EP130 – Getting Started with Marketing - Magic Messaging - Part 2 with Ian Luckett

In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, we're going to help you get started with Marketing with podcast one of three, and this mini-series, it's all about the perfect process.

Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast, the only podcast to help MSP scale to £1M, and if already there get to £5M and go fast. At the end of the day, isn't it all about building a business that works for you rather than you for it? I hope you enjoy the show.

So, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, welcome to the IT Experts Podcast, wherever you are, we're going to be helping you out today with the first excited to be bringing actually the first of a three-part podcast series where we talk about getting started with marketing. Now this this podcast is for any MSP. Whether you are a, you know, a low single figure, two £300,000 MSP, or whether you're a multi 7 figure MSP because. The thing that we, the thing that we know here at the growth hub is that marketing and sales are a massive subject and particularly for an MSP, it's a clunky subject because it's kind of not your happy place it you know the technical world is, is your happy place and marketing can be and sales marketing can be really quite hard to digest. You know, people say, oh, we just got to get on with sales and marketing. I need more marketing. I need more lead to need more sales. I need more of this. I need more of that. And the problem is people just do not know where to start. I don't know what I don't know about. The thing and you've got, you know, some amazing people out there who, you know from a Marketing point of view, shout out to our great friend Paul Green, MSP, Marketing Edge and Dave Sutton and Mark Copeman from Wingman. And all these guys out there who are doing, you know, doing marketing services for MSP and what we wanted to do today is share with you.

I don't know my kind of thinking really around how to approach this massive whale of a subject, how to get started with it. What do I need to do? What do I need to, you know, take notice of what put on what do I need to ignore? Because there are bucket loads of shiny balls around, you know, lead generation companies and sales companies and. Content creation and all this sort of stuff, but let's cut to the chase today and let's, as they say in the UK, let's sort the wheat from the chaff and let's get everything out in the open. So, look, we're going to go through three podcasts, obviously one a week for the next three weeks. Today's podcast is around the perfect process, so I want to talk to you about the process of marketing and some of the fundamentals that we know are working well with our clients. And then next week I'm going to be talking to you about Magic messaging because. Marketing is an art form, a bit of a subject that we need to make sure that we understand, but more importantly, we need to make sure that we've got real clarity. Around the messaging that's going out, we need to make sure that you're relevant and people care about what you're talking about, and then in show three in the third show, we're going to be talking about powerful platforms. So, what platforms do you need to look? We're going to go through the process today. We're going to talk about messaging next week, and then we're going to talk about the platforms. Obviously, there's more than three podcasts to go through. To get good at marketing in your MSP, but look, let's help you. Let's help you get this in place. So look, some people decide to get an apprentice while some people decide to get an agency in. Someone might. Want to do an. An online course gets some content created for. But The thing is, is it all starts with the process and you guys will know more than anyone else as you're working through in your MSP. Everything starts with progress and everything you know with the process sorry, and everything needs to align to that process. It's all, so the three things we're going to we're going to talk about. The first thing is around the sales funnel. You know, we talk about the sales funnel all the time. People talk about the journey that you're going on, but there's a reason that people talk about it. It's cause it's bloody important and we need to make sure that we. Understand how people buy from us. We want people to buy from us. We don't really want to go out and sell to people. Couple of reasons. Number one, you know selling is you know and what I mean by selling is like knocking on your door. Hey, do you want some? Do you want some tea towels, or do you want some? Do you want to buy some of my tea from us? It's all about, you know, getting people that that. So that they know, like and trust you.
