Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge

Are you running your MSP or is your MSP running you?

Paul Green — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 09:30:48 +0000

Back in 2007 in my first business, I had two or three members of staff, but I was still working 70 to 80 hours a week. The business wasn't growing. And my personal income had plummeted. Those were crazy times! Here's what I did to turn it around.

Firefighting! It's probably something that takes up a fair proportion of your working days, right?

And it's kind of what you sign up for when you start your MSP. Being reactive to clients' needs is part of the job.

I don't mean the big OMG moments, such as when a client gets breached and everyone drops everything.

I mean the routine reactive stuff, such as getting their internet back online, a password change, or setting up the new starter urgently because they forgot to tell you 3 days ago that someone new was starting

There's always going to be reactive work. That's only a big problem when your MSP's structure means every single issue, question, and decision still finds its way back to YOU, as the business owner or manager.

When that happens, you’ve become the bottleneck that slows the whole business down.

I know this because it happened to me

In my first business back in 2007, when I had two or three members of staff, I was working 70 to 80 hours a week. And the business still wasn’t growing.

In fact, I was making less money with staff, an office and more clients than I had made working in my own spare bedroom.

Because every decision was stuck behind me. Not just the important ones. Every decision. Without realising it I had staff acting as assistants rather than people who could operate independently and do what needed to be done within the business.

Eventually I had created a structure where I was the bottleneck to all progress. And until I admitted that, nothing was going to change.

The distinction that changes everything

There’s a distinction that took me too long to properly understand. Working IN the business versus working ON it.

Supporting a client is working IN the business. Fixing a ticket is working IN the business. Answering a question your technician should be able to answer themselves is working IN the business.

Whereas... improving how the business operates, developing your people, creating capacity for growth, deciding where the business goes next... that’s working ON it.

Both Michael Gerber in The E-Myth Revisited and John Warrillow in Built to Sell make this point brilliantly. The owners who build valuable businesses are the ones who transition from being the best technician in the room to being the person who builds the room.

Most MSP owners never make that transition. Not because they don’t want to, but because they never set out with the intent to do this and then protect the time to do it.

An idea: Make a daily 90 minute commitment to working ON the business

Here’s what I eventually did. I drew a line in the sand and committed to 90 minutes every single working day, working ON the business rather than IN it.

I was tempted at first to put one day a week aside, probably Fridays. But then I realised that that one day a week can very easily be eaten up by catching up on the other things you didn't do Monday to Thursday!

Instead I got up early every single weekday and spent 90 minutes working only ON the business.

It was painful at first. I'm not going to tell you what time I got up because it will make you wince. But it soon became a solid habit.

And I grew my first business to £1m revenue and a successful exit, just on those 90 minutes a day.

Because that 90 minutes a day soon compounds into 450 minutes a week. Seven and a half hours of strategic time working on growing the business.

350+ hours a year, every year.

WOW

If that can't change your business and in turn change your life, nothing else will.

Looking at it that way, the question isn’t whether you can find 90 minutes. You can. The question is whether you’re willing to protect it when something urgent tries to steal it.

And of course something always tries.

Training, not babysitting

The other part of this is letting your team do the work you hired them to do.

If a first line technician asks you a question, the temptation is to just answer it. You know the answer so it’s faster. But every time you do that, you’re training them to ask you again next time rather than figure it out themselves.

DOH-DOH-DOH.

Instead of giving them answers, ask them questions instead.

Ask them what they think the answer is. Ask them to walk you through their reasoning. By doing this you're training them to think and trust their gut feel.

Over time, fewer things rely on you because your team has learned what they’re empowered to handle.

Let me put this in a slightly more aggressive way... stop interfering with password resets simply because you can do them faster! That’s not leadership. That’s just being the most expensive first line tech in the building.

Drawing your own line in the sand

The practical starting point is simpler than most people expect.

Look at your calendar and find where 90 minutes can happen every working day. The same time each day works best. Also find a specific place to work where you won’t be interrupted.

Tell your team what you’re doing and why. Tell your family too. The people around you need to understand why this time matters and help you protect it.

Then decide what you’ll use that time for first. Not a vague intention to “work on the business.” Pick something you'll focus on every day. The more specific you are about what you're going to do with that time, the better return you'll get from it.

