Marketing is an effective way to create awareness for your business, drive leads, engage potential customers and create demand for your MPS’s products and services. But no marketing effort will be successful without a strategy in place. Starting without an MSP marketing plan will leave you like a ship lost at sea—you may arrive on land eventually, but it is unlikely that you will have arrived at your intended destination.
In this month’s blog, we’ll discuss the 5 steps of creating your MSP marketing plan, detailing the importance of the marketing funnel and what you need to get started. Are you ready to embark on your growth journey?
- Set the goals for your MSP marketing plan
- Set your marketing objectives
- Focus your efforts
- Analyse previous performance
- Build your MSP marketing plan
Step 1: Set the goals for your MSP marketing plan
Just like with any strategy, your first step when creating your MSP marketing plan is defining your goals. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to hit a certain revenue target or increase your number of leads? Is your goal to build a reputation or drive new customer acquisition? The biggest mistake businesses tend to make is seeing their marketing goal as separate from their overall business goals. If you want your marketing strategy to be as effective as possible, it should be closely aligned with your business goals. When setting your marketing goals, approach it from the top down. Take your business plan and set your MSP’s marketing goals based on what will help you reach your overall business goals.
Step 2: Set your marketing objectives
Once your marketing goals are set, you can define your marketing objectives. Your marketing objectives are actionable steps you will take to reach your goals. Let’s clarify this with an example: If the overall goal of your MSP marketing plan is to increase your revenue by 20%, where is that revenue going to come from? Do you want to push one of your products specifically? Are you broadening your service offerings? Is your main objective to increase your revenue through new customer acquisition? Once you have defined where your focus lies, you can set your objectives. Let’s stick to our example. Let’s say your MSP is doing well, but you would like to grow your client pool. Through new customer acquisition you’re planning to increase your revenue by 20%. Now you can focus your efforts on what you need to achieve your objective.
Step 3: Focus your efforts
Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle? Better known as the 80/20 rule, it tells us that 80% of our results come from just 20% of our inputs. In business, this means that, if you plan well, you can reap 80% of the reward through 20% effort. When building your MSP marketing plan, you need to understand and determine what is going to give you the best result with minimal effort.
In our example, you’re planning to gain enough new clients to increase your revenue by 20%. Now is the time to sit down and work out how many new clients you will need to achieve this result. Deep dive into your data to determine how many sales meetings you need on average to close one new client. Then work your way back. For every sales meeting, you need a certain number of SQLs (sales-qualified leads), and for every SQL, you need a certain number of MQLs (marketing-qualified leads). Your existing business data will give you your average conversion rate for each of these steps, which helps you to calculate how many MQLs you need on average for one new client.
You now know how many clients you need to add to reach your goal and you know how many MQLs you need to add one new client, so you can determine how many MQLs you need to increase your revenue by 20%. Don’t worry if the maths seems a bit overwhelming right now. We’ve created a tool that will help you determine the number of leads you need to hit your growth goal.
Step 4: Analyse previous performance
Once you know how many leads you need to achieve your goal, the next step for your MSP marketing strategy is determining which activities and channels will give you the best return. It’s crucial to look into your past performance again, in order to find out which results you usually see from your activities. Are there channels and campaigns that stand out? Activities you can rule out right away? Looking at your previous performance will show you which channels and activities have delivered great results for you and where to focus your MSP marketing plan. Use your previous data to let the Pareto Principle work for you—the best result for minimal effort.
Step 5: Build your MSP marketing plan
Now that you have all the pieces in place, the last step is to put them together and build your MSP marketing plan. This last step is all about converting the research you have just done into an actionable plan that will help you achieve your goal. When you plan the content for your MSP marketing plan, it’s vital that you add value for your target audience, addressing your customers’ needs and helping them to solve the challenges they’re facing. Keeping the marketing funnel in mind will help you ensure that the channels you’ve chosen address customers at each stage of their journey.
Let’s take a closer look at the marketing funnel and give you some examples of types of content and tactics that work well at each stage:
Awareness
This is the top of the funnel. In this stage, potential customers aren’t very familiar with your business yet. They have, however, identified a challenge and are starting to actively look for ways to solve the issue they are facing. This is where you attract prospects and show them what you have to offer. You want to focus on educational material, such as blogs, eBooks and landing pages. SEO will help you immensely at this stage of the funnel, making it easier for prospects to find you. Paid Ads and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are also great tactics to increase brand and solution awareness.
Consideration
The middle of the funnel is where prospects have identified their pain points and are looking to find an MSP or a solution that will help address and overcome them. In the consideration stage, content such as product sheets, comparison guides and case studies should be included in your MSP marketing plan. They are a great way to target prospects, as they demonstrate your expertise and help them see the value of your solution. Ensure that you understand your prospects challenges and clearly demonstrate that you are the right partner to help them overcome them.
Conversion
The conversion stage is at the bottom of the marketing funnel and where the results of your MSP marketing plan come to fruition. You have convinced prospects that you can address their needs and pain points, and now you want them to convert. This is where you want attractive calls to action to make it easy for your prospects to engage with your MSP. Great tactics at the conversion stage include offering free trials, demos or consultations. Being able to talk in these settings will help you warm up the prospect and keep the sales conversation going, smoothing the road to conversion.
Are you ready to get started with your MSP marketing plan?
At Marketopia, we have a wealth of experience in the MSP market, helping clients around the world successfully grow and market their businesses. Our experts are always available to support you in developing a detailed MSP marketing strategy in order to reach your business goals. If you’re reading this blog, you have already taken the first step in your growth journey. Are you ready for the next? Download our Lead Calculator Guide today to find out what you need to hit your growth goals.