618 Strategic Marketing for MSPs

00:09 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Hello friends, I'm from Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals, whether small or large, where we talk about tips, tricks and all things IT-related to help you run your business better, smarter and faster. I want to thank you for tuning in. This is one of our audio shows and I have a special guest with me. I should probably tell you guys that I know that we've been going back and forth. We've had an MSP Money series, that we've been going back and forth. We've had an MSP Money Series. We are now coming to the time where we're going to be talking about what you all believe my favorite topic is, and that is marketing. So, yes, no, marketing. Marv is going to be having an MSP Marketing and Branding Series and we're going to start with that today. 

01:03
I have Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. I'm going to bring him up in just a second. I do want to make sure that I mention that this episode is presented to you by our friends over at Super Ops, the future-ready, all-in-one RM, PSA, that sort of a tool you know to help you run your business. They are going to help you supercharge your client relationships and make your business better. So, super Ops, you can't see the screen, but I'm holding up the mug that they sponsor, where I have my angry hot tea that I'll be sipping throughout the show. So because this is an audio show, let's get right to it and bring up our guest, Tim Fitzpatrick Rialto Marketing. Tim, how are you? 

01:53 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
I'm great Thanks for having me, Marvin. I appreciate it. 

01:55 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, well, thanks for coming on, and I should let people know that your name probably is not going to show up for a lot of my listeners. You don't seem to be doing the circuit I guess is the best way to explain it in terms of showing up at some of our conference and stuff, but you've been in marketing for quite some time I have since late, late 2012, early 2013, somewhere around there. So Well, that's when you started Rialto, but you were doing stuff even before then. 

02:26 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yes, yes, I was. I mean, look, I've been a. I've been an entrepreneur since I graduated from college. I owned a business with my, with my father, um, worked with him for over 10 years. We sold that business and um, and then I got into residential real estate for a while, which I did not like. It was not a good fit for me, and that's when I shifted gears and got into what I'm doing now, which is on the marketing side specifically. 

02:53 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, well, I wasn't going to ask you about all that stuff, but we'll get back to that because it'd be interesting to hear how you work with your dad. But Rialto Marketing is your company, rialtomarketing.com is the website, so we'll go ahead and get that out to everybody. That will be in the show notes here. And you guys, of course you do marketing, consulting, advisory stuff. 

03:19 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
You do a lot of different things I do. Here's how I would put it. Though Marketing is so broad, at this point I focus on marketing strategy, planning and leadership. Those three things need to be in alignment if you want to build a marketing engine that's going to yield consistent, repeatable results. So those are the things I'm good at and that's the lane I stay in. 

03:46 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Well, glad you said that because, to be honest, that's the whole reason that I thought you need to be the first person on when it comes to this MSP marketing series, because one of the things that I see in our industry now granted, I am known as no marketing Marv because I don't market I have been lucky in my business to get everything by word of mouth or referrals. Now, of course, I mean, yes, there's a little bit of marketing, but it's not intentional marketing. I do have some branding People know my name, that sort of thing but most MSPs that are truly actively trying to grow are doing something intentional with their marketing. However, a lot of them are not strategic with their marketing. Yeah, so you help companies form a strategy. Now how many people come to you after years and years of marketing and are just frustrated and don't understand what a strategy is? 

04:49 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
and all of that, yeah, yeah, hopefully it's not years upon years, but I have a. I have a client that I'm working with right now that I talked to a little over a year ago, wasn't ready at the time, wanted to, you know, try marketing on his own. And you know, after a year he came back and was like I need help. Um, I will tell you, Marv, I hate to see that because it's wasted time and money, but sometimes people have to go through that before they're ready to actually take that next step. You know, so I can't, you can't force somebody to be ready. They have to be ready, right? 

05:29
But it's yeah, marketing is, it can be challenging. There's a lot of moving pieces, there's information overload that we're all battling, right. There's so much information coming at us and oftentimes, when we're battling, that we just don't know what to do, and inevitably what we end up doing is just I'm going to try this or I'm going to try that. You know we throw stuff up against the wall and hope something sticks. But hope is. Hope is not a marketing strategy. 

