Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

How to choose the best CRM for your MSP by answering a few key questions. Also this week, the most important metrics to focus on, and how MSPs can actually make money from AI. Welcome to Episode 345 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. The 4 types of CRMs used by MSPs (and which is best) One of the most common questions I get from MSPs when they start thinking seriously about their marketing is, “Which CRM should we use?” And on the surface that sounds like a really simple question, but actually the more you dig into it, the more complicated it becomes. Isn’t that always the way? Because this isn’t really a question about software. It’s a question about frustration. What MSPs are really asking when they ask me about CRMs is, “Paul, where do I put all my prospect data? How do I build a pipeline that I can actually see? How do I know who to follow up and when to follow them up? How do I stop things falling through the cracks? And why is all of this giving me such a headache?” Those are all the kind of questions that MSPs really have. So before I walk you through the four types of CRMs that MSPs tend to use, let me say something to you. It may be slightly controversial. I believe there isn’t one best CRM for MSPs. There’s only the best CRM for how your MSP markets and sells itself. And those are two very different things. And the reason so many MSPs end up with the wrong tool or with a perfectly good tool that they never really properly use, is that they chose the software before they defined the marketing process and that’s backwards. The tool should serve the process never the other way around. Let’s look at the four types of CRM based on the four types of MSP. The first type is what I’d like to call PSA led MSPs. So these are MSPs who basically live inside their PSA. ConnectWise, Autotask, HaloPSA, Synchro, Atera, Kaseya, whatever it is. Their agreements are in there and this may be you. The billing’s in there, your tickets are in there. So for you, the idea of keeping your sales activity in exactly the same place feels logical and tidy. And actually if your sales are largely driven by referrals or renewals and everything’s kind of straightforward and simple, then this can work perfectly well. If you’re not trying to build a sophisticated marketing engine but you just want visibility on leads without having more software, then that might be the right answer for you. But a big word of caution. When a PSA vendor says their platform has a marketing module, that’s a little bit like a Swiss Army knife saying that it has a saw. So technically, yes, it’s true, but it’s not what you would choose if sawing things was something that you did every day. You can’t use that tiny little knife every day on a tree, can you? It’s just for the odd job. And it’s exactly the same with your PSA. Most marketing modules in PSAs, and I haven’t looked at all of them, so if I’m wrong on this, please email me and let me know. But most marketing modules in PSAs are not really up to the job of actually doing good comprehensive marketing every day. The second type then is marketing-led MSPs. And these tend to be MSPs that don’t have enough leads and know that marketing has to be their principle growth activity. Again, you may be in this category right now. So they want to run campaigns, they want to publish content consistently, they want to capture leads through forms, and importantly, and this is the right thing to do, is use automation to follow up all of these leads. So if that is you, the platforms to look at are things like HubSpot, making sure that you’ve got the marketing hub, HubSpot’s broken into lots of different hubs, so you’ll need the marketing hub. Or you could look at ActiveCampaign or look at Zoho One, or the...

MSPs love healthcare practices for many reasons, so here’s how to reach them and win them as clients. Also this week, the 5 questions your MSP website’s MUST answer (or prospects go elsewhere), and the scary implications for MSPs when your clients buy cyber liability Insurance. Welcome to Episode 343 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Deep dive: How MSPs win healthcare clients Let’s talk about one of the most attractive client verticals that any MSP can go after. Healthcare practices. And when I say healthcare, I mean private practices specifically. So doctors, dentists, dental surgeons, optometrists, or opticians as they’re known here in the UK, veterinarians, we call them vets here in the UK, physiotherapists, cosmetic clinics, all of that kind of stuff. The kind of practice that’s owner operated or partnership run. I mean somewhere that’s got a reception desk, clinical staff, and a growing pile of technology holding the whole thing together. This is not about hospitals or large health networks. This is about those small to medium-sized healthcare practices that need IT support and they’re probably getting it from someone who maybe doesn’t really understand their world, and that is your opportunity. A heads up that this podcast is consumed all around the world and obviously there are lots of different healthcare systems out there. So for example, here in the UK, most doctors and what we call general practitioners, GPs, they work within the National Health Service, which is run by the government. So this means I’m not going to dive into specific details or specific laws for any particular country. Instead, I’m going to talk generally about how you can reach all of these kind of clients, whichever country you’re in. Because even though there are different laws and different systems around the world, these healthcare professionals all think and feel and act pretty much along the same lines. So why do MSPs love healthcare practices so much? Well, let me count the reasons… First of all, they’re almost entirely recession proof. People don’t stop going to the dentist when the economy wobbles. They don’t stop taking their dog to the vet. I mean, they might cut back on the extra spend such as having all their teeth replaced with those weird looking teeth that Hollywood people have, but they still maintain the basic essentials. So these businesses have a good solid base of revenue still coming in no matter what’s happening to the economy. In fact, these are businesses typically built on recurring appointments, loyal patients and services that can’t be postponed indefinitely. Second, they are deeply dependent on technology. The appointment system, the patient records, the digital imaging, the billing software, the online prescribing, the payment processing. It’s all technology, right? And all of it needs to work all day, every single day, because when it doesn’t work, the consequences are immediate and painful. A dental practice that can’t access its patient management system on a Monday morning isn’t just frustrating. It’s losing appointments and revenue and it’s letting its patients down. And that’s the kind of downtime that gets you fired as their IT provider and the kind of risk that makes them incredibly motivated to find someone they can genuinely trust. A side note, I worked with dentists in a previous business, one that I sold 10 years ago, and here in the UK, they call helping the patient’s “chair time”. That’s all the dentist wants, they want chair time. They want the patient in the chair, they want their fingers and metal things in the patient’s mouth, that makes them happy because they’re earning money, and anything other than chair time is losing them money. So it’s really good for you to get into the mindset of what is most import...

