EP142 - Unravelling MSP Cyber Insurance with Trevor Cornbill & Ian Luckett

INTRO

In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, we're back with another Ask Stuart and this question we're asking today is where do I start with marketing?

Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast, the only podcast to help MSP scale to 1,000,000, and if already there get to 5 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.

IAN

Welcome to the IT Experts Podcast back again. We got Mr. Warwick in the house. How are you doing this afternoon?

STUART

Fantastic, Ian good to be back as ever, love these sessions.

IAN

Good stuff. So the Ask Stuart series and Mini series, which is part of the IT Experts Podcast. We just take one question, we get asked all the time, we punch it on the nose, we rip it to pieces, we tear it to shreds. And we have a no holds barred conversation about what on Earth do I do? And in this one, it's where on Earth do I start with marketing my MSP? How many times a day do we hear this?

STUART

Yeah, it's. It's again. I think I've said this every time, it’s the Holy Grail. It's that I think there's a dozen things that seem to be the Holy Grail to being able to scale your MSP effectively. And the thing with marketing is that, you most, most MSP's have never done marketing because you don't get taught marketing at school. Yes, you might have done business studies possibly, but it doesn't really go into what's needed to market a small business and marketing a small business is very different to the kind of stuff you see on telly. From the big global brands.

IAN

Yeah.

STUART

Because marketing for global brands is completely different kettle of fish to small business marketing, but the problem is that you don't know what you don't know. You try stuff and it doesn't work, and so therefore you're in this, this spiral of, well, it doesn't work, it's a waste of money, every time I try it, it doesn't work again. So why? Why would I bother? I'll just give up and I'll just leave it to referrals, but deep down, you know that you need to have a sales and marketing engine in your business because every resource you ever look at says you need a steady flow of leads to have a healthy business, because not every client is going to stay with you forever and you need to be able to replace them as they leave. But actually more importantly, have a steady flow of clients. So your business consistently grows and the MSP model is so powerful that when you do have a steady flow of clients and you're really good at what you do, it's the profit that compounds not just the revenue.

IAN

Brilliant. So you know the other thing or the main thing that that we see a lot of marketing is there's so many different element, facets, people in competition whether it be lead Gen, content creation, you know videos you need to get a YouTube channel you need to get a podcast. All of this sort of stuff. It's just an absolute fog in your head, isn't it? On not only you know, how does it work and what do I need to do and where do I get started? But what should I start doing first it's just a complete and utter brain fuzz, isn't it?

STUART

Is it is. And the problem is all marketing works but it doesn't work every time in the way that you want it to. Yeah, because it's as much an art as it is a science. However, whether you do leaflets, you do SEO, you do exhibitions, you do telemarketing, all of those tactics work. But they don't work all of the time and that's why it's so frustrating and why many people give up. But the secret to marketing is consistency, and that's the issues people try something, it works and then they do it again. It doesn't work so telemarketing you could do some telemarketing today and get a lead and that lead might even close. But the thing is the percentages of that happening again are so low it's a bit like trying to win the lottery every week.

So to boil it down, we always talk about the fact that as an MSP business owner, you need to understand how marketing works so that you can direct the resources for people, whether they're in source or outsourced to do the right things consistently that you know are going to deliver a flow of leads. That unfortunately takes time, and it also requires investment of both time and money, but once you understand that marketing does work and you need to be able to consistently do certain things, you'll never stop spending the money on marketing. But there is this tipping point between being in startup mode and establish mode and believing that knowing that marketing does work for you to be committed to it.

The first place to start with is like anything, who are you working for? Who do you serve? What is your audience? If you've been on any, you know, marketing courses or been to any seminars, it's that cliche. Ohh yeah. Tell me something I didn't know. But remember, it's all about targeting. If you're playing darts, you need to aim for something. Are you going for a bullseye? Are you going for a treble 20? Do you need a double 10? Do you just need a six and therefore you throw the dart accordingly. So if you're an MSP that serves schools, then how can you reach schools consistently and effectively 24/7? If you work with veterinarians or lawyers instead of just putting a generic post on Facebook or delivering leaflets around your local neighborhood, you're not going to reach many, many lawyers that way. So of course that's bleeding obvious, but we forget that the power of sales and marketing is all in the targeting.

