MSP Marketing: Move Beyond Word of Mouth

By Joshua Oakes, IT Glue

We’re talking marketing this spring, and there’s a really good reason for that. Business as usual is now business unusual, and when we come out of the pandemic and all the economic and social fallout, you still want to be in business. In fact, now you can see the value of not just scraping by every month – you need to be built to last. The only way to make sure you’re built to last is to master marketing. Deep down you know this – no matter how good your service is, if nobody knows about it, you don’t make money. So let’s talk first about word of mouth, because for some MSPs, it’s the only tool in their marketing toolbox. But even for the best MSPs, it’s one of the most important.

Word of mouth is an interesting marketing technique. On one hand, it’s the most powerful. You tend to get pretty high conversions because you’ve got one of your existing clients selling you to a prospect, and so they’re often coming in pretty hot. On the other hand, word of mouth is slow, and you don’t have a whole lot of control over the process. Now if you’re staring down a recession and you’re down a couple clients, you need a marketing strategy that works a little more efficiently, and that means moving past word of mouth as your primary marketing strategy.