MSP Marketing: How To Build A Productive Marketing Plan That Generates Managed Services Clients

For over 25 years I’ve worked with thousands of MSPs to answer the question “What’s the best marketing plan to generate leads and (ultimately) get more managed services clients?”

A truly effective MSP marketing plan consists of clear goals, strategic positioning, sales systems and trust-building campaigns and marketing assets designed to generate leads, book first-time appointments and attract a prospect that is looking for fully outsourced, managed IT services. Unlike generic IT services marketing, or SaaS marketing, MSP marketing requires niche positioning, high-trust strategies, authority-building and long-term nurture systems to overcome resistance to switching IT companies.

There are four key component parts that go into creating an MSP marketing plan that has the best chance of delivering qualified managed IT clients:

1. Marketing Strategy
2. Marketing Assets
3. Marketing Calendar
4. Marketing Campaigns

Let’s dig into each of these component parts of your plan.

Marketing Strategy

Without a doubt, the first place any MSP needs to start is with their MARKETING STRATEGY. This consists of the following:

• Goals And Metrics: What are your growth goals, in new clients, MRR, gross margin and topline sales for this year, and in the next three to five years? Given your goals, how many managed clients do you need? What does your “backwards math” look like for number of FTAs (first-time appointments), MQLs, raw leads, etc., to hit that goal? This is the “math” part of your marketing plan that you have to map out first. In my experience, most MSPs completely lack goals for marketing and sales and do not track the critical KPIs and metrics required for marketing success.
  • Budget (CPL, CAC, RAC): Best-in-class MSPs (the most successful and profitable ones, as measured by Service Leadership) spend roughly 11% of their topline revenue on sales and marketing costs combined. That includes all media, software, services and employees (marketing manager, sales reps, etc.). That’s not to say 11% is a magic number. You can, after all, spend that or MORE and not get the ROI. You might also have strategic partnerships or some other advantage that enables you to get customers for far less. Either way, you need to budget for people, services and media to drive NCA (new client acquisition).
  • Defined Target Market And Segments: This is one that stumps a LOT of MSPs – selecting and fully researching their ICP (ideal client profile). A “target market” might be an industry or the size of a company, like financial services firms with 20 or more employees headquartered in the Nashville area. A segment of that market might be financial advisors, or businesses generating more than $1 million in revenue. Without knowing precisely WHO you want as a customer, your marketing simply cannot be as effective or efficient as it needs to be.
  • Authority Positioning (USP, Specialization): After you know who your customer is, you need to determine what unique value you bring to that target audience and be able to communicate why a prospect should hire you over all the other MSPs in their area, many of whom will be cheaper (called a USP or “unique selling proposition”).
    
    Remember, all of your best clients are already paying another MSP to manage and support their IT. Why should they fire them and hire you? If you have no answer – or a weak answer – to that question, no amount of marketing is going to drive customers inbound.
  • People (“Money Team”): Finally, WHO is going to do the work of creating, implementing and overseeing the marketing function? Who is going to handle the inbound leads and do follow-up? Who is in charge of sales? Smaller MSPs typically have their spouse and kids doing the marketing for them (if they’re doing any marketing at all) and they, the owner, handle sales. That’s okay if you’re just starting, but if you want to grow, you need to start building a competent marketing and sales team (what I call your “money team”) to consistently execute on your plan.

Marketing Assets

A marketing asset can be anything from a powerful origin story about how you started your MSP to a marketing campaign that consistently produces profitable IT services buyers every time you run it. Your list, website, sales process and published book are all examples of marketing assets.

For example, when I started MSP Success magazine, I knew it would be a huge credibility- and trust-building asset – and I was right. But I underestimated the opportunities it presented for me and how much it would elevate my status in the MSP community. A true marketing asset.

One MSP member of mine had a tremendous “origin story” about how he got into the MSP business and why he works so hard to fight cybercrime for his clients. The story, too long to deliver in full here, told of his father dying when he was young, leaving his mother to bear the burden of raising him and his siblings. After his father died, his mother was forced to move in with family, unable to afford the rent on the home they were living in.

The moving company she hired showed up and attempted to extort her for more money, refusing to move anything until she paid them more than agreed upon. He found his mother alone and sobbing, unable to cope with the tragedy of losing her husband and the helplessness and fear she had for her young children in that moment.

The epic injustice of it burned into his soul the need to protect others from bullies, and today he does that via technology for business owners who get ransomed by cyberbullies. It’s a powerful origin story that builds trust.

Great marketing assets build what I call C.A.T., or celebrity, authority and trust. Here are just a few marketing assets you should work on developing in your MSP:

• One or more productive lead generation offers (top of funnel and middle of funnel) that consistently generate MQLs.
• A strong USP (unique selling proposition) articulated extremely well so you can differentiate from other MSPs and command premium fees.
• A high-converting, search-optimized website.
• A large number of 5-star reviews and client case studies.
• A marketing automation system (CRM) that is built to maximize conversion of opportunities and leads.
• Strategic pillar content, like a book or stage presentation.
• A brilliantly constructed IT sales process and playbook.
• Your list (and a productive, trusting relationship with it).
• Strategic joint ventures and promotional partnerships that deliver high-quality clients consistently.

