MSP Marketing Mix — Beat the competition!

A lot of MSPs don’t value marketing, full stop. Let alone the value of investing in enough of a marketing mix.

In this highly competitive market you can’t afford to sit back and wait for those referrals to come in — that will take far too long! Want to grow your business, brand and get ahead of the competition?

Then you need to establish a strong mix of marketing effort to expose your brand, values and USPs as far as you can. It doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise, but it’s vital that you start drip feeding effort & a bit of budget into different marketing activities to get that all important stand-apart from your local competition.

Have a browse and take an idea on us. If we can offer any further assistance, please get in touch! Wingman is a formed of a team of talented marketeers & sharp sales people with years’ of combined experience working on the front-line of sales & marketing within the MSP world. We know what it’s like…

Setting up a marketing mix

Establishing a marketing mix doesn’t need to be a laborious task — start from the basics. Who are my target market? (Please narrow it down to more than just, “well anyone & everyone that uses IT”!).

Work out some key answers to important questions… where they are? What do they read? What events do they attend? Who do they listen to? Who are they partnered with? What regulations are there in their industry? What likely pain points are they going to have around IT linked with their line of business? Have they been in the news lately? What updates/developments/changes have occurred within their business?

All of these insights will allow you to tailor a ‘multi-attack’ campaign to suit your intended market. You might have to repeat this exercise across a few of your key verticals. Healthcare will be very different to Education, for example. But(!) some brand exposure within one market may well spill over into others; some of the marketing effort will be a level-playing field across all of your target verticals & generate general exposure.

Start the action!

Once you’ve answered those all important questions above, it’s time to get your notes into action. Spend time developing a Marketing Action Plan around that target market sector. Look at the key marketing avenues — social, blogging, website, SEO, email, direct mail, telemarketing, events… etc, etc. Try to make a reasonable activity action against each key area — something you know your team can achieve within your time & budget. But also, remember to put a tangible target expectation against that effort — what do you hope to see in return?

A lot of these actions of course won’t necessarily deliver direct results, however are important in the brand exposure and the old adage of ‘7 touches’ before someone will buy from you. It’s all about building recognition, reputation and keeping you fresh in their mind for when they’re ready to buy.

The majority of your competition simply aren’t doing it, so it’s time to get ahead of them and make your brand stand apart & into the eyes of your prospective clients.