The average MSP does not need a full time salesperson, here’s what you really need. Also this week, five cool marketing ideas from other sectors, and how to outsource operations without making mistakes. Welcome to Episode 341 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Why you shouldn’t hire a salesperson, even if you hate selling Can I be honest with you about something that might be just a little bit uncomfortable? If you hate selling, hiring a salesperson feels like the obvious answer. You get someone else to do the bits you hate, right? Problem solved, except it’s really not. And I’ve seen enough MSPs go down this road to know that for most of them it ends in frustration, wasted money, and a salesperson who quietly stops hunting for new business within about three months. Let me explain why. The average MSP does no more than about two sales meetings a month. Two. And before you think that sounds shockingly low, it actually makes complete sense when you understand the business model of MSPs. MSPs don’t generate enormous volumes of leads because most of them don’t do a lot of marketing and that’s a kind of obvious thing to say. But more importantly, when you do win a client, that client pays you all the monthly recurring revenue for years and years and years, sometimes a decade or more. So you don’t need to win clients every week to run a very healthy, profitable MSP. In fact, you might not be able to onboard them. You might not have the capacity to onboard a new client every week. You just need to win the right new clients, at the right time, consistently. And that might be for you one every month or two every month or something like that. But here’s what that means for hiring a salesperson. If you’re only doing two sales meetings a month, what exactly is a full-time salesperson going to do with the other 150 odd hours? Because new logo sales in an MSP is not a full-time job, not unless you’re a reasonably large business and you have a lot of sales activity going on. And a good salesperson who’s sitting around not selling is going to get bored, demotivated and expensive very quickly. So MSPs think, I’ll get them to do lead generation as well. But asking a salesperson to generate leads is like asking, I don’t know, a network specialist to build a PC. And sure, they may be able to have a go at it, but it’s not what they’re good at. Lead generation and going out and meeting people and closing sales are two completely different skillsets. With all of the marketing jobs that need to be done within your MSP, you need different people to do each of those jobs. Bearing that in mind, MSPs then think, okay, if they can’t do lead generation, then I’ll get them to do account management as well. That seems to fit. They can look after the existing clients and hunt for new ones. And yes, that kind of sounds logical, but 95 times out of a hundred, it’ll end in disaster. And here’s why. Account management is a genuinely enjoyable job. You’re talking to people who already like you, they’re already giving you money, you’re already solving problems for them and they already trust you. These are nice conversations, sorting out little small problems, conversations about the future of their business. Everyone enjoys an account management conversation. New logo sales is the complete opposite. Until you get into the process with someone, a lot of it can be rejection, cold audiences, long sales cycles. It’s having to build trust from scratch over and over and over again. So if you give someone both of those jobs, of course they’re always going to drift towards the easier one, which is account management every single time and not because they’re lazy, because they’re human. And that means that your existing clients get lots of love...

