We are continuing a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the second step: Grow relationships.

Welcome to Episode 320 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Grow relationships

Hello and welcome to another special episode of the podcast. We are continuing a three-part series this week. Earlier this year I released my book, MSP marketing: Start Here, about a 3 step lead generation system trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world. Last week, we looked at the first step – build audiences. Today it’s the second step – grow relationships.

I want to tell you a secret about marketing that most MSPs miss. It’s not about technology. It’s not about your tools, your stack or your accreditations. It’s about trust. Because nobody’s buying from you until they trust you, and they can’t trust you until they like you, and they can’t like you until they know you. That’s why the second step, growing relationships, matters so much.

Think about your own buying habits. When was the last time you hired someone for your business – a supplier, a consultant, or an agency – where you knew deep down, these are my people, this is my person. That didn’t happen because they cold called you at the right moment, right? It happened because you felt like you already knew them. Maybe you’d seen their content or you’d heard their stories or maybe laughed at their bad jokes, or maybe a friend had talked about them, or maybe you just liked their energy. You trusted them before you ever met with them. And that’s what you’re trying to create for your prospects.

Growing relationships is about showing up regularly with something useful, human, consistent. And the good news is it doesn’t need to be complicated.

You don’t need to become a social media influencer or hire a full-time marketing team. You just need to keep feeding your audiences with what I call edutainment – education and entertainment combined, something that teaches and makes them smile at the same time. Now, that’s your weekly email, that’s your blog on your website, that’s your LinkedIn posts which should go out every day, it’s your videos that you make or that you get in for your business. It’s not about talking tech, it’s about talking people.

Business owners don’t care about patching, monitoring, or endpoint protection. They care about whether their team can get work done without tearing their hair out. They care about productivity, they care about growth, stress, risk. So talk about those things. Show them that you understand what it’s like to run a business because that’s what builds connection. One of my favorite ways to do this is through storytelling. Tell stories about your clients with permission of course, or at the very least, anonymise it. Tell them how a small tech change made someone’s life easier, about mistakes that you made early in your business and what you learned. Because stories stick and if you can make someone feel something – curiosity relief, even a little amusement – they will remember you.

And the magic is that over time, these people start to feel like they know you. They see your face on LinkedIn every week. They read your newsletter over their morning coffee. They might even forward one of your emails to a colleague. They’re building a relationship with you even though you’ve never met. That’s the heart of marketing today. Asynchronous relationships. You build them slowly with every piece of content that you publish. And one day out of nowhere, that quiet relationship becomes real. Someone you’ve never spoken to sends you a message saying, Hey, do you know we’ve been following your stuff for ages, can we talk? And that’s wh...

We are kicking off a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the first step: Build audiences.

Welcome to Episode 319 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Build audiences

Hello and welcome to a special episode of the podcast. We are kicking off a three part series this week. Earlier this year, I released my latest book, it’s called MSP marketing: Start Here, and it’s all about a 3 step lead generation system trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world. It’s super simple and yet incredibly powerful, and that’s by design. So starting this week, we’re doing a deep dive into it. Let me tell you what the 3 step system is, and then this week we’re going to look at the first step.

I see my job as making marketing super simple for you, which is why I’ve pulled together an entire marketing strategy, a whole 3 step system into just six words. Let me tell you what they are – Build audiences. Grow relationships. Convert relationships. Super simple. But as you’re about to hear today and over the next couple of weeks, there’s a lot of detail within these three steps.

This week’s special, we’re just going to focus on how you can build audiences. So let me start with the question. If I asked you right now to name 10 local business owners who would love to hear from you about their IT, could you do that? Most MSPs can’t, and that’s not a criticism, it’s just the reality of how most MSPs build their businesses. They focus on doing great work for the clients they’ve already got, which is great. They rely on word of mouth, referrals, and maybe the occasional inbound lead.

Here’s the truth, if you don’t have an audience to market to, then you don’t really have a marketing engine. You’ve got luck but you haven’t got control.

