No vertical for your MSP? That's a mistake

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Here it is, Goldust for MSP's real life case studies and growth tactics from those doing it every day. [00:00:11] Speaker B: You're back. It's amazing to have you here because this is what I've got lined up for you today. We've got a bit of a deep dive on how to break into a new vertical. Why you really should guarantee your MSPs work. And my special guest is going to reveal the revenue opportunity for helping your clients to scale the with AI. Welcome to episode 327 powered by MSP. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Marketingedge.Com Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast One. [00:00:39] Speaker B: Of the smartest marketing decisions you can make for your MSP is choosing to break into a new vertical. Because marketing to a vertical is easier, more effective and ultimately more profitable. A lot more profitable and a lot of MSPs want this, but they don't know where to get started. So let's talk right now about how to enter any vertical you like and get traction quickly. Quickly and easily. Choosing to work in a vertical is like switching from a megaphone over to a sniper rifle. Most MSPs marketing sends a pretty generic message. Something like, we help businesses of all sizes, any kind of business, with their it, which is very lovely and friendly, but also utterly forgettable. Vertical Focus Marketing says we help dental practices eliminate downtime, secure patient records and keep imaging systems running smoothly. And suddenly with a message like that, you're relevant, you're specific, and you sound like someone who understands that exact person that you're talking to. The thing is that humans, we respond to familiarity, prospects respond to relevance. Marketing responds to focus. So when you pick a vertical, your story becomes sharper, your audience becomes easier to find, your content becomes dramatically better, your conversion rates jump and and you instantly differentiate from every generalist MSP around you. And this is especially true in professions like accountants, lawyers, dentists, like I was just saying, medical clinics and manufacturers. Because these groups all share similar software compliance concerns, workflows, frustrations, and even buying psychology. This is marketing heaven. But how do you actually break into one? Let's get into the practical stuff. There are three phases to entering a vertical. First, understand the vertical. Next, build the assets and the messaging. And then thirdly, build the audience. So let's do phase one, understanding the vertical. This is kind of like the homework phase and it's also where most MSPs skip straight ahead to the marketing and you kind of miss out on all the prep work. So please do do this bit. To break into a new vertical, you must first understand the software that they use then the regulations that they're bound by, and then maybe even that they fear and the workflows that frustrate them. You've got to understand the downtime disasters that could ruin their day, the KPIs that they care about, the conferences they attend, the associations that they belong to, the influencers they listen to and the language they use. If you talk their language, even just 70% of it, you instantly feel to them like you're one of them. And no, you don't need decades of experience in their vertical. You just need curiosity, a bit of research, a handful of conversations, and the ability to turn what you've learned, your insight into content for them and to adapt your conversations to take all of it into account. Because once you understand their world, you're ready for phase two, which is building up your assets and your messaging. And the question I always get from MSPS on this is, Paul, should I have a page on my website or should I have a whole separate website? Well, my recommendation for this is to start simple. So, yes, you begin with a single vertical specific page on your main website. Don't go building 17 new websites before you even know whether or not the vertical is going to respond to you. So your vertical page on your existing site should include a really clear headline which says something simple like IT support for dentists in town or in region. But make sure you reflect the pains they feel, the outcomes they want. The software that you support and you can name it specifically if there's like three or four big software pieces packages that they use, then name the two or three of them that you know you can work with. There should also be some case studies if you have them or if you don't have them, perhaps some testimonials from other clients. Ideally it should be clients within that vertical. That's something just to kind of go back and fill in when you start working with somebody in that sector. And then what you can do, regardless of whether you yet got vertical clients or not, is a short video of you talking directly to that vertical and of course a very strong call to action. The call to action that works best right now is for them to book a 15 minute call with you in your live calendar. So this page becomes your home base and a separate website is the next thing that you do. But you only do that when the vertical responds, when you're getting some traction, when you've got at least a couple of clients in it, because a separate website will give you the illusion of exclusivity. But of Course, it's