Thinking About the Future: Plan Out Your MSP Marketing Strategy

There are several options available to MSPs to market their business and services, from social media to blog content to direct mail. With so many options available to your MSP, you may find it hard to know where to begin with your marketing. We recommend developing a documented marketing strategy to make sure your MSP marketing has a clear purpose and a schedule with time and resources to execute the initiatives.

You Need to Establish SMART Goals for Your MSP Marketing

The idea of SMART goals is used in every industry. It’s applied to business operations, sales, and marketing. The only way to know if you’re successful is to set clear goals and track their progress from beginning to end.

You may be asking what it is that makes a goal SMART:

• Specific: Are your goals clearly defined?
• Measurable: Goals should be measurable to ensure you are able to track the effectiveness.
• Attainable: Your goals need to be relevant to your marketing demographic.
• Realistic: Does your goal fit within your timeframe, does your budget work, and has the best resources available?
• Timely: You should have a deadline. Do you have a reasonable timeline to work towards the goals?

You Also Need to ALWAYS Be Aware of Your Situation

You absolutely need to do a situational analysis to evaluate your MSP’s marketing efforts, and consider your strengths and weaknesses, if there are any marketing opportunities to take advantage of, and how your marketing compares to your competition and if they or any other circumstance you may have to deal with are a threat to your MSP. 

A great method of analyzing your company is by using a SWOT analysis. SWOT looks at your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s critical because you ask yourself what you’re doing, what you could be doing, and what you SHOULD be doing. A SWOT Analysis is a good way to get a picture of where your marketing is.

You Need an Audience to Target

The vast majority of MSPs will tell you that they target small and medium-sized businesses in their area. By analyzing your target audience, you’ll have more insight into what they are looking for, giving you yet another advantage.

The best way to go about this is to look at what type of companies you already have a successful relationship with. Ask yourself what the characteristics of your ideal client are. Once you’ve identified the ideal business you’d like to target, all that’s left to do is to generate a list and begin marketing to them. If you need help generating a lead list there are tons of ways for you to get some, the best being to come to us and allow us to help you find your MSP some leads to market to.

You Need to Establish a Budget

Planning your marketing must include budgetary considerations. In general, a budget is going to be between 7% and 10% of a company’s revenue. Once you’ve established your budget, you can lay out what specific campaigns and initiatives your MSP can afford to run throughout the year. Another part of planning is making sure your budget lasts the whole year. Running out of funds come the middle of the year would severely hamper your efforts.

A MSP Marketing Plan is What You Need!

Your MSP marketing strategy needs to be planned out, just like with any other project. After all, your marketing campaigns require manpower, materials, and management. Knowing that there is a fixed plan in place will help your business stay on track with the initiative you set for the year. 

Now that you know a little of what a marketing plan should entail, you no doubt understand its necessity. If you’d like help with creating your MSP’s very own marketing plan, see how we can help or give us a call at 888-546-4384 so we can talk more about setting your MSP up with a marketing plan!