Is your MSP wasting time on marketing?

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Fear of failure. You're not alone. For MSP owners find out what works, what doesn't, and what'll just waste your time right here. Hey, it's great to have you here as we jump straight into another podcast. Here's what I've got coming up for you today. How to avoid wasting your time on your marketing the seven massive mistakes that stop MSPs from generating leads. And my special guest is going to reveal how offline media can cut through in a way that digital media just can't. Welcome to episode 311 powered by MSP marketingedge.com Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast if you want nothing more than a new client for your MSP right now, just be careful that you're not wasting your time in the way that you go about it. Because some MSPs marketing is a complete waste of time, often because a vital element has been missed out. Wouldn't you love to hear about a massive time saver that all pro marketers use, yet very few MSPs are even aware of? You're going to love this because it's going to save you time and it could even help you find a brand new client. So what I'm talking about here is repurposing content. And this of course means taking something you've already created, like say a blog post, and then you turn it into other bits of content so you get more mileage out of it. Because you've already done the hard work once, so why not squeeze every bit of value out of this? And here's the thing, it's something that some people frown upon. But trust me, as a full time marketer of 20 years now, it's an essential thing to do because the only person who is consuming all of your content across all of your platforms is you. Different people consume content in different ways. Some like reading blogs, others scroll LinkedIn, some just glance at Google when they're looking for a new msp. So by repurposing in content, you can meet people where they already are without having to reinvent the wheel every single time. Great. So let me give you a few practical examples of how this works. Let's say you write a blog article about a new ransomware threat. First you publish it on your website as a blog article. Which is great because now Google can find it might have some SEO benefits, search engine optimization, et cetera, et cetera. But next you can take that exact same blog article and you can then adapt it into a LinkedIn newsletter. And that way the people who are subscribed to your LinkedIn newsletters, get a notification in the feed. They also get an email copy of it as well. And it's great for authority. You're seen as the helpful, local, knowledgeable IT expert. Then you can take that LinkedIn newsletter and you can cut it down into a shorter version and post it on your Google Business Profile. Now that's really powerful because when prospects do Google your msp, they'll see fresh, helpful content right there on their profile. It's also really good for your Google juice. In fact, I suspect that Google sees more of your Google Business Profile content than humans do. But ultimately, anything that helps you perform better in search results is good, right? And you could also record a short video on this same subject where you just talk through the same advice that you were giving in your blog, in your LinkedIn newsletter, and of course in your Google Business profile. Same content, it's just repurposed, it's changed in some way. You could take that video that you've just created, you could put that on LinkedIn, you could put it on YouTube as a short. It doesn't have to be Hollywood quality. People just want to see you and see the real you. And then finally you could take that content and you could break it into bite sized social posts to go on LinkedIn. Now, let's say you did five pieces of advice within that blog article. Each of those five pieces of advice could go on to be a standalone post. In fact, you could use them as a standalone post and then you could take those five posts and you could repurpose them into five graphics, or you could repurpose the whole thing into PDF carousel, or just stick with plain text, or do a video on each one, or do an image and a bit of plain text on each one. Can you see how this is almost limitless? From one single blog post, from one idea, you've suddenly got a whole week's worth of content to go across multiple platforms. Or you could take it even further and you could take that content and you could spread it out across a couple of months. So you have a variety of different types of content across different types of platforms all the time. And all of that can be organized by something. Got a content calendar, which is literally planning in. I'm going to do this on Monday, I'm going to do this two weeks on Tuesday, I'm going to do this three, four, five weeks on Wednesday. It's as simple as that. It's just a plan of how you're going to use your Content. Now, this is the magic of repurposing content. And the key thing for this is please don't think that you need to constantly come up with brand new ideas. You're not a full time media company or a full time marketer. You're running and trying to grow an msp. So repurposing content saves you time, gets your message seen in more places and positions you as consistent and reliable and the local tech authority, which is exactly what clients want from their IT provider. Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast still to come. We just spent ages there talking about all of those digital platforms. LinkedIn, your blog, YouTube. But you know what? Anybody can put content onto those platforms at any time at almost no cost. And that to a certain extent is what creates the amount of noise that we're all facing right now. There's so much digital noise because it's cheap and it's easy to put content on and try and get a message across to other people on a digital platform. But what about non digital platforms? What about physical stuff in our digital world? Does that still have a value? Well, my special guest today believes it has an immense value and is still a fantastic way for your MSP to cut through. He's going to be here to explain the power of physical stuff in the next few minutes. If you are pulling out your hair because you just can't generate leads for your MSP, this could be the reason why most MSPs make a series of huge mistakes that just hobble their lead generation. Don't you do the same? Let me tell you the seven biggest mistakes that MSPs make that stop them from efficiently generating brand new leads right straight into this. Massive mistake number one. You're not 1,000% clear on what kind of clients you want. You've heard the old joke, haven't you? The one that says I'll work with anyone who has a pulse and a wallet, but actually, do you really want one person banned businesses running Windows 7 for budget reasons Will your MSP thrive servicing lawyers? Can you cope with the out of hours demands of hospitality businesses? The most successful MSPs build something called an ideal client profile, an ICP. It includes very specific details about your dream clients such as their industry size, pain points, budget IT maturity and how they make buying decisions. Massive mistake number two. You struggle to tell prospects what makes you better than all the other MSPs. Now I've got another acronym alert here, but you should know this one. Do you have a usp, a unique selling Proposition. It's a reason why your ideal client would buy from you. Most MSPs struggle with this because the answer has nothing to do with the service you offer and the way that you deliver it, or the vendors that you work with, or your tech stack. In fact, all of these are internal things that don't affect the decision making process of ordinary business owners and managers. They don't care what services you use, they don't care which vendors you choose. What they care about is what you can do for them. And this is most easily put across in your usp, your unique selling proposition. Massive mistake number three. Your marketing messaging is inconsistent and this mistake happens because of mistakes one and two. If you haven't figured out your ICP and your usp, the messages you send out will have little consistency and that makes it hard for you to build up messaging momentum to be the MSP that your ideal clients keep coming back to in their minds and their hearts when they're thinking of leaving their current msp. Massive mistake number four. You're not building audiences of people to listen to you, because once you know what you want to say, you need lots of people to say it to. And that means building audiences. For most MSPs, just start with your LinkedIn connections and your email lists. Building audiences is unsexy and sometimes tedious work. My LinkedIn newsletter has come out every single Thursday for three and a half years. That's an audience for me. My MSP marketing podcast has come out every single Tuesday for nearly six years. It's a treadmill, I tell you, but it is worth it, as it's exactly the same word to put content in front of 10,000 people as it is to put it in front of 10 people. Only of course, the results are a lot better. Massive mistake number five, you're not growing relationships with people. The purpose of collecting all of those people in all of your audiences is to build a relationship with them. Ordinary business owners and managers don't know what they don't know about technology, and that means they make buying decisions with their hearts, not their heads. And the heart doesn't buy on facts, it buys on feelings. They're picking you or not based on how they feel about your MSP. If they've spent two years reading a little bit of your content on LinkedIn, a few of your regular emails, and some of your blog posts, then in a very, very small way they'll feel as though they know you. They'll certainly be more likely to respect you as a technology author. This is how you get a place at the sales table. Massive mistake number six, you don't have a solid sales process to convert them from first touch to bonded clients. And the goal is to turn attention into leads, into prospects, into sales meetings, into clients, and then into bonded clients. And these are people who would rather lose a toe than leave your msp. So that process I was just talking about, is that mapped out for your msp? Is that being turned into systems and automated processes? Or do you lose sales like most MSPs because you don't have a proper process and it's all a bit haphazard? If you run your marketing in a way that frankly you would never run your service delivery, then you have a problem. Final one, then massive mistake number seven, you're trying to figure it all out on your own. Marketing is massive. So many things to do, lots of different requirements and lots of different skill sets needed, which means a lot of trial and error, a lot of wasted time and missed opportunities. If you're trying to figure it all out on your own, why would you do this? When you find someone who's talking sense and you can see that they would help you jump ahead, then grab that person, shake them hard and say, how can you help me? In essence, what I'm saying is that you should go looking for wisdom, not information. There's plenty of information