They understand that you can solve their problems. And the sales funnel, you know whether it's through the top, the middle, or the bottom of funnel. So, you know the top of the funnel is all about awareness. It's kind of understanding, you know, what is it? How does it work? And then as you move down into, sorry as you move down. So, the first thing we really want to talk about is sales funnels and we want to make sure that we understand the process of the sales funnel. You know, we've got the top of the funnel when people just get to know you, the middle of the funnel, when they start to build a relationship with the bottom. Of the funnel, when there's when they're going to be buying from you and you know we often talk about, you know, dating game. You know when you first met up with. You know whether it be your wife or your husband or whoever, whoever you may be with right now, when you first met them, you know, did you say, hey, you look great. Do you want to drink? Let's get married. No, you. Well, you might go on, but if you did, good luck to you. If you didn't, then it's about building that relationship well, don't know who you are. I don't know what you like. I don't know what your values are like. I don't know what you like doing and what you don't like doing. I don't know if we're going to get on. I don't. If you're going to like me and all of these kinds of things. So you go on another date, another date and then you know end up going out for a meal and then before you know it. You know, you'll either decide that this is a good thing to pursue or it's not. A good thing? To pursue with and sales and marketing are absolutely no different. But you've got to have a process that you take people through. And the reason that you need a process is because. This process that the whole sales and marketing functionality is one of the areas that can really block up an MSP, but also it can absolutely be a great opportunity for you to leverage and delegate and pass out to that apprentice or that agency or somebody within your organisation. Who's who? You know who's a who's a marketing. But because the kind of concept that we work here at the growth hub is, it will teach you to be a great make sales and marketing director. So, you know what could look like and what bad looks like. So, understanding that process is really important. Understanding the journey that you're taking people through is important, and I know people, you know, some people do cold calling. Again, some people have some great success in my personal view. Shoot me down in flames. It's a, you know, it is a process that works, and if you phone enough people, you will catch someone at the right time. And that's absolutely fine. If you're happy sitting on the phone all day or paying someone to phone up. All day. But you know it's the same scenario as when someone phones me up and say, hey, do you want to buy a new boiler for your house? It's like, well, no, there’s nothing wrong with my boiler. Thank you. Now he will phone someone up and they will have a bit of a problem with the heating and it'll and it'll strike gold with the marketing. It's kind of almost as more important now than it ever used to. Be you know 70%. Of decisions to buy from you and made before they even get in touch with you. I think about five years ago it was almost 30%, so digital marketing being online, being present, being educational, some of the things that we're going to be talking about, it's really important to making sure we've got this, you know, a great success and also any process is not worth its weight unless you're tracking the data and the and the traffic going through it. You know, with a CRM, CRM with your, your marketing CRM and making sure that you've got a good system, just do you know what making sure you've got a system is important. And with many clients who use HubSpot. Which is a great tool. It's an amazing tool, but it's quite an expensive tool if you want to. Get started out. But if you actually look at it and obviously other CRMs are available, if you look at it where you can actually, you know, track the sales and pass the pass the information, send them different campaigns and all of this kind of good stuff. If it costs you £800 a month, how many new clients do you need to sign up? To pay for this amazing tool that's going to help slicken your whole sales process and I would suggest probably one, maybe 2 something. Well, £800 a month gets a couple of clients in for that and then all of a sudden, those two clients are paying for your CRM. But the CRM is going to be so powerful in being laser focused and tracking the data, tracking what's going on, tracking what emails are working, tracking what messaging is working. You know, it's important that we understand what piece of content or what blog, what video, you know what page they landed on. That ended up that client being a client of yours. You know what the? What was the journey that they went through so talked about self-finals talks about, you know, top, middle and bottom final. We're going to get into that a little bit more in the next show. So look, the first thing that's really important here. This is a journey of education, your customers and your prospects don't know what they don't know, right? They don't know really what IT support is. They have no idea what an MSP or a Managed service provider is.
So the language that you're going to need to use is going to need to be different, and it's all about. Educating them in why they need what you do. Do you know the impact of not having it and what they're going to get when they've got it sort of thing. So, when someone turns up, you know, someone turns up to a car showroom, they know they want a car. They know they're going to buy a car and they know why they need a car and they just. It's just about picking the model and that's great. But bearing in mind that, you know, they don't know what they don't know. Your number one. Job. Your first job is to build trust. Do I like you? Do I know you? Do I like you do? I trust you. And how are you going to do that? If your website is threaded with technical jargon about Office 365 and backups and data recovery and hacking, and all of this other great stuff that gets us excited. What are they going to think about that? They going to go? I don't know what this is all about. You know, I'm kind of. I'm kind of out as it would be and you know, a lot of the time the brain will make a decision on whether I want to pursue going on this website or talking to someone before, before you've even got into any sort of cognitive ability to understand what they're. About so building trust is really important and making sure that we're educating is also really critical. Now when we talk about the top, middle and bottom of fun of what, what we actually on about here. So, like the dating game you just walked into the pub or restaurant you've met up with your partner, your prospective partner, your prospect, your suspect and. You know, it's kind of who are you? What is it? What is it? What is this all about? Why do I need this sort of thing in my business? So there's different levels of content that we need to make sure that we're putting out, which we're going to talk on, talk a little bit about next. This week, but the top of funnel, what is it? How does it work? What do I need in business really, really high level? And at that point, those people might decide, no, I don't need it. I'm going to move on. Or some people might go. You know what? You've actually hit the nail on the head there. Yeah, we got hacked or we've got a problem accessing our data or our people don't. Know how to use our technical systems. Tell me more so we tell them more, and then we drop down into the middle of the funnel and then into the middle of the funnel. And this is where we need to use some. Think we call gated. So, we want to get something behind an E. We don't want something back. If you want to get some premium content, you want to get to the next level, you want to get the next bit of my expert brain because you are experts, remember whether you. Like it or not, we want to get something off them, right? Not necessarily. Want them to pay, but we want to get an e-mail address off from where? Number one, we know that they're motivated to move forward and they are going to be comfortable in giving us their e-mail address. They are. We will then be able to target them with specific campaigns or messages or pieces of content. And then you know, you might be able to get onto a call or come to an event and then it's just started to get towards the bottom of the funnel. You having a conversation with them and how would this work and how much would it cost and what do you need to do and what information do you need and all of these great things? And then you start, you know, moving into, you know the sales closing process as it would be.
