MSPs: If you want to win clients, you must stand out with your marketing. Here's how...
I've got this friend. Let's call her Debbie.
She's not in our world, she works in a different sector. And she's just been made redundant. Not fun, especially after nearly a decade in the same business.
It's left her at a crossroads. She was already thinking of changing careers, but of course we like to be in control of when we do these things, don't we?
I was chatting to her the other day and said "if you could wave a magic wand and do any job, what would it be?".
Her eyes lit up and she smiled. "I'd love to work with animals," she said. "In fact I just applied for a receptionist's role at my local veterinarians".
And then the smile faded. "But they told me they've had hundreds of applications. I've got no chance."
Now it was my turn to get excited. "No, wait! Standing out is a marketing challenge. That's my superpower!"
5 mins later, I'd devised a cunning plan:
- Bake a really big, delicious cake.
- Print her CV (resume) on high quality paper.
- Hand write a covering letter to accompany it. Saying something like I know hundreds of people have applied for this job and I wanted to make sure you saw my application. You'll be jumping for joy if you give me this this role, because... then list 3 benefits the owner will enjoy by hiring her. Maybe add a humorous 4th one about an endless stream of fresh cakes.
- Put all of this into a brightly coloured box to keep it together.
- Hand deliver the box to the veterinary clinic... TODAY.
Just doing this wouldn't get Debbie the job. But it would get her an interview.
As an employer, you'd be intrigued by a candidate who went to this much effort, wouldn't you?
I saw Debbie again a week later. And eagerly asked how her interview went.
"Oh," she admitted sheepishly... "I didn't do the cake thing. I didn't want to stand out for the wrong reasons."
🙄 JUST 🙄
🙄 FLIPPING 🙄
🙄 CRAZY 🙄
(although I do understand how much fear she must have felt at the thought of pushing that much outside her comfort zone).
But here's the thing.
For many job roles, and especially those that don't require specialist skills, employers are spoilt for choice. To get their attention you have to do things other people won't do.
Marketing your MSP is the same. The ordinary business owners and managers you want to reach have hundreds of other MSPs to pick from. You must stand out to them.
One of the tactics I recommend to do this is something called an impact box - similar to what I recommended Debbie do, but systemisable.
Here's what could go inside:
- A hand written short intro note:
- Your proposal or confirmation of the meeting / follow-up meeting (depending where in the sales process you send this impact box)
- Your buyers guide (if you don't have one, there's one included in the MSP Marketing Edge)
- A selection of printed case studies. I know that would be a third piece of printed material, but they all play a different part. One idea is to put video case studies onto a USB (because your prospects would never plug a USB from a stranger into their laptop, would they…?)
- Some edible stuff: Chocolates, biscuits, or sweets
- Some merch – a mouse mat, pen, whatever really
Make sure the box looks nice inside. Use sheets of gently crumpled tissue paper to achieve that. On the outside you could have some stickers printed with your logo.
What else could you do to make your MSP stand out to prospects?