Reactive work will always exist in an MSP. It never goes away entirely. But it no longer needs to control your whole day. The moment you start protecting strategic time and trusting your team to do what you hired them for, you start building a business that can grow without every decision waiting for you.

Question: How many hours have you spent so far this week working ON your business rather than IN it? Let me know. I read and reply to every email

The post Are you running your MSP or is your MSP running you? appeared first on Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge.

Which social media platforms should your MSP actually be on?

Paul Green — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:30:03 +0000

LinkedIn. Facebook. YouTube. X. Instagram. TikTok. Threads. Which ones should your MSP be on? And which are a waste of your time. Here's my verdict on every platform, one by one...

There are more social media platforms than ever. And it's easy to feel the pressure to be on all of them, all the time.

My view on this is to resist that pressure. It’s far better to do really well on one or two platforms than to be average across several. A half-hearted presence everywhere is worse than a strong presence somewhere specific.

So here’s my 5 minute, platform-by-platform verdict for MSPs. Just my opinion. Please, no hate messages (I'm looking at you, X and Reddit users ).

LinkedIn: Go all in

If you’re only going to be active on one platform, make it this one. LinkedIn is where the decision makers are. Business owners, operations directors, finance managers. They’re on LinkedIn every day, and the platform is actively rewarding consistent, human, non-AI-generated content right now.

Every day you should be making connection requests to the kind of people you'd like as clients. Then post at least every 24 hours and do a LinkedIn newsletter once a week. This is where you build the audiences and grow relationships. Some will turn into clients.

I’ve been doing this for seven+ years, and recommending it to MSPs. And I’m still convinced it’s the single best organic marketing channel available to an MSP.

Don’t spread yourself thin across other platforms until LinkedIn is genuinely working for you. Most MSPs never get there because they don’t stick at it long enough.

YouTube: Be there, even if the audience is small

YouTube is the world’s most used platform for watching video. That alone makes it worth having a presence on.

I’ll be honest with you: building a big YouTube audience as an MSP is genuinely hard. We’ve put significant time and effort into our own channel and our audience is still relatively small. But that’s partly because we’re targeting a very specific niche (you!) rather than chasing random subscribers for the sake of it.

The value of YouTube for an MSP isn’t necessarily a massive subscriber count. It’s the fact that your videos live there permanently. They’re searchable, and a prospect who wants to check you out before getting in touch can watch you talk for five minutes and decide whether they like you. That’s powerful.

Instagram: only if your clients are there

Instagram isn’t a natural fit for most MSPs. But there’s an exception to this rule.

If you’re targeting retail businesses, hospitality, restaurants, or any sector that uses Instagram to reach their own customers, then Instagram is where those business owners spend their time doing their own marketing.

And where they spend their time is where you should be.

For most MSPs targeting professional services or B2B businesses, Instagram probably isn’t worth the investment. But if your ideal client profile is in a consumer-facing sector, it’s worth a look.

Facebook: Useful because it's the "universal platform"

Almost every business owner is on Facebook. Which makes it a genuinely useful place to have a presence, just not in the same way as LinkedIn.

The best approach for most MSPs is to find and join local business owner groups and participate. Don't be a sucky salesperson, just being visible and helpful. Local business communities on Facebook can be surprisingly active, and being a familiar, trusted face in those groups puts you front of mind when someone mentions their IT is driving them crazy.

Facebook ads are also worth considering, particularly for retargeting people who have already visited your website. The targeting options are excellent and the cost per click is often lower than Google. If you’re going to run paid social at any point, Facebook is where to start.

Reddit: Useful for a vertical or niche

Trying to reach local business owners and managers on Reddit is tough compared to LinkedIn but if you operate within a specific vertical or niche, Reddit will give you access to those people.

The downside is that Reddit is sometimes like the Wild West, probably because it's a lot of angry people hiding behind anonymous user names! At the very least it can be an amazing research platform and show you what matters to the people you're trying to reach

X / Twitter: Move on

I’ll be blunt. X is not worth your time for MSP marketing. What’s happened to the platform under its current ownership has driven away a significant portion of the professional audience that made Twitter useful for B2B.

