Although the managed services industry is witnessing solid growth due to accelerated digital trends, many MSPs are falling short of their growth potential due to poor marketing efforts. According to a recent survey by MSP360, 50.6% of MSPs find getting new clients the most challenging aspect of their business.

The ultimate aim of MSP marketing isn’t just about expanding the customer base but rather hitting the MRR target. This can happen only if you manage to attract valuable clients who can benefit from your solutions.

This blog will highlight a 3-step marketing strategy that MSPs can follow to make their first impression in front of the decision-makers, right when they are ready to switch.

1. Identify Your Customer

Marketing is all about attracting the right customers who can benefit from your services. You need to start by identifying the job titles and roles of people who will be involved in the buying process. Based on this, you need to create an ideal customer profile defined by job role, income, seniority, location, etc. While searching for target customers, you don’t always have to wait for the perfect customer who checks all the boxes in your ideal customer profile. Doing so could cost you a lot of great opportunities in the market.

Instead, you need to study the market and determine the pain points of your potential customers. This information must be documented so that you can create market campaigns aimed at solving these issues. In addition to their pain points, you need to research your buyers’ spending habits, current solutions, etc. Once you have collected this information in a detailed manner, you can leverage it for your MSP marketing initiatives.

2. Create Website Content and Marketing Campaigns

The most obvious reason to create high-quality content is that customers appreciate it. With top-quality content, you can position yourself as a thought leader in the industry. The perception of your potential customers matters a lot when it comes to influencing their buying decisions. The content you create provides a great way to showcase your expertise.

This part of your marketing efforts should focus more on making your buyers’ journey informative. Before you making any marketing initiatives, you need to populate your website with relevant content. You need to diversify your content to cover all bases and clearly describe the services you offer. Also, make sure you have your LinkedIn profile in place along with your email database. Your website should have the right CTAs to ensure potential customers can reach out to you easily.

3. Deploy, Measure, Optimize

Once you have your content in place, it is time to launch your marketing campaigns. You can use multiple channels like emails, social media, targeted ads, etc., to reach out to your potential customers. When creating campaigns, it is better to use templates and checklists to help your customer understand your value proposition better.

While creating marketing campaigns is critical, it is even more important to measure your success and make incremental tweaks to perfect your marketing game. Regularly conducting A/B tests and documenting the results will help you nail down what strategies are working and what aren’t. By gaining consistent insights from your MSP marketing campaigns, you can fine-tune them further and target your potential customers the right way.

How IT Glue Can Help

Documentation plays a crucial role in all your marketing efforts. When your IT documentation is in good shape, it frees up time that can then be utilized towards bringing your marketing A-game. With IT Glue, you can automate your documentation and always keep it up to date. You can also easily create templates, SOPs, checklists and other marketing documents and share them with your team members.

IT Glue has a comprehensive activity log so that you know which employee has access to certain documents. It provides an Information library and a knowledge base to provide you with easy access to information.

Join our “Marketing Made Easy” webinar to gain a greater understanding on how to attract valuable customers.<webinar link>

To know more about how IT Glue can complement your MSP marketing efforts, request a demo.

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Your marketing efforts should be consistent and continuous if you want to ensure constant growth. With the world still battling the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative to create a marketing strategy specifically suited for COVID-era recovery. New challenges keep emerging when it comes to targeting the right customers, defining value proposition and sending the right message to potential customers. Also, your new marketing strategies need to be completely digital since face-to-face meetings are no longer an option.

Tailoring marketing strategies for the right audience and creating new marketing initiatives are imperative to ensure successful business growth for all MSPs. In this blog, we’ll cover how you can do just that.

Not sure where to start your marketing initiatives? Check our eBook – MSP Marketing Made Easy

Targeting the Right Customers

Your marketing initiatives begin with identifying the right customers. Without this, you risk spending your limited marketing budget on an audience that’s of no value to your company. Make sure you create an ideal customer profile and focus your marketing efforts only on targeting those customers. When creating marketing materials, focus on their pain points and consider the existing solutions in the market.

Once you have figured out who your target customers are and how to appeal to them, it is time to define your value proposition through your marketing content.

