Episode 228: Super easy customer case studies for MSPs

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for msps around the world. Around the world, this Paul. Paul. Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast. [00:00:09] Speaker B: And welcome back to the podcast. Next week, it's an Easter special. I'll give you more details of that later on, but here's what we've got coming up this week. [00:00:17] Speaker C: Hey, it's Joel clicke from case Study buddy. Join me on Paul's podcast, where I'll be talking about customer success stories, how you can get started using them on your marketing, and see some really great ROI from the great relationships you've built. [00:00:29] Speaker B: And on top of that interview with Joel, we're also going to be asking our hashtags, still valid on LinkedIn. [00:00:37] Speaker A: Paul Green, MSP Marketing Podcast let's start. [00:00:41] Speaker B: With a provocative question this week. Should you admit your faults and mistakes in order to be more relatable with your marketing? And I realize, having said that, that how can you? Because you don't have faults, do you? You don't make mistakes. You're perfect just as I'm perfect. Yeah, come on. We all know humans. We're fallible. We make mistakes. We get things wrong. You should see some of the outtakes of this podcast. You should hear some of the horrendous words that I say when I get it wrong. I don't know if you can hear in the back of my head today. [00:01:12] Speaker D: I can hear it, but I've got man flu. [00:01:15] Speaker B: I've got a man cold. My voice feels all different, and I'm all stuffed up and my brain's all foggy. And I'm a real trooper. So I'm plowing on and recording the podcast anyway. But producer Simon will tell you that I've made some horrendous mistakes. Know, just doing this week's podcast, never mind the normal podcasts, but all of that gets edited out because we just want you to have the good stuff, right? And that's what we all do with our know. I have lots and lots of faults. There are lots of marketing things that I'm really not good at, because no one human can be good at all of marketing. It's too big. That's like one human being good at all of technology, right? You can code Facebook in the morning, and then you can fix a server in the afternoon. It doesn't exist. No one has all of those skill sets. And if you think you do, then you're actually not a master of all of those things at the same time. But then we do our marketing, and our marketing makes us out to be perfect. We talk about all the perfect things. And we never reveal our faults. Well, I think we should. I think, actually, the more you talk about your mistakes and the more you talk about your faults, and not incessantly, if that's all you talk about, you're missing a trick. But if you weave it in to the stories you're telling, then I think that can make you seem a very real person, a very authentic person. And actually, in this age of AI generated content, that's a very, very good thing. You see, humans like to buy from other humans. People like to buy from people. And one of the ways that we can make other people feel connected to us is by telling stories. Human brains love stories. If you put a human into what's called a functional MRI machine. MRI. That's a mistake. We won't cut out the podcast. A functional MRI machine. An MRI. You know what MRI is? It's the big magnetic thing that goes boom, boom, boom, boom when it takes pictures of you. But a functional one can sort of scan what's happening in your brain in real time. And if you put someone into one of those things and you tell them a story, all sorts of parts of the brain light up, lots of different parts of the brain. You break down that same story into facts, and only two or three parts of the brain light up. So our brains are literally hardwired for stories, but they need to be compelling stories, right? And the trick is, on your website, on the emails you send, on the guides you write on everything, is to tell compelling stories. One of the most compelling stories you can tell is of mistakes that you've made and then how you've overcome them. It is a basic story. In fact, you think about Hollywood movies, right? Hollywood movies are full of people making mistakes and then overcoming those mistakes, and often then going on to learn how to fly, use a lightsaber, or something else like that. So what if you talked about a mistake that you made, which then set you off down a different path, and you became better at that? Now, the conflict in my head at this point is that there is a line at which an MSP shouldn't be talking about their mistakes. And by that, I mean breaches, data, security, incidents, anything which could be dangerous. It would be horrendous for your business and its marketing. If you said, I really learned about data breaches two years ago when a client got hacked and went bust, that would be horrendous. That's not a lesson to learn from. That's something that you should just know. Right? So there is very much a line of acceptability. That would be like, what's an example I can give of a dentist saying the day I realized I was causing my patient's pain was when one of them ran out screaming during the middle