TikTok, Threads, and everything else: not yet

TikTok has produced some remarkable business success stories. I know people with genuinely impressive audiences there. But for most MSPs, it’s a distraction rather than an opportunity. The content format is demanding, the audience skews younger, and the time investment required to do it well is hard to justify when LinkedIn is still so underdeveloped for most MSPs.

Threads, Bluesky, Mastadon and the other emerging platforms fall into the same category. Not because they’re bad, but because the opportunity cost is too high. Every hour you spend building an audience somewhere new is an hour you’re not deepening your presence somewhere that’s already working.

Get LinkedIn right first. Then YouTube. Then, if you have the capacity and the audience is clearly there, consider expanding. But most MSPs never need to go further than those two.

The simple rule

Go where your ideal clients actually are. Build one platform properly before you touch another. And never let the pressure to be everywhere distract you from being genuinely useful somewhere.

Which platforms are you currently active on? And which ones are you wasting time on that you’d be better off abandoning? Let me know. I read and reply to every email (yes even from angry X users).

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Your MSP’s Google reviews are sitting there doing nothing

Paul Green — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:30:57 +0000

Most MSPs collect Google reviews and then leave them sitting there doing... nothing. Here are six places where they should be working harder for you.

Question. How many Google reviews does your MSP have right now?

Follow-up question: When did you last actively use them in other marketing channels?

For most MSPs, the answer to the first question is “not enough”. And the answer to the second is probably "never”.

Which is a shame. Because a great Google review is one of the most powerful pieces of marketing content you have. It’s independent, credible, specific, and didn’t cost you anything to produce.

And yet most MSPs collect a handful of them, take the dopamine hit, and then leave them sitting on their Google Business Profile where only a fraction of their prospects will ever see them.

Let’s fix that.

First, why Google reviews are uniquely powerful

Testimonials on your own website are good. But the problem with any testimonial is that you have control of them. People know you chose what to include and what to leave out. Think of it as an invisible asterisk next to everything on your own marketing!

Google reviews don’t have that asterisk. Prospects know you can’t edit them. That independence is worth an enormous amount when a prospect's trying to decide whether to trust you.

AI tools use reviews too. When someone asks their tool of choice to recommend an MSP in your area, review signals are one of the things those tools consider. Google reviews in particular are useful to AI because of the way they're structured.

So you can see that more reviews, collected more often, make you easier to recommend.

But getting more reviews isn't what this newsletter is about. It's about what to do with the ones you already have.

Six places your reviews should be working harder

1) Your website

Your Google reviews should be embedded on your website, ideally on your homepage and your services pages. Not just a static screenshot. Use a live widget that pulls in your current reviews automatically and shows your star rating. Visitors can see exactly what Google shows, which carries more weight than a quote you’ve manually placed on the page yourself.

If you don’t have this yet, search for “Google reviews widget”. You’ll find several free and low-cost options that install in minutes.

2) Your sales proposals

Most MSP proposals are heavy on services and light on proof. Fix this by dedicating a section to social proof, including two or three of your best Google reviews quoted in full.

If you want to be really smart with this, pick the ones that speak to the specific concern the prospect raised during your meeting.

If they mentioned slow response times, find a review that specifically praises your speed
If they’re worried about communication, find one that mentions how well you keep clients informed

Tailored social proof like this is dramatically more effective than generic social proof. You can see why, right? It's kinda obvious.

3) Your email signature

Every email your team sends is a marketing touchpoint. Most MSPs waste this entirely. Add a line to your email signature that links to your Google reviews. Something as simple as: “★★★★★ See what our clients say about us” with a link to your Google Business Profile.

Every email to a prospect, every reply to a client, every outreach message... all of them pointing to your social proof. This is easy. You should do it

4) Your LinkedIn content

When you get a new Google review that’s excitingly good, share it on LinkedIn. Not just a screenshot, add some context. Tell the story. What was the situation? What did the client actually experience? Why does this review mean something to you and your team?

A review post done well is highly engaging content. It’s proof from a human, and it shows that real clients are happy enough to take time out of their day to say so publicly. That’s a powerful signal to anyone considering switching MSPs.

5) Your automated email sequence

If you have a sequence of emails that goes out to new contacts on your list, one of those emails should be dedicated to social proof. Pull two or three of your best reviews, add a brief line of context for each, and let your clients do the selling for you.