Building audiences is the foundation of everything else you’ll do in marketing your MSP. And yet, it’s the bit that most MSPs skip because it feels slow, it’s not sexy. You can’t post a selfie about it on LinkedIn and get a dopamine rush of likes. But when you’ve got an audience, a real audience of people who are listening to you, trust me, everything changes. Let me tell you where this hit me the hardest.

Back in my first business, a marketing agency that I built up between 2005 and then sold in 2016. Back in the early days, I was desperate for predictable leads and I tried everything… one-off campaigns, buying data lists, I was spending too much on ads and some things worked a little bit, but most of these things didn’t work. And then one day I realised something painfully simple. I didn’t have an audience. I had a client base, and I had some people on my email list, but I didn’t have a community of people who wanted to hear from me.

And that’s when I stopped chasing leads and started building lists. Lists of people who liked what I had to say. People who might not buy today, but who might remember me when they were ready to buy. And that’s when things really started to change in that previous business. So what does building audiences look like for you as an MSP? It’s not complicated. It’s small, deliberate habits that compound.

You start by finding the right people on LinkedIn. What if you were to attempt 10 new connections every weekday? And here’s the thing, it’s not about the numbers that you build up. It’s about doing this intentionally, because you’re not connecting to just everyone, you’re connecting to the right kind of people, the people you’d like to do business with – the decision makers, the people who run businesses that match your ideal client profile. Because when your connections are right, your content really starts to land in front of the right people. And then you engage with the...

I’ve asked five people, who are both friends and MSP experts, what they think is going to happen to MSPs next year. Let’s jump straight into our experts’ predictions for what could happen in your world in 2026.

Welcome to this SPECIAL Episode 318 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

5 expert predictions for MSPs in 2026

Hello and welcome to the first of four special episodes to take us through Christmas and into 2026. And that’s actually where we’re starting, with predictions for next year.

You’re going to hear predictions about the demand for cyber security, how content marketing might die as a marketing channel, a really cool idea about creating free apps as lead magnets, why you should help your clients reign in the usage of SaaS tools, why you should invest into your leadership and how to beat much bigger MSPs in your marketplace. And as you’d expect, there’s a lot of talk about AI.

Hi there, it’s Jamie Warner, CEO of MSP eNerds and SAS vender, Invarosoft. So what are my predictions for 2026 in the MSP industry? Well, I’ve got a few to tell you. First one is SMB, small to medium businesses, are always going to need an IT partner. I think people have been saying for many years, our relevance won’t be there in the future. As long as you have non-technical people that don’t understand technology, we’ll always have a huge amount of business to chase and a huge amount of opportunity there for outsourced IT services and to be an IT partner for them.

I think the number one trend though will always continue to be cyber security. I’m definitely noticing in my world, in the eNerds world, that new clients are always very cautious and worried about their security posture. So certainly focusing on that and ensuring that you’re following one of the best practice frameworks so that you can articulate how your service delivery will meet those cyber security requirements is going to be important.

Another one, artificial intelligence, obviously it’s a huge buzzword. How do MSPs get engaged? There’s a lot of people out there trying to tell you how you can just do certain things around AI. I think firstly, let’s get the platform right as MSPs, and then of course it’s going to be the Microsoft platform with Copilot. So making sure that you are crystal clear on how Copilot works. One of the things we are doing is running webinars with the big vendors and distributors with their experts around this space. Or you could become your own expert if you like, and making sure that you are being proactive with your advice around how to actually use AI in the Microsoft Suite. It tends to be 90+% of businesses are on the Microsoft platform unless you’re purely a Google shop or the like, but ultimately that’s a really good place to start and make sure that you are best in class around.

The last one that I would say, and it’s that my biggest bug bear if anyone see me talk, is just how we articulate our services when you get a new business lead.

One thing that will not change in 2026 is that when clients are looking for a new IT partner, they’re essentially looking for a step up in service delivery and in the experience they get.

So when you get a new lead, your only job is to convince them that your service delivery methodology is going to be a step up. And so your job is to argue the case of how you are going to deliver a service that will be best in class. So what are you going to talk about?

The big things is actually explaining and visually explaining, for example, your customer experience technology, how visibly you’re going to provide them with a one pane of glass. It could be your technology business reviews actually showing them how you’re going to do a gap analysis, a traffic ligh...