The Ultimate MSP Marketing Guide: Strategies, Services, and How an MSP Marketing Agency Can Help

Effective marketing is critical to drive growth in the competitive managed IT services sector. Does your MSP marketing strategy need a revamp?

Managed service providers (MSPs) are a critical business enabler for small and medium sized businesses who don’t have the resources for an in-house IT department, and the market shows it: Globally, the managed services market size was estimated at $267.35 billion in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.6% until 2030.

The MSP landscape is going through a period of true transformation right now: MSPs are continually increasing their focus and offerings around cybersecurity, infrastructure, cloud, and more. Digital transformations are in full swing and AI is taking the technology world by storm. In the fast-paced world of managed IT services, effective MSP marketing to boost visibility and grow your business is a critical factor for success in this competitive space. 

In this comprehensive MSP marketing guide, we will explore 10 actionable strategies to enhance your digital presence and drive growth. If you’re a seasoned MSP looking to revamp your marketing approach or growing via acquisitions and needing to integrate, this guide will equip you with the knowledge you need to create a robust MSP marketing strategy. 

Note: It’s important to have a marketing team that understands your business and targets. If you’d like to learn more about finding the right marketing partner to support your MSP business, download our eBook. 

1. Define Your Target Audience: The First Step for MSP Marketing Success

Before diving into marketing efforts, precisely defining your target audience is vital: You need to understand exactly who you are targeting so you can determine where to find them and how to tailor your strategies to better resonate. To determine your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), first think about the best customers that you currently have: Which characteristics of this customer apply more broadly across your potential prospect base? Areas to consider include:

• Company industry—do you have the most success working with a certain industry, like real estate or healthcare?
• Company size—where is your sweet spot where you can provide the best value for your client?
• Geography—how far will you travel to work in-person with customers (and is that even required?)? How far out do you need to target to get the volume you’re looking for? I.e., always keep in mind your total addressable market. (TAM).
• Pain points—your clients may be looking to increase their IT maturity, solve operational and efficiency issues, or protect against cybersecurity threats.

In addition to coming up with your current ICP, you should also think critically about your target audience for expansion opportunities: Would you rather work with bigger or more mature companies? Consider emerging or expanding industries, compliance and regulatory needs, level of IT and security maturity, and shifting your target company size to home in on exactly who you want. 

The right  MSP marketing agency partner should assist by conducting comprehensive market research and providing valuable insights into your target audience’s preferences and behaviors, in addition to TAM and helping understand the best angle for success. 

2. Impress Your Prospects with a Strong Brand Identity

A compelling brand identity forms the cornerstone of successful MSP marketing: it’s who you are. There’s more to a brand than just a nice logo—keep the following components in mind when building your brand:

• Visual identity: The classics—logo, color scheme, fonts, imagery and icon style, and other visual characteristics. Your visual identity is often the first thing that your target audience will notice about your company, and it can have a huge impact on how you are perceived. By nature, what you do is cutting-edge, so ensure your brand reflects that position.
• Messaging: What your company says. Your unique value proposition (UVP), brand promise, and vision should be consistent across your website, written content, sales and marketing materials, and internal/external talk tracks—and these points must resonate with your target audience.
• Voice and tone: How your company talks and writes. Voice refers to the elements of your writing that don’t change: Specific linguistic techniques and certain terms you use, for example. By contrast, your tone varies piece-by-piece, as it does when you speak. For example, you would use a far more serious tone on a blog post about a cybersecurity concern than for a social media post showcasing a recent teambuilding event.

A consistent brand that resonates with your target audience instills trust and recognition, setting you apart and drawing in prospects. Additionally, don’t forget to take a look at your closest competitors’ brands to see how you stack up. An MSP marketing agency can partner with you to help refine your brand identity and messaging and create a cohesive strategy aligning with your business goals.

3. Elevate Your MSP Marketing Game with an Engaging Website

Your website serves as the virtual storefront for your business—it’s where your prospects get their information about your company. The number of buying interactions, or “touchpoints” before prospects are ready to make a purchase decision, has grown enormously in the last few years—during the pandemic, it jumped from 17 to 27! This includes self-guided interactions—mainly internet research, advertising, social media, and personal interactions. The majority of these interactions will drive prospects directly to your website, which means that your site must be: these interactions will drive prospects directly to your website, which means that your site must be:

• User-friendly and aligned with the buyer’s journey—your prospects should easily be able to find more information about your offerings as well as educational content
• Visually appealing and on-brand for a great first impression
• Optimized for lead generation—don’t miss out on capturing all of that great interest that your marketing efforts generate!

