An MSP Marketing Primer: Create A Clear Path To Your Door
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
By Christine Kern, contributing writer.
In an article from Business Solutions magazine, Jim Roddy highlighted advice from Herman Pool, president of DBS Technologies and Vertical Axion. One of Pool’s messages is, “Your message has to come from multiple sources. It’s like boxing. Very rarely do you throw one punch and your opponent goes down. You need a combination like a newspaper ad that points prospects to your website where they will sign up for your newsletter. From your newsletter they will receive coupons to use your service. You should also make phone calls to the people who sign up for your newsletter.”
In other words, Pool points to multi-channel marketing as the successful strategy for winning and maintaining customers.
A new e-book also stresses the multi-channel approach. In the second installment of a three-part series, “The Essential Guide to MSP Marketing: Part 2,” Continuum hopes to provide insight into which strategies can best benefit particular companies and provides an examination of inbound and outbound marketing techniques. According to the Continuum blog, “MSP marketing is more art than science — meaning there are a number of different interpretations as to which strategies and tactics are truly today’s ‘best’ practices.”
The three-part e-book explains how to optimize inbound and outbound marketing, leverage social media and the Web, and create a comprehensive engagement strategy that can produce better outcomes.
Successful outbound marketing means “blending outbound methods into a larger overall marketing strategy and crafting messages that quickly authentically demonstrate your value,” the e-book explains. Meanwhile, inbound marketing should leverage the way potential clients are viewing content, which in turn powers buying decisions. Both web and social content can be leveraged to drive inbound leads.
The e-book concludes outbound and inbound marketing provide the foundation for successful MSP marketing: “The former delivers targeted content to an audience of prospects with the hope that they will react to and engage with the communications in a way that converts them to qualified leads and, ultimately, new or expanded client relationships,” while the latter leverages modern content delivery mechanisms to create maximum visibility for the provider.
“The processes of outbound and inbound marketing are a matter of trial and error, of measurement and constant adjustment. When things work, replicate them. When they don’t acknowledge the discrepancy, adjust, and move on,” the e-book states.
This advice echoes that of Allison Kirk, director of marketing for WAMS, who, speaking at the 2014 Technology Marketing and IT Sales Training Boot Camp in Nashville, TN,, said that WAMS’ marketing success is the result of “predictable, repeatable marketing systems,” according to an article in Business Solutions Magazine. Although she suggested that companies should know their markets before they begin a campaign, she also stated that campaigns do not always have to have an immediate payoff. “Just get them into the machine and keep trying,” she urges. The payoff could be found somewhere unexpected down the line.