Defining Value Proposition

The marketing materials you create should focus on the value proposition you offer. Ask yourself the following questions before developing marketing content – How do you differentiate your services from others in the market? Do you have any contingency plans for another crisis? Make sure you focus on this messaging while appealing to your target audience.

Even after the pandemic, a hybrid work environment is likely to be the future for most organizations. Provide information about the challenges your customers are likely to face in this environment and how you can help overcome them. Your messaging should be structured and actionable. Rather than selling fear, your messaging should focus on benefits such as cost savings, efficiency, security, etc. Also, don’t forget to include the right call to action in your marketing materials.

Cross-Selling and Upselling Opportunities

Bringing in new customers can be tricky and expensive. However, catering to existing customers who stick with you even during an economic downturn is a lot easier. This is why you need to identify potential cross-selling and upselling opportunities in your offerings. You can also have a session with all your customers on what they think about their future IT needs. This will help you gain some perspective on what your customers actually need.

You can also leverage your CRM and PSA to generate reports about new opportunities. Most importantly, you need to conduct quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and leverage the feedback gained from customers to identify their needs. This will also prove valuable when you plan to make new technology investments to future-proof your MSP.

Check out our Sales & Marketing Launchpad webinar.

Creating a Marketing Strategy

Considering the changes we have witnessed since the beginning of the pandemic alone, your COVID-era recovery marketing strategy cannot be the same as your pre-pandemic strategy. Your messaging, marketing channels, analytics, metrics, etc., need to be updated in line with the evolving needs of your customers.

For instance, you can no longer rely on traditional networking and face-to-face meetings to deliver your message to your potential customers. Leverage your social media and digital marketing channels to promote your services. These channels can help expand your reach with a limited budget and the return on investment can be tracked easily.

When creating content, make sure you exhibit thought leadership rather than focusing exclusively on sales-oriented messages. Your potential customers should understand that you know what you are doing. Use blogs, landing pages and video content to deliver your message. All the marketing content you create should tie back to your services and have a call to action for your audience to take appropriate steps.

Kickstart your MSP’s video marketing efforts. Check out the webinar now!

Strengthening Partnerships

Your marketing initiatives should be more than just about appealing to new, potential customers. You also need to focus on strengthening your partnerships with your existing customers. This involves networking with them frequently and gaining knowledge on how they operate. If most of your customers belong to a specific industry or niche, you need to improve your knowledge about the industry. This will help you understand your customers’ needs and serve them better.

You can use the vCIO services to explore their requirements beyond the basic technology stack. In times of crisis, you need to reach out to your customers periodically and enquire about their evolving requirements. When it comes to building relationships, your customers should know that you are here for them no matter what.

Looking Ahead

Although we are in the middle of one of the worst health crises in history, hard times don’t last forever. You need to focus on the future of your business and what changes need to be made as the industry evolves. Always make sure you target the right customers, define your value, identify cross-selling and upselling opportunities, and develop a marketing plan to make the most of your marketing efforts. With the right marketing strategies, you can build solid relationships with your customers and ensure continuous growth.

To know more about how IT Glue can help you with your COVID-era recovery, sign up for a free demo.

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Before we check out the significance of various methods of pricing, let’s take a quick look at how pricing affects your profitability.

Pricing and Profits

The way you price your services directly affects your profitability. While competitive pricing is essential to gain more customers, pricing your services too low will hinder your growth in the long term. Besides, this type of pricing will push you down the rabbit hole of low margins, low growth and low-value services.

What you need to focus on instead, is the value of your services. When you price your services based on the value you provide rather than the cost you incur or the comparative pricing of your competitors, you can attract quality customers who value your services.

Also, knowledge about price elasticity of demand (PED) can help you come up with a strong pricing strategy. Products or services that are highly sensitive to price fluctuations are considered elastic while those that remain stable under price fluctuations are inelastic. For instance, the demand for food products remains pretty much stable irrespective of pricing changes. As an MSP, you need to identify the price elasticity of your services before setting up the price.

This can be identified with the simple formula:

Quantity of the demanded service ÷ Price of the demanded service = Price elasticity of demand

In an ideal scenario, you would like your services to be inelastic (unaffected by price fluctuations). However, that may not always be the case. This simple calculation will help you determine the right pricing that doesn’t compromise your profits or future growth.

