The MSP market is a crowded one. And it’s going to get more congested with an expected 11.1% CAGR to reach $410 billion in 2027. Such robust growth can make it difficult for an MSP to find a niche for themselves. As an MSP business owner, you know this all too well. However, marketing your MSP effectively while juggling so many activities is a tough ask. Focus on customers, reduce costs, manage employees, short-list vendors, an endless list…and then find time to market my MSP?!! In this blog post, we will discuss practical ways to market your MSP business, particularly in the digital domain, with limited and stretched resources. So whether you are just starting out or you have been in business for a while, read on for some valuable tips to market your MSP business.
How to Market My MSP Business? 5 Smart Digital Marketing Channel Strategies
When it comes to marketing your MSP business, there are a few key channels that you should focus on. Each of these channels has the potential to reach a large number of people and generate leads for your business. Let’s take a closer look at the strategies to optimize their capabilities.
#1 How to Market My MSP Business?: Increase Organic Search With SEO
Google processes over 99,000 searches every single second. Optimizing your content for organic search opens up huge opportunities for businesses.
Pointers for Search Engine Optimization
- Research your keywords: Before you start writing, do some research into the keywords that your customers are likely to use when searching for your MSP services. This will help you target your content and make sure that it is seen by your target audience. Once you have a list of relevant keywords, make sure to include them in your content in a way that sounds natural. Stuffing your content full of keywords will not only make it difficult to read, but it will also hurt your search engine rankings. There are a number of tools that you can use to research keywords, including Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer.
- Create quality content: In order for your content to rank well in organic search, it needs to be high quality. This means that it should be well-written, informative, and relevant to your target audience. Publish blog posts, infographics, eBooks, and other types of content on a regular basis to help improve your organic search rankings.
- Build backlinks: Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They act as a vote of confidence from these other websites and can help to improve your organic search rankings. In order to get high-quality backlinks, create content that is worthy of being linked to. You can also reach out to other website owners and ask them to link to your content.
- Don’t forget your website: Your website is often the first point of contact between you and a potential customer. Make sure your site is up to date, informative, and easy to navigate. Include a “Call to Action” (CTA) that is a button or link on every page so that visitors know what they should do next. And don’t forget to include your contact information.
#2 How to Market My MSP Business? Maximize Paid Search (Pay-Per-Click) for Outreach
Paid search is another effective way to market your MSP business online. With paid search, you can place ads on Google and other search engines. When someone clicks on your ad, you will pay the search engine a small fee.
How to Maximize Paid Search
- Research your keywords: Just like with organic search, it is important to do your keyword research before creating your paid search campaigns. This will help you to target your ads and make sure that they are seen by people who are interested in your MSP services.
- Create quality ads: In order for your paid search campaigns to be successful, you need to create high-quality ads. Your ads should be well-written and relevant to your target audience. They should also include a CTA that encourages people to click through to your website.
- Look for offers: Google and Facebook periodically offer free credit to try their PPC services. This provides an opportunity to experience PPC without investing the resources to run full campaigns.
- Monitor your results: Once your paid search campaigns are up and running, it is important to monitor your results. This will help you to adjust your campaigns as needed and ensure that they are as effective as possible.
#3 Marketing for MSPs: Harness Social Media for Community Building
Social media is another great way to market your MSP business online. With social media, you can connect with potential and current customers, build relationships, and generate leads.
Best Practices to Create a Buzz on Social
- Choose the right platform: There are a number of different social media platforms out there, so it is important to choose the ones that are most relevant to your target audience. If your target audience is businesses, then you should focus on LinkedIn. If your target audience is consumers, then you should focus on platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
- Video is king: The majority of internet users are now watching videos online. This means that video should be a key part of your social media strategy. Use platforms like YouTube and Facebook Live to connect with your audience and show them what your MSP business is all about.
- Post quality content regularly: Just like with all other forms of online marketing, the key to success with social media is creating high-quality content. Post blog posts, infographics, images, and other types of content that is relevant to your target audience. In order for your social media campaigns to be successful, you need to post content on a regular basis. This will help you to stay top of mind with your audience and keep them engaged.
- Consider dark social: Nielsen says that customers are 4 times as likely to purchase a product if recommended by a colleague/friend/competitor. Expand to sites such as Quora, Reddit, and Twitter to increase brand awareness and create more touchpoints for customers.
- Engage with your audience: Social media is all about engagement. Make sure to respond to comments and questions from your audience. This will help to build relationships and trust. Engage with other users, respond to comments, and run promotions or contests.
- Go local: Join and participate in local groups and meetups on LinkedIn and Facebook. Our post-pandemic world has led to a slew of online events and groups – a great opportunity to network.
#4 How to Market My MSP Business? Nurture Leads with Email Marketing
Email marketing is helpful with lead nurturing once you have acquired leads via organic search, social, paid search, etc. Build a list of subscribers and send out regular newsletters, coupons, or other offers. Nurture leads via email and move them through your sales funnel.
Tips for Effective Email Marketing
- Curate Email Lists: While mailing lists and email services can be expensive depending on the level, most businesses do provide a free version for firms with smaller lists. If you want to create leads, you’ll have to find someone to sell to; a well-maintained list is an excellent approach to do so.
- Nurture Regularly: Send out regular newsletters that are concise and relevant to your target audience. This will keep people engaged and interested in your business. Nurture leads by sending them helpful information and resources that will help them make a decision about your MSP services.
- Incentivize: In order to generate leads, offer something of value in your emails, such as a coupon, referral bonus, or e-book, in exchange for the person’s contact information. Run contests to get user-generated content. Limit your CTAs to 1-2 per email.
- Test and Improve: Regularly check on your open rate and click-through metrics and tweak your content accordingly. A/B test your subject lines and keep your CTAs in the first screen fold.
#5 Marketing for MSPs: Optimize Content Marketing
One common thread between all the digital marketing strategies above is high-quality content. Content is the fuel when it comes to marketing your MSP business. By creating and sharing high-quality content, you can position yourself as an expert in your industry and build trust with your audience. When done correctly, content marketing can be extremely effective in driving leads and sales – attracting attention and building relationships with potential customers.
Content Marketing Guidelines
- Identify your stakeholders: Consider that you have 5 stakeholders in your content creation: customers, product/services, SEO, business/sales, and competition. Regularly check what these stakeholders’ interests and goals are and ensure that you have evenly distributed your content across them.
- Understand your target audience: Make sure your content is relevant and useful to your target audience. To do that map your audience user personas. Understand their interests, pain points, challenges, and goals.
- Map customer journey to content marketing funnel: Map your customer’s journey to the content marketing funnel – awareness, evaluation, purchase, and delight. Add content ideas that will nurture the customer through the funnel. Every step and piece of content should be aligned to the persona that you developed in the step above.
- Ground Rules: Your content should be well-written and informative. It should be visually appealing and easy to consume.
- Distribute and Promote: Distribute your content across various channels and mediums. Make sure to promote your content on your social media channels , PPC, and email list.
- Harness Vendor Content: Content marketing takes time and effort which you’re hard-pressed about. Don’t reinvent the wheel – check with your vendors about bundled marketing services. Do they have pre-sales collateral that you can use? Can they give you white-labeled e-blasts? Can you syndicate their blogs and ebooks?
CloudAlly’s PartnerZone: Simplifying Your MSP’s Marketing
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