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Welcome to Episode 277 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• No idea where to start with your MSP’s marketing? Start Here: Discover the most important marketing things that will bring new leads into your MSP in my brand new, easy to read book.
• People only buy managed services for one of two reasons: Most purchases are made to either fix a problem (needs), or to make the buyer feel good (wants). You should offer an almost endless supply of additional services to meet these two criteria.
• The MSP mindset that grows your business: Building a successful MSP isn’t just about what you do, it’s also very much about the way you think. If you and your technicians adopt this way of thinking, then you’ll achieve immense things.
• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Freeing up your time is a challenge but absolutely essential to the growth of your MSP. Here’s the simplest way to achieve it.

No idea where to start with your MSP’s marketing? Start Here

Does this sound familiar? Are you completely overwhelmed with what marketing you should be doing in the short amount of time you have to do it? Well, many MSPs are in this exact situation. There’s so much information and advice out there, the problem is actually cutting through all the noise and figuring out exactly what you should do and in what order.

I spent years figuring this out and refining it. And finally, you can discover the most important marketing things that will bring new leads into your MSP. They’re all in my brand new, easy to read book. Stick around for some of the best highlights.

One of the coolest things about recording a podcast or doing YouTube videos or even writing a blog every week is that it allows you to go back and see where your mind was years and years before. I’ve been working with MSPs since 2016, and the core marketing advice that I’m giving to you today is no different to the advice that I was giving nine years ago. Sure, some of the tactics have changed, but the good solid basic marketing strategy is exactly the same. Because a good strategy doesn’t change for decades, it’s just the tactics that change.

What I’ve really noticed over the last four or five years is that I’ve got considerably better at explaining what you should do in an easier and easier way. And I’ve spoken to thousands of MSPs over the years and I realised that the majority of them, they don’t want highly advanced marketing tactics and clever strategies that are actually quite difficult to implement.

The vast majority of MSPs I speak to just want marketing to be easy. They want clear, simple recommendations of what to do and how to do it.

And that’s driven me to refine my three-step lead generation system and the tasks that I believe you most need to do are contained within that. Now, I don’t think this is a mission that’s ever really completed, but in the last year or so, I believe I have made a big jump forward. And one thing that’s helped me with that is writing a book on this subject. It’s actually just gone on sale on Amazon worldwide. You can get it on your Kindle, including in the free Kindle library thing. You can also get a paperback copy. Now I’ve written a few over the years, but I genuinely believe that this one is the most powerful book I’ve ever written, because it’s the easiest to understand.

It’s called MSP marketing: Start Here. And I actually physically wrote the first version on an eight hour flight from the UK to Las Vegas when I was speaking at Scale Con in Octob...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Welcome to Episode 276 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• Happy client? Ask for a testimonial NOW: There is a perfect moment to ask your clients for a testimonial or review. This social proof is really important, and when you systemise collecting it, it’s going to make your life so much easier.
• Why MSPs should add new LinkedIn connections every day: LinkedIn is the single most important place for MSPs to go marketing right now and I’m going to tell you the best way to leverage it.
• How this MSP marketer grew the business: There’s no better way for you to find the right ideas to market your business than listening to other people who are doing it right now. My guest talks us through what he’s done and what you can take away and implement quickly.
• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Do you know what a vanity URL is and have you ever wondered if you need one? An MSP has asked the question which I answer in this episode.

Happy client? Ask for a testimonial NOW

What if I told you there was a perfect moment to ask your MSP’s clients for a testimonial or review. But you must act on it super quickly, as that moment will very fast vanish. If you struggle to collect social proof from your clients, this is going to make your life so much easier and even allow you to systemise getting testimonials and reviews from your happiest clients.

So we all know that social proof is really, really important. Social proof is when people see other people like them acting in a certain way, and it gives them kind of a feeling of safety to know that other people have already tread the path that they are thinking of treading. And what I mean by that is collecting testimonials, reviews, and case studies from your existing clients, and then using that “social proof”, as it’s called, to persuade other people to pick your MSP.