of a procedure and I never saw them again. You wouldn't visit a dentist like that, and no dentist would admit to that, even if it's happened. So there is a line of, a credibility line. But I think you can talk about mistakes that you've made, perhaps in things that aren't so important. Let's take something like a video call setup, right? So you might have a really good video call setup today with a USB camera and led lights and a USB microphone, and you might be using zoom or teams in a very specific way, and that might be the result of you doing some research and figuring out a great way of doing video calls. That really zing, right? And it's okay for you, in your marketing, to talk about how back in 2020, you, like everyone else, was doing really average, rubbishy video calls, poorly lit, terrible camera, and the sound wasn't great either. And over time, you've improved your game, and then you've helped your clients up their game. And now one of the things that you do, one of your services for your clients, is you give all of them the perfect video call setter, both at their work desk and at their home office desk, which, by the way, can be a great product to sell. Can you see how take something like that where I made a mistake, I got it wrong, I was making the same mistakes as everyone. But then I've transformed it and I've done something different. That would be a very, very compelling thing to do. And the more real you can make yourself, the better. The more human you can make yourself, the better. You've got to be careful of that credibility gap. But ultimately, people buy from people, and people make mistakes. Tell us about those mistakes. Tell us how you've overcome them. [00:06:22] Speaker A: Here's this week's clever idea. [00:06:25] Speaker B: I'm hoping you use LinkedIn quite dramatically. I'm hoping that you're on it every day, or if not you personally, then someone is working LinkedIn on your behalf. Because as an MSP, LinkedIn is beautiful, right? Everyone you could ever possibly want to do business with in the future, they're on LinkedIn, the vast majority of them, and it's a great place to go farming. LinkedIn very much is about farming, not hunting. Hunting is where you dart in and grab something. LinkedIn is about farming. It's about nurturing growing connections. All of that kind of stuff. And a question that I'm often asked is about hashtags on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is constantly changing things. And one of the things that's changing quite a lot at the moment is the role of hashtags. You know what I mean by hashtags. So someone will write a post. And for example, when I write a post, I always put a hashtag underneath hashtag MSP marketing. And I'll explain in about 3 minutes time why I do that on every single post and how you can do something similar to dominate a hashtag in your area. So if we go back, I guess a number of years, five, six, seven years or so ago, then hashtags were considered totally essential for kind of increasing your reach and discoverability on LinkedIn. Because the theory was that if someone, let's say you did have hashtag your town, that someone would click on hashtag your town and there would be lots of posts written by people in your town or written by people who wanted to reach people in your town. But I think what we've been seeing over the last six months or so is we've seen a bit of a shift in hashtags and a bit of a shift in how LinkedIn itself is viewing them. And they are always doing experiments and trying things. So it's easy to look back and say, I think if you go back around about ten years ago, I remember reading some research ten years ago saying that if you put on three to ten hashtags, it would just give you a boost. [00:08:25] Speaker D: I don't know, it would be like. [00:08:26] Speaker B: A 1020 percent boost or something like that. And the more specific the hashtags matched up to your content, the more of the boost you got, because literally people clicked the hashtag and it took them straight to content that they were interested in. The reality is, I think, how many people actually act that way? Do you do that? Do you click on hashtags to find things? Maybe you do on Twitter. Do you remember Twitter used to be called Twitter x? I don't know if anyone ever uses that anymore, but x Twitter. Twitter x like spacex. But maybe people do that on Twitter to follow specific things they're interested in. But do they do it on LinkedIn? Certainly LinkedIn itself has decided within recent years that hashtags don't really significantly impact. Well, the addition of hashtags don't significantly impact the post reach. So if you put on hashtags now, compared to a number of years ago, it doesn't automatically drive more traffic to your site. So we've been doing some very minor experiments. As I said to you, I've been putting hashtags on my posts for years, and I did some experiments where I didn't. And what I was trying to do was to figure know, is the hashtag making any difference? Am I seeing any kind of engagement? I've done a little bit of research. Most of my research has been done on Google or looking up LinkedIn experts and what LinkedIn themselves are saying. And it's certain