This works especially well early in the sequence, when a new contact is still deciding whether to keep reading your emails or unsubscribe. Showing them that other people trust you is one of the fastest ways to build that initial credibility.

6) Your discovery calls and sales meetings

In a discovery call or a sales meeting, you can reference your reviews verbally. “We’ve got 47 Google reviews averaging 4.9 stars. I’d encourage you to read through a few before our next conversation.”

That sentence does three things. It signals confidence, gives the prospect something specific to check, and it puts your social proof in their mind... at exactly the moment they’re evaluating whether to trust you. High five!

This is a mindset shift

Stop thinking of reviews as something that happens to your business and start thinking of them as a marketing asset you actively manage and deploy.

Ask for them deliberately, at the right moments. Use them consistently, across every channel. And when a good one arrives, don’t just smile and move on. Ask yourself: where else can I use this?

How many Google reviews do you have right now? And which of these six places are you not yet using them? Let me know. I read and reply to every email

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My 5 step format for a perfect MSP case study

Paul Green — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:30:48 +0000

For your MSP, reviews and testimonials are great. But the most powerful form of social proof is a case study. Use this format to create case studies that make prospects drop to their knees and beg to work with you.

When a client leaves you a review or gives you a testimonial, that feels great, doesn't it?

Reviews and testimonials are powerful forms of social proof, where other people are influenced directly by your clients.

But the most powerful form of social proof is a case study.

Think of it this way. If a review or a testimonial is a snapshot of how a client feels about you, a case study is a deep dive. It tells the full story.

And stories heavily influence how humans make decisions, whether we realise it or not.

Our brains are wired to engage more with stories than with snippets of information. We've been like that since we were cave dwellers. After all, for most of mankind's history, information was passed from generation to generation through stories.

So if you don't yet have a couple of case studies on your website and used across all of your marketing, you need to crack on with that

The goal of your case study isn’t to show off your technical ability. It’s to emotionally move the person reading or watching it. You want a prospect to finish it and think: “Oh wow, yes, that’s exactly what’s happening in my business. And these guys fixed it. I should talk to them.”

There's a specific format for case studies that works really well. That's coming in the next few seconds... but first...

Get out your wallet and hire a videographer

Before we get into the structure, let me say this clearly. The most powerful version of a case study is video.

A written case study is good. A video case study changes everything.

Because when a prospect watches a real client talking about their real experience, on camera, it creates a level of trust that no amount of words and pictures can match.

Hire a decent videographer for a day. Make sure it's someone experienced who knows how to make it a) visually look good, b) sound good, and most importantly c) ask the right open questions of your clients to get the best answers from them.

This will be worth every single penny you spend on it.

Once you have a ton of great footage, you can repurpose it endlessly: pull clips for LinkedIn, embed it on your website, use it in proposals, cut a short version for ads. One day of filming can fuel your marketing for years.

If video genuinely isn’t possible right now, no worries, a well-written case study following my format will still work. But put the video on your "must do soon" task list.

My 5 step format for a case study

Step 1: Context

Start by immediately establishing that the subject of the case study is just like the person reading or watching it. This means you need a clear grip on your Ideal Client Prospect, your ICP, so you can make sure the case study talks directly to that person.

It's a business owner or manager, frustrated with their technology. They're running a business of a similar size, in a similar sector, with similar challenges.

This is why case studies work so powerfully when you target a vertical. Lawyers are more influenced by hearing from other lawyers than by anyone else. Accountants trust accountants. Manufacturers trust manufacturers.

The faster you can make the reader or viewer think “oh, that’s me,” the more engaged they’ll be with everything that follows.

Step 2: Problem

Describe the problem the client had. But resist the temptation to get technical.

You’re not communicating to other IT people. You’re communicating to a business owner who doesn’t fully understand technology YET knows very clearly when it’s causing them pain.

Put about the problem in their language, not yours. Not “they had an outdated server infrastructure with insufficient redundancy.” Instead: “their systems kept going down at the worst possible moments, and nobody could tell them why.”

Step 3: Poke the pain

This is the step most MSPs skip, and it’s one of the most powerful.

Don’t just describe the problem. Show what it was costing them. Something as seemingly minor as slow computers can lose hundreds of hours a week across a medium sized organisation. Add that up over a year and that's a lot of frustration.