out there. All the information you want is out there. Your goal is to find wisdom and someone who can help you figure this out for your msp. If you think that I'm the person that can help you, I would love to do that. Go and see what I can do to help you and your [email protected] Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast still to come, every time you do a sales meeting, there are two specific questions that you should ask. One at the start of the meeting and one at the end. In our brand new section Marketing Minute, which is coming up in the next few minutes, Jamie Warner is going to reveal what what those questions are, why you should use them, and how they can make a dramatic difference to your MSP's sales close rate. When you're hunting for new clients for your msp, you'll notice the sheer amount of lead gen tactics out there. Some of them are exciting and brand new, some just seem as old as time itself. But so what? What's the one question you want to ask when introduced to a lead gen tactic? Yeah, that question you want to ask is, does this work? My special guest today is going to introduce you to an older way of finding clients for your msp. He's going to explain why it still works and how you can beat the other MSPs who don't even know that this is still a thing. [00:12:27] Speaker B: I'm Eric Smith. I'm the President and CEO of Incremental Media and we're a 20 plus year old marketing agency that helps brands diversify their media mix into a lot of offline marketing channels that I'm sure we're going to talk about. [00:12:39] Speaker A: And yes, that's exactly what we're going to talk about. Thank you so much for joining me on the show, Eric. So did you start the business yourself 20 years ago? Because for those watching this on YouTube, you seem like a pretty young guy. [00:12:50] Speaker B: No, yeah, definitely did not start the company. Our CEO started the company. He was CMO of a bunch of big marketing marketing companies. Excuse me, before starting Increments Media. But no, I joined five and a half years ago and I moved into the president and CEO role in January. So relatively. [00:13:04] Speaker A: Okay, that's reassuring. That's reassuring. I was thinking I was going to have to improve my face cream so I could look as young as you do. So we are going to talk today about the non, non sexy stuff. We're going to talk about the stuff that people were using in the 90s, in the 80s, in the 70s, possibly even in the 1870s and 1880s and 1890s because we're, we're going to talk about the non digital marketing stuff. Now I'm going to put a caveat on this which is I love the offline stuff. I see that the offline stuff, the value of it has gone up and up and up as digital marketing has got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I think you and I are going to explore why that is the case today. But, but let's just first lay out what do we mean when we talk about non digital marketing. What kind of marketing tactics are we talking about? [00:13:46] Speaker B: Yeah, so for us we call it offline marketing. People have different terminology for it, but that means basically anything that physically reaches another person from a marketing standpoint. So meaning direct mail people are most familiar with. Right. You get a piece of mail that ends up in your mailbox or if you're trying to reach a business owner, an msp, getting that to be delivered to their office ideally. But then there's also like shared mail. There's what's called package inserts if you ever get a package and there's offers from other brands inside. All those things fall under our what we call traditional channels and the, the offline marketing side. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Yeah, and 25 years ago that was marketing, wasn't it really? That and placing adverts in newspapers and radio and stuff like that. So I appreciate you weren't doing marketing 25 years ago, but is this still a place for that kind of offline marketing today? [00:14:33] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's been really interesting. Our business, you know, a lot of the brands we work with, of course, do the basic, you know, search, social, that type of advertising, but for a variety of different reasons, those channels have gotten more challenging or, you know, more expensive than they used to be. So they're sort of coming back to some of those more traditional channels that they, you know, used to use to your point, like 25, 30 years ago in an even bigger way. So a good thing for our business. But yeah, definitely a unique way, especially if you're trying to reach an MSP or somebody who's is a way to break through the clutter. You know, we're so ambushed with information in the digital age that, you know, receiving something physically is a great way to sort of break through the clutter compared to, you know, any of your other competitors that are just doing the typical digital advertising. [00:15:14] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And in a second, let's talk about some practical things that MSPs can do to try and reach business owners and managers in their area or then in their vertical. But I agree with you, as the amount of digital noise has gone up and the amount of junk mail that you actually physically get in your mailbox has gone down. I mean, if I think like 34, I'm a bit older than you, Eric, and 30, 40 years ago, you know, you used to get tons of posts every day or tons of mail every day in the mailbox and there'd just be so much junk mail. Right. And you hardly get any these days. So if someone does send you a sales letter or, you know, some kind of