that from what we can see, that LinkedIn themselves have been running some experiments. And one of those experiments involves them reducing the importance of hashtags. And they seem to be possibly even moving towards making them just less important and less used within the LinkedIn experience to use what LinkedIn talk about. So I think the bigger picture from this is that hashtags on LinkedIn, I think they're going to stay, from what you can see, that there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to take them away, but they're not as important as they used to be. So my final thoughts on this is going to be less of use to you because of that context, but it's still something that you can do. And I've said to you a couple of times that every single post I put, I post, I put hashtag MSP marketing, and I do that to try and own the hashtag MSP marketing. I'm sure there are other people that use it, but when you click on the hashtag MSP marketing, you see a lot of my posts, and it's also part of my authority, right? So if you go into my profile, it says, paul talks about MSP marketing. [00:10:58] Speaker D: Because it uses that hashtag, because I. [00:11:00] Speaker B: Use it often in my posts. So I think you can do exactly the same thing with a hashtag of support your town. So you can own and dominate a hashtag, it support your town. Does that make sense? But you need to use it on every single post. So from this point forward, every single post that you post, on every single post you use, add on that hashtag, it support your town, and over a period of time, you will come to own that. Is it going to drive more traffic from LinkedIn? Is it going to drive more inquiries? Probably not. Is it good positioning for something that takes a fraction of a second every time? Yes, it is. And I always believe with marketing, if you can have a tiny little win with something like that, why wouldn't you do it? Talking of LinkedIn, then you and I connected on LinkedIn yet, if we're not, the easiest way to find me on LinkedIn is actually through Google. If you Google LinkedIn. Paul Green, MSP marketing I guess you can go into LinkedIn and type in Paul Green, MSP marketing, but either of those are a great way to find me. Please do connect to me. I've got around about, it's about 8000 connections now. The vast majority are msps, and it would be delightful to be connected to you. But also make sure you subscribe to my LinkedIn newsletter. It comes out every single Thursday. I'll send that over to you. Brand new, fresh content every Thursday. When you connect to me on LinkedIn, it will automatically suggest that you subscribe to my newsletter, LinkedIn. Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul Paul Paul Greens, MSP Marketing podcast send you a message when we connect. It'd be great to talk to you. [00:12:37] Speaker C: Hey, I'm Joel Kleckie. I'm an expert on case studies, and I run the team at case study. [00:12:42] Speaker D: Buddy, and that's got to be one of the best company names that we've ever had on this podcast. It just trips off the tongue. Case study buddy, we'll talk to you later on about exactly what you do and how you can help msps, because I know you have worked with a growing number of msps already, but let's talk about case studies, because that's what your business sells. That's what it delivers. When we talk about case studies, what exactly are we talking about here? Are we talking about enhanced testimonials? Are we talking about influencing reviews? What exactly do we mean? [00:13:10] Speaker B: Joel? [00:13:11] Speaker C: Yeah, it's actually a shame that case study buddy flows so well, because what I wish we could call ourselves is customer success story buddy, which is nowhere near as nice to say. But that's really what we're talking about, is taking customer success story. Someone who's had a great experience with you, achieved success with you, be that relational, be that metrics based, something you've actually helped them lift or grow. We're talking about more than just a testimonial, though. That can be a byproduct of the work that we do and an output of the work that we do. But to boil it down, we're talking about stories with a narrative arc that start in one place, there's a transformational journey, and then they wind up in another and showcasing that relationship, the work that you've done, but making them the hero in that story. So we're talking about both written, we're talking about capturing that in video, and then as we'll maybe get into later, repurposing that into all kinds of little smaller pieces that you can use across your marketing in different ways. [00:14:06] Speaker D: Yeah, that sounds great. We'll definitely talk about that in a few minutes. But let's first of all talk about that transformational story that you just mentioned there. So if you imagine the average business owner client of an MSP, what kind of transformational story would you want to highlight in some kind of case study? [00:14:24] Speaker C: I think for a lot of MSP owners and their clients, a lot of clients come in in a state of overwhelm or in a state of panic. There's something, especially when you think of things like cybersecurity or a system that