What IS “Robin Robins” Marketing Anyway?
In a podcast interview, Luis Giraldo from ScalePad, asked me the following:
ChatGPT says that “Robin Robins is a polarizing figure in the MSP world – people either swear by her Technology Marketing Toolkit or find her ‘old school’ direct-mail methods a bit abrasive. However, no one denies she has moved the needle for more MSPs than almost anyone else in the industry.” Surely you have awareness of this polarity, or does ChatGPT have it all wrong?
I often joke that clients using the phrase “I’m doing Robin Robins” when describing their marketing strategy are confused about what’s actually included in the contract, LOL.
But double entendre aside, Luis’s question brought up a good point: What exactly is “Robin Robins Marketing?” Since there is clearly some confusion, I’ve outlined the top 14 core principles of the sales, marketing and lead generation strategies I base my advice on.
- I practice and teach a discipline called “direct response,” which is a MEASURABLE form of marketing designed to elicit a RESPONSE in the form of a lead or a sale from the prospect you are targeting.
Most marketing folks forget that the ultimate goal of marketing and advertising is to economically bring in a paying customer. Agencies, consultants and marketing “gurus” confuse business owners all the time with terms like “branding” or “thought leadership” or simply “getting your name out there,” whatever the heck that means (out where exactly?).
They throw around phrases like “inbound marketing,” “content marketing,” “account marketing,” “social selling” and the like – but all the business owner really wants is more check writers.
As a salesperson myself, all I wanted from the marketing department of various companies I worked for was a live, qualified prospect who was willing and able to buy what I was selling. I wanted marketing to FACILITATE the sales process. I personally didn’t care if a campaign “got our name out there.” What I cared about was making quota – specifically, getting signed contracts in hand.
That’s why I started studying direct response marketing. It was the only type of marketing that brought me an INTERESTED prospect to sell to. It was also the only type of marketing fiercely aligned with my own goal of only talking to properly prepared, qualified buyers. I did NOT invent it, but what I have done is become the foremost expert in direct response marketing for MSPs selling IT services and support.
When you embrace direct response lead generation marketing instead of pure branding or awareness marketing, you do a couple of very good things.
First, you use marketing to appropriately ATTRACT qualified prospects to you instead of using manual labor cold calling to find someone interested to sell to. Here’s a little secret: Salespeople don’t burn out from selling, they burn out from PROSPECTING to find someone to sell to.
Second, when a prospects seeks you out, they are far easier to move through the sales process (see #2 below) and you don’t have a highly paid salesperson (or in MSP’s case, the owner) spending hours prospect for someone to sell to.
Third, you start building a PIPELINE of “getting ready to buy” prospects that you can nurture through the sales process, building a relationship and establishing yourself as a trusted authority so WHEN they are ready to buy, they naturally come to you. This is how you build a hyper responsive list as well and brings me to the next benefit.
Fourth, you get far more from your marketing spend because you reach the “getting ready to buy” crowd and not just the “buy now” crowd that is actively looking and represents only a tiny sliver of the total prospect pool (less than 1%).
And finally, if you use educational direct response marketing (E.D.R. Marketing), which is what I invented for MSPs, you are putting out strategically engineered content that educates the prospect on what they need and what to look for in a new MSP, which then makes closing at a higher price point a reality instead of a wish. - The ULTIMATE GOAL of everything I recommend is to position you as a TRUSTED AUTHORITY. I learned a long time ago that a person’s perception WAS their reality. To that end, if I was perceived as a salesperson, selling marketing services, I was blocked, lied to, disrespected and ignored. However, if a prospect perceived me as an in-demand, highly qualified and trusted expert on growing an MSP’s client base, the entire game changed. It gave me the power to prescribe services to prospects instead of having to hard-sell them. That is why EVERYTHING you do in marketing should be with the goal of separating you from all the other MSPs and positioning you as a highly qualified, in-demand, trusted consultant, NOT an “IT guy” or, worse, a salesperson selling IT services.
This ties directly into the E.D.R. philosophy I outlined above, with the key distinction that we are careful not to do certain types of marketing that would make you appear as a needy, greedy salesperson. For example, I advise my MSP clients to publish books, reports, white papers and seek public speaking engagements, podcast interviews and strategic partnerships (also called JVs) because that type of marketing will position you far more effectively than spammy e-mails standing or pure cold calls. - I measure marketing success on SALES GENERATED and CLIENTS ACQUIRED, not “Likes,” friends or followers, subscribers, hashtags, SEO rankings, clicks, etc. In MY style of marketing, there are only two metrics that count: MONEY and number of PRODUCTIVE clients acquired.
