very personalized thing. So for you, Jim, if you say, go back to I can't remember the episode number, but it was early January 2023 as of today, as of this recording, it's our most listened to and most watched episode still. And for everyone else, if you haven't yet read they Ask, You Answer, you must read it, even if you can't implement it, because it's a big thing to implement. It guides you and pushes you down a specific route, and it's a route of really understanding your customer. I mean, you've obviously read it. I'm guessing you've got your team to have read it. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Yes. [00:21:22] Speaker A: What changes have you made as a result of reading that book that have benefited you? [00:21:28] Speaker B: There's so many, right? And like you said, there's a lot to implement, but you don't have to boil the ocean. You don't have to do it all to get started down the path. I would say the number one thing is actually understanding what your target market is, asking what are those questions, and making sure that your content is about answering those questions, not about you. I think a lot of times, and it's not just MSPs, any industry, right? You go to a website, you read an article, it's a lot of me, me, jargon, jargon, Jargon. And you got to get rid of that, man. It's got to be about listening and answering those questions that your customers are asking. That's the key thing. [00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And what have you found? What's your experience been of the type of content that normal people want to read? Because I appreciate that you're heading more at the sort of the enterprise level, but these are still human beings, right? These are still people who find things interesting or not interesting. And we all know that technology is a little bit of a turn off to ordinary people, so I'm excluding It directors. That's an audience very much within the sphere of if you're an MSP, if you're an It director, you've got a common language. But for a CFO, for a CEO, for an operations person, these people, they know technology is important, but they find it a turn off. So what kind of content have you found works best for that audience? [00:22:55] Speaker B: Well, it's a combination, really, because we all relate to different things, right? So we are incorporating a lot of blogging. So we're blogging quite a bit. We're doing video. Video is huge, right? And small snippets. Not real long form, just snippets, little educational bites. You mentioned different personas, right? CMO or CFO. A CEO. What is important to those individuals and what's the language or vernacular that they're using and making sure that your content is hitting those key points. But I think the biggest thing, Paul, that I would say is just understanding. Try to demystify the tech. Don't try to be I think sometimes we almost like to sound so important because we can use some really big words, make it sound ultra fancy, demystify it, simplify it. At the end of the day, what customers are wanting is their stuff to just work. Right? We don't need to impress them with big fancy words. I mean, obviously we know the vernacular, we have strong acumen, but just talking to them as if we were two CEOs or two CFOs or whatever, sitting at a table talking and what's going to be relevant to them and a lot of that stems from reaching out and asking them what's important to them. So when we're in a conversation with someone that's asking, hey, what's keeping you up at night? What are the things that you're looking for from a managed services provider? And then weaving those type of answers into your content? [00:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I absolutely love that. There's a saying which I read in a book, I can never remember which book it is, even though every time I say this on the podcast, I get five or six emails telling me what the book is. And for some reason it's never in my head, but the phrase is great. It's to influence what John Smith buys. You must look through John Smith's eyes, which is exactly what you have just described there. And it's so difficult to do. I feel very lucky because I trained to be a journalist at the age of 19, to be a newspaper reporter. And literally on day one, the very first thing they taught us was how to write content. So a 19 year old and I was a very young 19 year old, but a 19 year old could write for the 60 year old typical reader of the newspaper at that point of time. And that was such a power. I didn't realize I was learning such a powerful marketing and life lesson. The ability to think about something from someone else's point of view. And I think for many MSPs, when their marketing is so off, it's because they've just missed that. They don't understand the buyer. They don't understand what the buyer wants and needs and fears, and they don't understand, therefore, how to communicate with them. Okay, final couple of questions and I wanted to relate back into. You were saying earlier you do a mix of well, I'm going to give it a slightly different name, but you do a mix of push and pull. So push is where you're putting stuff out there. So you talked about doing webinars and you talked about doing essentially like proactive things where you are the ones that are pushing out, but you also do a set of pull stuff. So actually that kind of they'd ask, you answer content. We were just talking about a lot of that content is quite harder in the managed services market, but a lot of that content can become really good. Search engine optimization, SEO content. And certainly in the book, Marcus Sheridan saved his first business and arguably his house and his marriage by creating great SEO content accidentally while he was just trying to deliver content that his target customers would find of interest. So, do you see, obviously you're doing both, which is great. Do you see a distinct difference in the quality of the leads generated