EP234 – The MSP Marketing Clock: 12 Steps to Building A Lead Engine That Works with Ian Luckett

INTRO: In this episode of the IT Experts Podcast, I'm going to help you get your marketing off the ground by telling the time.

Welcome to the IT Experts podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1 million, and if already there, get to five and go faster 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: So good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast. We've got a bit of a fun run for you today. I've created something. I've created the MSP Marketing Clock, right. What are you on about Ian? I see an awful lot of the time that there's so much noise going on with marketing. Everybody that we talk to, a lot of our clients that we talk to, a lot of our prospects and just people in the channel is they can't seem to get started with marketing and when we analyze this, there's a couple of reasons for it, is I think the first thing is that people are impatient. You go and, everybody should be doing account management practices, going out, meeting your clients, grading your clients, understanding their profitability and all of that kind of great stuff. We call it the golden goose, making sure that we keep the golden gooses nice and fat, and it always delivers every year on year.

Most MSPs we talk to, they've got, I don't know, anywhere between 60, 80, a hundred thousand pounds worth of low hanging fruit. It's already in their client base, and we help them with the frameworks, pick it out. So, you want to grow your business, you want to make it more profitable and increase the turnover. Account management is really the first step to to focus on.

But after that, it comes into this marketing space and it can be really confusing, right? Because you've got created curated marketing services, like Paul Green. You've got, the stuff goes on in the tech tribe. There's some of the vendors do some marketing content, but to be honest with you, it's all about selling more of their product rather than offering value to their customers. And it can be a really noisy place. So deciding which bit you've got to do first and which bit you like to do, most MSPs aren't really that happy about marketing. They're not terribly creative types of people. So it can be, you've got to dial up your energy to do this stuff.

And what happened yesterday, so I was talking to one of my clients yesterday on one of the accountability pods. We were talking about marketing. He was talking about specifically the messages sending out on LinkedIn. So we had a chat and we were offering some advice and what's working well and what's not working, what, and I said, but that is just kinda 1/10 one. It's like only five minutes on the clock of the things that you need to do in order to make sure that you are really maximizing the opportunity with your marketing. So it got me thinking, I went home that last night and I was thinking about it and I thought, do you know what? I'm going to create something here because there's easily 12 steps to working out and in a sequential manner. I'm going to run through today and I said, I've called it the MSP marketing clock, at what time is your marketing.

And what I want you to do with this episode, I want you to share it with anybody that you've got working in your marketing team, whether it be an agency, whether it be an apprentice, whether it be somebody in the step because it is a sequential journey of building a great relationship, offering value, and then realizing that you're going to be great to work together and it's moving forward. That's literally the job of the marketing, right? Time to put a bit of patience in, because marketing does take a long time. However, once you've got it right, and once you've built that foundation, you can't just build a house overnight, right? You've got to wait for the concrete to set, and you've got to put the floor in and all the other elements.

So it doesn't just happen overnight like this. You've got to build up those relationships. Not many people will click on a pay per click Google ad and go, wow, I need an MSP right now. I need IT services. They need to be educated. So what we're going to do today? We're going to run through this framework. We like frameworks at the Growth Hub, everything we do at the Growth Hub has a framework to it. And this might be a new one. I'll see if it gets signed off. If it does, I should be absolutely delighted because I literally just came up with it last night.

So this is the MSP marketing clock, the 12 sequential, and that's a very important word, steps to getting your marketing up and running. Okay?

Step one, identify your target market and don't all huff and puff because this is so important, right? You would not be listening to this podcast right now if I was a general business coach, trainer, leadership coach. The reason that you're listening to this is because you're an MSP, you're ready to grow. You want to do something differently, and you want to get educated on what to do that, right? So identify your target market and when you think you found your target market, go deeper and go deeper and go deeper. Don't say professional services too broad, too wide. It's not relevant enough. You want it to be, a legal solicitors, accountants in Luton. You want people to look at whatever you're putting out there and go, wow, that's me. Seriously. Go into chat, GPT and just put this stuff in there and it will spit it all out. It's so easy right now to do that. If I'm working with this target market, what sort of pain points are they going to have? What's in it for me? What fears and frustrations have they got? What the benefit have they got? Blah, blah. Put all this into chat GPT, and it will give it to you. So the first thing is to identify your target market. Find out what it is they want from you, why they want it from you, what they can do their business after they've been working with you and what problems they've got in their business right now because they haven't got you and because they haven't got good IT support. So it's really important you understand these things. What's in it for me? Why should I care about you? I'm an accountant in Luton, for example. Why on Earth should I care about you talking to me? because I'm going to stop you getting hacked and I'm going to stop you from number one, having the embarrassing thing we was talking about yesterday of having to ring the ICO up and say, by the way, I'm actually not as good as I say I'm, and I've now been hacked and now I've got a real breach on hand and I've just lost 200,000 pounds or whatever that the story was we were talking about yesterday.

