I had a conversation about this with some colleagues in the MSP business the other day.
When you are running a managed service provider, every dollar counts. If you aren’t seeing a clear ROI on an activity, you should probably stop that activity pretty darned quick.
This is true of marketing as well. But marketing – and marketing managed services specifically – has some particular factors that make it tough to determine when enough is enough:
1. It’s known that it takes 7-9 marketing impressions on average before a prospect is moved to take action
2. The average sales cycle for managed services is now approximately 8 months long
So the chances of you getting a prospect to pick up the phone and buy from you after one marketing campaign is slim to none. But running a bunch of marketing campaigns without seeing immediate results can be hard on the wallet.
What should an MSP do?
My answer is that you have to employ an effective combination of targeting, tracking, and persistence to stay on track when marketing managed services. Most importantly, since most MSPs have a small marketing budget (typically 5% of revenue or less), I’d say it’s critical that you work a relatively small but highly qualified list over and over again over time.
A recent story from Everon is illustrative:
We have an in-house list of prospects that we’ve developed over the years, primarily from cold calling. Every quarter our sales team reviews this list and picks out their top 500 prospects for us to market to.
We recently had an appointment with a prospect that we had been trying to get in the door with for years. Towards the end of the meeting, we asked why she had decided to meet with us now. Her response was educational, and pretty humorous!
She jumped up from the table and said, “Let me show you.”
She then went to a large drawer in her office and pulled out all of the marketing pieces we had sent her over the last year. She got such a kick out of our marketing efforts that she decided to hang on to them. Then, when the time came to choose a new IT services provider, who else would she possibly call but us!?
The point is that you MUST continue to market your business at all times! The greatest sin you can commit at your business is to be invisible!
The managed services sales cycle can be long and tough; you need every advantage working for you. Marketing consistently and creatively is one of the biggest advantages you can give your business.
MRC
