How Your MSP Can Use LinkedIn To Dominate Your Market

By Nate Freedman, Tech Pro Marketing

For more than a few years now, I’ve been saying that LinkedIn was one of the most incredible opportunities for savvy MSP owners to generate leads in the modern era… and that was BEFORE we were all being prohibited from congregating in public.

In a lot of ways, success with your MSP marketing is about more than just setting appointments. It’s about making an intimate, personal connection with someone and conveying to them that you can not only solve all their problems but that you’re ready to rise up and become a genuine partner in their success. That’s especially critical right now when so many organizations in your area are still reeling from the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic – one that unfortunately shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

That intimate, personal connection is also what LinkedIn happens to excel at – but simply signing up and creating a profile isn’t enough to get the job done. If you truly want to dominate your marketplace as an MSP by wielding the full power of LinkedIn to your advantage, there are a few key things you’ll want to keep in mind.

Element #1: Your Profile

By far, the most important factor to account for when it comes to using LinkedIn to dominate your market is your profile – something that is arguably even more important than your website these days.

Don’t forget that all roads will lead back to your profile on LinkedIn, and most people who are coming into contact with your MSP for the first time will use it to form the type of first impression that they’ll never be able to shake. Therefore, it’s absolutely in your best interest to make it the strongest impression possible.

To do this, make sure that you’re accounting for a few key elements like:

• Your headline. This tagline is the first thing a prospect is going to see when you post something to your feed, so put together something that grabs their attention immediately. Instead of “Founder Of [YOUR BUSINESS’ NAME HERE]”, consider something with a little more “oomph” like “Increasing your IT’s return on investment by X percent with fully managed services.” Use this as a chance to show people what YOU can do for THEM.
• Your professional photo. At the absolute minimum, you need a photo of yourself smiling against the most professional background you can find. Never underestimate how much credibility you can build with a sleek, visually pleasing photo.
• Social proof, and lots of it. Do you have several incredible testimonials from your existing, satisfied customers? Terrific – copy and paste as many as you can to strategic locations in your profile where people are likely to see them. DON’T let them exist exclusively at the bottom if you want them to make an impression

Element #2: Your Content

Once you have your profile set up and properly optimized, you’re ready to use that as a foundation to build something far more effective in the long run. This, of course, means posting content and a lot of it.

For the best results, don’t just post anything and everything – that’s a great way to get people to stop paying attention. Instead, try to find helpful articles that are relevant to your niche and the problems they’re going through when it comes to technology. If there’s a particularly interesting breaking news item in your area (like a large ransomware attack, for example), don’t shy away from posting the link to your feed while also giving your unique perspective.

Again – the key here is to accomplish a few important things, essentially all at the same time. First, you want to immediately let people know that you’re not just going to “sell” to them – that you are interested in their success. Next, you want to establish as much credibility as possible so that people start to think “hey, this person may just have the answers I’ve been looking for...”

Element #3: Your Prospects

Once you have all of these elements accounted for, you can move onto the thing that will allow you to dominate your market – reaching out and making a connection with the prospects you’ve dedicated yourself to serving.

Here, you’ll want to keep a few key things in mind. For starters, you need to create a personal, logical and non-salesy outreach message that you can A) easily customize as the situation calls for it, and B) still send to as many people as possible LinkedIn success isn’t going to come by sending out one or two messages a day. You need to send out 10, 20, or even 100 messages regularly and you need to be as consistent about it as you possibly can.

Even as you reach out to these prospects with connection messages, understand that not all of them are going to be successful right away. But that’s okay, because for every “bite at the apple” you get you can still reach out and begin a genuine, earnest conversation with anyone who accepts your connection requests.

This, of course, means that you shouldn’t just hit them with an advertisement for your MSP. Far too many of your competitors are already doing that. Instead, try to get to know them a little better and tell them more about yourself. Ask genuine questions about their business and the problems they’re facing and see if you can find legitimate ways to solve them. Don’t be afraid to ask someone to hop on the phone so that you can discuss things further or get together for a lunch at their convenience (when our current Coronavirus situation is over, of course).

Once you have these basic factors accounted for, you have all the makings of the type of LinkedIn profile that your prospects won’t be able to ignore. At that point, all you have to do is keep posting that content, keep reaching out and making those connections, and keep offering as much raw value to as many people as you can. If you’re able to do that, there’s truly no limit to what you’ll be able to accomplish – which is an excellent position for any MSP to be in, no question.

If you’re still interested in finding out more information about how to use LinkedIn to absolutely dominate your marketplace, great – I’m happy to help. Please feel free to reach out to either me or one of my colleagues at Tech Pro Marketing so that we can discuss this further.

About The Author

Nate Freedman is the owner and founder of Tech Pro Marketing, an organization dedicated to helping MSPs and other IT-related businesses get more out of their marketing campaigns than ever. Click here to schedule an appointment for your consultation or click here to follow Nate on LinkedIn.