So identify your target market. Go really deep in that. If anybody in your organization says, we're going to do some marketing, and you say to them, who's our target market? And they go most businesses in Sheffield do something serious to them. Put them on a training course. Don't hit them. But just that is not good enough, it’s because the message is not going to get across. And I can't lay with a point enough in our new client runway training Framework. This is the first step, and you're not literally not allowed to go to session two until you've done session one.

So really get clear on that target market please. It's so important, I can't stress it enough. Once you're clear on that, we're going to move to step two.

So we're now at 10 past on the clock, we want to align the message. So we really want to get the things you've just identified in the first stage around identifying that target market. But I want you to get into their language, right? If you're working in a healthcare sector, I want to hear the words like caring. If you're working in a technical sector, to then use some technical words, go onto their websites and see what language they're using. Go into conversations and listen to the words that they're using around that, and align your message with them so that you can help them overcome their problems with their technology or their security or whatever it might be their it, so that your message is so compelling to them. And the little trick here, go and test this with some of your clients who are already in that niche or they're already in that target market, and just say to them , this is what we're just doing a bit of market research. Does this work? Let me know. I've given you all the secrets, man, this is crazy. So go in and talk to some of your clients about that and just say, we want some information. Is this what you are hearing? Is this what we do? Tighten that up, right?

So next step, three o'clock, quarter past three now is create a compelling, valuable middle of funnel offer. So you can have a, you get into a conversation with someone. We're going to come onto that in a moment, but you need to have something to offer them. I'm going to shout it out, Paul Green's IT Services Buyer's Guide is one of the best lead magnets that we hear about because it helps educate the prospects. So any buyer's guide on what good it looks like, why do they need it, and answers a lot of the questions that we've got in the first two or three stages of this. But when you are talking to someone, unless you've educated them properly, and unless you've actually gone into quite a deep conversation with them , they're unlikely to want to spend some time on a call with you. They're unlikely to book themselves an audit because they don't know how you are going to overcome the problem they've got in their business. Not a technical problem, remember is the problem in their business with what you do, and that is the most important thing that we get there. So have a nice offer. It could be a survey so they can score themselves. Very powerful. Could be the buyer's guide. It could be an event where they educate and they spend more time with you and they build that rapport. Let's just go with those three, survey buyer's guide or an event that's all you need to do right now. So that's number three.

Number four, I want you to go and hunt out your prospects. Go and find them. Where do they, not necessarily where they live, but where do they work? What groups are they in? Are they on online groups in Facebook? Are they on online groups? In LinkedIn? Do they go to events? Are they partner associations? Who do you know in your network who also knows these people? How can you get introduced to them and do what we call a bit of possibility thinking, whiteboard. In the middle target market. And then just get everybody in the team. Where do we find these people? And then you've got these little spiders coming off, all linking into all the different places where you can go and find them. And that starts to give you a bit of a stakeholder map and a bit of a direction on how we're going to find these people and what is it that we are going to, we're going to go and offer them when we do find them a case. So that's the super important thing to start with, to make sure that we've got that all in place.

Next one. Next one. 5 25 past the hour. Now on some clear, concise, non-salesy messaging, people are not going to come and talk to you if they don't think there's a benefit in talking to you, right? What's in it for me? Again? Non-salesy. You're not selling IT support. You're not selling managed services. I want to sell your way through this process. Number one, let's get in a conversation with them . Number two, let's give them something of value. Number three, see what resonated. Number four, back into the conversation again. Let's educate them in why they need to talk to you. That is probably one of the most important things. Nice, clear, concise, non-salesy messaging. If you put a LinkedIn post out there or you put a direct message out there and say, hi Jeff, great to connect with you. We're an IT company. We do this, do you want to buy it? It is just going to be tumbleweed all day long. Get into a conversation as if you're treating people, as if you're in a long, in a networking room, talking to them at a networking event. Hey, how's your business going? Yeah, brilliant. Ah what are you finding is going on? In the economical, you just get into a chat with them. It's what we call sell by chat, and it's a thing that you do when you are in the conversation in the dms. It's no different if you met somebody at an event. So that was number five.

