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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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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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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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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You’re a managed service provider. You’ve got a solid company name but you don’t have a solid tagline. That could be a big mistake. In the age of search engine optimization, I believe a strong tagline could be worth millions of dollars in new sales and market capitalization. Skeptical? Here’s one simple case study where a great tagline transformed a no-name technology company into a well-known brand.

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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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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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In part 1, I described how you can line up vendor money to pay for your branding efforts. Here in part 2, I explore a specific case study: In late 2007, Trailhead Technologies Inc. was a managed services provider without a clear brand — and without Web site.

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I’m hearing a familiar theme from multiple managed service providers: MSPs want to strengthen their branding and marketing efforts, yet local advertising firms and marketing consultants don’t understand the IT industry. As a result, local consultants who specialize in marketing aren’t very good at shaping an MSP’s brand.

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Sometimes, I get distracted by Web 2.0 marketing strategies. I’m always telling managed service providers how they can leverage blogs, Web video, etc., to improve their search engine optimization (SEO) and attract new customers.

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