05:56 - Uncle Marv (Host)
So, I guess, start from the beginning, cause I, I mean, I've got questions, but they're all over the place, so let me, let me ask if you can kind of give us a roadmap as to when a company or person comes to you and says hey, I look, I need help with marketing. Where's the place you actually start? I understand that you got to put a strategy in place, but what does that look like? 

06:21 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yeah, what does that look like? So the first thing we need to understand is where you're at right and then where you want to get to, what your goals are, and that's why there is no one-size-fits-all plan, like you can't these templated plans that people say, oh, you need to do exactly this and it's going to work. That's BS, because we're all in different places. Even if I talk to two MSPs that are the exact same size, they're not doing the exact same marketing. They don't have the exact same goals of where they want to get to. They don't have the exact same resources. All of those things determine and impact what needs to go in your marketing plan. So we first need to understand where you are and where you want to go. Understanding where you are is kind of like telling your GPS where you're starting from right. You can't create a plan to determine what you need to do until you know where you're starting from and where you want to go. So we identify where you’re first and foremost. Once we do that, that helps us unlock the growth and profit opportunities that are there, that exist. It also identifies where the roadblocks are right, because if we're going to grow, we need to remove the roadblocks that exist. That is then how we start to craft and create a marketing plan, a roadmap that's going to help you focus and outline what you need, what your priorities are. 

08:00
But what I will tell you is everything that we do focuses on strategy. First, because strategy is fuel, right. Planning is where you outline the vehicles and then leadership is where you put a driver in place. So if we just jump to the vehicles which, by the way, is what a lot of MSPs do I need to do paid ads or I need to be on social media those are vehicles. If we just if we choose vehicles and we have no fuel, they're not going to work very well. Right, and when we do that, we end up wasting time and we waste money, and that's why people get into the boat where they're like oh, I tried that and it didn't work doesn't mean that it doesn't work. Typically. It means things are out of sequence. Right, we put the cart before the horse, our vehicles didn't work. It doesn't mean that it doesn't work Typically. It means things are out of sequence. Right, we put the cart before the horse, our vehicles didn't have fuel. 

08:50
We need to go back to strategy. What's strategy? In my opinion, there's three elements of strategy. Your target market right. Who are your ideal clients? Who do you intend to serve? Then we can look at the message that you're going to use to attract and engage those people. And then we want to make sure that what you're offering those people is in alignment with what they need. Those three things have to be in place for a solid strategy to be there. Then you can start to look at what are the vehicles that I'm going to use in my plan. 

09:24 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, so I'm going to make some comments here that might ruffle some feathers, because you know our industry and there are companies that all they have is a plan. They have a. You know, I don't. I don't know what the numbers are, but I'm thinking. You know there's a, you know a $7.99 a month plan, a $10.99 a month plan, and it's really all about what you consider vehicles. They're all about here's how you. Here's a marketing campaign that you can throw on Facebook. Here's one you can throw on LinkedIn. Here's a news article you can do to get yourself on the news, and it seems as though a lot of them just they have the prepackaged plans. 

10:14 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yeah. 

10:15 - Uncle Marv (Host)
But I don't know and I may be wrong because, like I said, I haven't done any of them and I haven't had deep, in-depth talks with anybody that's gone through them. But I've heard a lot of people that are like oh yeah, all I was told is I got to post six times a month on Facebook and I would get people. So what you're saying is that just simply doing those without a plan is most likely not going to work. That's correct, Okay. 

10:42 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's not that there's anything wrong with those tools, but we first we need to have a strategy behind those tools and we need to know how to take those tools and adapt them to our specific situation. Right, and I? I think that the some of the programs you're referring to are attractive for MSPs because they look easy. Oh, this is the easy button for marketing. The reality is there is no easy button, there is no silver bullet. Marketing takes work. It takes consistency over a long period of time. It takes consistency over a long period of time, and so you can use those tools, but you need to know how to adapt those tools so that they can work for your business, because you can't just take the template, put your name on it and send it out. 