In addition to the visual and usability factors on your website, there are technical pieces to consider as well to be sure your site can be found and used. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, loads quickly, and employs SEO best practices to improve visibility in search engine results. Confirm that your website and company information pulls correctly into local business listings and maps—Google Maps, Apple Maps, Google Business, and Bing Places, for example.

There are a lot of components to a high-quality website that performs. A reputable MSP marketing agency can design and develop a high-converting website that attracts and retains visitors, maximizing your online presence.

4. Nail Your SEO To Drive the Right Traffic and Engagement

On a related note, a well-executed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is fundamental to improving your online visibility. Improving your SEO the right way helps drive the right people—prospective customers—to your website so they can find your business, learn about your services, and reach out to your team. 

SEO is a long-term play, and there are a lot of considerations to get it right. The first step is to conduct keyword research to identify relevant search terms used by your target audience. Then, you can work to optimize your website and content with these keywords to rank higher in search engine results. Investing in content generation, working to build relevant and quality backlinks, and ensuring your website loads quickly and is mobile-responsive can also help drive a higher search engine ranking. 

An MSP marketing agency with SEO expertise can conduct a comprehensive audit, implement technical optimizations, and execute a content-driven SEO strategy for better rankings.

5. Deploy Strategic Content Marketing to Showcase Your Expertise

Effective content marketing that aligns with your brand helps you to establish yourself as a thought leader and attract potential customers. But don’t just write content for the sake of content: Always start with your content marketing strategy first (an MSP marketing agency can help guide your strategic process), then use it as a guide as you select your topics and content formats.

Share insights and expertise using informative blog posts, e-books, whitepapers, and videos addressing your audience’s pain points—then promote the heck out of it! Email and social media are a great starting point for promotion, but you can also distribute your content through industry publications, content syndication, paid advertising, video, and more. Additionally, think about how you can repurpose your pieces to get more bang for your content generation buck: Could a great blog post be shortened and turned into an infographic or tip sheet? Can you pull snippet videos from a webinar to share on social media?

A note about AI: Generative AI tools like ChatGPT have been a game-changer for content marketing, and can be a valuable tool to help you in crafting content, providing ideas, and even helping with the editing process. However, it’s important to remember that while AI can enhance your productivity, it can’t replace the need for your unique insights and expertise in thought leadership. Originality and the human touch are essential in establishing your unique voice and perspective—and in staying ahead of SEO trends as AI-generated content becomes more prevalent. So, while AI can be a helpful collaborator, the responsibility of shaping and owning your thought leadership remains with you, ensuring your content reflects your authentic ideas and experiences.

6. Double Down on Social Media to Build Meaningful Connections

In today’s digital landscape, social media is an indispensable tool to build a legitimate online brand and connect with potential prospects and partners. However, it’s not enough to merely have social media accounts. Consistency in your social media efforts, such as sharing valuable content, interacting with followers, and actively participating in relevant discussions not only amplifies your presence but also nurtures meaningful relationships with potential clients.

To take it a step beyond posting consistency, there is truly a lot of potential on social media, and if you aren’t leveraging it fully, you might be missing the boat on numerous opportunities. From social selling and Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategies to branding and awareness campaigns, building individual expert profiles, and more, there is a wide spectrum of activities and priorities to explore.

What platforms should you focus on? Most MSPs have the best success with LinkedIn (including Sales Navigator for sales focus) and Facebook. Depending on your target audience, you may also want to experiment with X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, or newer tools like Mastodon. To efficiently manage multiple social media channels, try social media scheduling tools like HubSpot, Hootsuite, or Buffer. Partnering with a specialized MSP marketing agency can further streamline the process of social media planning, content curation, audience targeting, and posting.

7. Add Paid Advertising to Your MSP Marketing Mix

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does” – Steuart Henderson Britt

While Steuart Henderson Britt wasn’t around to account for the intricacies of organic SEO and free social media exposure in his teachings, the point remains: For many businesses, paid advertising is mission-critical for generating leads and hitting growth goals. Two of the most common methods for advertising are: 

• Paid Search: Google Ads is the clear frontrunner at this time, but Bing ads are also growing in popularity and worth a shot. Targeted, pay-per-click ads text ads appear at the top of search engine results for specific keywords and geographies, so you can home in tightly on what you want your target market to be searching.
• Paid Social Media: LinkedIn, and to some extent Facebook, offer powerful, niche targeting—you can filter audiences to reach exactly the right people for your ads based on industry, title/job function, geography, interests, and more, then display image or video ads in their social media feed or even send them paid direct messages.

