To develop a strategic marketing approach, it helps to know where your strengths and weaknesses lie and how your opportunities compare to the threats you’ll face. This is the purpose of the SWOT analysis… it allows you to assess your internal and external factors so you can refine and improve your marketing of the managed services you offer.
Let’s explore what goes into a SWOT analysis and how to use it to your advantage, beginning with a breakdown of its most basic parts.
I don’t have to tell you that, for the managed service provider, the sales cycle doesn’t have an end… it kind of just keeps going. While the finish line may seem to be signing a new contract, there’s a lot you still have to do to encourage continued and increased business with your new client. Much of it will depend on your ability to communicate with them.
From your sales team to all those who work with your clients regularly, everyone must remember a few critical practices when communicating with your clients and prospects.
Managed service providers can get real, quantifiable value from hosting an event for prospects or existing clients. Stick around because, by the end of this blog, you’ll be able to track the value your MSP receives from properly utilizing event marketing to pursue your goals.
“Content is king.”
This is a relatively common piece of marketing advice, but what does it really mean?
Simple: Regarding your marketing, your content will communicate most of your message with your audience. It pulls traffic to your website, gives visitors a reason to be there, and gives them ample opportunity to reach out to you. That said, your content also represents your business, so let’s discuss how to ensure your content puts you and your company in the best possible light.
There is an old saying that says, “the fortune is in the follow-up.” The saying is actually pretty accurate. Follow-ups have the potential to influence a customer’s overall experience with your company. How frequently you follow-up and the quality of your follow-ups can be beneficial - or detrimental - to your MSP’s long-term success.
The difference between success and failure isn’t just about how motivated you are. Most of us in the IT industry are very detail oriented, and it’s easy to get tangled up in the small details. Sometimes, getting stuck on the minutiae can really get in the way of launching and succeeding. Let’s talk about some common pitfalls MSPs often get stuck in that prevent them from driving business forward.
If there’s one thing marketing needs to be successful, it’s consistency. Sure, it needs to be informative, engaging, and convincing, but if your audience doesn’t see it regularly, it just will not be as effective as you need it to be. Of course, to create this level of consistency, you need to be consistent in your activities.
That’s why we’ve outlined five things that you should do each and every day to help make your marketing as effective and impactful as possible.
Has your MSP marketing hit a wall? Perhaps it’s time to try something different? Videos have long been treated as a tool for engagement, but as Google incorporates video as part of its search results, consider adding YouTube as part of your SEO plans.
Modern marketing is essential to any business’ operations, making it even more critical that all marketing efforts are as effective as possible. Images can play a significant role in accomplishing this goal.
Let’s talk about how you can (and should) use images and other visual elements to make your content more engaging.
It’s one thing to deliver a message to an audience. It’s another thing entirely to have that audience believe and trust you, putting what you say into practice. The first just takes marketing. The second, however, requires you to have built up your perceived trustworthiness: your “ethos,” or credibility.
Let’s explore why credibility is so important to your business' success and how you can cultivate it among the audience you want to attract.
If you want to build trust with your audience, you could do a lot worse than relying on testimonials. These accounts, straight from the mouths of your previously satisfied customers and clients, can easily bear much more weight than many—arguably most—other marketing efforts. After all, they are first-hand accounts of what someone can expect from working with you. That said, there are still ways that you can and should coax the best, highest-quality testimonials from your happy clientele. Let’s go over the four questions you should always ask while collecting customer accounts to accomplish just that.
There are a lot of decisions to make in any marketing effort you put out, many of which could be the difference between success and failure. Even more common, however, are the decisions where the difference is between success and great success. Obviously, the latter option would be preferable…so how can you identify the right path?
Simple… by utilizing something called A/B testing. Let’s discuss what it is and, more importantly, how to do it.
Unfortunately, if you’re like most MSPs, you’re not promoting your services in a way that reaches the local businesses that may need these services. Are you doing everything you can to introduce your business to, and explain how you can help, your local community?
Do you know the old saying about how the shoe cobbler always has holes in his boots? As an MSP, you are always thinking about the compliance of your clients, to the point where you might put your own security on the back burner. It’s easy to shove your website to the furthest corner of your to-do list, so let’s take a quick look at a couple of things you definitely should be thinking about.
Today we’re going to be talking about Cookie Laws and how your MSP should handle them.
Is your MSP’s marketing plan taking your content for granted or worse, “phoning it in”? As Google continues to focus on user experience, they have implemented “The Helpful Content Update.” The goal of which is to ensure content provides users with the information they are searching for, while penalizing organizations that fail to do so with reduced page position.
As MSPs, delivering value goes beyond just providing services—it’s about giving knowledge to our clients and prospects. However, with so little time in the day to manage and maintain your existing client base, how can you even think of providing this information, too? This is a question our MSP blog service answers.
There is no denying that SEO can seem to be a little... nebulous at times. However, there are many ways to measure if SEO is working for your MSP: your analytics, search position, and of course conversions. Despite these tangible measurements, many MSPs don’t feel their SEO is working. Before you call it quits, here are some questions to answer before you give up on your SEO.
Email is a hugely effective tool that you can use to boost your business’ marketing efforts, provided you use them correctly. If misused, however, email marketing can be less beneficial (or worse, actively harmful) to your business’ self-promotion.
Let’s determine how to balance between overdoing your email marketing and neglecting your contacts so that you can get the most value out of your efforts.
Email marketing is a supremely beneficial element of a managed service provider’s overall marketing strategy. Once you have permission to reach out to a contact via email, there are quite a few ways to use it to promote your business’ services.
One such way is through cold emails, but are they effective enough to bother with? Is there a more effective way you can send them?