from push versus pull? Or do you not quite measure it at that level? [00:26:47] Speaker B: No, we measure it. The key is engaging with that customer or that prospect at that moment. Of truth, right? When they're thinking, hey, I need to find an answer, or hey, I need to get this solved today. And sometimes for It services, it's when things are broke specifically that I need someone. Right? And the sky is so I would say from a pull perspective, when we're getting companies coming to us and we're pulling them into an event or whatever the case may know. Honestly, Paul, I would say it's a mixed bag. As far as quality, I think they're both providing strong quality. It just depends on where the buyer is in the journey, which is exactly. [00:27:31] Speaker A: The answer I thought that you were going to give was, it depends on where they are in the journey. Because let's be honest, if they're in a very early research phase, but they're still 1218 months even further out from actually even sitting down with people, then sure, we can get them into our system, we can work with them, we can build up more touch points, we can learn a bit more about them. But ultimately, people buy when they're ready to buy. And I don't know if you find this, but most MSPs find that getting that timing right is always the hardest thing to do, right? [00:28:00] Speaker B: No, absolutely. And that's why it's important to get those buyer journeys established and using a great marketing automation tool. So we use HubSpot here. I'll give you another book that I'll recommend to the audience that I didn't see on your list that might be a new one. It's called Hack the Buyer Brain by Kenda McDonald. And Kenda actually used to be in forensic psychology, and she got a real passion for marketing and it shows how psychology works in the buying process. And you can really use some of those practices in that book coupled with they ask, you answer to really put together a really nice strategic buyer journey. And it's automated so you can use that marketing automation tool to keep it going and put a nice relevant process in place for your prospective buyers. [00:28:48] Speaker A: I love that. Thank you. Not only have you been a great guest, but you've now recommended another great guest that I need to get onto the show. So thank you. I will grab that book as well and have a listen to that book. Very, very final question, Jim, which is if you were talking to another MSP, an owner or a manager of an MSP, and they said to you with a sigh and a heavy heart, yeah, we don't do much marketing. We're not very good at marketing. Where would you recommend they get started? [00:29:14] Speaker B: So I'll break it down into three core elements, three key tips that I always like to give. And it's not rocket science, but when you're talking about your website, there's three things that you can do to really help yourself kind of adopt that they ask, you answer philosophy and help with that organic SEO. So first just make sure your website is technically sound. Spend the time and get the bones right. Use a good CMS, make sure you have your Meta tags correct, make sure it's optimized for mobile and so forth. There's a lot of things you can do. It doesn't have to be months to build it out, but just make sure it's technically sound. The second one is content, which we've talked about today, right? Just making sure you have good quality content that's answering the questions that your customers are asking or that your prospects are asking. Do blogging. Marcus in his book talks about some great ways to get blog content, and he's a real big advocate for that. So blogging is good, and then video content, right, and stuff like that. But whatever you're going to do, whatever your content form or format is, just make sure it's consistent, right? Whether it's every week or every two weeks, just be consistent with your stuff. And then the third one is linking, right? Leverage internal links and backlinks. So, internal links, as I'm sure you, you know, if you have a sub page on your website that's talking about managed It services, and then you wrote a blog about managed It services, make sure those two are linking in between each other, right? And that's going to help build relevance as Google's searching. And then backlinking is when you have a relevant publication or partner that you're partnering with, and they reference your website and your brand, and it goes back and forth, and you're sharing a little bit of that Google juice. The fourth one, if I were to give you a bonus tip, would be citations. Just make sure your citations are correct. So for the audience who doesn't know what a citation is, that's your name, address, and phone number as it lives on online directories. So you'd be surprised how many bad citations there are where they have your name right, they have your address right, but they have your phone number wrong, or one element is wrong. So just making sure those are correct and updated. If you follow that process, even as basic as it sounds, over time, you'll start to rise up on the organic search, and that's going to help your business. [00:31:37] Speaker A: And a lovely bonus tip there. So thank you very much for that. Tell us how we can get in touch with you, Jim. [00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you'd like to learn more about Novatech, be sure to visit [email protected] and love to connect with anyone on LinkedIn so you can find me on LinkedIn. And besides that, always happy to connect and collaborate with anyone out there. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast this week's recommended book. [00:32:07] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Merit Khan. I'm the CEO of Select Sales Development. We work with people who sell something complex, creative or custom. And the book that I'd like to recommend is Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini. It's a really great book to understand about the powers and the principles of influence that are working their magic on you as a consumer. And when you understand them, you have a lot more opportunity to be effective in using these same principles to grow your own business. Coming up next week hi, I'm Michele Ibbs from I'm Your PA and I will be joining Paul to tell you how we support many MSPs to get more work done whilst working less in their business. [00:32:57] Speaker A: And on top of that fantastic interview next week, we're going to be talking about the psychology of three tier pricing. You've probably heard about good, Better, best. Maybe you use it in your MSP, maybe you're scared to use it because you want to keep it simple. I'm going to explain to you the psychology and why Good, Better, Best ultimately will drive more sales than having just one single tier alone. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, MSP Marketing podcast.
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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world. This Paul. Paul. Paul Greens, MSP Marketing Podcast we go with a brand new show and this is what I've got for you this week. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Hey everyone. I'm Jim Haney, vice president of marketing at Novatech. We're going to dive into some marketing best practices for MSPs to really propel you and be relevant to your target audience. [00:00:24] Speaker A: And on about that interview with Jim. Later on in the show, we're going to talk about a very cool and clever thing that you can do within LinkedIn messaging. Now, no one is really using this right now, which gives you a massive opportunity to stand out to your prospects. Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast I have this great friend called Andy Edwards who frankly, I don't get to spend enough time with. Andy was actually my second ever guest. So if you go back to episode two from November 2019, he was my guest. And it was a bit of a cheat because I knew I was going to be starting a podcast. And I happened to go to see him. He's about 3 hours drive away from me in a place called Bournemouth in the UK. And we were sat in his garden enjoying just a chat and some food. And I kind of grabbed my phone and said, hey, I'm going to be doing this podcast soon. Can I record you for the podcast? And that was how he ended up on episode two. But Andy and I, because we're sort of three odd hours drive apart, we never really spend enough quality time. And you know how COVID changed all of that. And you see people differently these days, don't you? One of the things I like about Andy and I met him when we were both speakers. So over the last 20 years, I've gone and talked at marketing conferences and talked about various marketing things, not so much within the MSP world, but sort of just within the UK. And that's how I met Andy. And one of the things that I used to love doing was when I'd done my talk about marketing stuff, I would sit in the audience and hear him talk about people stuff. And this is what makes Andy so great. He's very much the kind of guy who the kind of person who understands how other people tick. And his talk from memory was called something like, why isn't everyone like me? Or something like that. Now, Andy teaches how to assess other people through a four color system. And you can kind of Google this if you Google personality colors, it comes up with where people can be sort of categorized, whether they're red, yellow, green or blue. And actually this links directly into the disk system. So you might not have heard of the color way of sort of putting people into a box, but you may have heard of the disk system dis. And we'll talk about that in a second. Now, the reason I'm talking about this, and the reason I love listening to Andy talking about this is because it's all about creating better sort of harmony within your business and also figuring out why clients don't buy the way that you do. So for example, I am a red and I'm going to describe what these colors are in a second, but I'm a red. I'm a fast decision maker. I'm like, come on, let's do it, let's go for it. I don't need to sit and think about it. You tell me something. The switch inside my head says, Yep, let's do it. As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the conversation. I say, yes, we do it. That's it. Whereas someone who is a blue, which is blue, is kind of like the direct opposite of that. Someone who needs to hear lots of stuff about it, they need to think about it a lot more. They will then have lots of information, lots of pondering. They can't make a decision without a ton of information and time to process that information. And as you're out selling and you're marketing and selling to these different kind of people, you need to understand how these different personalities work. Someone like me when I used to do my own sales, which is like in 1872, and I didn't enjoy it, as most business owners don't enjoy it. But when I was out selling and I didn't really understand that different people bought in different ways, I couldn't understand why people weren't listening to me for five minutes and then going, Yep, let's do it. And I thought perhaps I was doing a bad job until I met Andy and he taught me about different personality types. So let me run through the four colors and then I'll link them up to the disc profile that you may be more familiar with and you may even use. So you start off with red and the typical traits of reds is they're extroverts, they're very ambitious, they're confident, they're thrill seekers, hard workers, and they're innovative. And as I say, I am absolutely 100% red. Although Andy tells me that everyone sort of has a primary color and then a more secondary color as well. And you can go back and listen to his interview in episode two if you want to listen to that. So you've got your reds and then you've got your yellows. And your yellows are kind of like diluted down