I don’t care if my website is at the top of the rankings or if I have hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram. Yes, they ARE leading indicators that are measurable and shouldn’t be dismissed entirely. However, they are NOT how I define “success.” I define success by ending every day with more money in my pocket than when I started, more enterprise value every year.
When I do a marketing campaign, I don’t celebrate the fact that I have thousands of views, clicks, opens, etc.; I care about how many PRODUCTIVE clients I obtained. If you want to succeed in business, you have to be careful about falling victim to fads and peer pressure from those who are not qualified to opine – the “cool kids” who think they’re smarter than all the “old dogs” because they figured out a shiny new penny, then attempt to make you feel foolish for not following suit.
On multiple occasions, I’ve consulted with content creators, authors, speakers and other “gurus” who have millions of followers and e-mail lists that are 30 to 40 times bigger than my own – yet I ran circles around them in sales and profits.
Bottom line: “Winning” in marketing and sales is about new clients acquired and profits secured, not about many of the “new” marketing metrics being sold by digital agencies and other gurus as “success” metrics. - I am NOT TIMID about selling. To quote good ol’ Zig, “Timid salespeople have skinny kids.” My style of marketing is based on the foundation that we are TRYING TO SELL SOMETHING.
To that end, we use STRONG, emotionally charged copy to move a prospect to action. We’ll use every strategy known for persuasion and influence to ethically motivate that person to buy. I make no apologies for that. After all, isn’t that the purpose of marketing and selling? To get someone to write you a check? To get them to buy from YOU over your competition? If that is NOT your goal, you will not like the marketing advice I’m serving up.
Candidly, I’m amazed at how many business owners (and even some salespeople!) have hang-ups, uncertainty and deeply negative emotions about even making the slightest attempt at closing a sale. They cringe at the thought of anything that may be salesy, severely handicapping their client acquisition, negotiations and ability to command premium fees and get clients to take their advice. They are NOT serving their clients as they might think they are. To be clear, you CAN be obnoxious about the process of selling – and that is absolutely not what I’m recommending. You should NEVER lie, exaggerate, con or bully someone into giving you their money; I’ve never suggested that. The process of selling should be done in a respectful, bold and confident way, not timidly. - I believe in being MARKET-DRIVEN, which means you STARTby defining a lucrative target market and then engineering a product or service that your chosen market will WANT TO BUY, which thengives you a USP (unique selling proposition).
Most MSPs and IT services firms start out the same way: They look around at what everyone else is doing and charging; then, using that as a starting point, they cobble together their own version of services, based on what they feel they can deliver at a middle-ground price point (not too high but not too low). Then, after creating a “me too” service, they attempt to sell it to a marketplace that is grossly saturated and already getting what they are selling from someone else. Puzzled at why everyone is telling them, “We’re fine,” and uncertain about how to overcome the pushback they are getting, they seek my advice on how to write a better website or how to create a good marketing plan, thinking it’s a MARKETING problem. Problem is, service marketing starts with the service. Which brings me to the next key point… - If the sales letter is hard to write, the product or service is FLAWED. A mantra all great marketers live by: Write the AD first. Doing so frees you to think of what you would have to be able to say or promise to get someone to do business with you, rather than being constrained by the limitations of the CURRENT product or service you are selling.
If you write the ad FIRST, you are thinking in terms of what would get your prospect’s attention. What would get you into an account? Unseat an incumbent provider? This is necessary because the marketplace – your desired prospects – are NOT going to leave a vendor delivering a good service for something potentially better. I don’t care how cute or clever the ad is – it’s not going to happen. Therefore, if you TRULY want to get more customers with ease, you must ENGINEER a unique selling proposition. You CREATE a product or a service that fills a void, solving a problem they aren’t getting solved right now, delivering something they desire but cannot seem to get. Anything less and you’re pushing a wet noodle uphill. - Marketing is the BEGINNING of the sales process;therefore, sales and marketing should NOT be separate departments that fight each other and work in silos. In most companies, sales and marketing are handled by two entirely separate departments, with different goals, leadership and metrics. They rarely come together in strategy and often don’t like each other.
The marketing department thinks the sales team is a bunch of uncooperative, lazy crybabies who won’t follow up on the leads they are generating, always attempting to do the least amount of work possible, sloppily skipping steps in the sales process that would help them track more effectively. The sales team feels the marketing department is a giant waste of space, not giving them the quality or quantity of leads they want, not providing the right tools and materials they need, not doing their job, constantly complaining that they ought to be doing this or that.