So, you know the bottom of the funnel and you know they will then decide, you know, is it for me. So top of funnels, what is it? What's it all about middle of funnels, how does it act? Really work, you know and bottom of funnel is it is it for me and all the way through you know not only are you looking for people to who are a good fit for you also looking for people who are bad fit you want to get them out of the funnel you don't want to clog your funnel up with a whole other rubbish and people that don't want to buy IT support and they're looking for a software system or looking for something else or don't want to pay they don't want to invest in their technology and the key thing here is that you need different types of content. Multi layered content approach for each section. And what I mean by that is. You know real high level real broad subjects at the top getting a little bit more specific in the middle and then at the bottom of the funnel you know really, really specific around proposals around the case studies around. You know you've got this problem. We've worked with the client, is very specific about this, this problem and content doesn't actually finish when someone becomes a customer. You then need to. You know you can move forward into the into your on boarding still by educating, building trust, building, you know, building content. For them, so different types of content there and then the most important thing is we've, you know, mentioned a little while ago is around the CRM and the tracking how are we tracking what's going on in this activity, how we're tracking, what journey people. Have been on what blog? Or what video or what you know event was a great success. Who was it? Who? Who turned up to it. And then we get into the realms of you know, copy the images. What sort of things do we need to do to promote because marketing is all about promoting to get people basically. You know, on a call for your MSP, when we get clients who work with us start working with us at the at the growth hub, obviously this is a huge subject. We've got loads of content and training and support and guidance for them in in you know, so they can be really successful as sales and marketing. But we always talk about the marketing model and we always talk about you know. Right. The first step and we've got this three-step process on some slides and it's all about, you know, who's your avatar, which we're going to talk about later. Who's your? You know, why do they need you? Why are they going to pick you? What model or system have you got that's going to? Help them and we don't really let them get any further down the funnel in terms of creating any content until we've got these absolutely fundamental pieces in place. This is the methodology. So look, setting up this foundation is absolutely key and critical and it's really worthwhile sending it's spending some time. With these ingredients, you know to bake this amazing cake. You know how many times have you? Used a marketing agency and it hasn't worked because they've been a generic marketing agency rather than one that specifically works with MSP's. Oh yeah, we'll do your avatar. We'll do this. We'll do that. But unless they know how your clients buying you and how you are working. You know, specifically in the IT channel, they're not going to know what's going to work. I will test it for you. Brilliant. Well, you're going to waste my money. Just think, you might as well go to someone who knows what they're doing, which is why you know Paul systems called MSP marketing fell enough for. This piece and you know and the same with the guys at wingman, you know, they understand the whole MSP market, they know what people buy, they know how they buy, you know, and they'll absolutely align with this podcast. What we're talking about but spending the time at the beginning of the journey in really understanding some of these fundaments in these next three podcasts is critical because. Knock seems like shooting a gun. OK, you know, we want to aim. We want to fire. We want to hit the target. And while you're at the top of the funnel, you're going to be spraying around all over the place, and some people are going to get hit and other people are going to, you know. Kind of resonate, but we want to make it laser focused. Because as I mentioned earlier, the brain will make a decision for you before you even think you will. And unfortunately, you know what's going to happen. There is that if the copies not right the colours not right. The messaging isn't right, it doesn't resonate with them. They're just going to move on bye and they're going to go oh yeah, we saw those guys. Oh, yeah, they do some tech stuff it stuff. So, making sure that we're specific. So the opportunity here is massive. But I really want you guys to kind of like just like, take a step back, review, reflect, see what's going on and make sure that we've got, you know, these key areas, all put in place right from the word go. So what we need to do as well from this podcast, and I need to taking notes for this one, making sure we're ready for for next week's one as well. We wanted to go and listen to episode 122 with our great friend Ben Spector, and it's all around the revenue stack and it's all around understanding the difference between marketing, CRM, sales, CRM, you know what happens when it goes into your PSA. And then what happens when we move into your accounting package? It's really great. Episode sits right nicely alongside this marketing miniseries here. And if you want to learn a little bit more about how some of this kind of connects, we've recently ran a sales and marketing master class and we recorded it and I'm going to drop the link in the show notes. So you guys can sign up and have a look at that. It's only about 45 minutes long, but it really, it's really going to help you become. Powerful in your marketing understanding the process, understanding a little bit more meat on the bones that we've talked about today and that's going to be of massive value to you. So look, I hope you enjoyed the show today. I look forward to connecting with you all soon. And more importantly, I look forward to seeing you next week when we're going to be talking about magic messaging for your marketing. Hope you enjoyed the show. See you all soon. Take Care now. So I hope you enjoyed the show, if you did, I'd love it if. You could leave a rating and review. On your favourite podcast. Form if you want to learn more about how to take your MSP to 1,000,000 or if you're already there, go faster. Then come and join Stuart Warwick and myself in the scale with confidence Facebook group the link are in the show notes. You go and enjoy the rest of your day. And I look forward to connecting with you soon.