reds. So they're still extroverted. They're very optimistic, but they're a lot more social. I'm not as social as I could be and that's why I know I'm not a yellow. So given the choice, I will stay on my own and have my own company rather than go out and go to an event or go to something. So yellows are a lot more social. They're very persuasive, they're very entertaining and they're very idealistic. It's almost like yellows are better versions of red. That's my words. And as a red I feel I can say that. Then we go into the sort of the introverted colors. So green and red are both introverts. Greens are very helpful. They're very easy going, very cooperative but very regimented and very patient. And blue again almost a more extreme version of green where again they're introverted but they're much more obedient still very organized, very meticulous, very cautious and very private. And you can see why it would take. I will make friends with someone in seconds. Blue, which is obviously the direct opposite takes a lot longer to build up some kind of trust. Do you see how that would directly affect any kind of marketing and sales that you're doing? Isn't that interesting? It's fascinating, isn't it when you sort of put all these things together? Let me link this to disk for you because you can go and get free disk profiles on the interweb disk dis dominant is the D of disk and that typically relates to red. So they're very much driven by the desire to dominate or lead others. Don't know if I like that. As someone who fits within that then you've got the I which is inspiring. That matches up with yellow. Inspiring is driven by the desire to inspire or influence others. The S of disk is stable and this is green. This links up to green which is driven by the desire for stability. So routine security is really important to these people. And then you've got C which is compliant. Again, this is blue driven by the desire to comply or do things as they are meant to be done. Now you and I don't have to spend tons of time studying this. Not in the way that Andy andy is an expert at this. His whole life is this and teaching people how to influence other people by understanding their personality. We don't need to spend all that time says Mr. Red who wants to get things done and move on. Maybe you want to spend more time looking at this. My point is all we need is a basic understanding that all people even though we're so diverse and we're so many different types of people we can ultimately all be categorized not fully but in a certain number of ways we will fit into certain boxes. And here we've got just two ways of doing that. If we can take some time to understand other people are not always like us and therefore we need to communicate and influence them in different ways then ultimately that's going to help us get a better sales and marketing result. Here's this week's clever idea. It's not very often that something marketing wise happens to me and completely blows me away and makes me think how did I not know that? But that did happen to me a couple of months ago when I received a LinkedIn message from someone who works for an MSP called Elena and she'd messaged me to ask a question. We're not working together yet, but she'd messaged me just to ask a question about something to do with marketing. And I saw that I'd got another LinkedIn message from her. So I went to look at that message and I was genuinely gobsmacked when I realized the message was this. [00:08:15] Speaker C: Hi, Paul, so thanks for connecting with me here on LinkedIn. I've been a long term fan of yours and just wanted to tell you a little bit more about us. [00:08:26] Speaker A: So, as you can hear there, it was a voice memo from Elena and that completely blew my mind. The reason that completely blew my mind is because I didn't know up till that point that you could send a voice message via LinkedIn. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not as green as I'm cabbage looking. I know that in your phone, you can send voice notes here in the UK. WhatsApp is the biggest messaging app? It's pretty much the default messaging app in the UK. And I know I send voice messages and voice memos to my friends all the time. I'm sure you do it in your messaging app of choice, but I didn't know you could do it in LinkedIn. Do you know what? I hear something that's really embarrassing as well. It's embarrassing for me is this functionality was introduced in 2018. So for five years now, you've been able to send a voice message in a LinkedIn message and I didn't know about this. I'm going to go easy on myself. I can't be expected to know absolutely everything. So, anyway, thank you, Elena, for sending that voice message to me. I didn't actually specifically ask your permission to play it out on the podcast. I know that you listen, so I hope you don't mind. You know, that whole thing of it's better to seek forgiveness than it is to ask permission. So thank you very much for letting me play that out. Now, let me tell you how exciting this is, because the main reason I didn't know this, apart from the fact I missed the announcement in 2018, was Elena was the first person ever to send me a voice message on LinkedIn. And I get a lot of LinkedIn messages, like, a lot of LinkedIn messages, as I'm sure you do. So if that was the first one I've received in five years, to me, this is an opportunity, right? This is something that you can use to stand out to the leads and prospects that you're working on LinkedIn. So the cool thing is, it's so easy to send a voice memo, a voice note within LinkedIn. You have to do it on your phone. That's the only thing you can't do it off your laptop. It has to be done on the phone, but it's super easy to use. So now that you know you could do this. Why don't you become the only MSP that actually, while you're chatting with leads and prospects on LinkedIn, you become the only MSP to just send them a quick voice note. And it could be