When the prospect can see the real business impact of a problem they also have, the case study stops being a nice story and starts being relevant to their own life. “We’re losing that time too.” “That’s exactly what’s happening with us.” That’s the reaction that wins you new clients.

Step 4: Solution

Now you get to talk about what you did. But again, keep it strategic rather than tactical.

You don’t need to explain the technical details of how you solved it. The prospect doesn’t need to understand your methodology. What they need to understand is that you came in, assessed the situation, formed a solid plan, and executed it calmly and professionally.

“We came in, did a thorough review, and put a clear roadmap in place” is more reassuring to a non-technical business owner than a detailed technical breakdown of exactly what setting you changed and why. The case study is about building confidence, not demonstrating expertise.

Step 5: Outcome

Exciting times, as this is the payoff. And it should be about the business and its performance, not about the technology.

Not “we upgraded their server and improved network uptime to 99.9%.” YAWN!

Instead: “Just a few months later, the team had stopped complaining about their computers. The owner had stopped firefighting IT problems. And the business had been able to take on two new members of staff because the systems could finally support the growth they’d been planning.”

Staff complaining less. Owner stress reduced. Business growing. TICK TICK TICK! Those are the outcomes that make a prospect think: I want that. And they know where to get it... from you.

So who should you ask to help with your case study... and when?

The best time to ask a client for a case study is when they’re at a moment of peak happiness with you. After a big successful project. Or after you’ve solved something that was really bothering them. And definitely in their first 90 days when everything has gone smoothly and they’re feeling relieved they left their old MSP for you.

Make it easy for them. Tell them exactly what you’ll cover, how long it will take, and what you’ll use it for. Most clients who are happy with you will say yes if you just ask.

And once you have one? Use it everywhere. Your website. Your proposals. Your LinkedIn. Your sales meetings. Anywhere you do marketing, your case study should be there.

Over to you

Do you already have a video case study on your website? Or even a written one following this kind of format?

Let me know. I read and reply to every email

The post My 5 step format for a perfect MSP case study appeared first on Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge.

MSPs: Please. Take. A. Week. Off. And your business will grow faster (pinky promise)

Paul Green — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 09:30:27 +0000

Here's why regular time off is an underrated growth tool for MSP owners (plus a challenge for you to take off at least 6 weeks a year).

A couple of weeks ago I took a week off with my daughter (a post-exams treat). We flew out to Krakow in Poland. Have you been?

She had a minor medical drama in front of 500 other passengers at the Polish passport control (which turned out to be completely fine, and which I’m choosing not to dwell on because everything was OK and also because I’m British and we don’t talk about our feelings )

But after that slightly chaotic start, it was a genuinely brilliant week. We visited Auschwitz, one of those experiences that puts absolutely everything else in your life into perspective.

We stuffed our faces, walked around a beautiful city, visited a terrible waxworks museum and did a fun escape room. I was properly present in a way that’s very difficult when you’re at home and the bloody laptop is sitting there on the desk looking at you.

And then, around day four, something happened that always happens when I take proper time off...

--> The QUALITY THINKING started arriving in my head <--

Why quality thinking never happens at your desk

I came back from Krakow with a minor course correction for my business, the MSP Marketing Edge. I’ve scrapped some projects that were taking up time and energy without going anywhere. And have set up some new ones that I’m genuinely excited about.

None of that thinking happened in a meeting, or while I was working through my inbox. It happened while I was walking around a city I’d never been to before, with no particular agenda, and my brain quiet enough to process stuff.

This is the thing most MSP owners don’t give themselves enough credit for understanding.

The problem isn’t that you don’t have good ideas or don't know what to do
The problem is that you never give your brain the conditions it needs to pull all the info together and process it properly

When you’re in the day-to-day, you’re in reactive mode. Tickets. Clients. Staff. Cash flow. Nightmare.

Every day is spent responding to what the business throws at you, and there’s no room left over for the bigger questions.

The real strategic thinking, the “what do I actually want this business to look like?” thinking doesn’t happen in the day-to-day.

It happens when you’re on a 10 mile walk with the dog at the weekend. In the shower on Sunday morning, on a long drive, perhaps exploring a city you’ve never visited before.