Hello and welcome to a very special edition of the podcast. For the first time ever, we’re doing a complete deep dive into one of the biggest growth opportunities available to your MSP right now… co-managed IT. Welcome to Episode 339 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Grow Your MSP 10x Faster With Co-managed IT Before I get into it, I want to tell you something about how we prepared for this episode, because I think that’s going to matter. So some background… we’re launching a new co-managed IT marketing membership, and I’ll tell you more about that at the end of the podcast, although if you do want to sneak peek, it’s on my website right now at mspmarketingedge.com/membership. Anyway, to help us get this right from day one, over the last six months, my team and I have done hundreds and hundreds of hours of research into this topic. We’ve interviewed IT directors, real ones who actually buy co-managed IT, so people who sit in the role that your MSP will be trying to reach if you did this. And we’ve also interviewed MSPs who already have co-managed clients and are winning more of them. And all of that work has helped us to build a new membership. And of course, it’s also got into this podcast episode. So what you’re going to hear or see today isn’t just my opinion about marketing to IT directors, it’s grounded in what they actually told us. In their own words about how they think, what they fear and what they want, and crucially, how they make buying decisions. In fact, throughout this episode, I’m going to play you some clips from one of those research conversations. It was an interview I did with an IT director who was very open with us, and I’m operating here on the principle that it’s better to seek forgiveness than it is to ask permission so he doesn’t know I’m playing these clips. Let’s keep this a secret, shall we? To protect his privacy, his voice has been filtered, and I’m going to call him Dave. Obviously, that’s not his real name, but these are his real words, completely unscripted. And remember, the call that I did with him was a research call six months ago. It wasn’t an interview. I’ve picked Dave for this because he really gave us insight into the emotions that an IT director goes through when they think about partnering with an MSP. And I think when you hear him speak, it’s going to change how you think about this massive opportunity. So, four things we’re going to cover today. First of all, what co-managed IT actually is, and just as importantly, what it isn’t. Number two, who makes the buying decision. Number three, why businesses choose co-managed. Number four, how you need to position and market yourself differently if you want to win this kind of work. Let’s go. What co-managed IT is and what it isn’t The single biggest mistake that MSPs make when they try to enter the co-managed market is assuming that it’s just a variation of what they already do. They take the same messaging that they use for business owners and bolt the words co-managed onto the front. And then they wonder why the conversation dies. Well, it dies because the buyer is completely different and a different buyer needs completely different language. In traditional B2B sales, you’re usually talking to a business owner or a senior manager who doesn’t live inside technology every day like you do. They don’t really want to understand it. They don’t want to talk about governance, architecture, service tiers, all of that stuff. What they want is relief. They just want someone to take all of the technology away from them. And that’s why phrases like, “We handle everything” or “Leave your IT to us”, they work so well in B2B marketing because you’re selling peace of mind to someone who just wants...

Your website is having conversations on your behalf because that’s its job… it’s there to explain who you are, what you do, and why someone should trust you. The question is, what’s it saying? Also this week, why most MSP reporting to clients is ignored, and huge mistakes you’ll make today that’ll damage your exit. Welcome to Episode 337 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. What your MSP’s website is secretly saying to prospects behind your back Your MSP’s website is talking behind your back. So the only question is, what’s it saying? While you’re out at dinner, walking the dog, in a meeting, or even having a sneaky kip at three in the afternoon, yeah, I know what you get up to. Your website is having conversations on your behalf because that’s its job, right? It’s there to explain who you are, what you do, and why someone should trust you. The problem is that for a lot of MSPs, your website is having the entire conversation with the prospect, because if they don’t very quickly find something on there that engages them and makes them think, “Oh, right. Yeah, this is the right place for me,” then they just move on. They go back to Google or AI or however they got to your website in the first place, and they go looking at other MSPs. And do you know what? You never even know that they were there because you don’t know their name, you don’t know what they were looking for. All you know is that another invisible conversation just died. So what is your website saying behind your back? From what I see, most MSP websites accidentally deliver one of four damaging messages… The first message is this: We don’t really want to tell you much about us. You see this everywhere in kind of vague written content, which of course we call copy. You see generic service descriptions or a homepage that says almost nothing specific or uses very generic text like proactive IT support, trusted partner, cyber security solutions. And here’s my favourite. We keep your business running. Now, there’s nothing technically wrong with those phrases until you realise that every other MSP within like a 25 mile radius is using the exact same words or the same intentions at least. And when everything sounds the same, you sound the same as all of your competitors. And when everyone sounds the same like that, the prospect has no reason to choose you. So the silent message becomes, we don’t really know what makes us different, so we’re going to hide behind safe language. And prospects really feel that. If you don’t give them something distinctive that they can hook onto, then they will go looking for someone else who does. The second damaging message is: Lack of transparency. Many MSP websites avoid talking about price. They avoid explaining how their services work. And they avoid spelling out what’s included and what isn’t included. Instead, everything funnels towards contact us to find out more. So put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. They’re already nervous about switching MSP and they don’t want mystery, they want clarity. If your website withholds really basic information like pricing, then the message it sends is that they have to speak to a salesperson before they can even decide whether you are relevant to them or not. And in 2026, that just kills momentum. Buyers want to research quietly. They want to understand what you do, roughly how you price and how you think before they ever talk to you. And your website either supports that research or it blocks it. As a side note, if you know that’s a problem and you want an easy way to fix it, I’ve partnered with bestselling author Marcus Sheridan to create msppriceguide.com. You can get an interactive price calculator on your website...