11:40 - Uncle Marv (Host)
That is not going to work. That's what I was going to ask you next, because that's what people have talked about and I just talked to an MSP. Last week. I was at a conference and they were talking about the fact that they literally were on a it wasn't a discovery call, it was a prospect meeting and the customer literally handed them a packet that was almost identical to the one that they were presenting, because they were competing against another MSP in the same city, same space, and they were so frustrated Go ahead. 

12:19 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
There's a key distinction here that I think is really important, because what you bring up I've interviewed MSPs on my podcast that are in some of these programs and they've said to me after the fact, like hey, man, I'm sending out some of this direct mail or email stuff and I've had prospects tell me that they got the exact same thing from multiple MSPs. That's not creating differentiation, right? It's not creating a desire with the potential client to want to do business with you. Specifically. The key distinction we need to pull out here is there's a difference between copying and modeling, right? Copying is just taking the template and slapping your name on it and expecting it to work. 

13:10
Copying doesn't work. We can model the fundamentals and the principles behind these things, but modeling means you're taking it and you're adapting it to your specific situation. You're updating it and tweaking it so that it's going to work for you. Updating it and tweaking it so that it's going to work for you the basic fundamentals and principles within that are still there, but you're adapting it for your business. That's how it's going to work and that's where I think a lot of MSP struggles. They just don't. 

13:41
Most MSPs got started because they love the tech right Great technical people, but you didn't. Oh yeah, to effectively market my business and in order to do that, it means you need to get support in some way, shape or form, and there are multiple ways to get support. We help with support in our own way, but we're not the only people out there that can help support. But you do need to get support to level up those skills so that you feel confident as an MSP owner to lead and manage your marketing efforts. Either that or you need to hire somebody to do it. 

14:32 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Right, all right. You mentioned support and I think I've bled over into the next question. I was going to ask because it was going to be based on, what are the common mistakes or misconceptions that you've seen MSPs make? And obviously we've just talked about copying versus modeling. Yeah, but I do want to ask more about those mistakes. But I want to go back in terms of setting the strategy. I mean, we talked about setting a foundation and stuff, but how long does it usually take for somebody? 

15:08
to actually To put that strategy in place Right to even understand what you're trying to tell them what a strategy is. 

15:16 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
There's a window and it depends on where you're at and how deep you need to go. But I think allocating two to four months for strategy is a good timeframe to keep top of mind. Two to four months Sometimes it can take a little bit longer, sometimes it can take less. It depends on how deep we need to go. But, like I said, Marvin, when you look at ideal clients, that's where everything starts. From a marketing standpoint, everything is driven by your ideal clients. 

15:48
Without that, everything else after it is out of alignment, and that is one of the biggest places MSPs struggle. If I go to five MSP websites, I remove the logos. Most of them say the same flavor of message. There's zero differentiation there, and I believe one of the easiest ways for MSPs to differentiate is to focus on specific industries. Focusing on specific industries is one way. Another way is to focus on a specialty right, whether it's you know you're the Amazon web services expert or you know Microsoft 365 expert right. You niche into a specific service offering and specialize in that. 

16:39
Those are two of the simplest ways that I think MSPs can really hone in on their target market and differentiate. But here's the other thing we don't need to reinvent the wheel. If you've been in business for a while, you've got current customers, you've got past customers. That's where you can look for some of those clues of where you might want to focus from an ideal client standpoint. And I call it. I call it the three power questions. You ask yourself this of your about your existing and past customer base who do you love working with, who are your most profitable clients and who do you get great results for? 

17:26 - Uncle Marv (Host)
That's what you're saying. The MSP needs to look at their client list and ask these questions of those clients. 

17:33 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
They need to ask themselves those questions about their clients. Who do I love as an MSP? Who do I love working with? Because why do you want to work with people that you hate working with? That's not good for you, it's not good for your team, it's not good for your team, it's not good for the client. Second, who are our most profitable clients? If we are going to stay in business and serve clients at the highest level, we need to make money. There's nothing wrong with making money, and we all know some clients take far more effort than others and reduce our profits because of that. And then the third is who are we getting great results for the outcomes that we are getting for our clients? Who love the out of our clients? Which of them absolutely love those outcomes and results? 