Or on the fourth day of a holiday when you’ve finally stopped thinking about "work stuff".

Your brain needs space and quiet to do its best work. And most MSP owners never give it either.

Guilt is the problem

I know what happens. You're away for a few days and then suddenly you remember a client situation, so you check your phone and there's an email and you feel like you have to reply to it. You feel guilty for not being at work. And in doing so you mentally leave your vacation and sort of enter a half work mode.

And the damage is done. You're back in the same mindset you were in the week before when you were sat at your desk.

Real time off requires trust. Trust that your team can handle things without you, and that clients won’t disappear if you’re unreachable for a week. Trust that the business you’ve built is robust enough to run without you watching your PSA every hour.

If you don’t have that trust yet, that’s got to be a priority for you. Because the inability to step away from your business for a week is itself a massive business problem. It means you’re the bottleneck and you're holding the business back.

What happens when you properly switch off for a week

The first day or two, your brain is still at work. You’re mentally running through your task list even when you’re sitting in a restaurant in another country. That’s normal. Let it happen.

By day three or four, your brain has moved into a different mode and the good stuff starts to arrive. I mean connections you hadn’t made before, or questions you hadn’t really explored. Perhaps a nagging feeling about something in the business that you’d been too busy to examine.

Use a notes app (or better still a real paper notepad) to capture what comes up. You’ll be surprised how much arrives.

I came back from my week in Krakow with more clarity about my business than I’d had in months. That’s not a coincidence. I knew it would happen.

Paul's genuinely outrageous suggestion

Here’s what I think every MSP owner should do...

--> Book a week off at least every two months <--

Not just a long weekend. A proper week where you’re not available, checking in, or “just keeping an eye on things.” A week where someone else is responsible for the business and you are genuinely somewhere else.

Is that outrageous? Maybe. For some MSP owners reading this, the idea of six weeks of proper holiday every year will feel completely unrealistic. Which is a shame because your family would love that from you. That's perhaps the greatest gift you could give them in the next 12 months... more of you!

(cue the jokes)

So get into your calendar now, put the time aside and then actually book some flights so that you're mentally committed to being away. That last bit is really important.

When did you last take a proper week off? Let me know. I read and reply to every email (unless I'm on vacation)

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MSPs: What your competitors are doing that you can’t see

Paul Green — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 09:30:56 +0000

I know two types of MSP owner: The one who never checks competitors' websites, and the one who CAN'T STOP checking them! IMHO both of these approaches are wrong. Here's my suggested middle ground, plus 6 tools to do the watching for you...

I know of two types of MSP owner.

The first never looks at their competitors at all. Heads down, focused entirely on their own business, vaguely aware there are other MSPs in their area but doesn't know much about them and frankly doesn't care.

The second checks their competitors’ websites every week. Screenshots their LinkedIn posts. Knows exactly what they’re charging. Gets a genuine knot in their stomach when a rival wins an award or lands a big client.

Neither of these approaches is right or wrong and if you ask me, I'm more the first kind of person than the second. However I think we all need to have a certain awareness of what our competitors are doing, because it reflects what's happening in the marketplace.

Let me talk you through how to do this, and give you six specific tools (I bet you a lollipop that you'll find at least one of them incredibly useful).

PART ONE: The strategy

Why ignoring competitors entirely is risky

If you never look at what other MSPs in your area are doing, you have no idea how your prospects see the market.

You don’t know if your pricing looks reasonable or wildly out of step. And you have no idea specifically who they're comparing you to when they're in the research phase.

It's good to track who's in the market, who's entering, who's exiting, who's getting bigger, who's struggling, etc etc.

Why obsessing over them is worse

The "checking-every-week" MSP owner has a bigger problem. When you spend a large proportion of your energy watching what everyone else is doing, you start reacting instead of leading. Someone launches a new service, so you scramble to copy it. A competitor drops their prices, so you start second-guessing yours.

And you’re comparing your raw reality inside your head and heart to their carefully curated LinkedIn highlights. That’s not a fair fight, and it never will be.

The middle ground

The answer isn’t more willpower or more discipline. It’s to remove yourself from the equation almost entirely. Set up tools that quietly watch your competitors for you, then review what they find now and again.