You’ll be perceived as a safer choice by business owners and managers if they see that other business owners and managers have already picked you and are happy to endorse you.

Now, you’ve probably heard this before, but maybe there’s been something that’s been holding you back from collecting lots of social proof. Maybe it’s just been you simply haven’t had enough time, too many things to do, right? Or maybe you felt a little awkward asking your clients to give you a review or a testimonial. I mean, they’re already paying you money every month, surely you can’t ask them for something else, can you? Well, as a side note, yes you can. In fact, your best clients are often the most delighted to give you a testimonial or review because they want to see you succeed so that they can continue to enjoy your service.

Whatever the reason you don’t have enough social proof yet, let me tell you the perfect moment to go asking for it. You’re looking for the point at which your client is at their happiest, and we can actually predict when this will be. There are two, maybe three times that they’re most likely to be at their happiest, and the first will be about 90 days after they very first joined you. So that first month is always a little bit manic, isn’t it? As you are onboarding them and you are migrating any services away from their previous MSP. And then the second and third months are where you work your magic and where the really good stuff happens. So they see little problems that never got sorted with the previous MSP get fixed by you. And you probably over service them a little in that first month or so, so everyone is very happy with you,...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Welcome to Episode 275 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• Why the tough life of an MSP owner is worth it: Running a business can feel like it’s sucking all your time and energy, but the big picture is that you can work towards the lifestyle you most want to live.
• How a messy office damages your MSP’s sales: Is your office a pristine, tidy space with zero mess or an untidy space packed with clutter? Find out why your environment impacts your effectiveness.
• EXCLUSIVE: How to reduce tickets while delighting clients: My guest explains why digital organisation is vital for business health and how you can help clients consolidate, archive and purge their data for a more effecient work flow.
• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Do you ever wonder how happy your staff are? I have the questions to help you find out the answer.

Why the tough life of an MSP owner is worth it

What is it with people like you and me running on fumes? If you’re running an MSP, I know what it’s like right now. That boost you had from time off over Christmas, all that recharging festive fuel, that was months ago. It’s all long gone. And yet we keep pushing, don’t we mile after mile after mile, hoping we can keep the business going, hoping we can keep it growing. But is this actually the best way to run an MSP? Stick around to be reminded why we do this, how to keep your energy levels up and the unexpected benefit to your life and lifestyle in the long-term.

So this is my 20th year as a business owner and my goodness that has gone so quickly. I kid you not, I was 30 when I started my first business and I was young and cool and now I’m this old man, I’m age 50, I’ve got the creaky back, I’ve got a dodgy knee. And if you’re in your twenties or thirties right now, do not get cocky kid. This is going to happen to you as well. Although by the time that you reach the age the I am now, I’ll be in a nursing home, anyway.

One of the constants of being a business owner is that it is hard work. I have a great business now with a great team at the MSP Marketing Edge and we do great work for MSPs all over the world with our service. But I still have weeks where I’m working more hours than someone with a job would. If I worked for someone else in a job, I would never do those 50, 60 week hours, rarely anyway. And if I look back over the last 20 years, there have been many of those periods of time where you throw yourself into projects or problems or whatever it is. I’m sure you do exactly the same.

The truth is only business owners can understand this…

Running a business that you own is more than just something you do. It’s more than just a job. It’s very much a way of life.

It has a unique way of sucking every single last ounce of energy and every last second of time out of you. And do you know, as I hear myself saying that, I realise that I’m not really painting it in a very good light for someone who’s actually thinking of starting their own MSP. So sorry if that’s you. But I think actually before anyone starts their own business, really they need to understand the downsides as well as the upsides. It is an all consuming thing and especially so with an MSP because running an MSP is surely running one of the most difficult kinds of businesses in the world.

There are so many details you need to be across, there’s so much that changes. And of course you have to be both proactive and reactive at the same time. You have to be proactive stopping things from going wrong, but then reactive...