Both sides have a point, but the bigger issue is that while they are supposed to be working together toward a common goal, instead they are infighting and pointing fingers. If you are in a CEO or leadership division, you MUST correct this. How a prospect is initially introduced (a function of marketing) and what they know about you and your reputation (also a function of marketing) WILL in fact determine how successful the sales team is and how difficult of a job they will have. That is why MY style of marketing is “salesmanship in print” as originally described in 1905 by John E. Kennedy, a successful copywriter and forefather of modern marketing. - I am, and have always been, media AGNOSTIC. I believe you should measure the effectiveness of a media based on the END ROI, not on the initial response, upfront cost, ease or difficulty of using it and certainly NOT based on your personal preferences. This needs little explanation and most understand it when said; however, not many practice it.
For example, a client comes to me with a list of all the leads she’s generated over the last year and their source. She asks me if she should allocate THIS year’s budget according to the results (leads) generated as a percentage – so, since Facebook generated 50% of the leads she generated and direct mail only 5%, should she reallocate 50% of her marketing budget to Facebook, 5% to direct mail, etc.?
My answer was that I could not possibly say yes to that without one vital piece of information: How many of those leads became HVCs (high-value clients)? If Facebook generated 50% of her leads, but only 1% became HVCs, that might not be the best place to allocate the budget. If we find that the majority of HVCs came from the Aspirin campaign with a good SDR, then let’s put more money and focus there.
Yes, Facebook is easier to do, costs less, is “sexier” than offline prospecting and delivers near instant feedback. I get it. BUT if another method is producing better quality, higher converting, more productive clients, then I would argue all day long that MORE money, time and resources should be allocated to THAT method over another media that was more “likable,” easy and inexpensive.
Going back to the opening statement that my methods are “old school” direct mail are deliberately and grossly false. I teach EVERY type of media, and select the media based on the prospect we are seeking and the financial means of the MSP I’m working with, nothing else. I have shown members how to use ALL media. So yes, direct mail is ONE of the media types we use – but absolutely not the only method of lead generation marketing for MSPs. - I believe that GREAT marketing is applied PSYCHOLOGY plus correct MATH. You’ve heard it said before that people buy based on emotions, then justify with logic. Science has proven this time and time again, and more is being discovered on “emotional intelligence” and how it drives our behavior.
In my extensive research done with buyers of IT services, I have seen over and over again that how a prospect/customer FEELS about the provider drives the decision far more than the model of service (managed, time and materials, etc.) and PRICE. However, if you look at the majority of marketing and advertising done today, you will see it defaulting to very logical features and facts, grossly deficient of known, emotional triggers that cause a person to stop, read and respond to a promotion. Sales “processes” consist of winging it: Show up and throw up.
The marketing I create is purposefully designed to work on known psychological drivers to get attention, build TRUST and move prospects to action. But no matter how great a campaign is, it will fail if coupled with bad business math.
As an example: Business-to-business advertising gets an average 0.5% response. Using our kind of marketing, we can often double or triple that. However, if a client “needs” a 10% response rate to “succeed” with a prospecting campaign, particularly with a cold, unqualified list and an inexperienced operator, we respectfully bow out. Yes, that type of response IS possible, but not probable. Part of being successful with marketing is having realistic expectations early on, understanding ALL metrics that play into success AND playing the LONG game of gaining your best ROI after a period of time, not the next day or the next week. - I believe you should use a MULTIMEDIA approach, incorporating offline andonline strategies, as well as strategic sales follow-up.
For starters, let me clarify what “media” is. It’s merely the communication vehicle to carry your message and offer to a list or audience of prospects. E-mail, YouTube videos, phone calls, direct mail, billboards, webinars and Facebook ads are all examples of MEDIA, not of strategy, and they certainly don’t make up a “campaign.”
In all marketing campaigns I’ve done, I’ve consistently IMPROVED response by using a multimedia approach vs. a single-shot media (like only using e-mail, only making cold calls, etc.). In fact, I find it more and more difficult to get a satisfactory result from any campaign without coupling multiple media together in one campaign.
For example, if I’m going to promote a seminar or event, I’ll set up a dedicated webpage to promote the event, then use e-mail, direct mail, phone calls, Facebook ads and retargeting on Google to promote it. By doing so, I elevate the response vs. only using e-mail or only using paid ads.
Further, experience will prove that people have preferred media. Some are far more responsive to direct mail than e-mail, or LinkedIn vs. a phone call. If you only use ONE media – like e-mail – you could be missing 80% to 90% of your prospects and clients who are NOT opening, clicking and reading it. Some prospects are highly responsive on LinkedIn, while others don’t have a presence. You might have a list of prospect that you don’t have permission to e-mail and must use direct mail and cold calls.