18:22
If you can work with clients day in, day out to check all three of those boxes, how much better is your business going to be, how much happier are you going to be? How much happier is your team going to be? I mean, I think everybody here is listening just goes yeah, damn, if I could work with people to check all those boxes, that would be awesome. So when you do that, though, Marvin. What ends up happening is you've got this subgroup that checks all three of those boxes and it's that group that you start to look for commonalities and things start to come to the surface and you're like, oh my God, I didn't realize that, for example, half the clients on this list are accountants or attorneys, or in health care, I mean, whatever it may be. That's one example. But you start to see things and patterns that you didn't see otherwise, and it's in those patterns that you start to look for your ideal clients. 

19:20 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Yep, so you mentioned attorneys. I got lucky with attorneys and that's kind of my niche. Probably about 70% comes from attorneys and going through the list, so that is a tough thing and this isn't a marketing point but when you're talking about which clients are profitable, part of the frustration that I see others having is sometimes you've got to fire the big whales. Just because they're paying you a lot of money doesn't mean you're making a lot of money. I mean I fired my largest customer at the end of 2017. They were at the time it was 33 or 34% of my revenue, but they were well more than 50% of my time allocation. 

20:12 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yeah, so think about that, right? Topline revenue does not equate to profit. It's a key distinction there, right? So we need to look at profit, not necessarily people that are driving top line. But you know that's a that's a classic case. I mean, there's a lot of MSPs that are in that situation where one or two clients are a huge percentage of business and that's a very vulnerable place to be. 

20:39 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Right and I say that because I'm assuming that that's got to be part of that strategy session identifying, like you said, where you are, you know where are you at and if you're going to be marketing to get more clients, you don't want to get more clients like that. 

20:57 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
No, you don't, and you want to make sure that the marketing you're doing is attracting the types of clients that you want to work with. You don't want to just attract anybody, right? I mean because then you're wasting time, right? If you're generating leads that aren't good fit, you're wasting time and money to get those leads. You're wasting time and money to qualify those leads. It just doesn't make sense and we need to be much more focused with our marketing efforts because, look, the reality is most MSPs don't have unlimited marketing budgets. We need to make much more focused with our marketing efforts because, look, the reality is most MSPs don't have unlimited marketing budgets. We need to make the most of it, and one of the ways we make the most of it is by being focused and targeted with that budget. 

21:40 - Uncle Marv (Host)
So with MSPs, so you work with them to get the strategy to get all of those lined up, how soon would you start putting vehicles in place? I mean, are you able to start some of them early and maybe add some later? Or do you have kind of like, hey, you know, we're at day 60. I think we've got the strategy, let's roll. I mean, that's sort of how do you do that? 

22:06 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
First off, there are vehicles you can look at while you're doing strategy. So it's not like everything is put on hold or you're going to stop what you're doing while you're working on strategy. There are always quick win opportunities. So I'll give you an example here. Marvin and you mentioned it right Most of your business is referral. 

22:30
Absolutely nothing wrong with referral. Referrals are fantastic, right? But if you want to grow past a certain point, most MSPs reach a point where they go I've hit a ceiling with referrals and if I want to grow past this point, I need to actively market my business, right? But one of the things I ask first when somebody says, hey, I'm generating most of my business from referrals Awesome, how are you doing that? The answer the majority of the time is it just happens. We do great work and it happens. Well, that's low hanging fruit from my eyes, because it's a much more passive way of generating leads. What happens if we get more active with it? Can we create a referral program that we can promote? Can we identify times throughout the customer experience their experience with you where it makes a lot of sense to ask for referrals? And if we start to ask for them consistently, how many more can we generate? That's an example of low-hanging fruit that we can work on immediately while we're doing strategy. 

23:39 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right. So I just want to throw in there that when I talk about my business getting referrals so yes, I do have referrals that are word of mouth from the customers but for a long time I was part of a referral network group. It did disband a while back. I did not join a new one, but I'm still in contact with most of those people so I'm still getting fruit from that labor. So that's something there. Um, as we talk about the vehicles, we talk about the marketing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok and God, I hope I never get on TikTok, but apparently, apparently there's a big push for that. Um, I'll just ask you this, cause I don't know another way to ask. I mean, can you just do you know boilerplate Kava, canvas, stuff to throw on? You know social media. 

