3 Simple Marketing Ideas For Your MSP

Many people in the IT world view marketing as a challenge… and for a variety of reasons.  They don’t know where to start.  They don’t have any leads.  Their ideas are too big.  Their efforts never pay off.  This list of reasons could go on forever. 

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what’s holding you back from marketing.  If you don’t market (and market effectively), your MSP will eventually fall to the wayside.  You will fail to create curiosity; you will fail to build engagement, and you will fail to grow into a bigger, better MSP. 

Marketing is and will continue to be incredibly important to the growth and sustenance of your business.  It allows you to build your reputation, showcase your credibility, and share your offering – to tell people who you are, why you matter, and what you do.  However, marketing isn’t as challenging as people typically make it out to be.  It simply requires a great deal of dedication and consistency.      

For an MSP specifically, marketing can be difficult for some to get going because it’s a B2B situation with a product that’s expensive and hard to understand.  So to get the ball rolling for you, we thought it’d be useful to share a few successful marketing ideas that our members have used in the past.  And surprisingly, these ideas are fairly inexpensive, incredibly simple, and really not all that creative. 

Wow Box

It’s called a Wow Box, and the idea behind it is very simple.  Fill a small box with inexpensive promotional items such as car chargers, pens, notepads, water bottles, sticky pads, and a short letter describing who you are.  A Wow Box can be used for both hot and cold leads, and its purpose is to create a lingering presence – where two, three, even six months later, your lead is still using your pen, drinking out of your water bottle, and writing on your notepad.     

At this point, if a need ever comes up, your business will be top of mind – the first provider thought of and the easiest one to contact.  Why?  Because they’re using a pen with your name and number etched directly onto it. 

(As a side note, it’s important to remember that these types of marketing activities won’t lead to a new client overnight.  You never know when the curiosity you create – and maintain – will pair up with a newly formed need.  Don’t get discouraged, and don’t give up too early.) 

Qualification Calls

Before our members begin marketing to a newly purchased list of leads, they’re expected to call down on the list.  The purpose is to ensure these leads are legitimately qualified to receive your marketing content.  While this probably doesn’t sound like such a novel marketing idea, it doesn’t make it any less effective.  It works, and it works so well that a percentage of these calls may even turn into a first appointment. 

However, some of our members aren’t successful with qualification calls.  They purchase a list of 600 leads, call through 20 or 30 of them, and then give up.  It’s important to make it through to the end of the list and to remain dedicated to the process.  Even if you don’t find an active need, the majority of these leads will most likely be qualified to receive your marketing content.  It will give you the opportunity to more strategically target your future marketing campaigns, thereby giving you the opportunity to turn cold leads into hot leads and hot leads into new clients. 

Event Follow Up

Events in general are a great way to market your business.  You can show off your company, network with fresh faces, and generate new leads.  But don’t allow the effort that goes into planning and attending an event to go to waste.  In other words, you should always follow through with a post-event marketing campaign. 

Say your event is on a Friday.  On Monday, you should send out an email to any new leads acquired during the event.  You should have another email prepared to go out a few days later and perhaps a follow-up call scheduled after that.  Like mentioned previously, these emails can be really simple – talk about the event, why you enjoyed networking with the people who attended, and explain how your business can solve any problems addressed during the event. 

You can also choose to incorporate additional content such as landing pages, postcards, and promo items.  Over the years, we’ve had major success with landing pages.  We’ll focus on something like “The Most Asked Questions” and to view these questions, prospects are required to click on a link provided within the email.  If you track open and click rates, then this will allow you to accurately determine which leads are the most engaged and which ones will require a follow-up call the soonest.  However, to be effective with something like this, you have to be consistent and motivated to follow through with the process. 

If you have any questions about CharTec or if you’d like to hear about more successful marketing ideas, give us a call today at 1.866.544.2772 or fill out a contact form here.  An Account Manager would be happy to answer any questions you have.