3 Ways to Fix Inbound Marketing for an MSP

Inbound marketing is a type of digital marketing strategy that has proven it’s worth to companies large and small.

HubSpot founders, Dharmesh and Brian, wrote a book about it over 12 years ago now. And fast-forward to 2019 and their company’s market cap is worth over 6 billion dollars.

Not too shabby!

However, in my conversations with MSP owners, inbound marketing is still new or it’s been “tried” with little ROI.

So in this blog, I’m going to provide a few inbound tweaks that MSPs should consider if inbound is part of their overall business development strategy for 2020.

Text-only Blogs Don’t Work Anymore

One of my favorite inbound success stories is that of Marcus Sheriden’s pool company.

It was late 2008 and the economy was starting to implode. Homeowners who were planning to buy a pool were demanding that Marcus return their down payments. He had plenty of reasons to panic but fortunately, inbound marketing saved his business.

One remarkable example is a blog he wrote entitled “How much does an inground pool cost?”

Potential pool buyers Googled “How much does it cost to install a pool?”, or something similar, and his blog article ranked first in search results. Imagine the thousands of pool buyers on his website! He brags about generating over 1M in sales from that single article.

But guys, wake up, it’s 2019! It's not this easy any more...

More competition exists (more MSPs).
More websites and blogs exist (remember that Microsoft blogs, too).
Everyone and their grandma is doing inbound marketing.

And so the bottom line is that we need to embed more into our blogs.

Like what? Try video...

Forget About “Tech Tips”

You’re in a mature market and so we need to recognize that most mundane “tech tips” are already written about somewhere.

Not only that, even the most mediocre MSPs are automating or offshoring work and so purely focusing on tech tips puts you into a category of “IT technician” in the minds of clients and less into the category of “strategic partner.”

And, you know very well that you need to be positioning yourself in the latter category, as a strategic business partner, so that you attract the right kind of clients.

So, instead of focusing 100% of blogs on the technical, think about the hard strategic challenges business leaders are mulling over.

Tell stories of how you helped a client transition to a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
Help a CEO develop a cyber security roadmap
Describe to a CFO how he/she can reduce marketing expenses by automating or even offshoring some aspects of marketing

Step out of the “IT fix” mindset and walk into the mind of business leaders.

They are wondering, “how do I appeal to millenials in my business?” and our job as their MSP is to help them answer that challenge from the standpoint of technology.

Hustle for Partner Backlinks

Inbound’s goal is to turn your website into a magnet, and a big part in achieving this is getting other websites to send links your way.

Here’s how Simple Selling does this for MSPs.

Special Offers Should be an MSP's Black Swan