is not working or a very big decision that needs to be made about a migration or a software, many, many different things. There's often a state of overwhelm. There's a state of panic or urgency. There's a state of going from not knowing to knowing. And there's also, I think, a lot of skepticism. There's also people who have tried to dip their toe into this market and been burned before, or they don't know where to start. So when we talk about transformational journeys specific to msps, those are often the things that we're keying into. Yes, there are things like when you talk about cybersecurity, well, we went from unsecure to secure in the number of instances, users and things like that. But it's often just going from not knowing to knowing, from a lack of confidence to confidence in a partner, from feeling unprepared to feeling now prepared, from being underserved on the software side to now having the right tools to do the job. So those are some of the narrative arcs that you can pull. And the really exciting thing is, depending on your personal strategy and your focus for the coming quarter or year, you can really key into specific stories that will help you sell a particular part of your offering or differentiator, what makes you unique. So it can be any number of things, but those are some of the common ones for msps especially. [00:15:48] Speaker D: Yeah. And what is it about case studies that gives them their influential power? [00:15:52] Speaker C: I think because it's not just claims that you're making, it's the ultimate sort of substantiation of all the claims you'll make on your website or all the things you'll say. Every company can say, for example, oh, we put customers first, or we really know this stack. But it's different when it's a client saying they really know this or they really looked after us. It's different when it's someone else essentially vouching for you in an authentic way by sharing their story. And I think that's the other thing, is it's not just a claim. It's not a bullet on a landing page. It's an actual transformational journey that someone outside of your company is kind of saying, I've been there. I've faced the decision that you're facing or the challenge that you're facing. I made the choice that you're debating and now I've gotten the outcome that you want. So it's that third party kind of vouching, that focus on the customer, that substantiation of the things that you may be already saying in your marketing that really makes this a powerful asset for you. [00:16:52] Speaker D: Yes, it's almost like saying, hey, here's someone like you and here's an experience that they had with us and look at the transformation that it's made to their business. And for people who are buying something that they don't really know about, which is more or less all decision makers buying managed services, that's exactly that situation. Now, Joel, earlier on you mentioned making the client the hero of the case study. And that and your use of the words transformational journeys makes me think that clearly you're familiar with Donald Miller and his series of books about story brand. And for msps, watching this and listening to this right now, if you've never read building a story brand by Donald Miller, it's a great book because it equates your marketing and particularly how you tell stories within your marketing. Back to movies. And a lot of movies follow a very, very similar story of transformation where you've got a hero who meets a guide who sets out a plan, and that plan ends in ultimate defeat of the enemy or success for the hero, which is exactly. That's the technology story, isn't it? Which is the hero, the client meets you, the guide who has a plan, which is your technology strategy for them to grow their business or whatever that is. Is that the kind of thing that. [00:18:01] Speaker B: You typically try to come across with. [00:18:03] Speaker D: Case study videos and with sort of case studies you do for msps, or do you have different types of stories that you go for? [00:18:11] Speaker C: Yeah, there are many different types of stories, but I think before I get into those, the thing that is integral to all of this is don't make your customer look like a hapless idiot. There's a real tendency you want to trump up the work that you've done the knowledge that you bring, but that will be self evident if you tell the story through their lens. So rather than making them some hapless idiot in need of rescuing, you want to make them look and sound like someone who's smart with agency, venturing into the unknown and needing exactly what you said, that guide. Now, that being said, there are different types of stories that we can key into. So for example, in some cases, you can transform that story into a bit of a playbook. So here's the starting point. Here's where they were coming from, here's the goals they had, and then, almost like a recipe, here's exactly how it looked. And here's how you can replicate, with our help, that success. Or you can tell skeptic stories where the focus is really on the objections they had during the sales process and how they were ultimately won over and how that played out. Or you can tell switcher stories. So