24:37 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
I call that laying ground cover. So it's it. It shows that there is activity there, right? So that if someone goes to your website and then they go to check out your social media, they see activity right, and they don't. You know, it's not like they go to your Facebook page and they're like, oh my God, these, this company hasn't posted in eight months. Are they still in business? Right? You don't want that to happen. So the activity like that lays ground cover, but it's not going to generate business, right? To really generate business from social, I think you need to get, you need to have a much stronger plan and you need to be consistent about it. So, no, I don't think that's going to work very well, but it will it. You know, like I said, it lays ground cover. So I, if you're going to do it, I think you need to take a little bit more time and thought Okay and put into it. 

25:35 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, I mean, I'm trying to be delicate because I don't want to throw a couple of companies under the bus. That's okay. There was one that we actually had to get out of the industry because that's all they did and it was atrocious, and taking money and not doing anything was basically what happened there. But I'll be honest, that's what I see, short of the new LinkedIn stuff, where everybody's trying to be a thought leader on LinkedIn because they're answering those questions or starting a newsletter, a LinkedIn newsletter. 

26:11 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
I see a lot of MSP content that I see and look, I'm active on a lot of social, but I'm really active on LinkedIn. You know, a lot of the MSP content that I see is about you know. It's about tech stuff, right? You know the latest whatever. There's a cyber-attack or here's the latest features about X Y Z, but do your ideal clients really care about that? I'd argue that they don't. I think what they care about are the outcomes that you, as an MSP, can give them. That's what they care about. Most of them are not. Most of your ideal clients are not technical people, right? 

26:56
No, they don't care about the tech. They care about the results that can get them. And so this comes back, Marvin, to understanding your ideal clients and what's important to them, because that's what's then going to drive what you create from a content standpoint. Sure, if they care about the tech and they're into it cool, then maybe that's appropriate content. But if they're not into it, your content needs to shift to what they are into and what they do care about as it relates to technology. Right into and what they do care about as it relates to technology. Right. 

27:30
It goes back to your comment about hey, 70% of your businesses are attorneys, right? When you look at what kind of content you need to create on social, it all goes back to them. What do they care about and where are they? Right? You said man, I don't want to be a man, I hope I don't have to go on TikTok. Well, guess what? If attorneys aren't on TikTok, then you don't need to be there. You get a free pass, right? But if they are and you want to get in front of them there, then sure you can be on TikTok. 

28:01
But guess what, even if they are on TikTok, it's not the only place you can go to get in front of attorneys, right? So if one particular marketing vehicle or marketing channel doesn't resonate with you as an MSP, who cares? You don't have to be there, right? There are people out there that'll go oh my God, you have to do this, you have to have a podcast, or you have to have a Facebook page, yeah, yeah, guess what? If you don't like it, then don't do it, because you're not going to do it consistently and you're not going to do it. Well, I'd rather have you get into marketing vehicles that resonate with you, that work for you, that are going to get you in front of you, your ideal client. Those are the ones that are going to work best the ones that are going to work best. 

28:52 - Uncle Marv (Host)
So, all right, let me do the low-hanging fruit, as if one of my listeners were to ask you know if we were live in the chat? Well, what types of things would you do on social media if it's not? You know those Canva pics? Or forwarding a story you know about the latest cyber-attack or the latest Microsoft update? Because, I'll be honest, that's what I think looks like marketing too. Except for the vendors. They may post about their conferences and their webinars and stuff like that, but I don't think I actually really see marketing on social media. Yeah. 

29:32 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yeah, look, it can come in multiple forms, but I think an easy way to think about this when you're looking at creating content, whether it's on social media or anywhere else, is we want to focus on the problems our ideal clients have and don't want, and the results, the outcomes, the benefits that they want and don't have. Say that again. So we want to focus on the problems they have and don't want and the results, the outcomes, the benefits that they want and don't have. So we're not talking about ourselves. We're talking about our ideal clients, right, because it's the problems and the benefits that are going to grab their attention. So, for example, you might create a quick social media post about a current client that you worked with, the problem that they had, what you did, how you helped them and the results that they're now experiencing how you help them and the results that they're now experiencing. 