Here are seven ways you can drive more qualified traffic to your MSP’s website… not vanity visitors or random clicks, but people who are genuinely more likely to start a sales conversation with you. Also this week, reasons to add a price estimator to your MSP’s website, and what to do if your referrals have dried up. Welcome to Episode 335 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. How to drive tons more qualified traffic to your MSP’s website If you woke up tomorrow and your MSP’s website had received double its normal traffic, would that actually change your business? For most MSPs, the honest answer to this is no because… Your marketing problem isn’t traffic, it’s qualified traffic… the right people, from the right businesses. So right now, I’m going to give you seven levers that you can pull to drive significantly more qualified traffic to your MSP’s website. We’re not talking vanity visitors or random clicks, but people who are genuinely more likely to start a sales conversation with you. Lever #1: Clarity beat volume. The clearer you are about who you want to attract, the easier it is to create content that pulls them in. If you try to speak to everyone, you’ll attract no one. But when you specialise, even if it’s just in your messaging, you become magnetic to a specific group. And that’s why vertical marketing works so well. When an accountant (CPA) lands on a page that clearly talks about accountants or a manufacturer sees content that reflects their world of production lines and deadlines, they instantly feel understood. Understood… that’s the keyword there because that recognition is what drives qualified traffic. Lever #2: Relevance over randomness. Most MSP websites are full of really generic service pages about IT support and cyber security and backup and cloud, and that content really doesn’t attract qualified buyers because it doesn’t answer specific real world questions. Instead, think about what your ideal prospect is typing into Google or their AI tool late at night when they’re worried about their business. They type in things like “What happens if our server fails?” or “How do we pass a cyber insurance audit?” or “What does downtime actually cost a manufacturer?” So when you create content that calmly answers those questions, you attract people who are already thinking about solving a problem that they believe that they have. It’s because you’re talking about them and their issues and not you. That’s a real key thing in website content. Leaver #3: Consistency. Because traffic compounds over time. One blog post won’t move the needle at all, but 50 might. 100 definitely will. 500 absolutely will. When you publish regularly, weekly blogs, weekly videos, daily LinkedIn posts that link back to your website, you just create more entry points and you stay more visible. You build familiarity. Qualified traffic rarely comes from a single piece of content. It comes from repeated exposure over time. The trick for most MSPs is to put in place a system whereby you have content going out on a regular basis, and that system does it 52 weeks a year with minimal impact on you as the business owner. And as a side note, if you want a system that puts content out there, go and have a look at my MSP Marketing Edge membership. It’s a system that we’ve designed and it’s trusted by hundreds and hundreds of other MSPs as a way of them getting content out every single day with minimal amount of work for them. Go to mspmarketingedge.com. Lever #4: Distribution. Creating content is only half the job. You need to deliberately put it in front of the right people, and that means emailing it to your database, sharing it consistently on LinkedIn, even sending...