IAN

But it's also in, you know, a a little bit of common sense that that we everybody who's listening to this show uses a niche in their life. So you got a knee problem. Who you going to go and see? You might have to go and see GP to start with, but you're not going to expect him to get your scalpel out and start having a little dig around and pull your, you know you're gongoing want to go and see a knee specialist. You want toa go and see a heart specialist. You want to go and see someone who's expert in laying drives or roofing or, you know, all of these other different things and you know, marketing and being specific and having specialists and experts in their field are everywhere, wherever, wherever you look, even down to your subway sandwich, other sandwiches are available and we just need to flick that, you know, buying mentality, process, theory, whatever it might be, is that you are a technical expert. People don't know what they don't know, and they need you to help them so your job is to educate your jobs, to help them, and if you serve everybody and you serving everybody all the time, your marketing's going to be very slow and it's going to be a race to the bottom, isn't it? From a pricing point of view.

STUART

Yeah, it is. It is completely and this is, this is why it's so frustrating because there's quite a lot of work needed in advance to be able to make sure that when you actually do the marketing, you get the best result. You can't win a race unless you do the training before the race to get ready, and its most people that don't do enough of the training beforehand. So when they tip up for the race, they come last. And they get upset that they didn't win. Well, they didn't put the effort in to understand what was required to win. And it's the same with marketing.

So the first thing is define who it is, is your ideal customer. Ohh, there's that phrase, ideal customer. You then have to match what you do your USP, your products and services, your message, how you position yourself in your local area. Assuming you're a local MSP or regional MSP, what is it you do and how does that match against who your chosen? You know, ideal customer is, yeah. What is it that they need from technology, that you do so that the second or Third Point around that is what they need is usually fixing business problems, not what the latest piece of kit is, or what the latest piece of technology is. They don't care that it's Microsoft 365. They might have heard of Google. They might think it's an Apple product or system that they need because they've got all Apple watches and products. They don't know what they need generally, but they know they've got a business issue or a business thing that they want and you need to match what you do and the promise with the need and the problem that they've got and that is the heavy lifting of you know, the training for a race that you, you need to have done for your marketing to be effective because that allows you to then and you hear this all the time to align your messaging to align your copy, to align what you say on your videos to what the conversation that's going on in your prospects head, so your business owner clients are wondering about how do I protect myself from being hacked? How do we make sure that we don't get fished and we have another 50 grand ransom, you know demand for getting all our data back. You know, what do I do to make sure that I can work if you know all the systems go down and then we have a disaster recovery plan for all our data and to keep up and running. 'Cause if we don't run this business every day, it costs me 5 grand a day to run the business. And if we're not functioning, I can't afford that.

So they've got all these business problems that they worry about at night, that technology can make them sleep soundly at night and protect them from, and also optimize the business as well. You know, they don't know that by upgrading their server, even though the server is still running, they could get twice as much or to half the cost for running that that server. Therefore that would impact the profit margin they're making their business.

So understanding who you serve, what you do, what their problems are and how you fix their problems are key to being align your messaging to make your marketing now. Yeah, I'm really aware that that is like, well, I still don't know how to do it. You know, but your job is to be the marketing director of your business, to understand what marketing does, what's needed, and then you get others to do it for you. And you know the marketing services and the marketing tools that you can get through Paul Green, you know from Mike Knight.

IAN

Tech Tribe.

STUART

Tech tribe. You know, they're amazing. But if you don't understand how marketing works and how to put it together, you're going to be fearful of actually putting the effort in to train for that race. As we talked about as an analogy.

IAN

And it's really important as well that whatever messaging or whatever copy that you're using, it goes across. It's congruent across all your platforms and this is where a lot of people fall down, isn't it? Cause your website might say one thing being one color you go to your LinkedIn profile with another it's a different color, it's an old banner. You might say something else. They might get an e-mail from you and it might be something else, even branded in, you know, something completely different and it it's not actually the buyers conscious decision that turns off. It's all unconscious, though. No, that isn't what I want. Ohh, hang on. Busy phones ringing and off they go. And it's as simple as that. And that's why aligning this all together and I know that that Paul talks a lot about Paul Green talks a lot about building multiple audiences because no one's just going to go to LinkedIn to buy yourselves. They're not just going to go on your website or just read an e-mail or just see you at an event. It's lots of different multi touches, isn't it? That's really important.

