How to Market Your MSP as a Solution to Business Pain Points

Content is king when it comes to getting and keeping Google’s attention, but the big question is what content? By addressing client pain points, MSPs can develop content that connects with potential leads and helps market their services.

MSPs, Do You Understand Your Customers?

One of the biggest mistakes Managed Service Providers make when marketing their services is assuming they know what services potential leads are interested in. This misalignment is often represented by the keyword strategy they implemented using their gut. These “magic keywords” are the search terms many MSPs use to gauge the success of their SEO and marketing. The problem is that most businesses searching for solutions aren’t using the “magic keywords” as search terms but instead searching for solutions that reduce or eliminate their pain points.

What are Pain Points?

Pain points are persistent or recurring problems that frequently cause inconveniences, annoyance, and even financial stress. When a business is having a technology issue, the first thing most of them do is Google a solution. What you want as an MSP is to be the one to provide the answer Google shows. The only way to do this is to have the best answers to their queries.

It’s also essential to understand what points of pain potential leads are experiencing if you want to be able to address them. It’s important to realize that there are a variety of pain points. What makes managed IT unique is that your services can handle all pain points, allowing you to double the opportunities to market your services effectively. Here are three points of pain managed services can help alleviate.

1. Financial Pain Points

The biggest worry of most businesses is the unexpected expense. Fortunately, the most significant selling point of managed IT is that it offers companies a flat-rate fee. This allows companies to easily budget their IT spending without worrying about the sudden expense of something going wrong.

2. Inability to Focus on the Business

A common MSP mantra is, “Let us worry about your IT while you worry about your business.” A common refrain of businesses is that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get things done, especially if they have to spend time dealing with problems. Your goal is to show businesses that your services can allow them the confidence that their critical systems will be reliable. Services such as remote monitoring and maintenance, help desk, or vCIO are well suited for this purpose.

3.  Prior Poor Customer Experience

The reality is that many businesses have had poor experiences, particularly regarding the technology they depend on for their operations. Your goal in addressing this is to have tangible proof that you will provide them with a different experience. Social proof in the form of reviews and testimonials are well designed for this. Additionally, white papers and case studies can help bolster the perception of your expertise.

How to Market to Points of Pain

Your marketing materials should promote how your services can help solve your target audience’s problems. Very rarely will your prospects care about what vendors you use (unless it’s for a very specific line-of-business app or something similar) or the hardware you can deploy. Your MSP content should explain how managed IT can perform as a form of technology insurance. Instead of the piecemeal expenses that come with break/fix, with an MSP service agreement in place, their IT is covered, and they know exactly how much they will be spending to keep it up and running. 

Ask your leads why they contacted you and develop a marketing plan focusing on the area flagged as the most critical issue they are concerned with. For example, if most responses are about cybersecurity (keep in mind, they won’t mention cybersecurity, but terms like “hacking”), then that’s what your marketing should focus on.

Finally, it is helpful to consider that effective marketing is marketing that is shared over multiple channels. Multiple channels are social media, content marketing, and SEO, among others, beyond having an MSP website.

Suppose you’re not actively listening to what issues are causing areas of concern for businesses interested in your services. In that case, you risk finding yourself out of step with the market and being left behind. Today’s business has a wide range of options, and you need to convince them to take a chance on you and that you can help them.

Communicate with your existing customer base to understand their stressors; chances are, they aren’t the only ones. First, checking in with them regularly is a good business practice. Still, in this case, it also allows you to develop a marketing plan reflecting the real-world concerns of existing and potential customers.

Let’s Market Your MSP Together

If you’ve managed to understand your audience’s points of pain but don’t know how to create the content needed to address them, we can help. As an MSP, we are uniquely suited to assist you in translating the jargon of our industry into content that is easy to digest, providing potential leads and Google with proof that you know your stuff. We offer a wide range of MSP content to keep your audience engaged. Call 888-546-4384 today to schedule an appointment.