The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Welcome to Episode 309 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• Do marketing you can’t automate or scale: In the early days of trying out new marketing, you can’t always jump straight to automation. Manual testing helps to figure out what marketing actually works for your MSP.
• MSPs: Imagine losing 17,000 connections on LinkedIn overnight: You don’t own your connections, your content or your interactions on LinkedIn… they belong to LinkedIn, you just get to borrow them. MSPs should have a combination of borrowed and owed audiences.
• The simple video every MSP needs to increase sales: Explainer videos are a key marketing tool and my special guest will explain how to create one and how to make sure it’s something your hottest prospects are desperate to watch.
• The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss this quick and easy YouTube marketing tip.

In a world where you can automate almost anything so it can be done at any scale, here’s the strangest advice you are going to hear from me. I believe sometimes you should deliberately do marketing that will never scale up and that you can’t automate, even if that means that you personally have to sit and do a whole chunk of work.

Why would I recommend this? Surely one of my jobs is to make your marketing easier. Well, yes, that’s true once you’ve figured out what marketing works, but doing marketing experiments yourself is an important part of figuring out the specific tactics that’ll work for your MSP.

As business owners, you and I love things that are scalable and repeatable, right? We like processes, automation, efficiency, and yes, that’s where you want to end up with your marketing. But in the early days of trying out a new marketing channel, you can’t always jump straight to automation. And here’s why. Not all marketing works for all businesses. What works brilliantly for the MSP down the road from you might flop for you.

The only way to find out what marketing actually works for your business is to test it manually in a way that doesn’t scale.

For example, let’s say you want to try LinkedIn outreach, and sure, there are tools out there that’ll blast out hundreds of automated messages every week. But if you don’t yet know what message resonates with your ideal prospects, then blasting out hundreds of messages just means you’ll annoy more people faster. Instead, you’re better off writing a handful of personal connection requests every day. Try different approaches, test out different messages and see what kind of response you get. Once you know what works, then you can look at scaling or systemising it.

Here’s another example, follow up emails. You might want to eventually build an automated nurture sequence inside your CRM, but before you do that, it’s worth sending a batch of personal follow-ups to prospects one by one to see which subject lines get opened, which wording gets replies. That kind of stuff. Once you know can then plug those learnings into automation and let software do the heavy lifting. And here’s my key point. Marketing is not a one size fits all game. Every market, every town, every vertical is slightly different. So in the early days of trying something new, you’ve got to be willing to roll up your sleeves and do the kind of marketing that just isn’t scalable.

Let me give you three more practical examples:

Number one – handwritten letters to prospects. Everybody has too much email, but nobody gets lots of nice stuff in the post...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Welcome to Episode 308 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• The 3 big reasons your best technicians might leave you: Surely one of the greatest fears of any MSP is that of losing one of your key technicians. Let’s explore the three big reasons why they might leave and what you can do to address those.
• How to turn tech newbies into your MSP’s biggest fans: If you confuse your prospects and clients with technology, it’s likely they will disengage and divert their attention elsewhere. Everything needs to be explained in the easiest possible way.
• Control freak? Your MSP may struggle to grow: Business owners are control freaks and often get so caught up in the details that they struggle to grow. My special guest shares how he could help you to improve your business by letting go.
• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: Have you ever considered starting a podcast for your MSP? Here’s a few things you should consider before you dive in…

The 3 big reasons your best technicians might leave you

There are many fears that MSP owners have. One of them is of course being breached, another one is running out of cash. But surely one of the greatest fears is that of losing one of your key technicians. And I’m so sorry to even bring this up, but it’s something that we do need to talk about because there are always very specific reasons why any employee leaves any business.

I want to explore the three big reasons that technicians might leave you so you can address those in your MSP before something terrible happens.

You’ve probably heard that people don’t quit businesses, they quit managers or owners… whoever’s managing them.