30:39 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, okay, I get it. I was going to say how in the world would we do that if we're trying to talk to prospects, but taking a resolution and modifying it? Yeah, because obviously you don't want to. You know, put your customer's name out there and stuff like that, but you want to put out the situation as it happened, Put out the situation right, or it could just be here here's a. 

30:58 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Here's a common problem. If you've identified a common problem, that a potential client has put the problem out, you could talk about how most people attempt to solve that and what's wrong with it and what you would do differently, Right? So in that situation, you're talking about the problem, but you're positioning yourself as different than how most people solve it Right, and showing how you solve it. That helps establish authority and credibility. It also creates differentiation. Okay, here's a problem. Here's how most people try to solve it. Here's what's wrong with that. 

31:39 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Here's a better way to solve it. All right, okay, so you know I don't want to beat social media marketing to death, but I just questions keep popping up, but I'm going to move on. What are, I guess, some other things that we look at in terms of and we're specifically I mean the fact that you've worked with MSPs helps a lot in terms of identifying what, what has and hasn't worked. But, you know, outside of first not having a strategy and then doing vehicles in the wrong way, what are some of the other things that we need to fix to get our marketing going in the right direction? 

32:22 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
yeah. So another thing that comes to mind is short-term versus long-term thinking with marketing. And again, this is a very, this is a very, this is high level. Right, this is not super tactical, but marketing is a marathon, it is not a sprint, and too often times I see MSPs thinking short-term. You know, I need to generate leads now rather than long-term, and when we when we fall into that trap, we don't give things a long enough period of time to work, we give up before we have the opportunity to see those things take hold. So we need to think long-term rather than short-term. 

33:10
But as a backstop to that, when you're investing in marketing, you've got to identify the important metrics and the markers that are going to identify whether you're on the right path or not. Okay, what do I mean by that? Because if you don't have the right metrics and markers, you're going to be an MSP that says man, I invested in marketing for a year with whatever. I did it myself, or I invested with an agency and nothing worked. Well, that shouldn't happen, right? The reason that happened was because there weren't the right metrics and there weren't the right markers. I.e., at month three we're going to have completed these things and these are the metrics that we're going to track, that are going to help us determine whether we're on the right path, because if you're not on the right path, it's okay. It's okay. You're going to need to make adjustments and course corrections. 

34:11 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, okay, let me. Let me kind of ask this question because I think in my head I'm thinking right now the only metrics that I know that people use are how many leads is it generating and how many appointments am I getting? And when you talk about marketing being a marathon and again I could be wrong, but I think most people seriously look at marketing when they need business now, so they don't have time to wait for those results to come in. So how do they match that? 

34:51 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
It's like you know. They say the time to get a bank loan is when you don't need it. The time to invest in marketing is when you don't need it. Because I guarantee you, if you get into, invest in marketing from a because what you just explained is a short-term mindset you are, you are bound to fail with marketing if you cannot step out of that. Because, look, you can get short-term results with marketing. But even paid ads, which can generate leads much quicker than other longer-term marketing tactics, it still takes months to fine-tune a paid ad campaign Months. 

35:34
So I don't know what to say. If you can't dig in and invest in the long term, then don't do it. But if you don't do it, you're going to be in the same position a year from now as you are today, right, right, because the reality is you're bound to be unhappy because if you invest in it with a short-term mindset, you're going to two months in three months in with whoever's helping you. You're going to be like this isn't working, it's not generating enough leads and it's because you haven't given enough time right, and so it's. 

36:09
There is no way around it. 

36:11 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, and I guess that's kind of what I was asking for clarification, because I think that a lot of times companies will look to marketing too late. Yes, instead of marketing instead of marketing. I mean, there's almost a case to be made that the day you open your business, you should be thinking about marketing. 

