Datto recently hosted a webinar, “Marketing Made MSPeasy,” where IT professionals shared their marketing best practices. These IT professionals play integral roles in the marketing strategy at their respective managed services providers (MSPs).
Each MSP utilizes both inbound and outbound marketing. To begin, inbound marketing includes everything from blogging, building your brand, utilizing search engine optimization, etc. Through inbound, customers have become attracted to and interested in their brands.
Here are 5 key inbound marketing takeaways:
1. Creating + Sharing Content
Short form content like blogging can greatly help you grow your MSP’s online presence. It’s important to focus on specific keywords your potential customers will be searching for. This will boost your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Once your content is live, social media is also a great place to repurpose content. LinkedIn, for example, is likely a social media platform your business is already on. Thought-leaders from your business can repost content through their own profiles, or LinkedIn Pulse blogging to build brand awareness. The MSPs doing this have seen a positive effect on client retention as they are making their presence known throughout the industry.
2. Reaching Your Audience
Presenting your business as a solution to a specific business issue is important when thinking about how to reach your customers and prospects. Connecting with your sales team at the end of every month to learn about what they’re hearing from customers is a great way to gauge what the important topics are. Support is another department to reach out too when building your content calendar. What problems are customers having? What’s your MSP’s solution? The answers to these questions make awesome blog articles that other people can look too to start solving problems on their own.
3. Being Conversational vs. Salesly
In the early stages of a prospects relationship with your MSP, you want to avoid sounding too ‘salesly’. Create educational content helps you establish your MSP as a thought-leader. Pushing product at potential customers from the start doesn’t usually go over very well. Never lose sight of the fact that all of your content represents your brand. Speak to your audience as you would want to be spoken too. Adding emotion and humor can add to your conversational tone. Think about the problem the piece of content addresses, how does it make the person affected feel?
4. Landing Pages + Call-to-Action
Potential customers who are moving further down the marketing funnel will be looking for meatier content as their relationship with your company grows. Gating more technical content turns potential customers into actual leads. Test out calls-to-action (CTAs) at the bottom of your blog posts. If a reader is interested to know more about the topic they just read up on, they’ll likely follow the CTA for more in depth content. CTAs should link to a landing page with some brief text and a form to fill out. Here, you’ll capture their contact information and can begin outreach.
5. SEO
Search Engine Optimization can be a game changer for your company. Your company can have the best product, service, and price, but if customers can’t find you when they’re searching online, they’ll never know. Investing in an SEO strategy is a key piece of any good marketing strategy in the digital age. Outsourcing for SEO can lead to a longterm business relationship, so choose wisely. Work with someone who will help you set your goals and attack them one at a time.
Content is the lifeblood of your inbound marketing strategy. A lot of time and money can be spent perfecting your inbound strategy, but results will follow! Begin by researching your target audience and go from there. While the takeaways listed above are fantastic jumping off point for MSP marketing, you can’t forget about outbound. For some outbound marketing tips, check out the eBook, “Marketing Made MSPeasy”.