Let’s look at how to market your MSP to manufacturers and whether this vertical is even right for you. Also this week, good/better/best pricing for MSPs, and how this 40 technician strong MSP wins clients. Welcome to Episode 333 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. How to market your MSP to manufacturers Do you want more manufacturer clients for your MSP? Manufacturers are one of those love it or hate it verticals in the channel. Some MSPs absolutely thrive working with manufacturers. Others hear the word and breakout in a cold sweat. And honestly, both reactions are completely valid. So right now, I want to do a proper, balanced, deep dive into how to market your MSP to manufacturers, starting with whether this vertical is even right for you, and then looking at what manufacturers actually care about when they choose an MSP. So let’s start with the reality. If you enjoy complexity, manufacturers can be a fantastic fit. They often have expensive production machines, specialist software, bespoke setups, and critical systems that simply cannot go down. And yes, somewhere in most factories, there’s usually a machine still running on an old XP box that hasn’t been rebooted for 10 years because if it stops, the whole place stops. That’s the joke I always make, but it’s funny because it’s true. The upside of this is obvious. There are lots of large, complicated, high revenue projects. There’s specialist work that you can charge properly for. There’s a real value in what you do because downtime costs manufacturers serious money. When production stops, it’s not a few annoyed users. It’s lost output, missed deadlines, idle staff, and very stressed owners. That makes manufacturers willing to invest when the risk is clearly explained. But let’s be honest about the downside. Manufacturers rarely have standard setups. There’s very little cookie cutter IT. Every environment is different. Every site has its own quirks. And that means that often you need your most senior technical people involved a lot more often than you would in a nice tidy professional services business. If your MSP is built around highly standardised stacks, minimum variation, and keeping senior techs away from day-to-day firefighting, then manufacturers will feel like chaos to you. Before you even think about marketing to manufacturers, you need to answer a simple question internally… do you enjoy this kind of work? Assuming you do want to go after manufacturers, the next mistake MSPs make is marketing to them like they’re any other business, because they are not. Manufacturers think differently. Their world revolves around production, reliability, safety and efficiency. They don’t care about shiny tools or buzzwords. They care about one thing above all else – keeping the production line running. From their point of view, the best MSP is not the most innovative or the most cutting edge, it’s the one that feels the safest. The one that understands their environment, the one that won’t casually suggest upgrades that risk stopping production. So when you market to manufacturers, your messaging needs to shift. You’re not selling IT support, you’re selling risk reduction. You’re selling uptime, stability, you’re selling calm. Manufacturers choose MSPs who demonstrate that they understand the consequences of failure. Talk about downtime in terms they understand… lost output, missed delivery slots, idle machines, wasted labour. Show that you respect legacy systems, even if you don’t love them and that you know how to work around them safely. One of the most powerful things you can do in your marketing is to talk about how you approach change. Manufacturers are often change averse for very good reasons. So explain how you test, how you plan, how you sc...

In this podcast special we’ve joined thousands of other podcasters around the world to take part in something called Podcasthon. I’ve chosen a charity called 404 Stress Not Found, that’s aimed at helping MSPs to cope better, and here’s my guest to tell you all about it… Welcome to Episode 331 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. MSPs: How to get help if you’re struggling Featured guest: Paul Croker is an award-winning Cyber Security person with a rich background in IT that span the years and sectors. In his last corporate role was heading up the IT for a pan-European space company where Paul led the way for the UK entity spanning two sites, managing complex needs of IT for space projects with budgets and an aggressive headcount to take into account too as the business was ramping up. Paul has also setup 404 Stress Not Found CIC. A not for profit looking to tackle the mental health and resilience issues that plague the tech industry. IT and Cyber are impacted as people are burned out, stressed out and not sure which way to turn. They may not know what is happening or be able to spot the signs. 404 Stress Not Found is a safe place, at in person events and via our free online portal, you can connect with others, hangout, or ask for help, listen to others in need, or start your own journey, it’s what you need it to be. Hello and welcome to this special episode of the podcast. This week, we’ve joined together with thousands of other podcasters around the world to take part in something called Podcasthon. We’re giving up this episode to promote a charity of our choice, and you’re going to love the charity that we’ve picked. It’s called 404 Stress Not Found. It’s a new organisation that’s aimed at helping MSPs to cope better. And here’s my special guest to tell you all about it. Hello, I’m the founder of 404 Stress Not Found. My name is Paul Croker. And thanks so much for joining me on the podcast, Paul. You and I have known each other for, it must be 9, 10 years something like that, it’s been a long time. And bizarrely, and what has sort of created this special episode today is I bumped into you and your wife, Gemma, at Barcelona Airport like back in autumn/fall last year. Now we had actually both been to MSP Global, so it’s not like we were just randomly flying into Barcelona, but we had a great chat outside the airport. I was very hungover, I remember that. And you were a bit more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than I was. I think I just had a coffee as well, which probably helped. Yes, you had. Which is a dangerous thing at two in the afternoon, but there we go. And we started talking about what you’re doing with 404 Stress Not Found, and I realised this is the perfect thing for this special episode. So let’s start right at the beginning. So just first of all, let’s find out about you. Just give us the brief version of your story in terms of the MSP that you run here in the UK. Sure, so I started a company called 18iT about five years ago now or thereabouts, off the back of exiting a pan-European space company, which is all very cool. So when we talk about rocket science, I know what that used to look like. And what we do now over here is very different. But I take those lessons and basically curate them for MSPs and people in the tech space. That’s really cool. And you can actually say it’s not rocket science because that’s what you used to do. And I do use that quote when I talk on stages. Yes. So you should, I would. I mean, I couldn’t even get into a rocket facility, let alone be a rocket scientist, but that’s pretty cool. And you founded this thing called 404 Stress Not Found. So how long has that been in your life? And we’ll exp...