36:35 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yes, you should Now look. I'm biased, Marvin, because I'm a marketer, but without marketing, bringing in leads that are then turning into clients. Who cares? You could be the best MSP in the world, you could have the best system, the best tech stack and all that good stuff, but who cares, it doesn't matter. So, really, you are a marketer and a salesperson first. You are an MSP second Because without those two things first and foremost you know we don't want to hear that. 

37:12
You know, first and foremost you know, we don't want to hear that now, of course you don't, but that's what you need to hear, right? So that's, that's the reality. Right, because if you don't have enough customers or clients, you're, then you're not going to stay in business, right, and I don't want that for anybody. 

37:30 - Uncle Marv (Host)
So let me ask this how much marketing has changed since the pandemic? Because we can't actively go out and sit in front of as many people as we did before. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think people are tired of looking at stuff online because we spent so much time in Zoom meetings and video meetings and playing on social media when we were at home. For 2020, 2021., yeah, I mean, are we coming? 

38:07 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
out of that, or what do we look like now? Yeah, I think we are. The marketing tactics are always evolving, always. It's constantly dynamic. It's no different than tech. On the MSP side, right, the tech side of things. It's always evolving, it's always changing, there's always patches to fix, there's always new feature updates. Same thing on the marketing tactics side. What does not change are the fundamentals of any discipline, the fundamentals of marketing, of sales, of tech, of operations, of finance. They don't change, they're the same, and so I believe that MSPs are much better served focusing on the fundamentals, right, getting that strategy in place, because that's what's going to, that's the foundation that you're going to be able to build the rest of your house from. 

39:01
So the tactics with marketing, look, they're always changing, but there's plenty of effective marketing tactics out there and, frankly, I think some of the tactics that were working for MSPs before the pandemic they're still working now. They haven't changed. I mean, look, there's MSPs that are doing very well with paid ads. There's MSPs that are doing well with content creation to support their search engine optimization, social media, email marketing it all works. We just have to do it consistently over time. But if we're doing it consistently over time and it's targeted too broadly. Right, we don't have a strategy behind it. It's not going to work. 

39:54 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, so paid ads still a thing. 

39:57 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Still a thing. It's not the first thing that I would tell most MSPs to go to. 

40:03 - Uncle Marv (Host)
I think you should be Really, because I thought Google ads is usually the first thing I hear of, when no it's not the first thing I would recommend. 

40:12 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Um, you know. Again, I think you need to go back to strategy first, because if you don't have good messaging and you don't know who you're going to target, you can waste a lot of time and money on paid ads. And if, if you don't have a strong sales process in place, you're going to spend a bunch of money for leads to come through ads that you then struggle to convert. So I think there's a lot of other things that need to be in place before you start to invest in paid ads. 

40:46 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, All right, Let me ask this discerning question Is there a prototypical MSP that is prime for developing a proper marketing strategy and formula in terms of size, revenue or things like that? Do you see one type of MSP benefiting better than others? 

41:18 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
That's a loaded question. 

41:22 - Uncle Marv (Host)
I said discerning. 

41:24 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yes, look, I would say that the sooner you can invest in marketing, the better. Okay, the sooner you can invest in marketing, the better. But I think the MSP that has grown through referral, that wants to continue to grow and scale their business and knows that they need to invest in marketing to do that, when you're at that place, I think that is a very good time to pause for a minute and reflect on okay, what do we need to do to get from where we are to where we want to be? Okay, because I talked to me talked to plenty MSPs that they're at that place where they've they're starting to grow past referral and they're investing in marketing in some way, shape or form, but they don't really have a plan, they don't have a strategy. And that's where it kind of comes back to what I talked about in the beginning. They're kind of throwing stuff up against a wall. They're hoping these things are going to work. 

42:24
When you're starting to put money on the line with your marketing, I think you really need to have a more cohesive strategy and plan in place, right? So before you hire a marketing coordinator or a marketing manager, or before you hire a marketing agency, I think you need to have a plan in place. I think you need to be able to give a strategy to your marketing agency or to your marketing coordinator, because if you don't, they really don't have all the tools they need to be successful. Strategy to your marketing agency or to your marketing coordinator. 

42:59 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Because if you don't, they really don't have all the tools they need to be successful. That's the reason they go looking for an agency. Is you give me the map and the roadmap and the? 

