Mark Dodds is the owner of Compex IT, an MSP in Birmingham…

About 12 years ago, my business partner Gary was working as the IT department for an engineering company. When they needed additional help I came on board.

We were so good at what we did the MD of the engineering company sold our services to other businesses in the area. This went on for years, and although it was never a formal commercial arrangement, it seemed to really take off.

I left for a year working for a bigger IT company. When I realised I didn’t enjoy it, I re-joined Gary working in partnership rather than as an employee. Eventually we did a management buyout and left the umbrella of the engineering company.

My experience with the other company allowed me to bring in the right systems to set us up as a formal MSP. We found that once a client signed up they stayed with us for a long time. Our problem was attracting the right clients in the first place. That’s where Paul Green’s MSP Marketing Edge came in.

We’d been working with Paul when he started his in-person peer groups. And when he launched the MSP Marketing Edge in June 2017, we jumped on board immediately.

Since those early days, the content and service has really evolved. Now we’re given so much content on a monthly and weekly basis that there’s always something we can use to educate our audience. Or that we can plan a bigger marketing campaign around.

We’re always being given additional content too, such as a buyer’s guide that we could have printed as a book, and content that responds to current events.

We use the vast majority of what we’re provided, and often take the time to change the content so that it’s either more personalised to us, or so it’s specific to the sectors that we’re marketing to that month. We always have something there to help us nurture relationships with both clients and prospects.

It saves us so much time. We’re never stuck, wondering what we could use for email content, or what we could send to a client that has a particular problem or concern. All of the hard work is done for us.

If I sat and tried to write some of this content myself, I would be there all day and probably only get one line down. Even if you don’t use all of the content that’s provided, it’s still useful to get ideas and inspiration for things to talk about in your own emails, or on your social media platforms. I use LinkedIn a lot, and I use the MSP Marketing Edge content for ideas on what to talk about.

Obviously, it takes some work from us to implement using the content, but the more time we spend on it, the more we get out of it. Even if you only use a small proportion of the content, you’ll still see a difference, because you’re consistently putting information and communication out there.

Over the past year or so, we’ve really evolved what we do on the marketing side of our business. We send out regular emails on a Thursday, which we call Three Minute Thursdays, and have so much educational content that we can use to nurture our relationships and really help people with. Without the MSP Marketing Edge we wouldn’t have done all this, and certainly not to this extent.

It can be a long process to get a new client as an MSP. People are reluctant to leave their current provider, just as they are with changing banks or accountants. Paul calls it “inertia loyalty”. They perceive it’s too difficult. So you need to consistently demonstrate your trustworthiness and expertise, it can’t be start stop. And the MSP Marketing Edge gives you all the tools to do just that.

If you’re considering signing up, I would say it’s a no-brainer. For the small price you pay, the amount of content you get is incredible. You do need to put a bit of time into it, to make it your own and to get it out there but the amount of inspiration it gives you to market and grow your business is immeasurable.