The Persuasive Power of Statistics in MSP Marketing

You want your MSP marketing to be persuasive in getting your target audience to do what you want them to do - turning to you for all of their IT needs. Unfortunately words aren’t always enough. Sometimes, you’ll need to use some numbers (specifically, statistics) to get your message across - the Statistics Appeal advertising strategy.

What is the Statistics Appeal?

The Statistics Appeal is an advertising strategy used by marketers to further persuade individuals to do something, whether it's to purchase a product or service, donate to a worthy cause, or buy into an idea.

The reason it is so powerful and persuasive is because people trust numbers, and they’re often a lot easier to digest than paragraphs of text saying the same thing. If you’re running a fact-based, thought-provoking marketing campaign, the right statistics can take the persuasive level of your message to the next level. The best part is, you can sprinkle them in to any type of marketing that you do! Use them on your landing and service pages, in your blogs, on social media, in your direct mail pieces - wherever you need a little extra persuasion with your message.

Finding the Right Statistics to Use

As a small business, you don’t necessarily have the tools to conduct a large, comprehensive statistical research. No worries - there are plenty of statistics that you can “borrow” to use in your MSP marketing message! Google is your friend.

When looking, know that you’re going to run into studies that were clearly conducted with an agenda. A cloud storage corporation publishing a study about people’s perceptions of the cloud? Probably a bit of bias rooted in their study. Since you’re using these statistics in your own marketing message and not as a consumer considering a purchase decision, this bias might not seem as important. However, you should still be keeping it in mind.

You should also try to use statistics from reputable sources. Instead of grabbing a statistic from a PDF showcasing a college student’s survey of ~50 of their classmates you randomly stumbled upon, pick one from a published, peer reviewed paper that conducted their research on a realistic and large real-world sample.

Reframe Statistics to Strengthen Your MSP Marketing

You’ve probably been warned during your lifetime about how deceptive statistics can be. Outside of the mathematical reasons they need to be taken with a grain of salt such as who was sampled, how the study/survey was conducted, how many were surveyed/tested and the like, you can distort them in your favor based on how things are worded. Yeah… we know this sounds a bit concerning, but it is a tool that you can use in your marketing to strengthen your message!

For example, you could take a statistic that says something regarding “33 percent of companies” and change it to say “1 out of 3 companies”. It’s still an accurate representation! To the human brain though, 1 out of 3 companies sounds like a lot more than 33 percent of companies.

Practice Ethical Statistical Use

Going off of what we said previously, statistics can also be distorted in a way that brings them quite far from the truth. Instead of just changing the format in which the data is represented, you can actually distort things by changing “51% of people surveyed” to “over half of those surveyed.” It’s still technically true, but it’s a bit deceiving to do this.

If you do choose to distort statistics in this way, you can run into problems down the line if a prospect decides to do their own research regarding this subject. When they discover the truth, it’s likely going to instill some distrust of your company and brand, so we highly suggest not doing this.

We also recommend, in some way, referencing where you got that statistic from. You can name the company or organization who conducted the research, and even say some basic information regarding the research itself like when it was conducted, the type of people in their sample (e.g., mid-level managers, small business owners, etc.), and the sample size. The amount of additional information you can and should give is going to depend on the marketing medium you are using.

Take it To the Next Level with an Infographic

If you have a bit of time on your hands and want to make your statistics that much more impactful, consider creating an infographic. Creating a visually appealing graphic branded with your logo and company colors can help instill a belief that your brand is an expert in the topic in which the infographic depicts.

Don’t take our word for it; check out this infographic we made a while back showcasing the benefits of marking infographics a part of your MSP marketing strategy.

It’s Time to Get Marketing Your MSP!

Now that you know how to use statistics in your MSP marketing, you can hit the ground running. Or, you can let us do the work for you. We already take advantage of the Statistics Appeal advertising strategy by sprinkling in powerful, relevant statistics into our MSP marketing services as a way to help our clients better convince their target audience about the benefits of managed IT services.

Feel free to reach out to us if you’re interested in having us assist you in taking your MSP marketing strategy to the next level.