something as simple as, oh, hi, Paul. This is Dave here. I know we've just been chatting about this. I'm fascinated to hear more about your accountancy business and it would be great to have a chat with you, blah, blah, blah. And I would do it like that. I would do it like a personal voice note that you send to someone. Because if you did this to, like, two or three people a day, that's not a great deal of work, is it? Right for you? And actually, you've got an opportunity to cut through the clutter, the digital clutter, because until everyone's sending voice notes on LinkedIn, which they're not, the opportunity is there for you to be one of the few people doing it. So here's how you do it. Grab your phone. I'll talk you through it. It's so easy. It's embarrassingly easy. So the first thing you do is, obviously you create a new message, or obviously, if you're in the thread with an existing message, then you just go into that message. But on your phone, there is a voice messaging icon at the bottom of the phone, at the bottom of the thread. And obviously, the first time that you click that, depending on your device, you might be prompted to allow LinkedIn to connect to the device microphone. Certainly on iPhones, they do that, don't they? And then you just simply hold down the microphone image to record your message, right? And when you finish recording it, you release it to stop the recording. And then you just either cancel it or you send it. And it's as simple as that. It really is as simple as that. So why don't you give this a try for the next week? Work your LinkedIn contacts. Why not drop three people a day, a personalized voice message via LinkedIn just to see what happens? And by the way, if you do do that, I would love to know what the results have been. Could you send me a voice message on LinkedIn with an update? That would be so cool. Do you know what? Talking of LinkedIn, it would be super cool if you and me were to connect on LinkedIn. If we're not already connected, then please go and find me, and I will accept your connection requests. So long as you are an MSP or you work within the channel. Just go into LinkedIn and search for paul Green, MSP marketing. [00:12:54] Speaker B: Hi, everyone. I'm Jim Haney. I'm the vice president of marketing at Novatech. [00:12:58] Speaker A: And Novatech, I believe, is based in Nashville in Tennessee. Is that correct? [00:13:02] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. We're headquartered here in Nashville. We also have a sub headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. [00:13:07] Speaker A: Okay. And the fact you're in Nashville, if I go and tell my 13 year old that I'm interviewing someone in Nashville, she will go crazy. You're probably aware there's a TV show called Nashville, which ran for about six seasons, and she discovered it about three weeks ago and is currently just about to hit season three. And we've just found that the platform, it's on here in the UK, there's only ten days left to watch it before it comes off the platform. And that's been a bit of a crisis in our house today. So thank you so much for joining me, Jim. And I am going to go and tell her about the Nashville connection in a second. I'm sure she thinks that you'll be a country singer of some kind, because that's what that show is about. Jim, I've got you on to talk about marketing and how you market your MSP and what you do that works well and what you found that doesn't work well. Because there is nothing more fascinating than getting on someone whose job is to market their MSP day in, day out. And that's something I know that you are overseeing. So let's just get a little bit more context from us. So tell us a little bit more about the business. What kind of clients do you serve? What kind of size are you? Just so we get context to add that into the marketing that you're doing. [00:14:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So, Novatech was founded in 1998. We are a nationwide MSP, so we do everything we service coast to coast. Our offering, we like to call it the managed office. And Paul, that's not usually a known term, but we do everything from managed It services right. Managed print, as well as the hardware aspect of It as well. So copiers and printers, cloud integration and technologies. And then everything we do, everything we do has a security element to it. So we like to call that managed security. So there's really four pillars of our business, and we service nationwide. Like I said, it's primarily enterprise accounts, small, medium sized businesses and so forth. And there's not one cookie cutter solution for a business. Every business has its own unique needs and business problems. So we're really sitting down with them and finding out how we can be of best service to them. [00:15:08] Speaker A: Sure. And do you have a sales team that's active on the ground, or are you doing all the selling remotely, seeing as you're covering a vast, huge country? [00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah, no, we do. We have sales reps, business technology advisors spread out throughout the country. [00:15:26] Speaker A: See, that in itself. I love that there's a moment of genius just there a Business Technology Advisor, because no normal business owner or manager wants to talk to an It salesperson business Technology advisor. It's the same thing, but it's positioning in It, and that shows that's a smart piece of positioning there. So let's talk about your overall marketing strategy, because in the four years this podcast has been running. We've talked about so many different things and we could do this podcast till the end of time, till humanity wipes itself out because there are so many facets to marketing and so many different strategies. There comes a point where as a business, you have to pick something and you have to commit to that. So without giving away any secret sauce or commercial secrets, what's your broad marketing