MSPmentor

Your website is the single most important marketing tool your company has. An effective website will increase your search engine hits, capture leads, and establish you as a leading managed services provider. But the key element to building great websites is one that many technology-based companies overlook—relevant, well written content.

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Here’s a smart move involving Architel, a managed services provider in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Architel says more than 10,000 users now depend on the company’s outsourced IT support services. Question: When was the last time you took a moment to brag (responsibly) about customer trust and company growth?

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Got news? Sure you do. Here’s a simple five-step plan to help managed services providers and VARs generate some news and trigger some buzz. Follow the steps and you could increase mind share and market share within your target markets. Here’s how.

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We’ve already covered the most widely read managed services blog entries from Q1 and Q2. Now, let’s take a look at what MSPmentor’s visitors were busy reading in Q3 2009…

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Video, video, video. MSPmentor keeps telling managed service providers to experiment with video as a tool to promote your company. But what tools do you need, how much is Internet video going to cost you and what types of video should you shoot? I’ve got some thoughts, and I’ve also lifted some ideas from Cisco Systems’ channel partner blog. Take a look.

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Our blog team attended a Dec. 2 lunch-and-learn session hosted by DynTek (an $85 million solutions provider). During the gathering, DynTek educated more than 60 existing and target customers about Windows 7 and virtual desktop infrastructure. It got me wondering: How many managed service providers are planning similar lunch and learns for 2010? And if you’ve never hosted a lunch and learn how can you get started?

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A quick question for managed service providers: Does your 2010 company budget include a line item for marketing, PR and company promotions? Do you even have a basic marketing strategy in place? If not here are nine quick ideas to get started.

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During the ConnectWise Partner Summit, MSPmentor sat down with a range of managed services experts. In the following MSPmentor FastChat videos, we covered such topics as hardware as a service (HaaS), MSP-to-MSP collaboration, sales and business development, online marketing for MSPs and email security. Here are six FastChat videos with a range of MSP industry experts…

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I need to make sure the following blog entry is in the proper context: Many managed service providers continue to grow and thrive. We’ll be sharing some early data points from our ongoing MSPmentor 100 research over the next few days. But this little anecdote is important to note: A few folks allege that 10 percent of MSPs have disappeared or closed up shop in 2009. True?

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When you think of what it is your company does, who do you think could explain it well?  Here’s a newsflash: Probably not your employees. Here’s why.

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Marketing seems to perplex some small VARs and managed service providers (MSPs). Despite the misconceptions, there are tons of easy, low-cost, and even free ways to market your business. To help out, I have organized a list of 10 easy marketing ideas…

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The managed services market is growing rapidly and has strong, long-term potential for many who are pursuing it. It is changing the way IT services are consumed and delivered. It is helping many of us diversify and strengthen our value propositions and balance sheets. We are all bullish about the future and the opportunity in front of us. There is one significant hurdle, however, that nobody seems to want to acknowledge — the proverbial elephant in the room.  Here’s the problem.

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Recently, a friend of mine who owns a small business told me “Paul, I tried marketing and it didn’t work.”  I asked “What kind of marketing did you try?” His reply, which I’ll share in a few sentences, mortified me. And it offers some important lessons to managed service providers.

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Roughly 60 managed service providers are beta testing Kutenda, an Internet marketing program that allows MSPs to offer Web site design, email marketing, search engine optimization and other marketing services to their end-customers. Kutenda co-founders Mike Cooch (CEO, Everon Technology Services) and Akash Saraf (CEO, Zenith Infotech) have updated me on their efforts. Here’s some perspective.

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Face it: People love data. They love statistics. And they embrace research. One of the fastest ways for managed service providers (MSP) to generate marketing buzz is to publish a research report that’s full of key statistics. The report can also serve as a key sales tool. Consider, for instance, a recent research effort by The Planet, a major hosting provider.

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Journalists and marketers share the same challenge: We want to write and say so much. We often use finely crafted language and lots of big words to tell our stories. But sometimes, the best way to market your company and your managed services business strategy is to bite your tongue — and get your hands off the keyboard — in mid-sentence. Let me give you an example.

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Over the weekend several MSPmentor readers asked me to focus increasingly on marketing tips for managed service providers. Your requests came through loud and clear. You’ll see multiple marketing-related blog entries in the days ahead, including this one. Let’s start with the basics: Marketing spend vs. marketing speak.

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It started about a year ago. Each time I attended a managed service provider conference, I saw executives and attendees shooting quick marketing video using the Flip camera. This week at the Cisco Partner Summit in Boston, everyone — more than 1,500 attendees — is armed with a Flip video camera (care of Cisco). But do MSPs really have time for video capture and video marketing — especially when many MSPs are still struggling with basic marketing tools like a blog?

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“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”  Variations of this quotation have been attributed to Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford and other revolutionaries in our history. I’m not sure if anyone really knows who coined the phrase…but I don’t think anyone would contest its truthfulness. Planning and success go together like PB&J. And although we are fairly comfortable in planning our business meetings, sales pitches and supporting data I’m willing to bet that most managed service providers do not sit down and plan a marketing strategy.

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TARP — the U.S. government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program — continues to make headlines. But Anexio, a managed service provider in Sarasota, Fla., is putting its own spin on TARP in an attempt to stimulate small business IT spending.

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Zenith Infotech CEO Akash Saraf has invested in Kutenda, a start-up that allows managed service providers to offer web marketing services to their customers. Mike Cooch, CEO of Everon Technology Services, an MSPmentor 100 company, is founder of Kutenda. Here’s a bit more about the launch.

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Managed service providers often ask me what types of Web 2.0 technologies — if any — to embed into their Websites. If you read MSPmentor regularly, you know I praise MasterIT (an MSP in Bartlett, Tenn.) for their use of viral video. But earlier this week I stumbled onto Jenaly Technology Group’s redesigned Website. A quick look at both sites offers peer MSPs some practical guidance for Web 2.0 and video success.

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Want to position your company as a polished, buttoned-up managed service provider? Steal a page from J. Michael Drake and Gary Wiseman, the executives behind masterIT. Drake and Wiseman both appear in this slick, well-scripted video about their company.

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