How to Generate Leads for Your MSP

There are a few prerequisites to being a good managed service provider. Of course, you have to provide your clients service, and your delivery needs to be proactive. One of the most important considerations, however, is to have clients to provide services to. This means you are going to have to generate the leads to nurture into these clients. Let’s discuss how to do that.

Your marketing will be your most important tool as you work to attract these leads. There are various activities that you will need to undertake, covering the gamut of marketing efforts.

Generating Leads via Inbound Marketing

Today, most people are doing their own research online before reaching out to service providers. Inbound marketing helps you turn the tire-kicking traffic into potential new prospects. This will require you to undergo some inbound marketing activities.

An inbound marketing strategy should revolve around providing a considerable amount of value on a website that is compliant to search engine optimization best practices. What does this mean? In essence, you want your website to serve its visitors, which is what the search engines really care about. What answers are your visitors looking for? What problems are you able to help them resolve? What outcome can they expect from your services?

Why Your Content Should Focus on Results

These outcomes should be the focal point of the content that populates your website - not so much the specifics of the services you offer. The reasoning behind this is simple.

If someone asked you what time it was, would you teach them how to build a clock? Of course not - and the same should go for your marketing. Nine out of ten times, your audience just wants the solution, not the equation that leads to it.

Shaping your content around the results of what you offer will make your website more attractive to your audience, and your marketing more effective. To optimize your inbound efforts, focus on producing the right kind of content - including targeted landing pages - and working on your SEO efforts. The higher you appear on a search engine’s results page for the right term, the more likely you are to attract the right audience.

Outbound Marketing Lead Generation

Of course, your website isn’t often going to convert a suspect into a lead on a single visit, much less complete their transition into a paying client. This means you need to keep pulling them back to your website.

This is where some outbound marketing tactics can come in handy.

Outbound marketing is the “yang” to inbound marketing’s “yin.” While inbound brings your audience to your content, outbound involves sending content to them. As such, things like direct mail and email marketing are considered outbound tactics.

One of outbound marketing’s greatest strengths is how effective it can be at cementing your business and services into your audience’s consciousness. Direct mail can provide a tangible reminder of your services, which can have quite an effect as it stands apart from the primarily digital communications we typically see nowadays. Of course, this doesn’t cheapen the value of email marketing, which also delivers a considerable impact if done right.

Outbound Marketing Considerations

You will want to be sure that you have secured someone’s permission to email them to avoid legal concerns. Direct mail can be useful for this, as can asking for their contact information as they access your website. You should also avoid being spammy with your emails, because this can have some serious consequences for your business... and its finances.

Social Media Engagement

Believe it or not, social media has a lot of potential for your business to use to its benefit tucked away between the goofy images and politics that people typically share. Not only do these platforms provide a free-to-incredibly-affordable means of sharing out your content, they provide a connection to your audience that no other marketing tool can.

How Social Media Helps Generate Leads

Thanks to social media, you can accomplish a few valuable marketing goals. First, you can begin a dialogue with people who may be considering your services in a visible space - both serving their needs and creating social proof that you are able to do so. Secondly, you’re given the opportunity to give your company a more human side in the eyes of your audience. Who would you rather turn to… a faceless company, or a group of dedicated human beings who are available to communicate with?

In order to accomplish this, you should have a presence on the major social media platforms that you regularly monitor. Check out our series on mastering social media for more information on using social media as a lead generation tool, and don’t hesitate to ask us for more information on how it can be used to your advantage.

Marketing List Management

Finally, you need to ensure that your records are well-maintained and remain accurate. Take your email marketing, for example. How many of your email marketing contacts are no longer worth your investment? The answer may surprise you, and is just one of the many reasons that you need to continuously evaluate your lists.

How to Integrate Lead Generation to Rebuild Your Lists

As your list degrades, you will want to build it back up. Your website can assist you with this, especially when your social media supports it.

Like we discussed above, the key to website-based lead generation is to provide quality, useful content to your audience. This could take quite a few different shapes, including blogs, free downloads, and requests for direct communication. However, you have the opportunity to build your marketing lists back up using this content by requiring your visitors to fill out a form in exchange for access.

Your social media could also be used to publicize these resources as well, drawing your followers to the form they would need to fill out.

Do You Need a Quality List?

Our Lead List Service was designed to optimize your marketing efforts by focusing exclusively on promising prospects. With this list, you can direct your marketing campaigns and initiatives toward those they are most likely to convert, saving you resources and increasing your revenue potential.

Click here to download our Lead List Service brochure, and don’t hesitate to reach out to us directly to learn more about how we can assist your lead generation, or find out about any of our other marketing services. Call 888-546-4384 to reach our team of marketing professionals.