a ton of work and you don't want to waste months and months kind of, you know, when you could be dipping your toe into the water and seeing if that vertical is interested in what you have to offer. Now, when you are starting out, should you have a separate LinkedIn profile? Well, probably, yes. I mean, I know that LinkedIn hates duplicate profiles and you know, it's, it's hard to build up a whole new LinkedIn profile from the get go. But if you've got kind of your general LinkedIn profile now, uh, it makes sense to start a second profile that's aimed directly at the vertical that you really want to speak to and make sure that's got, you know, positioning content in there that talks directly to that vertical, right down to your headline in your profile saying that you're doing it for, let's say, dentists in region, something like that. Keep it very clean, keep it very authentic. And I wouldn't do any other social channels. Maybe down the line again, perhaps once you've set up a separate website, but just to get started, you can just do a page on your existing site and, and a separate LinkedIn profile. Or if they're not using LinkedIn for their own marketing, you'd use whatever social media platform they use, for example, to reach restaurant owners, hotel owners. They don't use LinkedIn but they use Instagram for their own marketing. So you would set up an Instagram to go and get those people, just as an example. Now what you absolutely should build early on is an audience. And this is where vertical marketing becomes magic. Because vertical audiences are easy to find, easy, easy to target and super easy to warm up. So you start by building a vertical specific prospect list. You can use Google, of course, obviously LinkedIn, if it's a thing that they use, if they're a B2B company, then you've got other sites like Apollo, Lusha, those will sell you data or provide you with data. You can use professional associations. Often you can find lists of members, which is kind of crazy, but why wouldn't you use that? There are online directories, there's all sorts of places to find people. It's really, really, really easy to find audiences and list of audiences within a specific vertical. And then you build content that speaks only to these people. Create a vertical specific lead magnet, which is something where people give their email address to opt in to your database, to your CRM, something that has the word dentists and your, your area, your town or your region in it. Then you'd Build out a vertical specific email sequence, a vertical newsletter checklists that are just of interest to that vertical. Mistakes to avoid. You know what mistakes they want to avoiding because of their fears and the things they're scared of, the regulation and the things that could go wrong for them. You could do software comparisons between the different software they use. You could do videos, you could tell funny stories that only someone in that vertical would get. When your content feels like it could only have been written for them, they're really going to lean in. And that allows you to start to build relationships the slow and powerful way. Pick 20 people in the vertical and start commenting on their posts, reply to their content, send helpful resources, ask them short questions, share insights with them, just check in with them occasionally. You can email them, you can message them on social media, you can just be in touch with them and you start to build up a profile in their world, you're not selling, you're just becoming familiar to them. Because familiarity is the gateway to trust, and trust is the currency of high value clients. Now let's just go a little bit deeper into practicalities. I suggest you create what I call a vertical starter kit. So this would include a landing page, a downloadable lead magnet, a simple three email nurture sequence, a short video intro, a list of, I don't know, a couple of hundred up to 500 prospects, a quarterly webinar topic, a few articles to go onto your website, and a case study, even if you have to repurpose a vendor's case study within that specific vertical. And then you can run a 90 day marketing sprint. And the goal of this sprint is to build awareness, generate some repeated impressions, to launch some tailored content and create your first wins, replies, comments, conversations, all of that kind of stuff. You're looking for engagement on email, that's people hitting reply. You're looking for engagement on LinkedIn or the social media platform we're using, which can be as simple as likes or replies or comments. You're looking for webinar signups and you're looking for time spent by people on your vertical page or your micro website. [00:09:39] Speaker C: If you've built one. [00:09:40] Speaker B: Ultimately you'll know from that whether you're starting to get some traction from your vertical, starting to generate yourself some leads, some appointments, and maybe even at this stage being close to signing your first client. And as soon as you get your first client in that vertical, go get some social proof, interview that client, interview them over a video call, or better still in real person with a camera. Because once you've got a Video interview. You can then repurpose that down into a written case study, a testimonial. You can ask them permission to use it as a review, but always start with a video testimonial. You can use that in a number of different ways