10 Ways to Grow Your MSP Customer Base

Technology is transforming every facet of modern business and not spending on IT is no longer an option. However, simply because you offer IT services doesn’t mean you’ll naturally land clients. You have to advertise and market smartly if you are to stimulate sustainable growth.

Here is a guide detailing ten tips that can help you grow a more extensive customer base.

1. Publish Educational Material Regularly

Today’s marketing climate calls for out-of-the-box thinking for you to stand out as an authority in your field. If you can manage to develop confidence in others about how well you know your stuff, then it’s marketing 101 and you can translate that into sales.

No matter if you deal with hardware, software or serve the market in-between, you need to help your customers make the right decisions. Therefore, you should invest in developing and publishing educational content consistently to answer questions you know your customers have.

As you do this regularly, your audience will begin to regard you as an authority in your field.

When it’s time for them to make a purchase, chances are high they will turn to you as they will have already seen that you have in-depth domain knowledge that can give them the highest value.

2. Swap Your High-Value Content for Email Addresses

Sometimes giving high performing content you develop for free can seem like a less than stellar alternative. In such scenarios, you can choose to ring-fence your material for further value.

With this strategy, you design access to high-value material such that a user will need to give you their email address before they can access it. Remember that such a user most likely regard you as an authority in your field.

Once you get these email addresses, deliver insightful and relevant content to your lead’s inbox regularly. That will keep you top of mind, which pays off the day such a user decides to buy something they know your company also offers.

3. Email Marketing

Did you know that for every dollar you spend on email marketing you stand to generate $38 more?

That’s a compelling return on investment (ROI) you can leverage while still having a direct relationship with the users.

The trick behind successful email marketing is to nurture regular and dedicated communication with your subscribers.

The information you share can range from relevant offers based on the insights from your personalisation, to recent news. Such a strategy turns your email marketing into more of a content marketing system than direct sales, which can win over subscribers in due course.

You can then invest in ‘drip’ email marketing to move each lead along the sales funnel until you convert them.

4. Contributing to Other Platforms

On top of developing and publishing high-value content on your platforms, you can also deploy similar content on other platforms.

Reach out and foster partnerships with critical platforms that your customers trust, and publish material as a guest blogger/host.

Through this strategy, you will leverage the social capital of the host platform to attract those who trust the platform and need what you offer.

5. Sharpen Your Customer Experience

Long after people have interacted with your firm, they might forget every other thing except how you made them feel. That experience they have when interacting with you will go a long way in making them come back, and pass on a good word to others.

Thus, you need to invest in creating (and sustaining) exceptional customer experiences. Such an investment will keep bearing fruit through a glowing reputation and positive, personal recommendations.

6. Networking

Good old fashioned networking is still an essential way to increase your customer base, whether you’re B2C or B2B.

The kind of networking that bears lasting fruit is where you go with an attitude of how to help others, and not first being a taker.

Joint relevant trade associations to meet new people that can organically drive more business your way. No matter your scale, you should always be looking to meet new people whom your firm can serve.

7. Develop an Online Presence

As an IT service company, you need a consistent online presence to help groom your sales funnel. Start with the basics by establishing a third party platform presence through social media and the like.

Combine third party platform presence with your digital real estate to manage the risk of losing an audience. Don’t forget to coordinate your online messaging so that your various strategies speak as one.

8. Invest in Organic and Paid Traffic

Blending paid and organic traffic helps you monetise your efforts at establishing an online presence.

Organic traffic is the stream of users that come to you after discovering your content on search engines. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the tool through which you can attract visitors to your online platforms and convert them.

For paid traffic, pay-per-click ads help you complement your organic search efforts to generate leads that can increase your customer pool.

9. Rewarding Your High-Value Clients

Your most profitable customers continually drive consistent revenue to your business due to the value they receive. Therefore, rewarding such clients not only helps you retain the current business they give you, but it gives you a chance to upsell them.

Using the data you have on each customer, you can tailor-make relevant upsells that add the overall value of your proposition.

As you consistently carry out this approach, you get to convert them yet again on more products or services.

10. Remarket

Not every marketing effort you make will bear fruit. At times, you may target the right audience but at the wrong time.

It is with this in mind that you should regularly remarket to the leads who showed initial interest in your proposition before they jumped ship.

Consistent remarketing can help you pitch the right product at the right time to convert leads into new clients, thus growing your customer pool.

Do you want to grow your MSP, but are struggling to generate enough leads, which leaves you feeling frustrated, overwhelmed and stuck?

As a former chief marketing officer at a large MSP, I understand what you’re going through.

Based on a decade of in-the-trenches experience, we developed a digital marketing plan that shows IT companies how they can grow and scale their business while avoiding missed sales opportunities, losing out to competitors and a stalled business.