Most MSP owners are drowning in marketing tasks, telling themselves they’re saving money or keeping control, when in reality they’re just burning through their time. Let’s discuss how to change that. Also this week, many MSPs use AI badly for marketing, and it costs MSPs 5 figures to win a new client. Welcome to Episode 329 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Marketing tasks MSP owners should NEVER touch You’d be mad to do all of your MSPs marketing yourself, and if that sentence annoys you a little, there’s a good chance that you are exactly the person who needs to hear it. Because most MSP owners are drowning in marketing tasks, telling themselves they’re saving money or keeping control, when in reality they’re burning the one resource they can never replace… their time. Right now, I want to talk about which marketing jobs you absolutely should outsource, which ones you must keep ownership of, and how to focus your limited time on the activities that deliver the biggest return. So let’s talk about time, because for MSP owners and managers, time is the real bottleneck. You don’t have a lack of ideas, you don’t have a lack of tools, you don’t even have a lack of willingness. What you have is too many things competing for your attention. And marketing is often the thing that’s squeezed into the cracks between the tickets, the meetings, and the client fires. The goal of marketing isn’t for you to do more, it’s for you to do less of the wrong things and more of the right things. And here’s the core principle that I want you to adopt. You should outsource anything that someone else could be trained to do well, and you should keep ownership of anything that requires judgement, direction and deep understanding of your business. Most MSPs get this completely backwards. They clinging very tightly to low value tasks and then outsource high level thinking, which is absolute madness, right? Let’s start with what you should almost always outsource. Anything repetitive. Anything admin heavy. Anything that’s process driven, things like loading social media posts, scheduling blogs, uploading videos, formatting newsletters, whether that’s email or print making, LinkedIn connection requests, cleaning lists, basic CRM updates, repurposing content, chasing webinar registrations, creating transcripts and pulling simple reports. None of those tasks that I was just mentioning require you. They just require instructions. They require an SOP. If someone can be trained to do it once, they can be trained to do it again and again and again. And every hour you spend doing those things is an hour you are not spending on strategy, leadership, relationships or growth. Now let’s talk about what you absolutely should not outsource. You should never outsource ownership of your marketing direction. You should never outsource deciding who you are targeting, what you stand for, what message you want to be known for or what success looks like. You shouldn’t outsource thinking, you shouldn’t outsource high level decision making, and you definitely should not outsource responsibility. Strategy for your marketing lives with you, direction lives with you, and accountability lives with you. Even if you have a marketing agency, a virtual assistant, a marketing assistant, or even if you have a content team, they should be executing your thinking and not replacing it. Because trust me on this, no one else in the entire world understands your MSP, your clients, your ambition, your risk tolerance, the way that you do. Many MSPs say, Oh, I haven’t got time for marketing, and what they really mean is, I don’t have time to do admin marketing tasks. But the high ROI marketing doesn’t look like admin, it looks like deciding where you want to focus. I...

Breaking into a new vertical is one of the smartest marketing decisions you can make for your MSP, here’s how to get started. Also this week, why MSPs are terrified of guarantees, and the huge AI revenue opportunity for MSPs. Welcome to Episode 327 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. No vertical for your MSP? That’s a mistake One of the smartest marketing decisions you can make for your MSP, is choosing to break into a new vertical. Because marketing to a vertical is easier, more effective, and ultimately more profitable. A lot more profitable. And a lot of MSPs want this, but they don’t know where to get started. So let’s talk right now about how to enter any vertical you like and get traction quickly and easily. Choosing to work in a vertical is like switching from a megaphone over to a sniper rifle. Most MSPs marketing sends a pretty generic message, something like, We help businesses of all sizes, any kind of business, with their IT, which is very lovely and friendly but also utterly forgettable. Vertical focus marketing says, We help dental practices eliminate downtime, secure patient records, and keep imaging systems running smoothly, and suddenly with a message like that you are relevant, you are specific, and you sound like someone who understands that exact person that you are talking to. The thing is that humans, we respond to familiarity. Prospects respond to relevance. Marketing responds to focus. When you pick a vertical, your story becomes sharper, your audience becomes easier to find, your content becomes dramatically better, your conversion rates jump, and you instantly differentiate from every generalist MSP around you. This is especially true in professions like accountants, lawyers, dentists (like I was just saying), medical clinics and manufacturers. These groups all share similar software compliance concerns, workflows, frustrations, and even buying psychology. This is marketing heaven, but how do you actually break into one? Let’s get into the practical stuff. There are three phases to entering a vertical. First, understand the vertical. Next, build the assets and the messaging. And then thirdly, build the audience. So let’s do phase one, understanding the vertical. This is kind of like the homework phase and it’s also where most MSPs skip straight ahead to the marketing and you kind of miss out on all the prep work. So please do do this bit. To break into a new vertical, you must first understand the software that they use, the regulations that they’re bound by and maybe even that they fear, and the workflows that frustrate them. You’ve got to understand the downtime disasters that could ruin their day, the KPIs that they care about, the conferences they attend, the associations that they belong to, the influencers they listen to and the language they use. If you talk their language, even just 70% of it, you instantly feel to them like your one of them. And no, you don’t need decades of experience in their vertical. You just need curiosity, a bit of research, a handful of conversations, and the ability to turn what you’ve learned, your insight, into content for them and to adapt your conversations to take all of it into account. Once you understand their world, you are ready for phase two, which is building up your assets and your messaging. And the question I always get from MSPs on this is, Paul, should I have a page on my website or should I have a whole separate website? Well, my recommendation for this is to start simple. So yes, you begin with a single vertical specific page on your main website. Don’t go building 17 new websites before you even know whether or not the vertical is going to respond to you. So your vertical page on your existing site should inc...