maybe not as common in msps, but still some. If they were coming from another provider that let them down, making that the core of the story, why did they change? What was it about you that helped them see this bigger, brighter future or aspirational stories? So rather than focusing just on kind of the work that was done, if you have a client who is well known in their space or well respected, making this almost more about, you could be like this person or you could be like this company, you aspire to be kind of similar to them. You can take that tacker angle as well. So there's many different ways to kind of tell that story. There's also many ways to format that story depending on how you want to use it. [00:19:52] Speaker D: It's interesting you talk about the switcher videos. I'm working closely at the moment with an MSP who's part of my MSP marketing edge program and in his city, a super MSP, which is like a business that grows by acquiring lots of other msps in lots of other areas. They bought one of his main competitors. The super MSP has changed everything. So the service levels have gone down, prices have gone up, and the clients are just coming out the door as quick as anything and say, my client that I'm working with almost can't pick up the clients fast enough. And it strikes me that actually in a situation like that, a switcher case study would be a fantastic marketing tool that hadn't occurred to me. So thank you. Thank you very much. I've learned as much from this interview as anyone else has, which is just fantastic. Now, you mentioned earlier the idea of repurposing content as well. And traditionally, when we think of case studies, especially if we're coming at it from like a video point of view, we'd think, hey, let's do a video. We've got a video case study. Maybe we'd repurpose it into something written. But you're saying that actually you can repurpose it in lots of different ways. [00:20:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I think there's a lot of bias. Even if you're newer to marketing or it's not your specialty, a lot of people think of case studies as something you only give to a client at the end of the journey. So they've come in, they're evaluating, they need some proof, and oh, here's a story. And maybe that gets you over the line, but that's not the only way to use these. So, for example, you can use them in lead generation. So let's say that you are doing cold outreach. Well, you probably don't want to drop a 2000 word story on somebody's head. You don't have that kind of buy in, but you might be able to send them just a quick little sound bite, maybe a 15 to 32nd video that leads to a longer story or maybe a one sheet, a simple one pager that has some high level bullets. Again, that's tailored to that cold outreach or that advertisement, something more bite sized for them. But beyond that, let's say you do a lot of in person pitching. You like to be face to face. Well, translating that story again from its core format, be that video or a longer form written piece to a simple slide deck, something you can speak through, same story presented slightly different, now serves a different function. Let's say that you have long standing clients and you're now rolling out a new part of your offering. You're excited to be able to service them in this new way. You've successfully done it for just a handful of people, but you want more. Well, now maybe you have that sort of longer form written piece or that longer form video about the experience of that and with some more details. So now they can key into that. Or let's say that you've done an interview, but unfortunately the person wasn't willing to go on camera and you still want to have a multimedia asset. Well, if you've got the audio, you can translate in the same way that people do with podcasts. Turn it into an audiogram or an audio based video, where again, you've got a headshot, maybe the waveform, some captions, and now you've got something? Again, you can test out in ads, or you can test out embedded on your written stories, or just adding that multimedia layer. So there are many different ways to repurpose. And if you want a super simple framework that I think anyone can pick up. Nibble, bite, snack, meal. How hungry is your audience? Like how much information are they hungry for right now? If it's early on and you're doing cold outreach, maybe just a nibble is all they have an appetite for. If they're a long standing client considering taking on another area of focus, maybe it's a longer form piece. So having correlating kind of formats that fit that mold, something shorter for the less aware, less hungry they are, and something longer when it's a more involved decision, gives you a ton of utility from these stories. [00:23:18] Speaker D: I love it. Joel, a second. We're going to talk about what you do and how you help msps by just either guiding them through this or just doing it for them. I guess we'll talk about that in a second. But if you were an MSP yourself and you were going to diy this. [00:23:31] Speaker B: You were going to do it yourself, where would you get started? [00:23:34] Speaker D: What would be the first things that you would do? [00:23:36] Speaker