Marketing Calendar

Once you have the above two components dialed in, then, and only then, should you move to a more tactical marketing plan for your MSP. This is what most MSPs think about when they talk about needing a “marketing plan.”

Essentially, a marketing plan for most MSPs is simply a calendar of campaigns and activities. These activities can include going to trade shows, hosting a webinar on AI or cybersecurity, or even a multimedia prospecting campaign that utilizes an SDR (sales development rep) to call for appointments.

When creating your marketing calendar of campaigns, you also need to include the following:

• Backwards Math From Goal: Starting with the number of managed IT clients you want, work backwards to determine how many proposals you need to have in your pipeline, how many FTAs (or first-time appointments) you need, how many MQLs and raw leads you will need to produce.
  • List Segments And Audiences Selected: Every campaign needs to be targeted to a specific list, such as all unconverted leads in your CRM, or an audience, like companies googling “IT services company” in the areas you service.
  • Timeline Of Campaigns Initiated: This one is easy – simply map out WHEN these campaigns start or will be initiated, and how long they will run for. A Google PPC campaign may be ongoing. A digital newsletter or blog could be posted once a week. A trade show in February. Most MSPs still use spreadsheets and project management software, like Teams or Monday, to organize their marketing plan into projects with timelines and responsibilities assigned.
  • Budget Allocation: Every marketing plan needs to have an associated budget. Best-in-class MSPs typically budget 11% of their topline revenue to their marketing plan and sales team combined. What you actually need to spend marketing your MSP will be determined by a number of factors, including the growth goals you have and, of course, funds available.
  • Execution Plan (Who, What, When): An MSP marketing plan is essentially a big project with many systems and teams running it. Therefore, you need a project management system to organize and run it. I would not necessarily suggest you use your PSA tool for running your marketing plan, but you could in a pinch. Whatever planning tool you use, make sure you have a leader on the team that is using that project management tool to execute on your marketing plan as expected and within the budgets you’ve set.

Marketing Campaigns

The last core component of your MSP marketing plan will consist of individual campaigns you choose to drive the leads, appointments and IT services sales you want.

Again, this is where most MSPs start – and it’s a HUGE mistake. The campaigns should be the last piece you map out in your MSP marketing plan AFTER you’ve fully thought through and built the other components outlined above.

Each campaign needs the following:

• Market, Message, Media, Math: Every lead generation campaign must get these four things right in order to deliver quality managed services leads. The marketing is the list or audience. The message is what’s written in the e-mail, posted on the landing page or uttered by your SDR when making a call. It’s also the offer you’re making. The media is merely the channel you’ll use to communicate the message (websites, e-mails, text messages, SDR phone calls, social media ads, etc.). The math is the process of goaling for how many opens, clicks, leads, appointments and other marketing plan KPIs you expect to hit. Having realistic expectations is critical to a successful marketing plan for any MSP, yet it’s a part of the plan many get wrong.
• Funnel Design And Metrics: When a visitor clicks on your ad, what happens? When they opt in, what do they see? What e-mails and letters will be sent and what calls will be made? What’s the next step? A marketing funnel is the process, steps and communications you map out in a campaign to transform an MSP prospect into a viable, profitable MSP buyer.
• Tracking Established: How will you track the performance of your campaign? How will you know how many calls your SDR made and how many conversations they had? How will you track the number of prospects that visit your trade-show booth or take you up on your offer for a free cybersecurity risk assessment? All of these “funnel metrics” need to be tracked to ensure your campaign is performing as expected, to troubleshoot  problems and to continually improve the performance and ROI of any MSP marketing campaign.
• Marketing Oil Wells (Systems And Processes): Your MSP marketing plan should not consist of a series of “random acts” and hope. Never do one-off campaigns. Instead, build what I call “marketing oil wells,” or systems you can repeat over and over again to produce the same results (or better). As with a recipe, you want to document the steps, “ingredients” and actions needed to reproduce a successful campaign. Doing so will ultimately make your campaigns more effective, avoid stupid mistakes and help you learn from failures and successes.
• Follow-Up, Drip And Nurture: Inbound leads for managed services and other IT services don’t always close on the first interaction. Only the most in-pain “buyers in heat” will. That doesn’t mean the other leads are bad – they just need more time to get ready to buy (after all, switching MSPs is a very painful, disruptive and risky process). Therefore, all qualified leads should go into a drip marketing or nurture sequence that ideally consists of highly valuable multimedia content designed to position you as a trusted advisor. This is how you build a productive MSP marketing list and a pipeline of buyers.

MSP Marketing Plan: Quick Summary

1. Define your MSP marketing strategy and growth goals, paying particular attention to target market selection and USP development.
2. Build marketing assets that create authority and trust. Your website and marketing automation system are paramount essentials to start with.
3. Create a marketing calendar aligned to revenue targets.
4. Execute repeatable MSP marketing campaigns with tracking.

Of course, any plan needs constant oversight and management. If you want to talk to me about helping you formulate and execute on a plan, click here to inquire about private consulting services.

And if you’re not ready to move to a consultation just yet, at least download my eBook Trust-Based Marketing For MSPs.