How Do I Find a Marketing Agency for My MSP?

Marketing can be a substantial pain point for many MSPs. Some owners believe marketing your MSP won’t produce substantial results, while others consider it too complicated or expensive, but the reality is quite the opposite. In fact, the question that most often comes up  for MSP leadership is “How do I find a marketing agency for my MSP?”

There are massive benefits to investing in marketing, including new lead acquisition, increasing your MSP’s marketplace visibility, upping your sales, establishing authority in your field and building trust with your customers. You can start making transformative marketing decisions today with the help of valuable resources or by simply hiring a digital marketing agency to do that for you.

While trying to find a marketing agency for your MSP, you should become familiar with the following key factors:

• The most important marketing elements for MSPs
• The difference between marketing in-house vs. hiring an agency
• What to look for when hiring an MSP

Once a key decision maker (or you) gains more substantial marketing knowledge, their MSP can increase their authority in the field and gain more sales. Most importantly, marketing efforts help MSPs become more aware of their strengths and limitations.

Marketing for MSPs: Key Elements

When considering what you should do with your MSP’s marketing needs, you’re probably wondering about what strategies or tactics work. 

Consider the following:

Content marketing is the most important element of MSP marketing today. If done correctly, it will do much more than increase your MSP’s visibility, it will also build trust with your customers. 

Google searches and word-of-mouth are the two primary ways MSPs get new leads. Those channels are interconnected. Therefore, you must build a sound knowledge base that provides value to your customers while following the best search engine optimization (SEO) practices. It is good to have generalized and niche content (meaning specialized topics, such as medical office IT support, security, etc.).

SEO is a process of organically increasing the quality and quantity of your website traffic without paying for ads. In this process, it is essential to satisfy Google’s SEO requirements and provide quality content through text and video formats.

A good rule of thumb is to make your website’s homepage very descriptive to continually ensure visitor engagement in longer sessions as they scroll through your site. 

However, the content on your website needs to resonate with Google as well. You do this by developing a strong keyword strategy optimized for SEO. 

A keyword is a word or phrase your target customer is typing into the Google search engine. You can find ideal keywords by seeking out a word or phrases that are important and relevant to your clientele and MSP business. Once you get the results, take note of what content appears at the top positions or first page of search engine results pages (or SERPs.) 

As you analyze the content, consider the top results’ characteristics: 

• How long is the text? 
• How is the text formatted? 
• What are the headings and subheadings used? 

Examine what your competitors are doing and use it as inspiration, but don’t just copy what they’ve written. Google punishes web pages that show duplicate content by lowering their page ranking in the search results.

It will likely be months before your content is visible, but once it is, it will remain there for a long time. Investing in a marketing agency to create the best MSP content online pays off in the long run.

If you’re looking for faster results, SEO can be paired with other strategies, such as paid Google or social media ads, depending on your budgetary and specific campaign needs.

Geographically specific ads and content possess greater value for MSPs. Your marketing agency can combine text and video content, tailoring your message and making sure it reaches people in a particular city, state or country. 

Paid ads are also highly beneficial when done the right way. SEM, PPC, banner ads and sponsored social media posts are ways an MSP can engage in paid advertisements.

Marketing analytics and KPIs include feedback from contact forms, phone calls, downloads and social media engagements. You can also rely on the “bucket of engagement metrics.” These are the basics: how long a user spends on your site, the bounce rate of marketing emails and website page visits per session. 

StoryBranding is often overlooked when leaders search “how do I find a marketing agency for my MSP?” What works today is a people-centric, story-driven approach. Making the customer the hero of your story allows your MSP to get more leads and grow. 

This source of differentiation makes your brand stand out from the overly corporate image of your competition, and creates an engaging connection to your customers’ pain points and how your MSP is uniquely qualified to solve them. 

Choosing Between In-House vs. Hiring a Marketing Agency

Whether you’re looking to hire a marketing agency or promote your business with an internal team, you need someone who understands your MSP and the marketing world. 

It is a good idea to stay flexible and try different approaches in marketing. Your strategy doesn’t have to be thoroughly thought-out from the start (that’s where an agency can prove invaluable.) Become receptive to what resonates with your target market and repeat and optimize what works.

You can also outsource to a marketing agency or specialist. Shopping for your tagline, logo and brand statement can get very pricey if you switch from provider to provider. Instead, for the average-size MSP, the focus should be on organic content because that is what generates the most leads.

What Should I Look for in a Marketing Agency for my MSP?

Locating and working with experts in any field can be daunting. Since the MSP industry has unique challenges, it’s good to work with a company that is familiar with IT services and MSP marketing.

Wondering what to look for in an agency? Seek out companies that have:

• A good system with a firm structure.
• Established success in their associated fields.
• A client rapport that is reliable and results-oriented.
• Compatibility between your MSP’s culture and their ethos.
• People-oriented professionals.

If you’d like to learn more about marketing solutions for your MSP, book a meeting with us to take marketing off your plate.