STUART

Yeah. And these days with digital world we live in, I think it's something like 36 or 37 points of contact that are needed for somebody to become comfortable with the decision making. You know to make a decision to buy something. And many times I think you know, be pre-Internet. It was like 6 or 7. So you've got to be prevalent and consistently visible, consistently.

The next element is bringing it together. Because the challenge with selling technology services is that there's usually a fairly long sales cycle. Somebody's already got a relationship with another supplier, another managed services or they are waiting for the end of a budget and the start of a new budget year. So they there's a, there's a very much a big time gap between when someone starts looking curiosity on Google or LinkedIn and being ready to buy. And so. You know, many of us when we first get a lead, we see, are they ready to buy any? Use them and they're going to buy for me. And then they go quiet for weeks, months and the sales cycle, even if somebody is ready to buy now, is probably at least 12 to 16 weeks. It could be a two year sales cycle. So you've got to keep in touch and without overcome making this complex cause it today is all about where do I get started is you know the we come back to the consistent thing is that, it's all about the funnel from the top of funnel when someone first comes into your world or connects with you or gives you their e-mail address to the point where you nurture them through that middle of funnel, which is the language we use till they get to the bottom of funnel and they're ready to have that conversation and talk about what you can actually do for them and how you know what your services and pricing might look like that could take two years.

IAN

So one of the hardest things here is actually about creating the content, isn't it? And as techy business owners, inspiring and creative about writing things and copy. It's like couldn't be further away from their happy place, but content and educational content is absolutely critical, isn't it to help move your prospects down that pipeline.

STUART

Yeah, it is because you're trying to give your prospect the confidence that you're the right person for them. In the old days, you know, you'd think right. I need a new, a new laptop and you get the Yellow Pages out. You know that used to be 3 three inches thick and you turn it to the letter I and you'd go it and you'd put your finger down and there'd be some names of companies that you could ring locally.

IAN

God, you didn’t.

STUART

And they'd make an inquiry now you exactly.

IAN

I'll remember that. Ohh, they shouldn't have admitted that.

STUART

And these days we just go on to Google, don't we and up pops, you know, Google My Business up pops three or four MSP suppliers or IT support companies. And then there's a whole load below that as well. That's the way it works. How the hell do you get yourself on Google, My business.

First of all, you know. You need to be visible and findable when people are looking for you, but the thing is, when they start to engage with your website or your LinkedIn profile, there's content there that triggers curiosity and interest. And so the starting point is you are irrelevant as a business until such time as they are, they are convinced that you might be able to solve their problem, and then they're like. This guy, this girl sounds like they understand what I what I'm struggling with and have done it before and can solve my problem. And so that's the point at which you as a business name become relevant. Up till then, all their interest, they're scanning Google and the web pages to look for relevant words that go, that's my problem. And all that looks like there's an answer there. Or can I do it myself. Ohh, that looks a bit complicated. Ohh, these guys have got some case studies and some proof that shows that they've done it before. I think I'll give them a call. Oh no, I'm too busy. I'll do it next week and then it goes cold. And you've had these people flicking around your website. They might have downloaded something, and then they go cold and they go quiet. And so this is the sales cycle that we're talking about is that you need to understand your customer, you need to be where your customer is looking for you, whether it be on Google or LinkedIn, when they reach your website, it needs to resonate with. Ohh yeah, that's my problem. I think you can solve that and then over time at some point will be relevant for them to make contact with you. And so this is the nurture piece so the creating Educational content is really hard because you want to talk about products and services and what you do, and all they're interested in is what problems do you solve and how can you help me get that right. And you'll start to get much more interest and much more return from your marketing activities. The beauty though in this channel is that there are some amazing people out there that package this content up for you. So as long as you understand what this content does for you and what it does when it's in front of the right people and your job, is to just to get it in front of those people, through e-mail, through website, through website copy, you know, through LinkedIn, through LinkedIn messaging. Whatever it is you're doing, video the hard work, the heavy lifting is taken out of this, but you've got to understand who your audience is and then tailor the content that Paul Green, the tech tribe wing man, Mike Knight, all these guys out there, IT rock stars that can help you package that information up and take the heavy lifting out of that copywriting.