strategy for generating leads for the, you. [00:16:16] Speaker B: Know, the number one goal of my team is generating know, obviously there's a lot of levers that we're pulling to accomplish that. But the main thing on that, Paul, is producing content and that is relevant to the persona and the buyer that you're out there for. And that starts with the website. That starts with your blogs, your social media, everything that you're putting out there, making sure that you're answering the questions that customers are actually asking. I know you have on your resource of books, one of the books that we love and I use as a cornerstone and foundation is they Ask, You Answer. Right? It's a great book, but using that philosophy and making sure that the content that we're putting out there is relevant and actually answering those key questions that people are coming to the site for. So we're doing a lot of that. We're very active online, very active on social, a lot of blogging, making sure that the website is optimized. We're doing a lot of strategic outreach to customers, both in email, direct mail, webinars, live events. It's a full breadth of strategies that we're out there approaching the marketplace with. [00:17:29] Speaker A: And I'm going to come back and ask you for a little more detail about those in just a second. But you mentioned something called buyer persona. Now obviously I know what that is, but could you explain for the benefit of our audience, what is a buyer persona? Why did you put it together in the first place? And actually, practically, how does it guide you on a daily basis with your marketing? [00:17:47] Speaker B: Yeah, so a buyer persona, that's who are you trying to market to right within a company? Who is the typical individual that is buying your service or interacting with you on a day to day? So that might be a CIO. A CEO, a marketing director, an It director. It just depends on the industry and the vertical and then understanding what messaging resonates with that type of individual. So what we do is we identify those personas, understand the vernacular that they're using and the key phrases that they're searching for online. And a lot of that is grassroots. We're asking these individuals, what are you Googling? What are you searching for? And then we're building buyer journeys for those personas. And each journey is a little bit different based on the persona. Again, that's relevant to them and it's giving them some gated content, free content. And all along the way, we're nurturing them along the buyer journey with information that's relevant, that's useful, and we're kind of nurturing them along throughout the cycle till they get to the point to where they want to engage. [00:18:58] Speaker A: And that buyer journey, have you planned all of that out in advance, or was that a case of getting something basic set up and then you've added to it and added it to it as you figured out what works and what doesn't work for that persona? [00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think it's ever a one and done. I think marketing is always learning, right? So we set up these personas, we see how they engage, we do some A B testing on what's relevant, what's actually converting, what are they downloading, what are they not downloading, and then we go back and continue to massage it. We listen to voice of customers, so we're reaching out to them, hey, is this content worth relevant to you? Is it useful? And then if it's not, we're updating and modifying it along the way. [00:19:39] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a truism there about all marketing, isn't there? Which is it's not one and done. It's a constant thing, which I know is distressing for many MSPs because they want to just do marketing, tick it off and say, we've done marketing. But unfortunately, things change. And as you said, there's always an opportunity to improve it. What we typically find is that it's not that your marketing performance degrades, it's typically that your competitors are getting better. And certainly in SEO in search engine optimization, that's very much the case, which we're going to come on to later on. Now you mentioned as well. They ask, you answer, which is an amazing book by Marcus Sheridan. Jim, did you actually know that Marcus Sheridan has been on this podcast? [00:20:17] Speaker B: I did not know that. That's amazing. [00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you go and find there's an episode from early January this year, it was a special episode because I've been a fan of they Ask, You Answer. Actually, only for a few years, because I only read it a few years ago, and I knew I had to get Marcus on this show. And it took some time, but he's so generous with his time, and he tailored all of his answers to MSPs. And in fact, the answer he gave about why you need to put your prices on your website is something I'm using with my MSP Marketing Edge members all of the time, because it's such a powerful and very personalized thing. So for you, Jim, if you say, go back to I can't remember the episode number, but it was early January 2023 as of today, as of this recording, it's our most listened to and most watched episode still. And for everyone else, if you haven't yet read they Ask, You Answer, you must read it, even if you can't implement it, because it's a big thing to implement. It guides you and pushes you down a specific route, and it's a route of really understanding your customer. I mean, you've obviously read it. I'm guessing you've got your team to have read it. [00:21:22] Speaker B: Yes. [00:21:22] Speaker A: What changes have you made as a result of reading that book that have benefited you? [00:21:28] Speaker B: There's so many, right? And like you said, there's a lot to implement, but you don't have to boil the ocean. You don't have to do it all to get started down the path. I would say the number one thing is actually understanding what your