43:10 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
guidelines and stuff. But that's a huge mistake. And here's why Most agencies are not strategic. They're tactical, right, they may be great at paid ads or great at content or search engine optimization, but they're not strategic. And when you go to an agency expecting them to put a plan together for you of, hey, this is where I am and this is where I want to go An agency hopefully this makes sense an agency has a dog in the fight, okay, and what I mean by that is what do you expect them to tell you that you need? 

43:46
If they sell paid ads and they sell SEO, they're going to tell you that you need paid ads and SEO to get where you want to go. They have a dog in the fight. They have a vested interest in recommending what they sell. So you're really not getting an objective opinion of what needs to be done. So, in my opinion, you need to work with a consultant or an advisor that doesn't have a dog in the fight, that thinks strategically, that can say, hey, let's put a strategy in place, let's put the plan in place. Then you can hire that marketing coordinator or that agency to do some of the implementation of that plan. That needs to get done. But when you approach an agency to do the work, some of the sequencing of marketing gets out of place, and the sequencing of what we do with our marketing is just as important as what we do. 

44:49 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, so you're giving me the same advice I got about choosing my financial planner not to go with one that all they do is sell what's in their portfolio. 

45:02 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
That's another perfect example that's easy for most of us to understand. Right, Most financial advisors make money from what they sell. 

45:13 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Yeah, commissions and fees. 

45:15 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
There are fee-based financial advisors that you only pay a fee. They don't care what you invest in, they just want to recommend what's best for your situation, again, for where you are currently and to where you want to get to. 

45:29 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, and to where you want to get to, All right. Well, Tim, we're moving right along here and you've done very well in dodging my loaded questions, and I want to take an opportunity here and remind people RialtoMarketing.com is where you're located. You did mention a podcast and you do a podcast, and it's, you know, funny enough entitled Rialto Marketing Podcast. 

46:00 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yes. 

46:09 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Of which I've actually listened to a few, and the one I was going to ask you about is the one that you did with the Raving Fan. It's probably three or four episodes ago. I'll have to get you back on and talk about some others. 

46:18 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Yes, cool, yeah, absolutely yeah, I do a weekly podcast episode. I interview MSPs about their journey, what they've done, what's worked well, what hasn't, so that we can learn from that experience. 

46:32 - Uncle Marv (Host)
So all right. So obviously there are going to be some people listening here that are like oh, you work with MSPs, so beyond the website and the podcast, where else can they uh find you at? 

46:44 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
yeah, the best place is LinkedIn Tim Fitzpatrick. Look me up, I believe it's. My linked URL is Tim P, as in Paul Fitzpatrick. The other tool I'll make available to your audience is over at revenueroadblockscorecard.com. So one of the things we touched on earlier is if we want to grow, we need to remove the roadblocks. There are nine common revenue roadblocks and at revenueroadblockscorecard.com you can determine which of the nine roadblocks are slowing down your growth. It takes less than five minutes for a free customized report. There's a ton of value there, so your audience might find some value in doing that All right. 

47:23 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Well, I will have a link to that. And so there are nine. You said nine roadblocks, Nine Yep, that sounds like a lot. 

47:36 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
It is a lot. 

47:38 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right. Well, Tim, we had a good discussion. I know we could have talked more. I may have to ask you to come back and join me again. Oh, I'd be happy to do it. 

47:47 - Tim Fitzpatrick (Guest)
Thanks for having me, Marvin. 

47:47 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Maybe I'll have you close out this MSP marketing and branding series and see what we've learned along the way but thank you for coming on. Appreciate it. All right, folks? That's going to do it. Be sure to head over to itbusinesspodcast.com If this is your first time listening to the show. You will find some podcast player links that you can subscribe to and get the show whenever it is released, and know that we stream weekly Wednesdays at 8 pm, live on all these lovely social platforms that I talked about LinkedIn, YouTube and the Facebook. So find us there and I'll be back with another episode soon. Thank you for tuning in On behalf of my friend here, Tim Fitzpatrick. We thank you for listening today. We'll see you soon, Holla!