MSP Holistic Marketing Methodology: Adapt [Guest Post]

This is a guest post by Dave Sutton, MD at Wingman: Sales and Marketing for MSPs.

The best type of advertising is word of mouth, and if you've been diligent in recent weeks, there's no doubt your customers will've been raving about how your services have helped them. It's also likely that if some of your competitors have stuck to their same old ways, their verbal reviews haven't been quite as shining.

If you're looking to take your business to the next level, adaptability is key.

The current climate poses a real opportunity for providers to step-up and be known, proudly shout from the rooftops the level of value you deliver to your clients, as there will be businesses out there reeling from technology woes that damaged their performance during the COVID-19 crisis.

So, the time to start engaging with new potential customers is now.

Where to begin?

There are 5 key steps to a campaign:

1. Data – A successful campaign needs to be aimed at the right people. Quality, accurate, profiled data is absolutely essential
   
   
2. Message – A clear, succinct, well defined message is required. If it can be tailored to your market niche/s, all the better
   
   
3. Creative & Copy – Marketing assets will be required to deliver the steps of your campaign. Be that emails, website landing pages or PDF material
   
   
4. Structured activity – A scheduled series of touchpoints using multiple marketing mediums are a must to attract & engage prospects into the pipeline
   
   
5. Follow-Up – A human-to-human sales engagement is needed to critically follow-up with prospects. Build relationships, learn about their business and nurture their interest

It’s time to get planning.

As business owners & managers we've all identified what our best customer looks like – where they're based, how big they are and what industries they are in; so why bother marketing to anyone else?

By driving your marketing activity to well curated lists of prospects, you can ensure that your message is only read by the most appropriate potential customers. This means that your marketing spend and sales efforts aren’t wasted on chasing down the wrong businesses either.

Where to start?

1. How big is my market? - Look to the ONS (The Office of National Statistics). The ONS are the only accurate source that will openly (and free of charge!) share reports that will help you identify the number of businesses by geography, by size and by industry. These numbers will be critical to your marketing planning.
   
   
2. Where do I get the contact details? - There are countless sources of data – even in this post GDPR world, there are always options to identify and pool together prospective customers. Your preferred marketing partner should support you in sourcing data, or you can turn to a traditional data house or scrape it yourself by cherry picking contacts from LinkedIn or industry associations websites.
   
   
3. Get cleaning! – It can be a time consuming and very laborious task, but essential in making sure you really do have the right firms, contact details and names to feed into your marketing engine
   
   
4. Profile – Before you begin marketing & selling to the pool of prospective customers you have identified – you need to learn about them; vet their size, structure, relationships with incumbent suppliers, contracts, needs and business pain points

Got stuck?

I work at Wingman, a specialised sales and marketing agency for MSPs, and we’d love to help. If you read 'agency' and got a cold sweat, don't worry, we practice what we preach.

Working intimately with our clients, we spend all day every day supporting technology service businesses with everything from data and content to telemarketing. To date, we've collaborated with more than 35 MSPs and helped take their marketing to the next level.

If you're an MSP and are considering outsourced support for any of your sales or marketing activity, get in touch with Wingman today.