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 Channel Futures

Sales & Marketing


Solving the Biggest Challenge Facing MSPs: Marketing and PR

  • Written by Joe Panettieri 1
  • June 12, 2008

The biggest challenge facing today’s managed service providers is marketing and PR, according to 44 percent of participants attending our MSPmentor Live: CEO Exchange Webcast, held June 12. (You can view the archived webcast here.)

Other challenges included educating customers (28%), training sales staff (15%), choosing the right platforms (9%) and training tech staff (3%). (The figures are rounded, so they only add up to 99%.) I’ll cover each of these challenges in the days ahead.

Let’s start with some tips for mastering marketing and PR.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

First, open your wallet and purchase “The News Rules of Marketing and PR,” by David Meerman Scott. As I’ve stated before, this book should be required reading for everyone building a business.

Scott describes how you can use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing and online media to reach your target customers directly. It’s an easy read packed with great tips and guidance.

I’ve actually used his book to assist some of our viral marketing strategies at MSPmentor. Consider this: In less than six months, more than 1,800 blog entries across the web have linked to our content.

Scott was one of the key guests at Cisco’s first-ever partner marketing summit, held in December 2007 in Miami. (Full disclosure: I consulted a bit on the event, and recruited Scott into the speaking slot.) Scott’s personal site (http://www.davidmeermanscott.com) is full of free marketing tips.

People In the Know

If you’re kicking around PR strategies for your business, I recommend potentially speaking with Cheryl Snapp Conner, principal at SnappConner PR. She represents DirectPointe (ranked #1 on our MSPmentor 100) and can certainly help MSPs to promote their messages.

Also, Marie Meoli of Whitefox Marketing and Communications is a solid PR expert for MSPs. She currently represents such organizations as Ingram Micro Seismic and N-able (and a new MSP-related client soon).

It’s a little strange for an editor to direct readers to PR resources. After all, Marie and Cheryl pitch me story ideas from time to time. But I guess that’s why I thought of them first: They’re PR pros who push MSP company agendas forward. (Sorry if any other PR pros felt snubbed.)

One word of caution: PR isn’t free. If you want guidance and help, you’re going to pay for it. But you can start small. Pick of David Meerman Scott’s book for starters.

Tags: Cloud Service Providers Digital Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Sales & Marketing

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3 comments

  1. Avatar Matt Makowicz June 13, 2008 @ 11:03 am
    Reply

    I agree! Once providers figure out that they want managed services and are ready to deliver, they realize sitting around waiting for referrals to come in just won’t get it done!

    The idea of finding a marketing strategy that will instantly bring in 5-15 new customers every month is challenging. What I did was found 15 strategies that all brought in a customer every month or at least one per quarter – and I did all of them!

    Over 1,000 people transformed their businesses with my first book – A Guide to SELLING Managed Services – faster, easier, amp; for greater profit.

    Now, I am happy to announce my next book on marketing. You can learn from someone who’s actually done it! I am going to check out the resources on this post because the way I see it – we can never learn enough!

    A Guide to MARKETING Managed Services – faster, easier, amp; for greater profit is 26 chapters full of marketing strategies I know work and the best part is that many of them are little or no cost to execute. It’s not the “silver bullet” but I guarantee you’ll get real results!

    Follow this link for the full table of contents and special pre-order pricing of 20% off. (book will ship on or about 7/15/08).

    happy hunting to all the MSPs out there!

  2. Avatar Erick Simpson June 13, 2008 @ 9:47 pm
    Reply

    Hi Joe;

    Sales amp; Marketing training is the number one requested deliverable of MSP University by our members. This is truly the achilles heel of IT Service Providers, and our online MSP University’s most popular webinars reflect your findings – Sales amp; Marketing, Sales Training and Service Delivery and Helpdesk/NOC Training are the most widely viewed and commented on.

    As you blogged recently, we’ve completely rebuilt our website at http://www.mspu.us from the ground up, with the largest library of training webinars, tools, documents and collateral available anywhere to help service providers transition to a proactive Managed Services delivery model. The best part about our new website is that joining MSP University is absolutely Free, so any IT Service Provider can sign up and learn successful sales and marketing, business and service delivery processes to increase their efficiencies, grow their businesses and increase their net profits.

    Erick Simpson
    MSP University
    http://www.mspu.us

  3. Avatar Joe Panettieri June 14, 2008 @ 11:33 am
    Reply

    Waiting for Tony Robbins to weigh in with details about his new book… …

    Kidding aside, there’s a key point here for MSPs: There’s no single source for guidance in the managed services market. There are plenty of sources: books (Matt’s book on Marketing Managed Services), educational and training organizations (MSP University), vendor organizations (MSP Partners), and member organizations (MSPAlliance and CompTIA/Focus on MSP), etc.) to help readers understand how to market their solutions to existing and target customers.

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