Pricing Strategies

There are different methods available for MSPs to price their services. Some of the commonly used pricing strategies are as follows:

• Per-device pricing: Here, a flat fee is charged per endpoint in the organization. The fee is based on the type of endpoint. For instance, support for a server costs more than a laptop or a mobile device. In this model, you can charge an additional fee only if the customer adds more devices.
• Per-user pricing: Here, a flat fee is charged for every user in the organization. The user may have different devices like laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc. The fixed fee includes support for all the devices. While organizations with plenty of devices may benefit from this model, it means more work and more support for MSPs.
• All-in-seat pricing (AISP): This is a highly recommended approach to MSP pricing. First, you determine your overall cost burden in providing service to an organization. This helps you determine a break-even price, and then add the required margin you feel is reasonable. For instance, if your monthly recurring revenue from a company is $150,000 and you support 1,000 seats, your AISP is $150 per seat.

When using the AISP model, you need to study the average purchasing power of your customers to make sure you are not charging too much. At the same time, you also need to consider your desirable margins to ensure you are not underpricing.

Factors to be Considered

The following factors are critical when coming up with the pricing strategy for your services:

• Cost overheads: Calculate your total costs, including salaries and rent, before coming up with a price.
• Value pricing: Costs alone should not dictate your pricing. Consider the value you provide and the intellectual capital you have invested in the service.
• Competition: You don’t always have to charge lower than your competitors. However, an understanding of the market price can help you come up with a better msp pricing strategy.

Remember, MSP pricing is not a one-and-done deal. You need to review your offerings every six months to make sure you are keeping up with the changes happening in the market. Also, when pricing your services, provide clear information to your customers about what they can expect from a package.

Want to learn more about MSP finance? Watch for our finance-focused webinar featuring Peter Melby, CEO of Greystone Technology, a globally recognized MSP, as he reveals how MSPs can reinvest and make money at the same time.

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Using Financial Statements

When you first go online and read about financial statements (income statements, balance sheets, etc.) you get a surface-level view, pick up a few financial ratio formulas and away you go. The key, however, is in the application of this knowledge. If you understand financial statements you can:

• Guard against fraud
• Make financial plans proactively
• Understand which levers to pull to impact your financial outcomes
• Increase the value of your business prior to exit

Know Your Goals

What metrics matter most? Well, it depends on what your goals are, which is why it’s important to have a clear sense of what those are. If it’s growth, you might not care much about your debt/equity ratio as long as your YoY revenue numbers are popping. However, if you’re looking to exit, EBITDA and the value of that equity matter quite a bit more.

Using Financial Ratios

All those fancy ratios are designed to tell you things about your business. Understand these well and you’ll be in much better shape than if you just take your accountant’s word for it. For example, if you notice that your current ratio has been stable for six months but your cash ratio is getting worse, what does that tell you? Well, it tells you that either your inventories or your receivables are spiking relative to your cash. If it’s inventories and you don’t know why, that’s not good. If it’s receivables, find out who the culprits are and talk to them.

The same thing applies when it comes to understanding the difference between, say, EBIDTA and net income. EBIDTA is the basis on which your business will be valued, so maximizing that is important if you’re looking to exit. Net income matters to the taxman and if you’re not looking to exit, it’s all about minimizing your tax burden.

The key here is that there’s more to strategy than just delivering great service, marketing well and running a tight ship operationally. Understanding what your financial goals are and what tactics will help you achieve those goals requires at least a fundamental understanding of financial statements.

Want to learn more about MSP finance? Sign-up for our upcoming finance-focused webinar featuring Peter Melby, CEO of Greystone Technology, a globally recognized MSP, as he reveals how MSPs can reinvest and make money at the same time.

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Before we get to that, let’s just get something out of the way. Your salesperson should not be spending time hunting for leads. Lead generation is a different job, with a different skill set. Don’t waste a good closer on marketing, and don’t waste a good marketer on trying to close deals. You need at least two people for this job if you want to do it right, with each working to their respective skill set.