to help prove your credibility to other people like them. That's the beauty of a case study. A video case study within your chosen vertical. And finally, I recommend that you make a mental commitment to stay in that vertical long enough. So a lot of MSPs, they kind of try out a vertical and give up after three months, which is nuts, right? Because vertical marketing works. But it takes time. I mean, how long does it take you to win a new client anyway? You might meet someone today that doesn't sign up with you for, I don't know, what, like a year or two years. So how can you judge whether or not a vertical works for you in just three months? You can't do that. Give it six months to get traction, 12 months to get a reputation, maybe even 24 to 36 months to become the MSP for that vertical. Most MSPs don't fail at vertical marketing. They fail at sticking with the vertical marketing. So you need focus, relevance, patience, consistency, and of course, content that makes people feel understood. When you get this right, something amazing happens. You stop chasing leads and the leads start finding you. Breaking into a vertical isn't hard, it's just deliberate. So pick a vertical, build relevance, build assets, build an audience, and stick with it long enough to see the magic happen. [00:11:30] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Still to come. [00:11:34] Speaker B: You and I have conversations about AI all the time, because that's what we do here in the channel, right? But ordinary business owners and managers, they're not as aware of it as we think. Perhaps they haven't embraced Copilot more than using it as a personal productivity tool. Well, this creates a massive revenue opportunity for you to strategically lead them and help them scale their business using the most appropriate AI tools. And that's what my special guest is talking about today. He's going to be here in the next few minutes. Do you guarantee what your MSP does? Or is the very idea of that just crazy to you? In the last 10 years, I've only come across a tiny handful of MSPs who offer a guarantee. But interestingly, they seem to win clients faster and easier because they've de risked it for them. Let me tell you why I believe you should guarantee your work. Show you a specific guarantee that a real life MSP is using right now and give you an easy way to get started with this. Most MSPs don't guarantee anything. Nothing at all. And I kind of get why there's this fear that if you offer a guarantee, clients will abuse it or you'll end up giving away loads of free work, or you'll somehow be on the hook for things outside of your control. But that fear is almost always irrational. Because here's the truth. A good guarantee isn't about operational risk, it's about. It's about psychological power. All buying decisions are emotional first and logical second. And when a Prospect considers switching MSPs, their biggest barrier isn't cost, it's fear. Fear of downtime, fear of disruption, fear of picking the wrong partner and fear of making a bad decision that embarrasses them. A guarantee removes all of that fear. It says, hey, don't worry, I'm taking the risk off your shoulders and putting it onto mine. And when you do that, something magical happens. More people say, yes. Guarantees work because they trigger three very persuasive psychological effects. First, risk reversal. You're taking away the possibility of loss, which makes the decision feel safer. Second, credibility. You look like someone who's confident in their service, confident enough to back it, and confidence displayed well is incredibly persuasive. Third, trust. A guarantee signals that you do the right thing by default. You're not hiding behind terms and conditions. You're stepping forward and saying, if we don't deliver, you don't pay. Now let me give you a practical example from an MSP that I know well. They offer a very clever set of. [00:14:13] Speaker C: Guarantees on their website. [00:14:14] Speaker B: One of them is a straight, simple happiness guarantee. If the client isn't happy in the first 90 days, they can walk away. No drama, no penalties. Another is a response time guarantee. If they don't answer the phone in a certain time frame, then that month's support bill is reduced. And they even guarantee the onboarding schedule. If they miss an agreed deadline again, the client gets compensated. Now, you're probably a bit scared by all of that, so here's the part I want you to really absorb. The MSP offering those guarantees will almost never have to honor them. Great. MSPs don't miss deadlines very often. They don't leave clients unhappy. And this they don't ignore ringing phones. But the existence of those guarantees, just the words on the page, do an enormous amount of heavy lifting in the sales process. They reassure, they calm, they de risk. Ultimately, they're helping the prospects to feel like they're not stepping into the unknown and that MSP looks safer than their competitors, even if the actual service seems identical to the ordinary business owner or manager. That is the power of psychological reassurance. And here's the clever twist. Your guarantee doesn't need to be dramatic. It just needs to be real. You could guarantee onboarding timelines or specific response times, or guarantee customer satisfaction in the first, I don't know, 30, 60, 90, 180 days. You could guarantee that switching to you won't disrupt their business. And