IT Service Marketing: A Checklist for MSPs

Effective marketing helps your business stand out, especially for managed service providers (MSPs). When you take a strategic approach you’ll build brand awareness, establish trust and most importantly, attract the right clients. But, what do you need to market your business? Keep reading to learn the essentials of IT service marketing. 

1. Establish a Clear Marketing Strategy

Before you jump into one-off tasks like creating your company’s LinkedIn page and signing up for Google Ads, you need to create a marketing strategy. Otherwise, your efforts may not align with goals, and you could become lost in the sea of competitors. 

Here are two tips to build your IT service marketing strategy: 

• Define your target audience: This is also known as developing your buyer personas. Your buyer personas help you identify the industries, business size and pain points your ideal customers may have. You can use this information to create messaging and content that speaks directly to your ideal potential customer.
• Perform a SWOT analysis: This analysis assesses your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Its purpose is to highlight areas for differentiation and improvement. 

2. Strengthen Your Digital Presence

Everything is online today; absolutely everything, including a good majority of your IT service marketing efforts. The first place to start is by optimizing your website. You want to ensure a seamless user experience that’s mobile responsive and informative. 

By adding search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, you’re more likely to be found by your audience. Use keywords to enhance that visibility and drive organic traffic right to your website. 

3. Develop Engaging Content

With so much of today’s marketing being online, it’s critical to create engaging content. By providing valuable content, you establish your MSP as a thought leader in the industry.  

An IT service marketing pro tip: Your industry greatly benefits from prioritizing education over prioritizing selling. Educational content can include blog posts, case studies, industry insights and sharing tips on social media. Ask yourself this question when creating content: Does it address or solve a pain point my clients experience? If the answer is yes, then it’s educational. 

Now in order to get someone to see your blogs, your social media posts and other content, you need to be consistent with publishing. By creating a structured content plan or social media calendar (ideally both) you can plan content and regularly update your audience.  

Creating a plan also helps you map out keywords and strategize social media content. 

4. Utilize Paid Marketing Channels

Organic leads can take a while. SEO takes time to get going, and unless you’re buying followers (please don’t), your social media profiles will need time to build organically. Fortunately, paid advertising can help you reach targeted audiences quickly. 

Google Ads and other search engine ads can help your organization appear in search results when potential clients are actively looking for IT services.

Social media ads, especially those on LinkedIn, can be targeted to engage decision-makers and expand your brand awareness. 

A good IT service marketing strategy should use both organic and paid methods. So don’t discount the good organic methods even though they may not return results as quickly as paid. 

5. Build a Strong Reputation

Credibility is vital in both gaining and keeping clients, especially when they are trusting you with the backbone and cybersecurity of their company. 

Here’s how you can show your credibility in your marketing:

• Share reviews and testimonials on social media or display them on your website.  
• Publish case studies that demonstrate further how your company has helped businesses overcome challenges and achieve goals. 

6. Leverage Local Marketing Techniques

Whether you only serve local customers or customers all over, your marketing strategy should include local search optimization. 

Two of BigOrange’s favorite ways to do that are:

• Leveraging your Google Business Profile to its fullest extent.  
• Using location-specific keywords to improve visibility among local businesses while searching for IT services. 

7. Track and Improve Performance

Lastly, there’s no way to tell if your IT service marketing strategy is working if you don’t track the results and then refine your strategy. 

It’s important to track key performance indicators (KPIs). You may want to track:

• Website traffic.
• Conversion rates on PPC ads. 
• Campaign ROI.
• Total engagement on your LinkedIn.

This helps you determine the overall effectiveness of your strategy. When a part of your strategy isn’t meeting KPIs, then it’s time for a new plan. Use the data you have at hand to adjust and improve your approach. 

You Don’t Have to Go IT Alone

A well-structured marketing plan is essential for your business. Whether you are in IT, cybersecurity or even landscaping. But, that doesn’t mean you have to try to also become a marketing pro, too. Luckily for you, you’ve been hanging out with a great MSP marketing firm for the past five minutes. You can keep hanging out with us and get support with your marketing if you book a call with us right now.