What Leads Look Like

The first thing you need to know about leads is that they aren’t “anybody that needs IT”. Goodness, no. I mean, any company bigger than a shoeshine stand needs IT but you’re not looking for just any customer – you are looking for good customers. The kind that understand and appreciate what you do, and are willing to pay for it. Let your competitors settle for the rest of the market – aim for the cream. Figure out which among your current customer base are the most profitable and use those companies to build profiles. Typically, these are the companies for which you add the most value. If you aren’t able to add value to a company they probably won’t do business with you, and nor should you expect them to.

Nurturing

A good lead is a company that not only needs your services, but understands that need. If those are in short supply, you’ll need to take leads you aren’t sure about and nurture them a bit. After all, if someone isn’t even close to signing a contract, you only want to invest so much effort in them. But you do want to keep your name in front of them so that when they do need an MSP, or they have a contract with another MSP coming due, you are top of mind.

Scoring

In a mature marketing organization, leads are typically scored. It takes some data to do this properly, so this might only work for larger MSPs, but basically lead scoring is what helps your salespeople prioritize their efforts. You want to understand how likely a lead is to buy, based on their profile and the interactions that they’ve had with your team already.

Where Leads Live

You never really know where leads live until you can identify a pattern. At first, you’re probably just using word-of-mouth. Once you get a few clients, talk to them about where they like to spend time, what media they like to consume – that sort of thing. Basically learn how to reach them. No point in spending money advertising on one platform if your target audience doesn’t use it. Same thing with any marketing activity – invest where your clients are. Fish where they’re biting. And while you can throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, the best approach is to be a little bit more targeted, which is where those initial conversations come into play.

If you found this article helpful, why not take a quick demo of IT Glue. We’ve saved our partners literally millions of hours of wasted time, and you should be taking advantage of our documentation platform, too.

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One of the most important soft skills in marketing is positioning, or differentiation. This is what makes you unique from your competitors. Sustainably unique. That word “sustainable” is the key to differentiation. It’s why differentiation isn’t the same thing as “what we do well”.

What We Do Well

Let’s start with this. List five things your MSP does really well. Do you crush tickets? Are your reps friendly? Are you fully up-to-date on the latest hardware and software? Do you have a niche, or a vertical you know like the back of your hand?

A lot of folks stop there. The problem is that “great service” can be done by anybody. The few companies that use service to differentiate are well-known stories for a reason – it’s harder than it sounds. So you’re friendly, local and give great service. All of your competitors can do that, too. The key here is to tell a story that inspires your target market. This story is where your story intersects with their story. If you can explain how you go to this place, and understand how they got to this place, then you have the foundations of connection, upon which you’ll be able to do business.

Verticals and Niches

Verticals and niches can be a great way to differentiate, at least in the short run. In the short run, if you’re far better than anybody else at security, that’s a niche you can exploit. But where does that expertise come from? Because if you just got into it last year, everybody else can catch up to you. First mover advantage is an advantage, but it might not be sustainable if you don’t keep ahead of the game.

Verticals work the same way – if you’re the only one doing health care in your county, that’s differentiation, but you have to continue to improve, because otherwise somebody else can enter that space and catch up to you. Sustainable competitive advantage in a vertical usually means having a multi-year head start, combined with a track record of excellence.

Defining Your Differentiation

The tricky part of differentiation, then, is carving out a space that you can own, and making it very difficult for anybody else to get in there. If you have years of expertise that make you that much better than anybody else, that can work. If you have the best processes so that nobody will ever really be cheaper (and profitable), or deliver better service, that could work. But when looking at your services, you have to be brutally honest with yourself as to whether you genuinely have superior service. If you don’t know the processes that contribute to that, and understand how you’ll sustain the superiority of those processes, then you probably can’t sustain that advantage.

No Resting on Laurels

Competition keeps you sharp. It may not feel good, but embrace the game and you’ll be better for it. If you have a head start on rivals by a year, then you have to work just as hard as them to maintain that lead. It’s important to think in these terms. The reason Coke has stayed ahead of Pepsi for almost 100 years is that Coke has never taken their market leadership for granted. If they didn’t have Pepsi, they’d have taken their feet off the gas a long time ago. Learn to embrace your competition and learn from them.

