Our executive team has decades of experience in the MSP space, and we work with our MSP partners closely to help them sell and deliver top-notch cybersecurity services. We have a first-hand and in-depth understanding of their pain points, and MSP marketing is a top challenge.

Yet, MSP marketing is essential for helping you reach more prospects, convert them into clients, and expand your footprint within existing accounts. An effective MSP marketing strategy is critical for selling more cybersecurity services, growing revenue, and scaling your business. So, what does it entail, and where should you begin?

Define your market positioning

Before producing marketing materials, you must determine how to differentiate your brand. It all starts with nailing your market positioning: What’s the unique value you bring to the table, and how does your approach to security service delivery set you apart from your competition? What makes your clients want to work with you instead of other MSPs/MSSPs or hiring an in-house team?

Align your unique value proposition with your target audience’s needs and challenges. You may also highlight your expertise in serving specific industries to produce relevant and relatable marketing content. For example, if your target market is healthcare organizations, you may emphasize your experience in helping clients protect patient data on multiple platforms and achieve HIPAA compliance.

Address your prospects’ priorities

Your marketing materials must go beyond tooting your own horn to communicate what your prospects need to know to make an informed decision. Consider the questions your customers ask during sales conversations to create relevant content. Here are some popular topics:

• More companies now understand cybersecurity’s importance and want to know how an MSP can help them stay safe. Proactively educate your prospects and address how you can protect their IT infrastructure and assets. You may share statistics about cybersecurity risks, outline the tools and processes you use, and review the security framework you deploy (e.g. NIST CSF) to secure client infrastructure.

• Ultimately, your customers want to know that their MSPs are implementing tools and processes to help them achieve their business objectives. For instance, you may describe how you tailor your cybersecurity services to integrate with your client’s internal workflows, incorporate existing security stack, and support their business objectives to shorten the time to value while increasing their ROI.

• Your prospects want to know you’re there to answer questions and help them navigate security challenges and incidents. Highlight your responsive customer service, such as 24/7 support, proactive follow-ups after incidents, and weekly or monthly threat assessment reporting. Review your customer support and escalation procedures and share client testimonials about your outstanding customer service.

• Today’s organizations must respond to shifting market demand. Emphasize how working with you gives them the scalability and flexibility to grow their business without substantial upfront investment. For example, most MSPs charge a flat monthly fee for security services. You may showcase how your simple and transparent pricing structure allows clients to scale up or down to stay agile.

Design a marketing plan

MSP marketing involves many moving parts, and a plan helps you identify all the necessary elements and coordinate them strategically to achieve the best outcomes. Start by defining your target audience — who are the decision-makers, and what do they care about? What channels do they use for research, and what content formats do they prefer? How will you position your brand to appeal to these people?

Choose the most effective marketing platforms for your campaigns. For example, LinkedIn helps you reach audience segments based on industry, job title, company size, location, and more to deliver highly personalized messaging. Meanwhile, pay-per-click (PPC) ads allow you to target longtail keywords and attract prospects with high purchase intent to your website.

Then, develop an SEO strategy to drive high-quality traffic. Conduct a website audit and update the content based on your target audience’s behaviors to optimize conversions. Implement a content plan and create high-quality content to augment your SEO tactics. Also, build digital marketing assets like branded landing pages, email templates, and enhanced social profiles to support your campaigns and deliver a cohesive brand experience.

Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your marketing objectives. Track and analyze these metrics to gain insights about your target market and support continuous improvement. You should also schedule a full review every six months to refresh your ongoing content strategy.

Build trust and credibility with great content

To stand out in a sea of competitors, you must position your brand as the go-to source of valuable information to build credibility with your prospects and clients. After all, they’ll need to trust you before handing you the key to their infrastructure, especially for cybersecurity-related services.

Sharing valuable insights and information helps you gain visibility and build trust. Publish thought leadership content like eBooks and white papers to showcase the breadth and depth of your expertise. Additionally, be proactive and helpful on social media to augment the “like, know, and trust” factor and speak at conferences and webinars to reinforce your expert status.

Cybersecurity can be abstract, so relatable content goes a long way to humanize the topic and showcase your capabilities. Share customer stories and case studies to illustrate how your services have helped your clients. Make these stories concrete, specific, and engaging. Provide context, describe the pain points, share the client’s thought process as they navigate their challenges, and how you support them to achieve the desired outcomes.

Include metrics to illustrate results whenever possible. For example, you may show how you helped a client lower their cyber insurance premium by X% or how your 24/7/365 security monitoring identified suspicious activities within X minutes to stop an attack. Use quotes from happy clients to highlight the specifics. You may also supplement these case studies with written or video testimonials to boost credibility.

Shorten your learning curve with MSP marketing services

MSP cybersecurity marketing has many nuances — you can’t put an ad on Instagram and expect to fill your pipeline overnight. That’s why more service providers now turn to MSP marketing specialists to help them navigate the fast-shifting market landscape and get the most out of their marketing budget.

InSOC’s Certified Partner Program includes a sales and marketing enablement component to help our partners develop an effective marketing strategy and grow their pipelines. You’ll get sales team support, personalized coaching, and a dedicated account manager to help you take the guesswork out of building cybersecurity sales.

Learn more about our Certified Partner Program and get in touch to see how enhanced.io can help you grow your business.

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