In today’s digital world, implementing an effective advertising strategy is crucial for any business looking to acquire new customers and accelerate growth—and this certainly applies to managed service providers (MSPs). With increasing competition in the IT services marketplace, simply relying on word-of-mouth referrals is no longer enough. MSPs must get proactive with advertising across multiple online and offline channels to stand out.
This article will explore 5 proven, highly effective advertising strategies that MSPs can leverage to boost brand visibility, generate more qualified leads, and ultimately drive business growth. From optimizing content for search engines to running paid ads on social media, we will cover actionable tactics to help you connect with more prospects and turn them into customers.
So let’s dive in and unlock the blueprint for advertising success!
Understanding Your Target Audience is the Starting Point
Before activating any advertising campaigns, the vital first step is gaining crystal-clear clarity on who you are trying to reach. The more precisely you can define your ideal customer profile, the more targeted and effective your advertising will become.
Pinpoint Your Audience’s Needs and Pain Points
Conduct thorough market and buyer research to uncover your target audience’s main frustrations, challenges, and needs. Understanding these motivations will allow you to craft messaging that resonates.
For instance, if you specialize in providing IT support for healthcare organizations, research may show that data security and meeting HIPAA compliance are huge pain points. Tailoring your ads to address these specific issues would strike an emotional chord.
| Industry | Main Pain Points |
|---|---|
| Healthcare | Data security, meeting compliance standards |
| Financial services | Preventing cyber attacks, minimizing downtown |
| Retail | Omnichannel experience, analytics |
Identify the Best Channels to Engage Your Audience
It’s crucial to meet your audience where they already spend time online. Network administrators and IT decision-makers are likely active on platforms like Reddit, Spiceworks, LinkedIn, and relevant industry blogs.
Meanwhile, executives may be harder to reach on social media but very receptive to thought leadership content and email newsletters. Conduct market research to determine the optimal media mix.
Build Detailed Buyer Personas
Map out fictional representations of your ideal customers by constructing detailed buyer personas. Include demographic details along with psychographic attributes like common objections, preferred content format, daily challenges, and trusted media sources.
These buyer personas will serve as a North Star to guide your messaging and platform choices in a way that powerfully resonates with your best-fit prospects.
Leverage Content Marketing to Spotlight Your Expertise
According to recent surveys, more B2B buyers now prefer consuming educational content to interact with vendors vs. sales reps. This makes content creation an indispensable pillar for MSPs seeking to attract and engage prospective customers.
Develop Truly Valuable Content
Rather than overtly promotional content, the most effective approach is taking an educational, problem-solving stance through blogs, eBooks, whitepapers, case studies, and video tutorials. Tapping into your audience’s thirst for knowledge is key.
For example, an eBook title like “10 Mobile Security Threats Every Enterprise Must Address in 2023” will likely gain more traction than “Buy Our Mobile Security Product.”
Position Yourself as an Authority
Consistently publishing premium content allows you to showcase domain expertise and establish thought leadership authority in your market. This critical trust-building helps prospects choose you over competitors when ready to buy.
Educate and Guide Your Audience
Content should aim to provide real value for readers at every stage, whether they are early researchers unfamiliar with MSP terminology or highly-informed prospects comparing vendors. Optimize content to attract new visitors and guide existing prospects down the sales funnel.
| Buyer’s Journey Stage | Goal of Content | Example Format |
|---|---|---|
| Awareness building | Educate on MSP model and basics | Beginner’s guide eBook |
| Initial research | Describe key features/services in depth | Solution webpage |
| Comparing options | Provide product comparisons | Comparison matrix |
| Final evaluation | Establish credibility/results | Client case studies |
Driving visitors through this education journey ultimately primes them to become qualified marketing-ready leads.
Harness the Power of Paid Advertising
While organic content marketing efforts take time to drive results, paid advertising allows for rapid amplification of reach and visibility. With pinpoint targeting and nearly real-time optimization, paid ads can deliver exponential returns.
Launch Highly Targeted Campaigns
Digital platforms like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Quora all offer extensive paid options for hyper-targeted exposure aligned to your buyer personas’ attributes.
For example, advertise your backup and disaster recovery solutions specifically to IT managers at retail brands, or promote your specialized healthcare offerings strictly to hospital CIOs. This surgical focus pushes relevance through the roof.
Retarget Warm Prospects
If prospects visit your website or interact with your content but don’t immediately convert to sales, paid retargeting keeps your brand visible as they continue their research process. Displaying relevant offers across devices compels them to re-engage.