The Key to Sustainable Differentiation

Your competition can become excellent, and if they really wanted could probably get better than you at just about anything. But you could do that to them as well. Differentiate on things they can’t just copy. Put a lot more time and effort into your brand than you’re doing right now. Your brand is something they can’t copy – I mean, legally, they can’t copy it.

Culture is difficult to copy. If you want to do the “superior service” thing, then your superior service needs to be the result of replicable processes, continuous improvement, and a culture that is obsessed with service excellence. You’ll need to hire for it, train for it, design everything about your company for it. Read up on how Zappos does its culture to sustain service superiority. You – the owner, the C-suiters – you need to live and breathe the culture you want your clients to see. If you’re not doing that, nobody else in your MSP will either.

Position, and Reposition

Position, if possible, away from your competitors. Find something the market cares about, and be better at that thing than anybody else in your area. Communicate this very, very well. Make sure to associate that point of differentiation with your brand as much as humanly possible, so that the connection is instantly made. Then back that up with hard skills – the SEO and ad buying – that supports your positioning.

And then re-position when necessary. This doesn’t mean pivoting away from what you do best. It just means understanding the current state of the competitive environment at all times. Competitive positioning is not a “set it and forget it” kind of thing, but rather is something you should re-visit regularly. Make sure you’re still differentiated the way you intend. Be prepared to change some messaging. Also be prepared to change your processes – if somebody else has started taking your customer service lunch money, find out why they’re beating you and change your processes to recapture that positioning.

There’s nothing easy about the marketing soft skills. They take experience to master, and that’s very different from learning hard skills. But once you get there, you’ll realize that’s the key to finding and sustaining differentiation, and ultimately learning how to identify your best and most sustainable sources of competitive advantage.

We’re good at marketing here at IT Glue. We’re also good at documentation. In fact, we are the best in the business. If you’re serious about getting your documentation sorted out, and then using that documentation to improve your margins and get into growth mode, then we should talk. Take a quick look at what we offer, and we’ll take it from there.

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You run a business, so you know that the “bottom line” isn’t just some metaphor – it’s your mortgage payment, your children’s tuition, it’s your retirement fund. Your net margin is the bottom line, but the gross margin and operating margin are full of things you can influence in order to improve your net margin.

As a documentation solution, we probably can’t tell you much about things like rent on your physical facilities, but we do know a thing or two about reducing operating costs.

Total Lifetime Cost vs. Sticker Price

A surefire way to crush your margins is to focus strictly on sticker price. It’s a bit counter-intuitive because sticker price is so big and obvious. But total cost is what matters. Think about your PSA, for example. The leading PSAs are pretty powerful, but often come with steep learning curves, require consultants to help set them up, and then someone on staff to help with the administration.

Where documentation is concerned, total cost is more about what the solution offers you. Use a solution that doesn’t have professional-grade security? Ok, factor in the cost of a breach. Use a solution that does only a few basic things? Ok, factor in the opportunity cost because instead of cutting down time waste by 50%, maybe you’re cutting it down 10%. That 40% difference is money you’re not saving now – what’s that worth? Use a solution that talks big but is mostly just vaporware? Ok, but now you’re waiting around to get the automation and deep workflow integrations you need. Cost that out.

Ultimately, if you’ve got a laser focus on sticker price, and not thinking about total cost, your margins will suffer for it.

Total cost today is important but you’re probably already noticing that something like a consulting fee is not necessarily an ongoing expense. True – it calls to attention that total cost has to be looked at from a lifetime perspective. Makes sense – that 50% time waste reduction saves you a few bucks on any given day. But over the course of years, that savings is into the tens of thousands, if not more.

Total lifetime cost includes development – i.e. where the product is going. At every event in the channel, that product roadmap discussion is the one MSPs care about the most, for this very reason. So where is the product going? Does the roadmap focus on deeper workflow integrations between critical tools?

And with the roadmap, does the vendor have the team to deliver? Did they just lay off a bunch of people? Do they have a roadmap that sounds brilliant but only has a couple of engineers to make it happen?