When you do sit down to review it, ask yourself three questions:

Is there anything here I should genuinely be worried about, or learn from?
Is there a gap in the market that nobody local is filling?
Does anything here actually change what I should be doing... or is it just noise?

Most of the time, the answer to that third question is “it’s just noise.” And that’s fine. The point isn’t to find a reason to change course. It’s to confirm you’re not missing something important.

And and actually, no MSP loses a deal because a competitor was slightly better. They lose it because they were inconsistent. Your own implementation matters much more than whatever the MSP half a mile away is doing this month.

PART TWO: The tools

This is not a complete list in any way. But here are six ways to let software do the watching, so you don’t have to.

1) Google’s new information agents

Google announced this at I/O in May. It’s a genuine evolution of Google Alerts. Rather than emailing you a messy list of links, you can set up a background AI agent that continuously scans the web for a competitor’s name and sends you a summary only when something changes. It’s rolling out this summer to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. Worth setting up the moment it’s available to you.

2) Google Alerts (in the meantime)

Until information agents are fully rolled out, plain old Google Alerts still works and costs nothing. Set one up for each competitor’s business name and you’ll get an email whenever they’re mentioned somewhere new online. Rougher than the new version, but free and instant.

3) Follow them on LinkedIn and Google Business Profile

The simplest option of all and entirely free. Follow your local competitors’ company pages and the owner’s personal profile. If you're not comfortable with them seeing that you've done that, get a non-MSP friend to follow them for you.

4) Visualping

Point it at a competitor’s homepage or pricing page and it’ll alert you the moment something changes. You can describe in plain English what you care about, so you’re not getting pinged every time they fix a typo. Free tier available, plus paid plans for more pages and more frequent checks. Genuinely useful if you want to know when a competitor changes their messaging or pricing without checking manually.

5) Hexowatch

A step up from Visualping if you want more detail. It can track a competitor’s pricing specifically, monitor for new pages appearing on their site, and even flag changes to their technology stack. WAAAAAY more than most MSPs need, but worth knowing about if you want deeper visibility on one or two key competitors. Paid only, with a short free trial.

6) Your AI friend, used quarterly

Once a quarter, copy the text from a competitor’s website or a handful of their recent LinkedIn posts and ask your AI tool of choice to summarise their positioning, their apparent USP, and anything that stands out. If you use the same thread for this (especially in an AI with a good memory like Claude), then it'll help you spot what's changed over time.

If you're rubbing your thighs at the thought of one of these paid monitoring tools, you're probably overthinking this. Just keeping a basic check on your competitors via LinkedIn or using something like Visualping is enough for the vast majority of MSPs.

So tell me... are you the MSP who never looks, or the one who can’t stop checking? Let me know, honestly. I read and reply to every email

The post MSPs: What your competitors are doing that you can’t see appeared first on Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge.

5 new things on LinkedIn (and what they mean for your MSP)

Paul Green — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 09:30:10 +0000

LinkedIn has been shipping new features in a frenzy. Nine in the last few weeks alone (someone clearly wants a promotion). Let me tell you which ones matter most for your MSP...

I think LinkedIn must have a new product manager, because they've been shipping new features at a pace that makes me feel slightly old and tired. Nine in the last few weeks alone.

Anyway, I've had a good lie down, and now I'm ready to talk you through the ones that matter most to MSPs.

Here’s what’s changed, filtered down to the things that actually matter if you’re an MSP owner ready to win new clients.

1) The algorithm is now penalising AI slop (GREAT)

LinkedIn has officially confirmed it’s building systems to detect and suppress generic, low-quality AI-generated content (aka AI slop).

If their algorithm detects you've posted something which doesn't really have any original thinking, or there's no specific insight or genuine perspective, then they're not showing it to as many people.

LinkedIn says it isn’t penalising AI-assisted content, only content without substance. This means if you use AI to help you articulate something you genuinely know and think, that’s fine. But if you stick a topic into ChatGPT and just post whatever it spits out, expect your reach to suffer.

I believe this is a good thing, don't you? I follow many people on LinkedIn, and I see a LOT of them who are not writing their posts any more. They're not even editing what AI is churning out. And it's soooooooooooooooooo obvious to spot. It makes me think less of those people. They're "doing LinkedIn" rather than using it as a tool to build and influence a targeted audience.