Targeted Marketing Tips for MSPs (EP 797)

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for MSPs and IT professionals anywhere in the world, actually. If you need help running your business and working with business customers, hopefully I can give you a little bit of guidance. Today, even though we have moved into the month of April, I am continuing with my marketing and money theme for many reasons.

One, there's so many people out there that can help with this. We just can't squeeze them all into the month of March. And two, I was gone for a good six or seven days with the ASCII EDGE conference in Orlando.

I also had a client move in Orlando. So I was away from the studio here. I'm back.

So I've got some people joining me here for some of these great shows. And hopefully I will get some questions answered because as many of you have heard, No Marketing Marv may have to market this year. So we'll see if our guests can help us with that.

And speaking of guests, Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing is joining me today, a return guest from the show. Tim, how are you?

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
I'm great, Uncle Marv. Thanks for having me back. I must've done something at least okay for you to ask me back.

So thank you for having me back and I'm excited to reconnect.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, the short answer is nobody complained about you. But two, I probably had an email or two of people saying good stuff. And I like when people tell me the good news and not just the bad news.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yes. Yeah. It's always nice to hear the good, isn't it?

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
All right, Tim. So it's been a few months since you've been here. So I told people you are with Rialto Marketing.

And I think we did explain last time that you were here, that you're just not the, you know, spray and pray type of marketing organization that a lot of us know about. Even though you do a lot of the stuff that we talk about, you're a little more focused than that. You're a little more precision based marketing, right?

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yeah. So I'm a marketing coach consultant advisor. And what I do is I help MSPs build their marketing engines so that they can get where they want to go faster.

So how do we do that? We do that by focusing on three areas of marketing, strategy, planning, and leadership. Okay.

Strategy is the fuel for the engine. The planning is where we're picking the parts and assembling the engine. And MSPs are doing a pretty decent job there of picking parts and assembling the engine.

And then leadership is the mechanic. You got to have somebody who's maintaining and optimizing that engine so that it continues to run efficiently. You have to have all three of those if you want to build a strong marketing engine.

And so that's where we focus. We're not creating social posts for you or managing paid ad campaigns. We're focusing on the more holistic, how do I build the engine?

And we do that. We can do that in multiple ways, but we can come in as an outsourced marketing executive and do it for you. I've got an advisor service where I'll guide you through the process.

And then I have a group accelerator program where people come in in the group and we do it in a group setting at your own pace. But all of the tools that we utilize to do this for clients are there and we help guide you through that process.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I've noticed over the years, as I've been talking to more and more marketing folks, there is the group that will help you build the campaigns. They'll do the social media posts, give them to you.

They'll do the templates and all of that. But there is a growing number of marketing experts that are moving more towards your model where it's more about strategic planning. Who are you as a business?

Where are you going? What are the goals that you want to reach? Because I'll be honest, I've been doing this 28 years.

I don't remember anybody ever asking me, what's your goals in terms of specific monetary client avatar type deals? So it seems pretty interesting.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yeah. Well, you know, it's the biggest mistake I see most MSPs making is they're jumping into that planning phase, immediately picking the marketing tactics and the marketing channels. And they start taking action.

But the problem is the engine doesn't have fuel. And when you don't have, it's not going to work. Which is why a lot of MSPs are like, gosh, I'm doing all these things, but none of it's working.

Well, something's out of alignment with the engine. Usually it's strategy first. And then on the backside, it's, you know, look, you're an MSP, right?

You're an IT person. That's why you got into the business. You like the IT.

Marketing may not be your area of expertise. And when it's not, it is very difficult to manage something well that you don't understand. And that's where you need to have at least some support to guide you through that, right.

Or help level up your skillsets so that you know how to manage it effectively. Right. And because what ends up the most common challenge I see with leadership is, man, I just worked with an agency for a year and nothing happened.

Like it didn't work. Right. That's a, part of that is a strategy issue, but part of it is a leadership issue because you just didn't know, like, what questions do I need to ask them?

What metrics should we be tracking? How do I hold them accountable? Because you shouldn't get to 12 months and be like, this didn't work.

There should be waypoints along the way to help guide your decisions into like, are we heading in the right direction? If we're not, what do we need to do? If we are heading the right direction, cool.

What's the next waypoint? Right. And so that's an example of a leadership challenge.

I mean, it's not your fault because it's not your area of expertise, but you have to have somebody who can help you there.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
And your marketing agency is not the one that helps you with that. Agencies are great at implementation. They're great at doing the tactical day-to-day work.

