New Year's Resolution

Have you been putting off investing resources into marketing your MSP? As the new year starts, now is your chance to take the necessary steps to generate the leads your business needs to grow. Take a moment to consider these New Year’s resolutions you can do to bring your MSP to the attention of potential customers.

Market Your MSP With These Three New Year’s Resolutions

Was last year’s marketing plan a success? Congratulations, if it was, chances are you are well-positioned to continue to generate the leads your business needs to grow. Unfortunately, MSPs are notoriously reluctant to invest in marketing as an industry. Historically, many MSPs never have a marketing plan or don’t implement the one they managed to cobble together. 

Some excuses we have heard as to why MSPs choose NOT to advertise their services include the following:

• “SEO doesn’t work”
• “Social Media doesn’t work”
• “My last MSP marketing plan didn’t work”

These excuses are repeated year after year, as their competitors have embraced marketing and, over time, have been chipping away at their marketing share. Well, this is a new year and a chance to try something new. Here are three New Year’s resolutions MSPs should embrace when marketing their services.

Resolution One: Review your website.
When was the last time you took a good look at your website? Was it when it first went live and then never again? How many years ago was that? Now that the new year has started, take a moment to take a critical look at your website. Doing so is essential because your website is your primary source of information about the services your MSP offers. If your website does not adequately represent your capabilities, you may lose potential leads before they have a chance to learn more about your business.

Your website is often the first impression a potential customer will have of your business, and ensuring they have a good experience is essential. Cliched it may be, there's never a second chance for a first impression. If your website appears old-fashioned and has outdated information, potential customers may not trust you as a resource. It's not hard to understand why a likely lead may view an MSP with a poor website as not the type of "technology expert" with which they would be willing to risk their business technology.

Not sure how to take a critical look at your website? The best way to review your website is to look at it from the perspective of the audience you want to target. By viewing your website through the eyes of your customers, you can see the perspective of your most important critics. Does your website convince you that you can help their business? 

What type of things should you be looking for when reviewing your website?

• Speed: Does your website feel responsive, or is it sluggish?
• Navigation: Does your website make sense, and can you find the information you are looking for?
• Look and Feel: Does your website seem modern? Is it well-designed and attractive?
• Information: Does your website provide information that answers your questions?

If any of these elements are missing, and you have a poor experience, there is a good chance that any customer will have the same experience. This means your website is going to have a hard time being able to be effective in converting visitors into customers.

Resolution Two: Write a blog or other content.
If you can only follow up on one resolution regarding your MSP marketing, we recommend you focus on creating content. It’s important to understand that Google’s primary goal is to provide a searcher with the answer to their question. To drive traffic to your website, you must offer content that provides those answers. If you found your website wasn’t driving as much traffic or generating leads last year, it is a strong possibility that this was due to a lack of compelling content.

As an aside, if you’re looking for the secret sauce to rank on Google, writing content is the most effective way to do so. If you’re still searching for a magic MSP keyword to push you to the top of Google, you will be disappointed, mainly because Google no longer uses individual keywords as a ranking factor, but instead, whether or not your content provides answers.

Content quality is more important than ever, as Google has recently updated the algorithms they use to promote websites. Google’s helpful content update is designed to push content and their corresponding websites to the top of search results. If you want to break through the noise of your competitors, your content is the best way to do so.

Resolution Three: Set up a marketing meeting.
Marketing is an essential component of your business’ growth, because unless you promote your business, you won’t be able to generate the leads you need to operate. Simply put, if you don’t show how your services can help their business, you won’t get many leads.

Many MSPs understand this and recognize that they don’t have the time or expertise to market their business successfully. This is where partnering with an MSP marketing agency can help them: by allowing them to focus on answering calls, following up leads, and not on the marketing process itself.

If you haven’t been happy with your previous marketing success and considered asking for help, but didn’t follow through, now is the time to set up a meeting. As we noted, it will take time for your marketing to gain traction, so the sooner you schedule a consultation, the sooner you will see results. 

Did Last Year’s Marketing Plan Achieve Its Goals?

If it didn’t, or you don’t know how to improve your results, remember you don’t have to go it alone. Successfully marketing your MSP relies upon tried and true techniques designed to help your business break through the noise of your competitors and get noticed. It takes time to develop the expertise needed to be successful. Simply put, the more you understand marketing best practices, the better your chances. However, you’re in the business of managed IT, and while you certainly can invest the time and resources to become a marketing expert, the question is, is that the best use of your attention?