promotion in the mail, the actual physical mail, you're holding it like, look, you've got something. I'm just waggling a piece of direct mail that I actually had from my optometrist this week. It really stands out. Unlike the email, where it's one of 200 emails that you've had today. Do you think people are scared of doing offline stuff because it's difficult, time consuming and expensive? So it's almost like the complete opposite of digital stuff? [00:16:12] Speaker B: I mean, sort of. I think it is a little bit intimidating for somebody who is more kind of versed in the Digital marketing side, but at the same time, you know, it's applying a lot of the same principles that you do in digital advertising, right? So, you know, there's a data aspect, like, who are you trying to target that fits, you know, the ideal customer profile that you're trying to reach. What's the format that you want to use to reach them? So it's nice about, you know, I'll stick with like, direct mail because that's the most kind of simple example. You get a lot of space to communicate your messaging, right? So like in a digital ad, you might have, you know, a couple of sentences or something really kind of specific. You know, in a. More in things like direct mail, there could be, you know, catalogs. You can have a huge amount of space to sort of communicate what makes you unique. And, you know, for MSPs that have, you know, a service that costs a meaningful amount of money, like, you can sort of afford the cost of direct mail because your cost to acquire a customer is probably higher than somebody who's selling, you know, a consumer product like a wallet or something that's more of a lower ticket item. So. So, yeah, so from a. It can definitely be intimidating. I think that's why people come to companies like us. But at the same time, it applies a lot of the same principles that, you know, I'm sure MSPs are familiar with from doing their digital marketing. [00:17:18] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Right. Let's make you earn your money. Not that you're getting paid to be on this podcast, but let's make you earn your place on this podcast. I'm going to set you a challenge. So pretend I own an MSP and I'm in a very crowded market. Doesn't matter whether it's a geographical or a vertical market, but there's lots of MSPs doing what I do, and I'm finding it really hard to cut through. SEO, search engine optimization just isn't working for me because there's so many other people investing in it. I'm trying to build my email marketing list, but it's just taking time. And everything just seems to take. Take time. And I'm struggling to get really good leads, and therefore I've got no one to sort of follow up. So I come to you and I say, right, I want to do some offline stuff because no one in this marketplace is doing any offline marketing. Give us some ideas, some practical ideas of some things I could do. [00:18:03] Speaker B: Well, I'll give you. Actually, I'll give you a real example of what we do in our business. So, you know, we're trying to reach other, you know, marketing decision makers at specific companies. So similarly, you know, we have a hard time breaking through. Right. Of people who just, you know, search for different advertising channels and things like that. So what we've done is very specifically found a list of marketing decision makers so you could do the same type of thing using tools like HubSpot. We use a tool called Seamless AI that really helps us find contact information for different people that we want to reach. And then we mail them an actual box with some package inserts inside. And we'll email them before saying, hey, keep an eye out. We're going to be mailing you this package. Then we email them, hey, you should have just gotten the package. And then we should email them afterwards that says, hey, you know, what do you think of the package we sent you? So we found that's a very successful way to break through the clutter and get extremely high response rates. I mean, like 10, 15% of people who we mail and insert to respond back and, you know, have booked a meeting with us and then obviously, you know, it's our job to sort of close them from there. But. But yeah, that's like a good practical example of something we even do for our own business that has, you know, helped us break through the clutter with some of the key decision makers that we want to reach. [00:19:16] Speaker A: That's really cool. And something like that. I mean, what kind of cost would that incur? And I appreciate you shouldn't just look at the cost alone. You should look at what's the return on investment at the end of it. And actually for MSPs, obviously tons of recurring revenue and they keep clients for seven to 10 years. So the average lifetime value of a client could be 100, 200,000 over a decade. But for something like you've just described there, what kind of investment would you. Look, I'm kind of asking for a quote without a quote. [00:19:43] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I mean, what's nice is we, you know, I'll continue with that example. You know, we were just focusing on like 100 people. So it's not. We're not mailing thousands of things out. You know, it's something you could even just do in your office yourself and then mail those types of things out. So basically, we bought boxes. We had our team sort of put inserts of brands that we work with into that box and then mail that out. So think, you know, let's use round numbers. Let's say it's $10 to get that all of those things, you know, built and then mailed and physically like reach a customer. A lot of times you