The most of them, I will not say everyone, but most of them are not strategic.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, most of them are basically do these 10 things and you will get these results. And we've learned, you know, mileage may vary and for some people doing those 10 things actually might work, but not for the reasons they think, you know, they just happened to hit at the right time. I remember, you know, by the way, I do listen to your podcast and I remember you telling somebody and I can't remember who that, you know, buyers are only ready to buy 10% of the time.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yes. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
And if you catch them at the right 10%, you're golden. But 90% of the time you're, you know, either hitting and missing or you're just trying to reinforce the idea that, hey, when you are ready to buy, remember my name.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yeah. And that comes from that's the Chet Holmes Buyer Pyramid. So if anybody wants to look at that, just search Chet Holmes Buyer Pyramid and it comes up.

And he says 3% of the market is looking to buy and 7% is open to buy. So you have 10% of the market that might buy. The rest of the market is not in a place where they're going to buy.

Which is why it's so important to have, we need to, especially in the MSP space, like people are not shifting MSPs unless there is a real problem. It is a pain. It is a difficult transition.

And so the pain is very high when they choose to shift. If you haven't, if you haven't stayed in front of them until they get into that place, they're not going to think about you. Right.

And so, yes, part of your marketing and your sales efforts can be and should be focused on trying to get in front of that 10%, but you have to be realistic and know that 9 out of 10 people you connect with are not going to be in that place. And so what do you do with those 9 out of 10 that you connect with? Well, you continue to build the relationship, right?

And you've got to have mechanisms within your marketing engine that are helping you do that.

[Uncle Marv]
Let me ask you this, and we're going to take a left turn early here. I don't know if you were paying attention to my opening statement. So I'm in a situation myself where I've told people, first of all, no marketing, Marv.

I don't send out postcards, newsletters. I'm not buying ads. I built my business on relationships and networking.

So I did have some clients when I left the store I was at that we were already servicing after hours and on the weekend. So I started with that and I did do networking. I went out to an organization that was like a B&I, and I was out there, refined my pitch and attended the chamber meetings and stuff like that.

And that worked for me in the sense that I could let people know, here's the work that I do. Here's the type of people that I do it for. And here are the qualifications or disqualifications for you to know if we're a good fit.

And back then it was easy. If you had a server in your office, I can help you. It's changed a little bit over the years.

But in 28 years, that has worked for me because it always, listen, the stars may have aligned. I may have gotten lucky. I'll admit to that.

But anytime I needed a client, one was just there. And it was always based on the relationship that I had with the person, that the timing was right. Or the referral had a situation where they're like, okay, I have somebody that can help you.

Marvin, can you help these people? That has nothing to do with this engine that you're talking about.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yeah. There are some elements of what you just described that are in the engine, right? So one of the things that we look at in the engine is retention and referrals.

What are you doing to retain and get referrals from clients? And you're in a position, look, most MSPs are in a similar situation to you. Most businesses are in the same situation, right?

They start by generating new business through referrals and that's totally okay. There's nothing wrong with it, right? But most businesses reach a point where they go, I need to grow beyond my referrals, right?

Referrals are not scalable. They're not predictable. And when you reach a point where you want to grow beyond that, you have to start looking at how am I going to do that?

What are the various ways that I can do that? So there's nothing wrong with referrals. We want to make sure we're leveraging them as much as possible.

But then when we start to branch out, then we're starting to look at all these components that need to get in place for your marketing engine. Because it's not as simple as, and again, this is a common mistake, is, okay, I need to grow beyond referrals. Let me jump to picking the parts and start to assemble the engine, right?

I need to do paid ads. I need to create content. I need to post on social media.

The problem is if the strategy isn't in place, there's no fuel, which is why it doesn't work. So what do I mean by that? When I talk about strategy, I think about first thing that you look at is your target market.

Who are you ideal clients within that market? You have to know that because everything from a marketing standpoint is driven by that. If that's out of line or it's too broad, which is the common challenge I see with MSPs, it's very broad.

Man, you can't hit a target you can't see. We need to narrow it down. And when we narrow it down and we really understand them, then we can create a message that's going to resonate with them.

But until you understand who they are and what their needs are and what their goals are, you can't create a message that's going to attract them. So without those two things in place, when you jump online and just start taking action with your marketing, you don't have those two things. It's not going to work well.

It's either not going to work well or it's not going to work at all.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, I see that because I'll be honest, when I look at social media marketing or any of those types of digital things, you're just kind of, you know, I said it earlier, spraying and praying. You're just hoping it hits the right person, which is why I've liked what I've done where I go out and I meet those people or I have a network of people that know what works for me and all of that. So we're moving into this time of AI.

And, you know, now I'll be honest, I haven't gone to AI and said, hey, help me market and help me find an attorney with, you know, a legal office with 50 attorneys within 50 miles, blah, blah. I haven't done any of that yet. Thought about it.

What are your thoughts on people starting to use AI for this?

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
You can and I think you should leverage it. I think right now it's still a little early to expect that you're going to get all the strategic advice that you need, right? Because, again, unless you can put it in there, but how do you know that the output that you got is good advice?

You don't, unless you've got marketing experience, right? And you can interpret what's being output. So I think there's still some help that you need, but there's a lot of things that you can utilize AI for.