in almost all of these cases, you're already doing these things anyway. You're just not saying them out loud. When you turn your high standards into guarantees, prospects perceive you differently because you stop sounding like all the other MSPs and you start sounding like a safe decision. That's how guarantees work. They make you look more trustworthy, more confident, and more accountable. And they may cost you a little bit down the line. When you have one nightmare idiot client that claims on the guarantee, but it's going to be someone you didn't want to work with anyway, who was going to cost you money anyway. Think about all the other clients that you win with these guarantees. So if you don't have a guarantee right now, just have a think about what you already do reliably every single day that you could just formalize into a guarantee to ordinary business owners and managers. All MSPs look and sound the same, so a guarantee might be your easiest way to stand out and make more people say yes. [00:16:35] Speaker A: Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast have you. [00:16:39] Speaker B: Got your free copy of my MSP Marketing Map yet? It's a physical wall planner that I'll send to you in the mail and it shows you a route to improve your marketing. In fact, this is cool. There are 36 smart marketing actions to take you from zero leads to new clients, so if you want a free copy, just go to MSP marketingedge.com planner helping businesses with AI is a massive revenue opportunity for your msp. Of course, it's the thing that everyone's talking about every day. But when it comes to actually using it, the ordinary business owners and managers that you service are a little uncertain. They might be using it as a personal productivity tool, but how do they best roll it out in a way that benefits their entire business? My special guest right now has some answers about this and how you can help people in a way that drives growth for your msp. [00:17:34] Speaker D: So I'm Alex Bacon and I'm the founder of Brightkeel AI and it's so. [00:17:38] Speaker C: Cool to have you on the show. [00:17:39] Speaker B: Alex, we are going to be looking. [00:17:40] Speaker C: Today, how do you scale your MSP with AI? And as you're about to tell us in a second, you have a really, really good marketing background within msps. But it's so good that you're now taking your brain and looking at everything that an MSP can do to make themselves more efficient and grow faster using the AI tools that we are all coming to love and trust. [00:18:00] Speaker B: So tell us a little bit about your background. [00:18:02] Speaker C: You're based in the UK like myself. In fact, I'm surprised you and I have never run into each other before because I know we've both been. Well, I've been in the channel 10 years and I think you've been around a little bit longer. [00:18:12] Speaker B: Give us, give us the brief version of your story. [00:18:14] Speaker C: Where were you and what have you achieved there? [00:18:17] Speaker D: Yep. So I've worked in marketing for 20 odd years, most of that in MSPS and was in one MSP for quite a long time and then that was went through a merger and acquisition and then more recently I was the marketing director at Cloud Direct. So I joined there as the only marketer quite a few years ago. I think I Was there about 8 years in total and when I joined There are about 4 million of revenue and I left that earlier this year when they're doing around 38 million. So quite a big growth journey there both in terms of the marketing and the business as a whole. [00:18:59] Speaker C: Yeah, and I bet you went from being the only person sitting at the marketing desk to then I must have been weird the day you got another marketing person joining you and maybe even weirder when one day you got your own office or your own, your own section of the office. When you take an MSP From, I mean 4 million in itself is pretty impressive, but to take it up to that kind of size, how does the marketing change and what kind of decisions. How do the decisions change as you're on that journey? [00:19:27] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean it's a really interesting question and a lot to cover, so I'll try and touch on it fairly briefly. But when I look at that journey, the first year coincided with a couple of acquisitions, so we acquired a couple of smaller MSPs. So one of the first jobs there was integrating those into the business. And of course you've then got your upsell and your cross sell opportunity and looking at more of that going into the existing customer base. And I know you talk a lot around kind of the white space mapping and so that was one of the Things that we did at that point and then as we scaled it was really looking at having multiple channels of our lead generation. So what I mean by that was looking at partnerships and Microsoft was a big partner of ours, but also other partnerships, looking at that as one channel, looking into the customer base as another channel, and then looking into new leads and new opportunities as the other channel. And then as we scaled and I built out a team, we were able to do more and more and look beyond just doing kind of point campaigns where initially we might say, okay, we'll run an event, but actually tying all those all together into holistic multi touch campaigns and that's really what have helped us, helped us scale and the, the success