Track Conversions and Optimize Accordingly
The beauty of digital ads is the ability to closely monitor performance and instantly optimize based on response. If certain messaging or platforms are yielding high click-through rates and conversions, double down on those. Whereas low traction areas can promptly be reduced or modified until improved. This allows your budget to continually flow toward high-ROI channels for optimal efficiency.
Steer Organic Traffic Your Way Through SEO
Beyond building a paid advertising flywheel, MSPs must also nail fundamental organic search visibility. With Google driving over 90% of all searches, ranking well for relevant queries can steer significant qualified visitors to your digital doorstep.
Research and Target Popular Search Terms
Start with Google Keyword Planner or connected SEO platforms to uncover the main phrases prospective customers use around IT managed services and specific offerings like MSP security solutions, remote monitoring, help desk outsourcing etc. Identify both high-traffic head terms as well as longer tail variations.
Optimize Site Content for Search Engines
Embed these target keywords naturally within crucial pages like Services, About Us, pricing pages, and location-specific landing pages. Also ensure useful meta descriptions are applied so search engines can better interpret pages.
Boost Local Visibility
For MSPs offering regional support in set metro areas, focus extensively on localized SEO as well. This means optimizing Google My Business listings, targeting local search phrases (e.g. “Los Angeles IT support”), and building citations/backlinks on relevant regional directories.
Earn High Authority Backlinks
Secure guest posting opportunities on reputable websites and earn backlinks from trusted industry sources like technology publications and SaaS directories. This signals search ranking authority and segments you above sketchier competitors attempting to manipulate rankings.
Let Social Media Expand Your Marketing Reach
While social media may seem less transactional than search, its ability for branded content to viral spread offers tremendous awareness upside at scale. Both organic and paid social can complement an integrated strategy.
Strategically Choose Platforms
Rather than spreading yourself thin across every network, examine research to pinpoint 1-3 core platforms where your audience and industry peers are most active. For B2B tech companies like MSPs, significant traction potential exists across LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube etc.
Engage Followers with Valuable Updates
Educate and entertain your followers through a steady mix of relevant articles, how-to content, thought leadership commentary, news updates, infographics, case studies, live videos and more. Social media excels for multi-media storytelling vs plain text.
Also actively support your industry peers by sharing their content, cross-promoting partners, and participating in larger community discussions. This establishes you as a trusted member vs self-centric channel.
Amplify Reach With Paid Boosting
Once you have built an engaged organic audience, paid social options offer powerful amplification potential with the ability to define campaign budgets, optimize creative, set customer match parameters, and target robust B2B demographic filters like job title, industry type and interests. LinkedIn leads the way on finely-tuned professional targeting to CIOs and IT decision-makers.
Nurture Leads Into Customers Via Email
Email is a workhorse channel that drives tremendous ROI across the lead generation and sales conversion process for MSPs and SaaS companies alike.
Build Your Subscriber List
Offer compelling website opt-in offers, gate access to premium content behind email sign-ups, purchase lookalike email lists, nurture social followers into subscribers, tap existing customer contacts and run paid campaigns with email lead gen bidding – there are myriad tactics to systematically aggregate relevant inboxes receptive to your outreach campaigns.
Guide Prospects Down the Funnel
Once someone enters your email ecosystem, carefully craft nurturing sequences that map messaging to their buyer’s journey stage. Early education for newcomers can transition into product demos and pricing for those demonstrating middle-funnel interest and case study social proof for late-stage evaluators nearing decisions.
Continually Test and Optimize Performance
Obsessively track open rate, click rate, reply rate, and conversion rate for every email campaign. Leverage strategies like dynamic content, behavioral personalization and A/B subject line testing to continually optimize deliverability, engagement, and sales outcomes. Remove underperforming segments while doubling down on your top converting sequences.
Pulling Together an Integrated Strategy
As we have covered, employing an intentional, 360-degree approach across multiple advertising channels and formats is imperative to dominate visibility within your regional MSP market and consistently connect with new prospects.
The most essential element is honing extreme clarity on who you serve best before determining how to target them through content messaging and media mix optimization. Rather than choosing a single channel, it is the collective momentum across paid search, paid social, organic content, email and more that produces compounding returns.
Evaluating new customers on metrics like customer acquisition cost and lifetime value allows you to adjust budget allocation accordingly based on the highest converting pathways. When optimized as a flywheel, these proven advertising strategies can drive transformational growth for MSPs over the long-term.
Now it’s time to put these approaches into practice for your own managed services business and start better engaging the many prospective customers seeking IT solutions like yours today!
