5 Modern Marketing Hacks for MSPs
While attending DattoCon 2019 in San Diego, I had the opportunity to sit in on a few MSP-led sessions (which are always a highlight). One of the standout sessions was themed around maximizing marketing techniques for MSPs.
Reese Ormand, CEO of Techvera, shared some of his best practices for generating leads, building brand awareness and separating himself from the competition. Keep reading for the top five takeaways and see how these can take your marketing efforts to the next level.
1. Implement Video
Video is an excellent medium to use to convey messages and information that might not translate as well in written format. Customize videos with personality, record content in no time using your iPhone or webcam, and make them interesting to your target viewer.
Let your brand message and feel shine through to form a deeper connection with viewers. Consider incorporating video messaging into everything from your website, follow-up emails with sales prospects and event promotion.
2. Utilize Marketing Development Funds (MDF)
Many vendors have MDF programs that often go underutilized. Take advantage of some extra marketing dollars by reaching out to a strategic vendor partner. Present the vendor with your campaign plan, expected goals, follow-up strategy and projected return on investment (ROI) to ensure your plan will get pushed through, and funded, in a timely manner.
If you are an Axcient partner, reach out to your Partner Success Manager or log into the Axcient Marketing Portal to learn about the Axcient MDF programs available to you.
3. Embrace Your Community
Be an active participate in the local community where you run your business. Communities provide plenty of activities such as food drives, park openings, parades, career fairs and business launches that give you the opportunity to give back in a meaningful way – while networking with local business owners at the same time. Many of these activities also include signage where you can share your logo for brand awareness.
4. Become the Expert
Leverage your technology expertise to become the expert in your local market. Host lunch and learn and networking events, security seminars, speak at chambers or rotary clubs and join local radio shows as a guest. Any opportunity to showcase how you can enable technology to empower local businesses will position your company as an authority. When these businesses are ready to upgrade their IT services, they’ll come to you knowing you have their best interest at heart.
Establishing yourself as a trusted and knowledgeable resource leads us to the final hack…
5. Leverage Hot Topics
Now is a ripe time to demonstrate your expertise in areas that other professionals find dauting or don’t truly understand. Capitalize on hot topics and current events as you seek out community events and other opportunities to become the expert. Consider the migration to cloud and why it benefits small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs), email security and best practices training, recent ransomware attacks in the news and how to keep your business safe. Topics like these that resonate with local business owners, their weaknesses, available solutions, changing trends and industry specific issues will get their attention.
These are just a few marketing tips to help you upgrade your brand, generate leads to build a pipeline and begin to position yourself to close more deals. These tactics are also surefire ways to set yourself apart from the local competition. The key to marketing is repetition, so if something doesn’t work right away, continue to refine and repeat the process to build results. Good luck and happy marketing!