of those campaigns compound ultimately. And they're amplified through partners, they're amplified through our existing clients and getting them involved in the campaign. So getting them to help create content, getting them to help to speak at events for example, and also looking at trade bodies or marketing partners as well. So that's a really good angle to go into. A particular industry is partner with someone who already knows that industry and someone who's already in that industry and who already has the captured attention of the audience. And they're typically then sort of talking the language of that customer and they're talking at the business level. So you can then go in and support from a technology side of things. And a lot of that was through SMB and then as we grew, we went into bigger and larger customers. [00:21:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I can imagine. And I guess as you become a bigger entity and there's a lot more revenue and a lot more resources, you have that luxury of being able to look at these bigger ideas, the partnerships, the events and multi touchpoint campaigns. And there'll be, you know, thousands of MSPs listening to this on, you know, the podcast or watching this on YouTube, who are thinking, well, I'd love to be there, I'd love to be doing all of that stuff. My advice is always actually, you know, start small, get the basics right first, put in place a marketing machine first. And then as you grow and as you get bigger and you have more resources, you can start to look at those things. And as you said, you actually unlock bigger and you know, more impressive clients as you're doing that kind of stuff. So let's, let's stop looking backwards, let's start looking forward. So at some point last year you exited that business, you're now here doing. [00:22:38] Speaker B: Your own thing, obviously AI. [00:22:40] Speaker C: And an AI play is a smart move for anyone starting a business. You know, Last year or this year. [00:22:46] Speaker B: What is it exactly that you're, that you're now doing? [00:22:49] Speaker C: Because you're, you're not just working with MSPs on their marketing now? [00:22:53] Speaker D: No, so, so I am still doing marketing consultancy and fractional CMO work. But Brightkeel AI is all around adoption of AI for businesses. So we're working with businesses really help look at how they can start using AI. And that really looks at some workshops which I'll touch on in a minute because that's kind of where we look to partner with msps, but audits and assessments to look at the opportunities for using AI and automation. And I kind of use those terms interchangeably because actually a lot of it is automation rather than AI for their processes and ultimately how businesses can scale without necessarily always adding on headcount to scale. And so that model that we engage with really has three areas. It's that assessment and audit that I mentioned that helps create a roadmap. We then look at enablement, which kind of looks at the workshops and the training side of things and then we look at implementation and that's where we, we partner with businesses to actually do the technology delivery. [00:24:05] Speaker C: Yeah, that makes sense. And what are we like three, three something years, maybe a little bit more since sort of chatgpt went mainstream because obviously it's been there for many years but most people weren't aware of it. That was the point that AI became a thing and obviously we know it's got so much better, it's got incrementally better almost monthly since then and there's been the explosion of all the other tools. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Do you see still the marketplace out. [00:24:31] Speaker C: There, so the ordina business owners and managers that MSPs want to reach, do. [00:24:35] Speaker B: You still see that they are, are they still dipping their toe or are. [00:24:39] Speaker C: They, you know, are they separated into a small percentage of power users and other people who are scared of it or actually is there a more widespread adoption? What are you kind of seeing at the moment? [00:24:48] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean it is a real mixture obviously whoever you speak to, what, what I'm tending to find is a lot of people are using it quite often in their personal life more than their business life. So they, they are familiar with the technology and you can't get away from it in the news. So again, they're aware of it and you tend to get maybe one or two who are heavy individual users. But as a business, a lot of them have not really embedded it, especially the SMBs I'm talking to. They haven't really identified Quite the role that it's going to play. They haven't necessarily got the confidence to use it day to day. And again, I use that term AI and automation interchangeably because that whilst has been around for a long time, has kind of come to the forefront off the back of the AI conversation that businesses are now really looking at saying, well, we can't just keep growing by adding more and more headcount, actually we need to look at the efficiencies that we've got. Have we got the right processes? Are they the most efficient way? But also those people that you have got, making sure that they're doing the valuable work. So making sure they're doing things like strategy and speaking to customers instead of doing the heavy lifting of admin