Most MSPs get decent margins in the good times. The trick is getting good margins when les bon temps no longer rouler. How you perform in a recession and coming out of one is really a reflection of the habits you build when you don’t need them. And paying attention to the total lifetime cost of your stack, including the opportunity cost of using immature tools, is absolutely one of those habits.

Doing more with less takes more work that most people realize. In the short run, you can cut corners on sticker price and just work more hours. In the long run, that’s not going to be sustainable, not if you want operational excellent and healthy margins no matter what the economic conditions are.

Want to see how IT Glue maximizes the efficiency of your team and functions as the missing link between the tools in your tech stack? It’s a must have for any MSP that wants to maximize margins.

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Now, that’s not to say that developing a more sophisticated and targeted marketing strategy isn’t complex (because it is), what I mean is that you can broaden your reach and increase your exposure by understanding the fundamentals.

Digital marketing requires digital assets

Sure you can use text-only advertisements, but as the saying goes, a picture says a thousand words, and this is even more true in our image obsessed world. Images with minimal text tend to perform better, as do images with movement. The goal is to catch the viewer’s eye and draw them in like a moth to a flame. Each platform requires unique specifications for digital images and videos, and often allow text that falls within a predefined character limit. The goal is to get your message across, and entice a “click”.

Know your channels 

Think of online channels like the channels on a TV network. Each channel broadcasts a specific genre of shows, and appeals to a specific group of viewers. Similarly, each digital channel allows you to reach specific groups of people with defined interests. The biggest online channels right now are Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, though the list goes on. Each of them brings in a very broad range of people, but based on behavior, you can target specific groups of people that you think will be interested in your product. For example, on Google you can re-target individuals who visit websites and use search terms that are relevant to your product or service.

What are your clients’ behavior profiles?

You wouldn’t advertise diet pills at a hot dog eating contest. You need to have a general idea of your target audiences profile in order to target them effectively. Without targeting the right people, you’re throwing money away. Based on the digital channel you’re promoting your services on, you’ll use different characteristics to target your market segment. Think about what the typical age, location, industry, job title,  media they consume, and so on.

What’s your “call to action”

Your Call to Action (CTA) is the action that you want the audience of your advertisement to complete or perform. This could be anything such as downloading a piece of content, watching a video, or requesting a demo. Don’t do anything without a clear objective in mind.

Where does it fit into your sales funnel?

If your CTA is to “Buy Now” and the person viewing the digital advertisement hasn’t even heard of your product or service, then there’s a misalignment between your CTA and who you’re targeting. Unless your product or service has high public or industry awareness to begin with, it’s a good idea to draft your messaging so that it appeals to people at the top of the funnel as well as those further down. You don’t want to miss out on a qualified lead.

Measure success

You’ll want to see if your digital marketing efforts are bearing fruit. Are people answering your CTA? How much are you paying per click? Have you seen an uptick in new clients? The metrics you use to measure success will depend on what type of digital marketing strategy you’ve implemented, so make sure you’ve established these from the get-go and are tracking data.

IT Glue isn’t a marketing tool, but it does help you save money by making your techs more efficient. Plow that savings back into your business on the marketing and sales side, and you’ll start scaling in ways you never thought possible – even in a recession.

Yes, I’ll take a look at IT Glue

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We each have a unique personality, and your company should be no different. Yes, it’s weird to view a corporate entity through an anthropomorphic lens, but your customers are people, and this is how they’ve grown to view and understand businesses. When you think of Apple, Nike, or ESPN, they all have distinct personas, and how they communicate their products and services consistently align with that persona.

Your MSP may not be Apple, but nonetheless will be viewed by prospective clients. It’s an aspect of your company that makes you distinct from the competition, and easier to remember and understand. In a perfect world, that brand is something only you can offer – so don’t say “friendly service” because anybody can say that. Your brand needs to be distinctive.

Here’s how to approach defining your brand.

Know Your Audience

You wouldn’t talk to your mother the same way you talk to your friends. Likewise, the way you present your company to prospects and customers should be appropriate for them. Ask yourself who your target market is. Sometimes you’ve gone after this market segment intentionally, or perhaps you’ve found that a defined segment of the market has organically gravitated to your business. Whatever the case may be, write down a list of defining demographic and psychographic features. Sometimes it helps to create a character that represents your quintessential client, complete with a name, traits and backstory. Your brand needs to appeal and resonate with this type of person.