Delighting your clients is really important to retention, so it should be systemised in every single MSP. Also this week, AI prompts for MSPs to win new clients, and this is how MSPs lose revenue. Welcome to Episode 325 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. MSPs who don’t do this, risk losing clients Insane retention for your MSP isn’t just about doing a great job for your clients, it’s also about making sure they feel really positive about you. Most MSPs have great retention by default. Sure, you’re looking after people properly, but you must also remember that for ordinary business owners and managers, switching MSPs is a distress activity. In fact, the perception is that moving to another MSP is difficult and dangerous and that’s what keeps people with you. It’s called inertia loyalty. But relying on it is a really bad strategy. Instead, here’s how to systemise going the extra mile so that your clients don’t just respect what you do. They love it. We’re really talking here about delighting your clients, but not in a haphazard way. One of the great things about owning your own business is having complete control over the experience of the customers, right? If you and I could clone ourselves, then we’d have the perfect businesses because everyone in our team would behave like us. But the reality is that no business is like that. We need other humans and other humans behave in different ways. So unless we put in place systems and train our people on the systems and then coach them to follow those systems and thrive within them day in, day out, we get haphazard performance. I think that customer service is absolutely one of those areas that could and should be systemised in every single MSP. And by customer service, I mean going the extra mile, the stuff that genuinely makes clients think, wow, these tech people are different. Because when you do that consistently and not just occasionally, you create loyalty, referrals, and a reputation that’s almost impossible for your competitors to touch. So let’s get into 10 simple but practical ways that you can go the extra mile and more importantly, how to turn each one into a repeatable system inside your business. Proactive communication. I don’t just mean the usual emails that say your ticket has been updated, but actually I mean reaching out to someone before something becomes an issue. So like a quick monthly check-in call or a short video from a technician summarising what they’re working on for them. The magic here isn’t the contact, it’s the proactive nature of it. And yes, you can systemise this with a simple CRM task. Every client gets a check-in every 30 days, no exceptions. Now obviously if you’ve dealt with some tickets with them in those 30 days, you can skip that, but if you haven’t really dealt with your clients, you haven’t sorted anything big out for them in the last 30 days, then send them a proactive video just telling them some stuff you’re doing or just checking in to say, Hi, how are you? What’s happening right now within the business? Personalised micro touches. Things like remembering their birthday. I mean, what if you got the birthday of every user at every client and you just sent them something? Just send them a card or just send them a video message from the team. I know that means a bit of work every week, but it’s a point that it really connects with them. What if you celebrated their business anniversary? What if you found out and congratulated them when they hired someone new? In fact, you are one of the first people to find out when they hire someone new, right? If they remember to tell you, although I realise most of your...

