Marketing continues to be the Achilles’ heel of many managed service providers. Chalk it up to improper investments in marketing efforts. Or perhaps it’s simply a case of not having the right education. As a long-time marketing professional, I believe limited investment and educational deficiencies are both partially to blame, but MSPs are also confused by all the marketing professionals who each have something different to say to MSP business owners about the right way to market their MSP company.
It’s no secret that I’m a straight shooter, a tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy. So here is my observation about the MSP marketing universe: There is just too much information, too much deception, and too many people hunting for your hard-earned dollar. But it doesn’t need to be that way.
This is where lifecycle marketing comes in.
What is lifecycle marketing
Approximately 18 months ago, my team at Ulistic made a strategic investment in lifecycle marketing. Regardless of the technologies involved, a proper lifecycle marketing strategy creates a foundation that takes potential prospects through a process of educational content, special touches, and opportunities to engage with your managed services company.
Ulistic has bet the house on Infusionsoft as the tool to build our lifecycle marketing strategy for our clients, and I believe Infusionsoft is the perfect tool to accomplish this. MSPs who work with Ulistic and our lifecycle marketing strategies continue to outperform their competitors. Why? Because this strategy includes:
- The right connections: Lifecycle marketing starts with the right connections. Regardless of where you get your lists — purchased or built organically — every MSP must invest in the proper list to start their lifecycle marketing efforts. And you need to ensure you include the right connections. Your list shouldn’t just be C-level executives. You need to have “rank and file” professionals sprinkled throughout as well.
- Awesome educational content: Your list subscribers will engage with your content when you keep it educational. They’ll immediately unsubscribe when you’re over the top with your sales message. I’m not saying to totally abandon sales, but your educational content must be what people get from you about 90 percent of the time.
- Lead scoring: Managed service providers need to have a lead scoring process in place that gauges interest and scores opportunities based on their actions. When a prospect hits a certain score, the MSP is alerted, and that particular prospect can be graduated to the next level of your marketing efforts.
- A personal touch: Throughout your lifecycle marketing efforts, you need to make your marketing personal. Infusionsoft allows for complete personalization of every single email that goes out. Your subscribers need to feel that you’re emailing them and only them. Strip away all Infusionsoft branding and make your emails appear like you sat down at your computer and sent this from your own Microsoft Outlook.
Ready to learn more?
Ulistic’s lifecycle marketing strategies go into a lot more detail than what I can share in this blog post. So I invite you to watch the webinar with Intronis where we will discuss in depth how your managed IT services company can build a lifecycle marketing strategy that, when executed, is guaranteed to create amazing results from all your marketing efforts.
Photo by Berto Macario
