Marketing Your MSP in Hypercompetitive Areas

Managed service providers, as well as other B2B vendors and service providers, have a very different market to compete within than they once did. In fact, the competition between different businesses has transformed into hypercompetition—the shifting adoption of various tactics for the express purpose of undermining another business’ advantages. Let’s consider how the right kind of marketing activities can help your MSP to gain an advantage over its competitors.

Competition is No Joke

As you would imagine, these strategy-centric considerations are nothing new. The Harvard Business Review published an article back in their July 1978 issue that explored the management strategies that service-based businesses should consider, posing questions like:

• “How can we defend our business from competitors?”
• “Do we fully understand the specific type of service business we are in?”
• “What is the rationale for our pricing strategy?”
• “What process are we using to develop and test new services?”

The answers to these questions (along with many others) are what help to shape a business’ strategy to take a more competitive stance in their market. Let’s explore some ways to generate value for your business, and how to leverage that value in your marketing.

How to Establish Your Value Amongst the B2B Market

If you can’t demonstrate what you have to offer to your prospects, you won’t reach the level of success you could have achieved otherwise. Part of this is for you to establish the value that you can offer your customers and outline it in clear terms. This value can take shape in a few ways:

• Service - Naturally, what you can offer to your clients as an MSP is a critical way that you can deliver value. If you can eliminate the risks that they face—or even those they fear that they face—their relationship with you is clearly beneficial.
• Quality - Delivering consistent and consistently good services that uphold your service level agreement will reassure your clientele that they’ve selected the right resource to trust their IT to.
• Responsivity - When a client reaches out, they expect (and likely need) expeditious services. Promptly communicating with them and addressing their needs and/or concerns will raise your standing with your clientele.
• Time - Or the lack thereof, really, in how long it takes for a client to see a return for their investment. Clients expect prompt benefits, so the faster you can provide them, the more value your clients will perceive.
• Price - Clients aren’t always motivated by low, low prices and other big bargains. A lot will instead seek out the highest (surprise, surprise) value they can get for the price that they pay.

Focusing your marketing messages around these aspects will help to elevate the perceived value that your audience sees in your services and give you the edge over your competition. We can help you to do so through a variety of means, starting with a comprehensive marketing plan.

This marketing plan will include, amongst many other insights, an analysis of your primary competitors and how you can outshine their services. We’ll provide an actionable plan for you to follow so that you can aggressively stake a claim to a desirable market share through localized and targeted initiatives… and assist you in implementing it if you so wish.

Give us a call at 888-546-4384 to learn more, and be sure to read our other blogs for more marketing best practices.