Therefore, to be truly get the highest and best response to your lead generation efforts, you must use ALL media at your disposal. - I believe marketing is less a “creative” process than the building, refining and improving of repeatable, proven PROCESSES and SYSTEMS that consistently bring you clients.
The LAST thing I want to do in undertaking any marketing campaign is to invent something new. For starters, ALL great sales copywriters and marketers have huge swipe files made up of proven, successful ads, offers, headlines, copy and marketing systems that have already been tested and confirmed to work. In the biz, we call them “controls.” Therefore, only a fool would sit down and attempt to be “creative” at marketing, starting from scratch to try to manufacture success when you can copy and paste a proven winner.
All clients who succeed in marketing have a handful of offers and campaigns that work that they then repeat, over and over again, refining and improving. At TMT, I created my famous “Godfather” campaign that involved mailing a sales package with a dollar bill attached, with additional media outreach. That campaign consistently produced results for over a decade, generating MILLIONS in sales and bringing in new clients.
Most people would have moved on from such a campaign out of boredom or thinking that “everyone has already seen THAT ad.” Nuts. As long as it produces, it stays.
I call this a “marketing oil well,” and just like a REAL productive oil well, the thing should sit there and produce day and night with very little supervision, very few changes, only being stopped when the well runs dry. - I believe your list – and the relationship you have with it – is the single biggest ASSET in your business, period. Treat it accordingly.
If you ask an average group of business owners to make a list of assets in their business, they’ll often list their company vehicles, their building and even their IT equipment. What they almost NEVER think of is their LIST of clients and prospects (leads). More specifically, the relationship they have with it. That is, by far, the single most valuable asset in their business.
When an IT services business is bought, what is the company really buying other than the client list? Most MSPs don’t have revolutionary systems and processes for delivering the work. Not much is unique and proprietary on the operations side of the house, and the company buying you will typically merge your clients into their operating system – so the ONLY thing worth buying is the client list. Naturally, the more “connected” those clients are to you – by contract or by delivering a product or service that has a high pain of disconnect – the more valuable your business is.
Yet most MSPs can’t even produce an up-to-date client list or even accurately tell me how many clients they have! They don’t have their list organized in a way that allows them to easily cross-sell and upsell additional solutions, nor do they have “profit pathways” mapped out of how they will continue to expand the relationship (and spend) of those clients via strategic account management. Their most valuable asset is sitting rusting and abandoned in a field – unvalued, underutilized and GROSSLY neglected.
When MSPs come to me, they are always looking for more NEW clients, while sitting on a virtual “acre of diamonds” left untouched. Marketing, in my world, doesn’t end when you acquire the client – in many ways, it’s just getting started. - I believe a CEO must be SALES-DRIVEN and heavily involvedin MARKETING STRATEGY, metrics, planning and numbers if a company is to grow. As Michael Gerber famously said, “Most business owners are technicians suffering from an entrepreneurial seizure.”
What they WANT is to totally, completely be hands-off with marketing, selling and client acquisition so they can sit behind their desk and DO the work – the thing they like and feel comfortable with. They want to completely abdicate (not DELEGATE) the responsibility of marketing, selling and money-getting.
Further, they have all kinds of hang-ups and fears about hiring people, so they end up “owning” a job with a bunch of helpers, which leads to an extremely stressful existence for them and a “business” that doesn’t work unless they do. If they don’t wake up and accept that THEY must be the “chief revenue officer” and work on developing the skills necessary for sales, marketing and building a money team, they can end up working 10, 20 years or more, never making any money, never building a REAL business. I’ve seen this play out over and over again. - I believe MARKETING should be given as much time, money and resources as the operational aspects of running a business.
Unlike a number of marketing gurus, I won’t tell you that “marketing is everything!” That’s just not true. Marketing IS a vital aspect of your business – but if you JUST focus on marketing and client acquisition and neglect operational excellence, building an “A” team, a purpose-driven culture and disciplined financials, you’ll quickly create a disaster.
That said, marketing is not just about lead generation, websites and e-mail campaigns. It’s about the strategy of your business – WHO is your customer? What is your value proposition? How will you give yourself a strategic advantage over the competition? How will you secure new clients? How will you monetize those clients?
The above are MARKETING questions. Neglect to answer them and to put strategy, people and systems in place to properly execute on your marketing plan, and the business starves.
The above is obviously the core philosophy of my approach, which you can see is far more sophisticated than merely sending out a direct mail campaign – and I haven’t even touched on the marketing SYSTEMS that must be built and sales processes and playbooks necessary to support this.
If you want to find out more about getting a truly effective marketing system implemented in your MSP business, click the “Work With Robin” button and let’s talk.