Well, this is absolutely true, and in fact, studies have consistently shown that 75% of voluntary exits are due to the boss and not due to the role itself. Another survey that I found on Google show that 57% of employees left their job because of frustrations with their manager or leadership.

So here are the top three specific reasons that a technician might leave your business:

The first is poor management – a lack of support, micromanagement, or even bad communication. Managers who don’t coach, who don’t listen or who don’t trust their people well they drive them away.

The second reason is no meaningful growth or opportunities. High performers crave challenge and progression, and without it they get bored or worse, they leave.

And the third reason is feelings of being undervalued or unrecognised. If your techs aren’t getting feedback, recognition or meaningful rewards, they’ll just look for a place that gives them those things.

But now for the good parts and how to flip the script and keep your top tech talent engaged, motivated, and loyal:

Number one – coach them, train them, invest in them. Make development a habit, not just lip service. Training, whether you do this yourself or whether you pay for them to have training, it boosts retention massively and tailored development plans show that you’re serious about their future. Plus, if you invest in leadership, you won’t end up with accidental managers who drive people away. And of course that’s good because as you can develop managers who work for you, it’s going to be easier for you to hand over the reins for the business at some point when you want to take life a little bit easier. And we do get there, I promise you we do.

Number two – give them room to grow and give them meaningful work to d...

The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Welcome to Episode 307 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• MSPs: Stop using this 2008 marketing tactic: Some MSPs are trying to find new clients using outdated tactics from over 20 years ago. Let’s find out which tactics are working for building your email list and lead gen right now.
• Why ignoring Copilot damages MSPs’ retention: Whether you love it or hate it, AI tools are here to stay and we know that Microsoft is highly committed to baking Copilot into everything. Let me tell you why.
• Can MSPs win clients without embracing video?: The video revolution is happening, and it’s the MSPs who are embracing it who are winning new clients faster. My special guest reveals ways for you to use video easily and also something that he’s calling, the new social SEO.
• Paul’s Personal Peer Group: As an MSP owner, do you struggle to let go and delegate tasks to staff or outsource. Let me tell you why it’s such an important step to growing your business.

MSPs: Stop using this 2008 marketing tactic

You’re not doing MySpace marketing, are you? Some MSPs are trying to find new clients using outdated tactics from over 20 years ago. Building an email list is still one of the most effective things you can do, but are you asking for email addresses in the most modern way? Let’s find out which tactics are working for building your email list and lead gen right now, and which should have died out alongside MySpace.

What I’m talking about here is lead magnets. Have you heard of those? Let’s discuss what they are, why you should care, and why your approach to them might be stuck in the past. First things first, what is a lead magnet? It’s something valuable that you give away for free in exchange for someone’s contact details. And usually that’s their email address, but sometimes it’s also their phone number or other information.

The whole idea is to attract the right prospects and start a relationship with them before you try and sell them anything.

Now, if you think about it, no one wakes up in the morning thinking, oh, I can’t wait to fill in another contact form today. You have to give people a reason to do it, and the lead magnet is that reason. So how would you use one in your MSP? It’s simple. You put it everywhere that you prospects might come across you. So on your website, your LinkedIn, both your profile and your posts, your email signature, anywhere really, and you promote it almost like it’s a service that you offer. In fact, the more valuable it feels, the more people will download or sign up for it. And then you can follow up with useful emails that guide them towards becoming a client, whoop.

Now here’s the thing. For years the go-to lead magnet has been a PDF download, something like top 10 tips for cyber security or a small Business IT checklist. And don’t get me wrong, these can still work, but let’s be honest, PDFs are a bit old hat now, right? People are drowning in files they never open, and the guide that you put hours into creating is probably sitting in someone’s downloads folder and they’ve never opened it. So what’s better these days?

Well, I believe these days, interactive content wins. And one of the best examples is an engagement quiz. The kind of thing that you can build with a platform like ScoreApp. If you’ve never heard of that, go and Google it, it’s a great app. And here’s why quizzes work so well.

• They’re quick – your prospect can answer a few easy questions in minutes.