target market is, asking what are those questions, and making sure that your content is about answering those questions, not about you. I think a lot of times, and it's not just MSPs, any industry, right? You go to a website, you read an article, it's a lot of me, me, jargon, jargon, Jargon. And you got to get rid of that, man. It's got to be about listening and answering those questions that your customers are asking. That's the key thing. [00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And what have you found? What's your experience been of the type of content that normal people want to read? Because I appreciate that you're heading more at the sort of the enterprise level, but these are still human beings, right? These are still people who find things interesting or not interesting. And we all know that technology is a little bit of a turn off to ordinary people, so I'm excluding It directors. That's an audience very much within the sphere of if you're an MSP, if you're an It director, you've got a common language. But for a CFO, for a CEO, for an operations person, these people, they know technology is important, but they find it a turn off. So what kind of content have you found works best for that audience? [00:22:55] Speaker B: Well, it's a combination, really, because we all relate to different things, right? So we are incorporating a lot of blogging. So we're blogging quite a bit. We're doing video. Video is huge, right? And small snippets. Not real long form, just snippets, little educational bites. You mentioned different personas, right? CMO or CFO. A CEO. What is important to those individuals and what's the language or vernacular that they're using and making sure that your content is hitting those key points. But I think the biggest thing, Paul, that I would say is just understanding. Try to demystify the tech. Don't try to be I think sometimes we almost like to sound so important because we can use some really big words, make it sound ultra fancy, demystify it, simplify it. At the end of the day, what customers are wanting is their stuff to just work. Right? We don't need to impress them with big fancy words. I mean, obviously we know the vernacular, we have strong acumen, but just talking to them as if we were two CEOs or two CFOs or whatever, sitting at a table talking and what's going to be relevant to them and a lot of that stems from reaching out and asking them what's important to them. So when we're in a conversation with someone that's asking, hey, what's keeping you up at night? What are the things that you're looking for from a managed services provider? And then weaving those type of answers into your content? [00:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I absolutely love that. There's a saying which I read in a book, I can never remember which book it is, even though every time I say this on the podcast, I get five or six emails telling me what the book is. And for some reason it's never in my head, but the phrase is great. It's to influence what John Smith buys. You must look through John Smith's eyes, which is exactly what you have just described there. And it's so difficult to do. I feel very lucky because I trained to be a journalist at the age of 19, to be a newspaper reporter. And literally on day one, the very first thing they taught us was how to write content. So a 19 year old and I was a very young 19 year old, but a 19 year old could write for the 60 year old typical reader of the newspaper at that point of time. And that was such a power. I didn't realize I was learning such a powerful marketing and life lesson. The ability to think about something from someone else's point of view. And I think for many MSPs, when their marketing is so off, it's because they've just missed that. They don't understand the buyer. They don't understand what the buyer wants and needs and fears, and they don't understand, therefore, how to communicate with them. Okay, final couple of questions and I wanted to relate back into. You were saying earlier you do a mix of well, I'm going to give it a slightly different name, but you do a mix of push and pull. So push is where you're putting stuff out there. So you talked about doing webinars and you talked about doing essentially like proactive things where you are the ones that are pushing out, but you also do a set of pull stuff. So actually that kind of they'd ask, you answer content. We were just talking about a lot of that content is quite harder in the managed services market, but a lot of that content can become really good. Search engine optimization, SEO content. And certainly in the book, Marcus Sheridan saved his first business and arguably his house and his marriage by creating great SEO content accidentally while he was just trying to deliver content that his target customers would find of interest. So, do you see, obviously you're doing both, which is great. Do you see a distinct difference in the quality of the leads generated from push versus pull? Or do you not quite measure it at that level? [00:26:47] Speaker B: No, we measure it. The key is engaging with that customer or that prospect at that moment. Of truth, right? When they're thinking, hey, I need to find an answer, or hey, I need to get this solved today. And sometimes for It services, it's when things are broke specifically that I need someone. Right? And the sky is so I would say from a pull perspective, when we're getting companies coming to us and we're pulling them into an event or whatever the case may know. Honestly, Paul, I would say it's a mixed bag. As far as quality, I think they're both providing strong quality. It just depends on where the buyer is in the journey, which is exactly. [00:27:31] Speaker A: The answer I thought that you were going to give was, it depends on where they are in the journey. Because let's be honest, if they're in a very early research phase, but they're still 1218 months even further out from actually even