Number six, go and connect with them . So either, send a connection request on LinkedIn, find out how you can get these people onto your email list. Attending an event, you could go and use other people's lists. So if you are in Chamber of Commerce or if you're in the FSB or any local businessing groups, business groups, or any niche specific groups, you get extra points for niche specific groups. You could be in a group of professional services businesses in a particular town. I know that's not the niche, but that's where these people are going to start to hang out, right? Could be at an event, it could be at an expo. Go and find those people and connect with them.

Next seven, we're going to converse and chat. Just open up the conversations don't sell. Just sell the next step, and the next step when you're conversing and chatting is to get them onto a call with you so you can spend more time demonstrating how what you do can overcome their business problems. That's all that matters at this stage. We're at 25 to the hour right now, and we haven't even started talking about selling anything. So this is all about nurturing. This is all about making sure that you are resonating. This is all about making sure we've got that nice conversation. They like you, they're like a rapport with you. They think you're not going to sell to them. You're not going to be a salesy salesman that we see so many all the much, all the time, and they're going to know and trust you, right? That's the number one thing. Number three things, no and trust you. They've got to be in that position.

So then number eight moving around 22. The 22 is we've got nurture and educate. The email system is still the most powerful way to nurture and educate people in 2025 sending emails that matters to them. Yes. It's hard. Go into chat, GPT. Ask them, what's a welcome sequence? What's a nurture sequence? What do I need to do? What? What do these people care about? What's their pain points? If we slide all the way back up to number one and two, which is identify your target market and then align with your messaging. Once you've got that data, you can just put that back into chat, GPT or AI of your choice, and it will come up with all the things that matter to these people.

But keep selling, keep putting in the prompt. I don't want to be salesy, I don't want to be salesy. I want to build rapport. I want to build rapport. So using your email system to do that is absolutely important. The one thing that you can do when you've got people on your email system, you can start to score the lead so you can start to work out who's clicking on the emails, who cares about the emails, who'sopening the emails? What is the most popular topic someone's clicked on this week? I have people been spending time on watching our videos? Have they been clicking on certain links? You can then get telemarketing right to come in at this level because you are not making a phone call, which is cold. You're making a phone call to someone who already knows, likes, and trusts you receiving your emails. They're understanding what you do in the business and how you can help them . I'm going to keep repeating that, by the way, and then you can work out what it is. That it is that their pain point is and start to tailor things towards them. Okay, so that's number eight.

Number nine is demonstrating your expertise in solving their problem with your technology. So once you are getting a little bit further down the funnel, now we're now starting to be in a position where if you've got inefficiencies in your file transfer system, you might want to use office 365. If you're having problems with your security because it's either too tight or it's too loose, or you are getting breaches, you might want to. Consider using blah, blah, blah, certain ex, certain security products, which is going to help you overcome the problem. You don't have to sell the brand, you just have to sell the concept of the security or the file transfer system, or good internet or good WiFi or UpToDate technology or hardware and that sort of good stuff. So then you can start to demonstrate your expertise. And this is how, you’re not selling. What you're now doing is you're now in the position where you are sharing with them why you are the person who's going to fix that problem, which is the same kind of thing as selling, right? But it's not selling.

So number 10 is align your offer and demonstrate the value to them of doing this. So if we were to install this system and update your laptops and blah, blah, blah, you will be able to do more of this stuff in your business. If you don't do this, the impact of not doing it is also. You could get hats, you could lose money. You could have, a serious breach if you are a professional services business, there's a pretty good chance there's a compliant issue, compliance issue that we're going to have kicking around there as well. Align the offer, demonstrate the value, sell the value, is the most important thing that you are doing. And also the impact of not doing it. We had a lot of conversations recently about people who are saying that their clients are leaving or they're not moving forwards with things because of the finances going on.

I did a podcast recently with our finance coach, Claire, on this one. Go and check that one out. That was a really good one. Gives you some information, some tips and tricks on what to do if it's starting to get a little bit slowed down for you and people are starting to get a little bit wobbly.