Determine Your Unique Value Proposition

The marketplace is crowded and you need to be unique to stand out. Knowing your unique value proposition requires that you understand your competition and how you compare to them. Your unique value could be a specific service you provide, a payment or bundling plan, or perhaps a special way that you deliver service. Whatever the case, it should be the first thing people think of when they think of your company.

Develop a Brand Identity

Your brand identity is the face of your company. It’s the color scheme and visual language that’s used across all your marketing and communication materials. It also includes the tone of voice and language used in your marketing copy and pros. These things should flow from a strong brand statement. Your brand statement is different from a mission or vision, and is something created for internal purposes. As yourself what your company does, how it does it, and why it does it. Choose five characteristics that describe your brand. Lastly, think about the story of your brand. Now distill this into a brand statement.

While defining a brand is often treated as a secondary consideration by companies, given that it’s the first thing prospects and customers pick up on, there’s no doubt it should be one of the first.

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The first is collecting from customers who don’t have any money because they aren’t working. This is not going to be an effective use of your time, and you kind of know that already. It’s the second A/R challenge that matters right now.

The second main challenge you’re facing is from customers who are still working, but not making a lot of money. They’re looking to save every penny they can and guess what – you’re probably starting to look like a line item to a lot of them.

You know the saying “the best defense is a good offense”? I think it’s quite apt here. Everybody is shifting into survival mode, because all they can see is the risk that they face. But for the few who can shift their mindset to one of opportunity, it’s out there. And it starts right here, right now, with the way you market your business.

Here’s what I’m getting at.

You do not sell “IT”. You sell peace of mind, you sell ROI, and it just so happens that IT is the pathway by which you deliver these things. If your clients are paying you for “IT”, well they don’t know what that is, don’t care what it does, they just want stuff to work. The problem of course is that anybody can give them “IT” and there’s always someone willing to do it cheaper.

So take the opportunity to build a better message. Think about peace of mind for a second. Does the CEO of Marriott have a lot of peace of mind right now? I suspect not. And all it took was the credentials of two employees. I’ve said it before – I don’t even know any of my passwords, and I can’t do jack without 2FA.

If your clients – or worse yet your staff – have to memorize their own passwords and don’t use 2FA, then how do your clients sleep at night? Peace of mind is worth a lot of money. Ask anyone who’s been ransomed. That’s a message you can sell to even the stingiest of clients – ransomware is an existential threat to small business just as much as COVID-19 is, and we’re not even close to flattening the curve on ransomware.

On the ROI side, the question you always want to come back to is “how much does downtime cost?” Ask your clients for a cost per hour. Back in the days before COVID, maybe they didn’t know. But anybody in business today has to know exactly how much they were making in an hour of normal business. Whether it’s one machine that goes down, or an entire network, the faster you get it up and running again the faster they can go back to making money.

When we get past all this, your clients will need to make up for lost time, so they can’t just leave money laying around on the table. The speed and accuracy of your service desk matters. The quality of the tech you give them matters. Your ability to facilitate remote work, to troubleshoot and to provide round the clock service – all of these things matter. It’s all part of why they pay you, and all of those things have value. The cost of your service has to be weighed against that value. If not, you’re just cost. If so, any rational client will realize that the ROI of even the most expensive MSP is pretty solid.

These aren’t the only two things you can do to come out of the gates quickly in the post-COVID world. But they’re two big ones, because they take you and your clients out of survival mode, and shift the mindset back towards positioning for growth. I think we can all agree that getting back into growth mode is going to be essential for the rest of 2020 and beyond.

So take this opportunity to work on your messaging, and start thinking about the best ways to get your messaging out there. It’s not rocket science. You do amazing work, and your clients need you more than ever. Just sometimes they need a little reminder of just how much value you bring.

Want to become more streamlined and optimized yourself? Good call. We’ll talk more about that in the coming days. But for now just take the time to think about the value you bring and how you’re going to convey that, so that your clients resist the urge to be pennywise and pound foolish.

Cheers, and stay safe.

And while you’re here maybe check out a little video we made about Network Glue, because we are the marketing department after all.

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