Regardless of your chosen platform (or mix of both), we typically recommend two methods:

• Full-Funnel Advertising: This is a long-game approach which entails creating ads that reach prospects at various stages of their buying journey—from building awareness to driving consideration and, ultimately, securing conversions. The full-funnel campaign retargets people who visit your website or click on your awareness-level ads to receive ads further down the funnel until they convert.
• Intent-Based Advertising: This means ensuring that your ads reach and convert users who are not only in your target demographic, but are also expressing interest or intent related to your services or solutions. For example, they might be Google searching “MSP near me” or engaging with your eBook on “How to Choose the Right MSP For Your Business.” These ads often tend to be more expensive because they are more targeted, but when you do receive leads, they are more likely to convert to a customer because they are already searching for your solution.

The world of paid media can be complex, and many have tried it, only to discover that it didn’t yield the expected results. If you haven’t tried paid advertising before—or tried without success—we highly recommend working with an experienced MSP marketing agency who can manage your PPC campaigns, allocate your budget effectively, and optimize ads to drive qualified leads to your website. 

8. Offer Irresistible Lead Magnets for Effective MSP Marketing

Your educational content is valuable—turn it into a lead magnet to start generating prospects and growing your network and mailing list. Lead magnets like eBooks, templates, whitepapers, and webinars entice prospects to fill out a form to get the valuable information inside. 

What makes a quality lead magnet? Your prospects aren’t going to give you their contact information for free. Include thought-provoking, valuable content, proprietary information, new statistics and research, and expert insight to make it tempting and worth the download—and don’t forget to make your piece visually appealing for that professional touch.

While it is not appropriate for every content piece, we recommend having at least a couple of lead magnets that are intent-based—like we discussed for advertising, they indicate interest in your services. This is a little tongue-in-cheek, but here is an example from Magnetude’s own resource library: A Step-by-Step Guide To Finding The Right Marketing Firm for Managed Service Providers. Consider how the title and landing page copy indicates to us, as a marketing agency, that a person who downloads this eBook is likely in need of our services. Inside the eBook, you’ll find advice on how to gauge if an MSP marketing agency is the right fit for your business—and a clear call-to-action to contact us if you need marketing support. Think through how a similar concept could apply for your business—what eBook topics would indicate that a prospect is thinking about working with an MSP?

9. Don’t Underestimate the Power of Email for MSP Marketing

Email marketing has gotten a bit of a bad rap as inboxes are flooded with notifications, offers, and true junk. But despite all this, email marketing done the right way continues to stand out as a powerful tool for nurturing leads and building lasting customer relationships. Remember the statistic we mentioned above on the number of touchpoints needed before a sale? As you begin to generate all those great leads through your advertising, organic efforts, and lead magnet promotion, you’ll need a strong email nurture program to keep leads in the fold before they’re ready to speak to sales.

Effective email is not just about sending generic messages; it’s about creating meaningful connections. Be sure to tailor your emails to your audience’s preferences by sharing personalized and pertinent content, from the latest industry updates to educational resources and exclusive offers.

Segmenting your email list based on your recipients’ interests and their past interactions with your emails is the secret sauce. By doing so, you’re ensuring that your messages hit the right mark, resonating with each reader on a personal level, which not only boosts engagement but also enhances the likelihood of conversions and customer retention.

10. Partner with an MSP Marketing Agency to Supercharge Results

If you made it this far, you clearly see the sheer amount of expertise and resources required for an effective MSP marketing strategy. Many MSPs choose to partner with a marketing agency that specializes in MSPs, IT, and technology to leverage their specialized marketing expertise and resourcing power. In fact, working with an outside marketing partner brings a lot of cost efficiencies and specialized expertise in the same way that your clients benefit from working with an MSP for their IT needs—in a way, the right MSP marketing agency is managed services, just for marketing.

When looking for a marketing partner, it’s important to find the best fit for your company, industry, pain points, and culture. Subject matter expertise, a well-defined strategy paired with impeccable execution, custom-tailored plans designed specifically for your business, and a metrics-driven approach are all essential considerations in your search. Your chosen agency’s industry insights, resources, and commitment to these principles will have a significant impact on your marketing strategy and your results. 

The world of managed IT services is rapidly evolving, and a robust marketing strategy is essential for success in this dynamic landscape. We hope these 10 actionable strategies have been helpful as you plan your MSP marketing strategy to enhance your online presence, define and reach your target audience, and achieve growth. We often find that partnering with the right MSP marketing agency is the key to success for our clients. If you’re ready to take your MSP marketing to the next level, contact us for a free consultation.