But the thing that's really important here when we're in this op bit, where we're in this kind of like bit of financial flux, I'll call it, is. Sharing with them and demonstrating to them the impact of not doing something. What's that look like? So the negative approach, nearly there, stick with me in 11, is identify the outcomes and overcome their objections. What are you going to say if they say it's too expensive? What are you going to say? If they say, we don't need all of this stuff, we just don't really want the security stuff. You need to, then this is where you then need to go a little bit deeper into the value and you need to have a good. Sales process, which is a good structured sales process that's going to keep you on track. Most MSPs we know are pretty good at closing. They're pretty good at get somebody in a room they're pretty good at closing them. But remember that you are not always going to be that person doing it. You might have your account managers doing it, you might have some junior salespeople doing it. So having a good structured process that kind of almost has an objection tree of what if they do, if they say this, and what if they do say that? You can then roll it back up again and you can go all the way up to what their problems were. But making sure again, that you are demonstrating that value.

So just coming up to the top of the hour now, number 12 is around closing obviously and onboarding. So you've gone all the way through this process. You've built this great rapport with these people. You've demonstrated the value, you've demonstrated and explained to them what happens if you don't do this. You've come up with a solution that fits their business, that they're really comfortable and they're happy with, and now it's time to just get it over the line and just say, when do you want to get started? When can we make this happen? Let's get cracking all of those kind of whatever closing phrase that you feel comfortable with. And then on board, start the onboarding process. Get them onboarded and overdeliver on what you promised. There's nothing worse than sitting there in a sales conversation and going, yeah, we're going to do this. Yeah, we're going to do that. You are happy you've gone out the room, clicking your heels together, slapping your hands because you've given this great great service. And then you hand it over to someone who hasn't got that same energy and says. Oh, welcome miss Client number one. This is the package. This is how it works, blah, blah, blah. And then leaves them leaves them just hanging with Jeff said we were going to do this and we were going to do that. So make sure that you've got a really good handover process to your operations team. Make sure that you are keeping in check if you are in a sales function, making sure that you are keeping in check to make sure that you are. Over-delivering on what you offered so that you are delighting them. Don't want buyer's remorse coming in. We don't want people thinking that, oh my God, I got caught up in the sale and now look what happens. So making sure that you have that really good over-delivery on the promise as well.

And that is your 12 steps to getting your marketing working, getting your marketing process into flow and I'd love you to just share this with anybody in your team who's talking about marketing, talking about getting marketing started. And just to get the word out that it takes a long time, but it doesn't mean to say that you won't get the results. If you are unstructured and you are jumping around and you jumble around these points here, and I'll give you, for example, I'm going to go straight to demonstrate my expertise at number nine, right? But I haven't done any of the nurturing to start with. I haven't built that great rapport we had over the conversation. Might not you might think you're a bit, a bit cheeky or a little bit, not the right person for me or not the right company for me, it's your job during this process is to educate. So use this in this sequence.

I'd love to hear some great feedback. If you want to hand on how you put this stuff together, then just message me on LinkedIn, hit the website, come and have a chat, book, a call, whatever you need to do, and we can help you to work out how to get the best out of your marketing. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did putting it together, and I hope you it's given you a diff bit of a different slant on how to get your marketing working and as I say, please share it with your teams and good luck. Step by step, do one step at a time. Use AI to remove some of the thinking. Use your team. Use your clients. Use the information that's all around you. Don't do this all on your own. Build out a plan, get this up and running. Go and get yourself some new business. Go and do it today. That's it for me today. You enjoy your day and I look forward to catching up, connecting with you soon.

Be good. Take care. See you soon.

OUTRO: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Just before you go, and if you're curious about how this episode links with the ability to scale your MSP to a million or, or if you are already there, accelerate to five, then we want to invite you to come and take the MSP Mastery quiz, and in just three minutes, you're going to get 360 degrees scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can. Engage in, align your people and help generate more leads in your msp. It's really simple. Just click on the link in the show notes and if you have enjoyed this episode, we'd love to get some feedback from you by means of a rating review on Spotify or iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice. We really appreciate every single one of them. Now, you can go and enjoy the rest of your day and we look forward to catching up and connecting with you soon. All the best day.