IAN

And then the final bit is kind of jumping back to where you started, which was about the sales and marketing director in, in knowing what good and what Paul looks like in terms of performance.

STUART

Yeah, totally. As by understanding marketing, what it does, you can sit there and say, right, Mr. Agency or marketing manager or social media manager. I need us to do XYZ so that we get ABC, and I know that we need to do this, this and this. When can you get it done by and when they've done it, you can look at it and understand whether it is doing the right thing. Is it talking about the way it solves the problem of the ideal client? Has it got the right language in it? Has it got the right call to action? And unless you understand how this stuff works, you can't confidently feel that you're doing the right thing because the final point in all of this is testing and measuring. If you haven't got a measure of success for your marketing and it might be Leads, it might be inquiries. It might be connections on LinkedIn. It might be well leads you know the leaflets given out consistently. It might be doing one business show a month because you know business shows always give you leads. If you go to the local Chamber of Commerce thing or to go networking.

So unless you are reflecting back on saying in terms of the effort and the money we've spent, what have we got for it, if you just turn up every, every month, every week, and just do it and do it and do it, you'll eventually get to the point saying this is a waste of money. It's not working because you haven't got a measure of success.

IAN

Thank you, Stuart. I'm going to ask you for your summary in a minute, but before I do, we've got some resources I want to talk to you about in a second as well. But remember that the Ask Stuart Podcast series is all about the questions that the channel are asking. If you have any question whatsoever, and you want us to make a podcast about it, there in the show notes, there's a link, click the link, fill in your details, ask your question and we will do a podcast specially for you. And even shout you out if you want to, so bringing this one into Lance Stewart, what's the top things that we need to need to be considering when somewhere in this, summing this one up.

STUART

Bottomline is being control of your marketing be the sales marketing director of your business and that starts with knowing your audience, understanding your audience, and understand their problems and frustrations with technology. And therefore packaging up your services in a way that you solve their problems. The technology itself is irrelevant in the scheme of things. All they're looking for is somebody that can help them with whatever it is they are struggling or need within their business that technology can deliver. Then you're able to align your messaging and your copy and your websites and all of your assets, around that, that language that is going to resonate with your ideal client. And then it's creating the relevant content to allow them to embrace all that information and believe that you are the expert to serve them. And the final point is understand what success looks like for you. Because there are the suppliers out there that can help you with the creation of the content, but you have to understand what you want from marketing. And who you are in your marketplace and how you show up.

IAN

Exactly and finally, last thing, last but not least, we've got a little gift for you. We want to give you, there's a link in the show notes here about the new business advantage blueprint. That we've put together here, Stuart, why do people need to even bother clicking on this? And what's it going to do to them? How how's it going to help them out, this amazing resource we've got.

STUART

Yeah, the new Business Advantage blueprint is exactly what it says on the tin. It's a blueprint that gives you an advantage in creating a very simple funnel, and it takes you through the seven ones that are needed to create a funnel that will give you the right content with the right messaging, with the right resonance for you to get leads. Unfortunately, you've got to create the content after that but it gives you the process and steps that you need to take to get a steady flow of leads that resonate.

IAN

Fantastic and all you need to do get access that click on the link in the show notes and it will be straight in your inbox. Stuart, thanks again for your wisdom and insights on this terrible subject of marketing, which is so important yet so hard and clunky, and I look forward to catching up with you on the next one.

STUART

Fantastic. See you then.

IAN

See you soon.

OUTRO

So I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, I'd love it if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to learn more about how to take your MSP to a million, or if you're already there, go faster then come and join Stuart Warwick and myself in the Scale of Confidence. Facebook group. Link’s on the Show Notes. You go and enjoy the rest of your day and. I look forward to connecting with you soon.