want to do what's called marketing mail, not first class mail, because marketing mail is cheaper. First class is only if you need to get something in somebody's hands really fast. So, you know, 100 people, $10 to reach them. So it's like $1,000 essentially to do marketing. And you can do it on an even smaller scale if you want to. You know, there's not at that level, there's not too many economies of scale of doing it at, you know, 10,000 people. So again, you know, you want to reach that really specific person. So sort of focusing on that, that, you know, hundred to couple hundred people is way more worth it than, you know, spamming out thousands of these things to people that may not even really be the right, you know, customer for you. [00:20:50] Speaker A: Yeah, and actually for the average msp, I think that's, that's a very doable thing to. You know, most MSPs have got 20, 30, 40 people that maybe they've met at events or they've, you know, they have had on their website, they've filled in a form and for whatever reason, it's not gone anywhere. So I think that's a, I mean, that's a really smart way of doing a very small scale thing, either using someone like yourselves or, you know, as you say, doing it yourself, just getting everyone in the office just printing stuff off, doing boxes. It's a really smart idea. Okay, final question for you, Eric. What's the best piece of direct mail or the best kind of offline marketing thing that you've ever seen? Maybe it was something that was sent to you or you've seen in like an industry blog or something like that. That's really made you think, oh, wow, that is amazing. Whoever came up with that is a genius. [00:21:31] Speaker B: Oh man, that's a good question. I mean, I would say it's kind of a recent example, I guess, but the. We get a lot of mail or I get a lot of mail. Excuse me, from Omaha Steaks. So it's more of a consumer example than a business example, but they've got this like massive picture of like a stack of burgers and steak on the front of the ad and it says like, get 12 free burgers is like their big offer on the top. So I don't know if it's the best marketing I've ever seen, but it's a really, really good example of like, Something that, you know, you're reaching into your mailbox and you're pulling this stuff out and that gets your attention for sure. So, you know, not every brand has, you know, the ability to put beautiful burgers or steak on a, on a piece of direct mail, but doing something that's eye catching and, you know, helps you stand out of the mailbox, I think that's maybe the, the lesson that the listeners can take from that. [00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. That's brilliant. Eric, thank you so much for your time. Tell us a little bit more about your business. So what exactly do you DO to help MSPs, and what's the best way to get in touch with you? [00:22:26] Speaker B: So, very short version, incremental media, like I said, we're an offline marketing agency, so we help brands expand into those offline channels. Right. Direct mail, shared mail, package inserts, like I said. And then we actually have a big focus of our business on podcast advertising. So helping brands advertise within podcasts, big or small. So it could be a really niche podcast all the way up to the Joe Rogans and the really big podcasts of the world. Yeah. So if you want to contact us, you can either just go to our website, incrementalmedia.com and hit out the contact me button and fill out the form. You can email [email protected] or you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Just search Eric Smith. Incremental Media. [00:23:06] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast, the Marketing Minute. [00:23:11] Speaker C: Hi, this is Jamie Warner, CEO of MSP Enerds and SAS vendor Envirosoft. And here's my idea that your MSP can implement in 60 seconds that relates to a marketing improvement. And that idea is more related to sales. That is an area that I'm passionate about. And it is including two questions in your sales pitch that you may not be including at the moment. The first you do at the start of the meeting, and you say to them, what does a 10 out of 10 experience look like once you've picked your new IT partner? And at the end of the meeting, you ask the final and most important question in sales, which is, what is standing in the way of selecting MYMSP as your new IT partner? Once you get the answers to these questions, you're in a very powerful position to be able to talk to how you're going to deliver on what they're looking for. And at the end of the meeting, identify what could be standing in the way of them choosing you. So you can do your best to negotiate and get over the sales hurdles that might be getting in the way of you signing up that new client. I hope this helps and have a wonderful day. [00:24:22] Speaker A: Coming up. Coming up next week. We talked earlier about mistakes and I've got another big one for you next week. The mistake is trying to be the cheapest MSP in your area. It's a major, major mistake. A terrible strategy. In fact, you should actually be aiming for the other end. You should aim to be the most expensive MSP in your area. Next week. I'll explain why. And not looking at it from the point of view of your profit, but looking at it from the point of view of the buyer. What kind of person buys from the most expensive msp? What's the psychology of how they pick you in the first place? It's all going to make a lot more sense when we look at this in next week's podcast. See you then for MSPs around the world around the World the MSP Marketing Podcast with Paul Green.