C: I love this question because most people leap right to production, and that's not the answer. Don't just start bashing a keyboard or making requests. I think importantly, you want to focus on what are the types of stories that are actually going to drive an ROI for us in the first place. Because yes, you can just go to your biggest and best clients and make a request, or the low hanging fruit. But think about your business goals. Is there a particular focus area you're trying to grow into, or a market you're trying to serve better, or an industry that you're really going after? Are there a particular type of buyer that you're trying to appeal to? So before you start creating anything, just take one afternoon, sit down and kind of map out. Here's the type of buyer we're going after, and here are our goals for the coming quarter or year. And then think what types of stories would grease the wheels on a sales conversation? And who in our client base do we have that might fit the bill? Who might have a story like this? Start there, then keep it super simple. Make a simple and specific ask of someone, so don't come in and send them ten paragraphs. Just send them a simple request. Hey, we're working on building out our library of social proof. We'd love to talk to you because x and bring in that specific what is it about your relationship that makes it a good fit? We'd love to cover Y. So take out the fear of their request by just saying, this is what we'd like to focus on. We'd love to publish it by Z so that they have some sense of timeline. Would you be open to taking part? So start first with strategy. Make a simple ask, and then if you're only going to produce one thing and you want to kind of just dip your toes into the water, get them on a Zoom call, record the conversation so you have that video footage, if they're willing to be featured, turn it into a one sheet just as a starter, because that's something that's pretty simple to DIY versus more complex things, which might take a little bit more lift. And now you've got, hey, a short written piece you can use in different environments, some video footage that you can maybe pay someone to edit up for you. And that's a great inroads just to getting your feet wet. And because you've got that strategy behind you, you're already ahead of some multi billion dollar companies who never stop to think about, hey, do these stories actually do anything for us on the business then? [00:25:46] Speaker D: Yeah, I love that. Absolutely love it. [00:25:48] Speaker B: Joel, tell us what you do to. [00:25:49] Speaker D: Help msps and what's the best way to get in touch with you. [00:25:53] Speaker C: Yeah, so case study buddy exists to basically take care of this process end to end for msps and for other b, two b clients. The only things we don't do are make the initial ask and handle legal release. But we have heaps of advice and resources in terms of that. But we come in, we get to know your business, your goals. We help you kind of identify for yourselves what types of stories might make the most sense for you. We can give you templates for making the ask. Once you have someone who's willing to take part, we have a handoff template. And from there we take care of everything. All of the capture, all of the editing, all of the navigating approvals of the assets, all the way through to final design. So you essentially make a warm introduction to a willing customer. We take care of the rest, deliver it in the formats that you're actually going to go and use in your branding to your standard. And it's about as turnkey as it gets for video and written types of components. So we've been at it for almost eight years now and working with all kinds of clients in all kinds of complex spaces, and that's us that's kind of how we come at it. [00:26:54] Speaker D: Cool. And the best way to get in touch with you? [00:26:56] Speaker C: Yeah, check out casestudybuddy.com. There's a blog full of resources if you decide to DIY or come at it, lots of just try this, go do this how we think about this and there's a contact form if you look and I go, I don't got time for that, I'd love to just have a conversation. So lots there that you can learn and it's a really easy way to kind of see our formats, examples, pricing and get in touch if it's something that might make sense or is a priority for you for the coming year. [00:27:22] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast this week's. [00:27:26] Speaker E: Recommended book hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. The book I recommend is the gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. Fantastic book that really digs deep into why so many of us as entrepreneurs are unhappy because we're looking at where we're at and comparing it to an ideal rather than looking at where we've come from and where we are. Fantastic book. Highly recommend it. [00:27:56] Speaker B: Coming up next week next week it's an Easter special. Join me and MSP growth expert Kevin Klune as we discuss how AI can unlock hidden data in your PSA. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP. [00:28:14] Speaker A: Made in the UK for msps around the world Paul Green's MSP marketing podcast.