Law firms are a vertical that can be incredibly profitable for MSPs. If you want more lawyers as clients for your MSP, here’s everything you need to know. Also this week, why MSPs are working so hard, and how MSPs are losing revenue. Welcome to Episode 323 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. How to market your MSP to lawyers If you want more lawyers as clients for your MSP, here’s everything you need to know. Let’s talk about what lawyers look for in a new MSP, why they would switch, and what kind of marketing is going to grab their attention and convince them to talk to you. So law firms are a vertical that can be incredibly profitable for MSPs. And I know that sometimes lawyers can be difficult people to deal with, but if you’re confident in your service and you know that you want more professional firms that put technology at the heart of everything they do, let’s get more lawyers. In fact, I believe they’re one of the easiest verticals to market to when you know what they care about. And spoiler alert, it’s not Windows 11 and Copilot. Law firms buy IT differently from most other businesses. And the reason for this is simple. Everything they do revolves around risk. Their risk, their client’s risk, the risk of regulators breathing down their necks, and the risk of missing a deadline because Outlook decided today was a fun day not to work properly. So if you want to win lawyers, you don’t sell IT support, you sell risk reduction and professional reputation protection. Let’s talk about their biggest pain points. So first is compliance and confidentiality. Lawyers live in a world where one email sent to the wrong person can cause a catastrophe. So talk to them about secure communication systems, email encryption, MFA everywhere, data loss prevention, and of course audit trails. Second, billable time. Every minute a lawyer can’t work is literally money disappearing. So your message here is simple. We keep your fee earners earning. And then third, case management and workflow tools. Many firms still use clunky old systems or they haven’t fully adopted cloud tools yet. So show them how better tech can make caseloads smoother, faster, and more profitable. If you want your MSP to stand out, you need to stop sounding like an IT company and start sounding like someone who understands legal practices. Use their terminology – fee earners, case files, discovery, retainers, compliance obligations, client confidentiality – all words like that. Because when they hear their own world reflected back at them by a potential IT partner, they immediately think, “Ah, yeah, this one understands us.” You do need some specialised proof. Law firms don’t buy from generalists, they buy from specialists. So create a case study with a local legal firm, a landing page dedicated to IT for law firms with a short guide called something like, The seven biggest cyber risks facing law firms in 2026. And then just get a few testimonial quotes from partners or office managers. You don’t need dozens, one or two strong quotes will carry huge weight. And here’s a little marketing trick. Law firms love audit. I mean audits is basically their favourite word. So offer them something like a free 20-minute legal IT risk assessment saying something like, Is your firm compliant with your regulators cyber guidance? Find out. And this positions you as a safety first expert rather than just another IT fixer. Another smart tactic is to pick a sub niche. So don’t just market to all law firms, pick a slice. It could be family law or conveyancers or criminal defence or corporate commercial, maybe personal injury. Each of them has slightly different pressures and workflows, and the more specific you’re messagin...

We are continuing a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the third step: Convert relationships. Welcome to Episode 321 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Convert relationships Hello and happy New Year, and welcome to our final special episode of this podcast. We’re finishing a three part series this week. Last year, I released my book, MSP marketing: Start Here, about a 3 step lead generation system, which is trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world. In the first special, we looked at the first step – build audiences. Last week was the second step – grow relationships, and today, starting 2026, we’re going to do the final step – convert relationships. Let me paint a picture. You’ve built your audience, you’ve nurtured your relationships, but now what? How do you turn all of that goodwill into actually clients without feeling pushy, desperate, or salesy? Because no MSP wants to be like that. Well, that is where step three comes in – convert relationships. I like to think of this stage as harvesting, farming. You’ve spent months planting seeds – every post, every email, every conversation – and now it’s time to gently shake the tree and see what’s ready to fall out. And I say gently because good sales isn’t about pressure, it’s all about timing. Remember, business owners only switch MSPs when they are ready, not when you are ready, or you need more MRR. So your job is to make sure that when that readiness appears, when they finally get fed up with their current incumbent MSP, you are the first person that they think of. And that’s why conversion is as much about staying in touch as it is about asking for the business. There are a few practical ways to do this. The first is personal outreach, and by that I mean a phone call. But here’s the trick. It shouldn’t come from you. So I’m assuming that you are the business owner and you’ve already got a million other things to do, right? So hire someone, even if that person is part-time, to just make those calls for you. A back to work mom is great for this. Someone working two to three hours a day, two to three days a week, and you want someone warm, friendly, and curious. Their job is not to sell IT support, it’s just to have conversations on your behalf. Things like, Hey, we connected on LinkedIn a while ago, or you connected with my boss on LinkedIn a while ago. How’s business going? Something super simple like that, something human that starts and maintains and builds relationships that can turn into video calls. That’s the thing. Her job is to book a video call with you, a 10 to 15 minute video call, and then you do the hard work of turning the video call into a real sales meeting. Now, the other way that you can do this is through marketing campaigns. And I’m not talking about the one-off hit and hope campaigns that we all get tempted by or that we get from vendors, and you think, oh, this is brilliant, and you do one piece of activity and then you’re kind of upset that nothing happens from that. I’m talking about systematic outreach marketing campaigns that build on the relationship that you’re building with your prospects. So things like sending a physical letter out to a batch of prospects and then following that up with an email the next day saying, Hey, did you get my letter? And then making a friendly follow-up call later in the week. Now, this stuff is old school, but I promise you it works because most MSPs don...