sitting down with people, then sure, we can get them into our system, we can work with them, we can build up more touch points, we can learn a bit more about them. But ultimately, people buy when they're ready to buy. And I don't know if you find this, but most MSPs find that getting that timing right is always the hardest thing to do, right? [00:28:00] Speaker B: No, absolutely. And that's why it's important to get those buyer journeys established and using a great marketing automation tool. So we use HubSpot here. I'll give you another book that I'll recommend to the audience that I didn't see on your list that might be a new one. It's called Hack the Buyer Brain by Kenda McDonald. And Kenda actually used to be in forensic psychology, and she got a real passion for marketing and it shows how psychology works in the buying process. And you can really use some of those practices in that book coupled with they ask, you answer to really put together a really nice strategic buyer journey. And it's automated so you can use that marketing automation tool to keep it going and put a nice relevant process in place for your prospective buyers. [00:28:48] Speaker A: I love that. Thank you. Not only have you been a great guest, but you've now recommended another great guest that I need to get onto the show. So thank you. I will grab that book as well and have a listen to that book. Very, very final question, Jim, which is if you were talking to another MSP, an owner or a manager of an MSP, and they said to you with a sigh and a heavy heart, yeah, we don't do much marketing. We're not very good at marketing. Where would you recommend they get started? [00:29:14] Speaker B: So I'll break it down into three core elements, three key tips that I always like to give. And it's not rocket science, but when you're talking about your website, there's three things that you can do to really help yourself kind of adopt that they ask, you answer philosophy and help with that organic SEO. So first just make sure your website is technically sound. Spend the time and get the bones right. Use a good CMS, make sure you have your Meta tags correct, make sure it's optimized for mobile and so forth. There's a lot of things you can do. It doesn't have to be months to build it out, but just make sure it's technically sound. The second one is content, which we've talked about today, right? Just making sure you have good quality content that's answering the questions that your customers are asking or that your prospects are asking. Do blogging. Marcus in his book talks about some great ways to get blog content, and he's a real big advocate for that. So blogging is good, and then video content, right, and stuff like that. But whatever you're going to do, whatever your content form or format is, just make sure it's consistent, right? Whether it's every week or every two weeks, just be consistent with your stuff. And then the third one is linking, right? Leverage internal links and backlinks. So, internal links, as I'm sure you, you know, if you have a sub page on your website that's talking about managed It services, and then you wrote a blog about managed It services, make sure those two are linking in between each other, right? And that's going to help build relevance as Google's searching. And then backlinking is when you have a relevant publication or partner that you're partnering with, and they reference your website and your brand, and it goes back and forth, and you're sharing a little bit of that Google juice. The fourth one, if I were to give you a bonus tip, would be citations. Just make sure your citations are correct. So for the audience who doesn't know what a citation is, that's your name, address, and phone number as it lives on online directories. So you'd be surprised how many bad citations there are where they have your name right, they have your address right, but they have your phone number wrong, or one element is wrong. So just making sure those are correct and updated. If you follow that process, even as basic as it sounds, over time, you'll start to rise up on the organic search, and that's going to help your business. [00:31:37] Speaker A: And a lovely bonus tip there. So thank you very much for that. Tell us how we can get in touch with you, Jim. [00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you'd like to learn more about Novatech, be sure to visit [email protected] and love to connect with anyone on LinkedIn so you can find me on LinkedIn. And besides that, always happy to connect and collaborate with anyone out there. [00:32:00] Speaker A: Paul Green's, MSP Marketing Podcast this week's recommended book. [00:32:07] Speaker C: Hi, I'm Merritt Khan. I'm the CEO of Select Sales Development. We work with people who sell something complex, creative or custom. And the book that I'd like to recommend is Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini. It's a really great book to understand about the powers and the principles of influence that are working their magic on you as a consumer. And when you understand them, you have a lot more opportunity to be effective in using these same principles to grow your own business. Coming up next week hi, I'm Michelle IBS from I'm Your PA and I will be joining Paul to tell you how we support many MSPs to get more work done whilst working less in their business. [00:32:57] Speaker A: And on top of that fantastic interview next week, we're going to be talking about the psychology of three tier pricing. You've probably heard about good, Better, best. Maybe you use it in your MSP, maybe you're scared to use it because you want to keep it simple. I'm going to explain to you the psychology and why Good, Better, Best ultimately will drive more sales than having just one single tier alone. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. Made in the UK for MSPs around the world. Paul Green's, MSP Marketing podcast.

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