tasks that we know can be automated now. [00:26:06] Speaker C: Yeah. And for the MSPs that are looking after these people, what are the biggest opportunities for them right now? So what are you advising them? Is it consultative or is it literally pulling your sleeves up and getting in and actually building things and showing them how to use AI to automate processes and grow without more people? [00:26:24] Speaker D: Yeah, I think there's huge opportunity here for MSPs. I mean the thing that excites me about this is it's a technology that your customers are actually interested in and it's probably the biggest opportunity that MSPs have got to merge those conversations between technology and business. And so the msps, sorry, the end customers are looking at this and saying, how is this going to transform my business? How do I operate my business? How does this align to my business goals, objectives, strategy? They're not looking at it necessarily from a technology angle, but it is a technology that they're thinking about and I think that is absolutely transformative. We've seen the wave of cloud for example, but that was still a technology conversation. That wasn't really something that was being discussed, particularly in the boardrooms or in terms of business strategy. And this is. So there's a real opportunity here to combine those two things and really that's, that's what I'm doing is going in and having those consultative conversations, looking at, talking about AI, but for non techie people, aligning it to business strategy, aligning it to opportunities, and then there's an opportunity for the MSPs to actually look at rolling up their sleeves and delivering on some of this. Because the reality is, whilst a lot of AI and automation is painted as being really easy, some of the gen AI stuff absolutely is, but some of the automation stuff and some of the stuff you go into Copilot, for example, the customer's still never going to really get involved in that. That's not what they're in the business of. So there's still a huge opportunity there for MSPs to come in and to work on that. Not to mention then the opportunities that it creates for other things, such as your cybersecurity that you look around that your data migrations, data that you're feeding into AI, your SharePoint, as well as anything to do with the automation and the agent building. [00:28:34] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I guess we can look at it. The end customer, the business owner or manager, they were never interested in configuring their SharePoint. They just don't want to do that. They want someone else to do it for them. Why would AI be any different? And even though AI is, I guess, is an easier interface, it's, as you say, when you, when you start actually integrating things and putting things together, there are levels of complexity in that. Alex, this has been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for being with us. Now, I know that you actually have your own podcast, which is about this very own subject. So do you want to tell us three things? Number one, tell us about your podcast. Number two, tell us what you can do to help MSPs. [00:29:11] Speaker B: And then finally, what's the best way. [00:29:12] Speaker C: To get in touch with you? [00:29:14] Speaker D: Perfect. Yep. So the podcast is scaling with AI, so you can find that on Spotify or Apple podcasts, wherever you are. How I can help MSPS is really bridging that gap between customers who are hearing about this in the news. They're interested, but a bit scared and a bit curious. And the MSPs who have all of this capability to deliver on that. And really I sit in the middle between helping the customers understand what is possible, get them thinking in the right way, get them starting to feel comfortable with this so that the MSPs can deliver on it and how to get in touch with me. So the website is brightkeel AI. So that's B R I G H T K E E L A I. And I'm very active on LinkedIn. So add me on LinkedIn. Follow me on LinkedIn. [00:30:01] Speaker A: Alex Bacon the MSP Marketing Edge Member Update. [00:30:07] Speaker B: A quick update if you're a member of the MSP Marketing Edge to make sure that you've swapped over to this year's IT Services Buyer's Guide on your website and in your marketing. We did deliver the 2026 version to our members back in October last year, but I have just checked a couple of random member sites and some of them still have the 2025 version on there. This is really important that you update it, because when a prospect is nearly ready to switch msps, you've got to be ready and appear up to date to give you the highest levels of credibility and authority. So you can download that 2026 version right now from the MSP Marketing Edge portal. Oh, and if you're not yet a member, why not check to see if it's available in your area? Because we do only work with one MSP per area. Just put your zip code or postcode in to MSP marketingedge.com Coming up, coming up next week. Thanks so much for listening this week. Next week we're looking at a real marketing basic, but it's such an important, important one. When you're talking to prospects, don't talk to them about the features of what you do, talk to them about the benefits of it. In fact, I'll show you how to turn any feature into a benefit. [00:31:18] Speaker A: See you then for MSPs around the world around the World the MSP Marketing Podcast with Paul Green.