How To Successfully Develop and Put A MSP Marketing Plan Into Action

Is Your MSP Marketing Plan Up-To-Date & Are You Executing

Many MSPs come up with great marketing ideas; they may write them down and have every intention to put them on their to-do list. However, these great ideas often get pushed to the “back burner” due to other important priorities, such as technical issues or a server deployment that gets in the way.

Half the battle for marketing success is organization and commitment. Plan your marketing projects, organize them into master lists, give them deadlines, and create repeatable systems to implement them.  With this strategy, your ideas won’t go to waste and you can put your marketing plan into action, and attract more clients.

This is where Ulistic helps your managed services business.  We help plan and also help you execute.  Offering MSPs direct mail, telemarketing services, Google Adwords management and even an MSP website that nets consist of new business.

Develop Your MSP Marketing Plan

Once you’ve established an idea for a marketing strategy, reduce it into a written plan as soon as possible. Get a clear direction and desired outcome for the plan, before writing down a lot of to-do items.

Here’s how to begin:

• Who is my target audience?

Decide what kind of audience you’re attempting to attract with the plan.

• Decide what you’d like to achieve with this plan.

What is my plan?

• Outline your entire plan.

Organize Your Marketing Plan Into Master Lists

Chances are, you’ve got a long to-do list; and if everything you want, need, and hope to do it on this one big list, you probably feel overwhelmed. Feeling overwhelmed won’t get you anywhere—typically the more overwhelmed we are, the less we actually accomplish.

At Ulistic, we recommend making “master lists.” You might need a few lists for different projects, for example, a current list, future list, etc.  Include your marketing strategies (primary, secondary, etc.) on one of the lists.  The trick is to only view these lists once a week, and transfer items from your master list to a “weekly to-do list.”

Only transfer projects or to-dos to your weekly list if you honestly intend to complete them—give them deadlines.  This will take practice; it’s a good idea to start with 5 or 10 priority items so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Then, once a day, either at the beginning or very end of your day, review your weekly list and transfer the most important items to your “daily list.” Again, this should be a relatively short list containing priorities only.

Thought? Should you hire an internal marketing person for your managed IT services business?

Complete A List of Step-By-Step Tactics

Write down a list of step-by-step tactics that will lead you towards your desired outcome. These are the items that you will include on your daily to-do list.

Here’s a sample list for planning and implementing webinars:

1. Plan the dates of the webinars, and add them to your calendar.
2. Write the first draft of the webinar, promoting the events.
3. Write the final draft of the first webinar, edit it, then post it on your website.
4. Do the first 5 to 10 PowerPoint slides for the webinar.
5. Complete all of the webinar slides.
6. Sign up for a webinar hosting service.
7. Write out webinar announcement emails.
8. Practice presenting the webinar.
9. Deliver the webinar.
10. Repeat steps three through nine for the next webinar.

Your resistance will decrease as you continue to follow a step-by-step plan of action. It will help you feel less overwhelmed, you’ll waste less time, complete more projects and achieve better overall results.

Set Up Systems To Ensure Your Marketing Plan Is Completed

A system will help you avoid resistance, simply by having structure and conditions that will enable you to get things done more easily. Setting up an email newsletter system can help make the process go a lot more smoothly, and prevent you from missing important deadlines.

Here’s a sample of steps in an email-marketing plan:

Choose a time of the week or month to write, and don't schedule any appointments that day. Repeat this every week/month until it becomes a habit.

1. Create an email template that you’ll follow each time. For example, once you’ve written in a text editor, paste it into your blog, and then format it in your email management program.
2. Create a file or page with article ideas. Each time you think of an idea for an article, add it to the file. Eventually, you’ll have a long list of ideas to refer to before you begin to write.
3. Write for an hour without stopping to edit, and without any interruptions. Resist any and all temptations, such as checking your email or answering your phone; this will only slow you down.

Setting up systems may appear to be simple, however, it takes a lot of commitment to follow and complete. Once you’ve practiced this strategy for a month, you’ll wonder how you ever got things done without it.  You’ll find yourself to be more focused and less frantic, with your high-priority items getting done each day.

Planning and implementing marketing strategies is important, it will help you get new clients and keep the ones you have. As simple and obvious as marketing strategies may seem, they have the ability to change your entire business.

There's an old saying: "Once you have a good plan, it's half done.” At Ulistic, we believe this saying is completely true.

What Are Your Next Steps To Developing A Solid MSP Marketing Plan?

Ulistic can help you effectively and successfully put your marketing into action! Call us today at 716.799.1999 to arrange a no-obligation consultation to learn more about how we can assist you.