You can utilize it to help you with research, right? On your specific types of ideal clients. You can use it to help create content, right?

And refine content. I know people that are popping in there, they're SEO helping it. They're using it to SEO optimize the content that they're creating.

They're using it to create email campaigns. I mean, there's so many different ways you can leverage the tool, but the quality of the input determines the quality of the output. And so if you're not putting in good information, good prompts, the output's not going to be where it needs to be.

So let me give you, I'll give you an example. I use ChatGPT primarily. Not to say that it's the best out there, but I think it works incredibly well.

And I think you're going to get lost if you try to use all kinds of AI tools. I think you need to go deep in one or two and really understand them. And then maybe you branch out from there once you get your feet wet and you're really maximizing the tool.

But I haven't even come close to fully leveraging ChatGPT. There's so much you can do in it. But if you just put in a general prompt, hey, I'm an MSP and these are the types of people that I work with.

I need to create a marketing plan. What would you recommend? The output's going to be okay.

But the more data you can give it, the better it's going to be. So if you can go detailed in, hey, I'm an MSP and here my services. And there's a breakdown of your services and what you do.

If you have ideal client profiled information that you can load in there, these are our ideal clients. This is what they look like. Here's how we're currently messaging and communicating to our ideal clients.

This is what we say. These are the problems we solve. These are the results and outcomes we help them get.

Here's how we're different from our other MSP competitors. But if you can load that type of data in and then ask that type of information, the output's going to be much, much better. You still need to have somebody that has the experience to look at that and go, yeah, this makes sense.

Or no, it doesn't. So the tool's there. You can utilize it.

But I think when you're using it, you need to make sure that you're leveraging it the right way. And you still need to interpret the data.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. So there's still a part of me that looks at that and thinks that may not get you the right contact information. I can't imagine ChatGPT or any of them being able to go out and grab all that information unless they can scrape LinkedIn or something, right?

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yeah. Oh, are you talking about like ChatGPT actually creating like a lead list?

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it's the best tool for that.

There are other tools for that. But yeah, I don't think it's the best tool for that. What I'm talking about is more utilizing the tool as a thought partner to bounce ideas off of and to utilize it to help you get a base that you can work from.

So don't expect it to write an entire piece of content and you just copy and paste. But it can get you 90% of the way there, which makes it faster and more efficient for you to do the work, right? So I find right now what I use it for is as a thought partner, a lot.

Bouncing ideas off of, here's what's happening. What are your thoughts? What am I missing?

What are different ways to approach this challenge? That type of stuff. I think it works incredibly well.

But again, the input determines the output. So the more you can input data specific to your business, the better and the more relevant output you're going to get.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Good starting place for me to think about. Has there been any, besides AI, any new trends out there that you think MSPs should take note of?

Any horror stories that you could share?

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yeah, that's a good question. With what I focus on, it doesn't change. The fundamentals of marketing and building an engine don't change.

I think AI is the biggest thing that's impacting marketing at this point. And what I will say is one of the common things that's coming up with AI is how is AI impacting search engine optimization and how you're found in search? A lot of people are talking about, well, hey, if people are going, just think about if you're using AI, think about how it's shifted how you're using search.

I go to chat GPT, or sometimes I go to perplexity to get information. I'm not going to Google the search in some cases. When I do go to Google the search, a lot of times the Gemini answer that pops up at the top is as far as I go.

It depends on what I'm searching for. In marketing, the buzz that people are talking about is this zero click world where people aren't clicking on search results. We're not there.

But there are businesses that are seeing their traffic drip from search going down. And if that's happening, what's going to be different? What are you going to do differently?

So AI is impacting search a lot. And sometimes I've talked to people who are like, well, I need to find an MSP. I'm not going to Google the search for MSP Orlando.

I'm going into chat GPT to do it. So what types of things do you need to do so that chat GPT actually finds you and pulls you in to that? So AI is impacting search in a lot of ways.

And we'll see how that all shakes out. But AI still to me is the biggest disruptor in marketing that you need to keep an eye on.

[Uncle Marv]
Right. So I didn't even think about that. So optimizing our information to get into chat GPT and other AI platforms.

Have you spoken with anybody about how that works? Because from my understanding, it's just doing the same thing that Google would do or ask Jeeps.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
So a lot of the activities that you're taking, if you're doing SEO right now, a lot of the activities that you're doing are going to help you show up in that type of search. Because it's looking at public web data, depending on how it's grabbing it. It's looking at that data.

And that data is all based on search engine optimization. So there's a lot of crossover there. The nuances of it.

I'm not an expert in that. That's not my area of expertise. But I just know that that is something that just because there's this shift doesn't mean you're not going to want to continue to do some of the things that you're doing.

For example, creating content. Content is still very important. Now, people may not be clicking on a search result that's driving traffic back to your website.

But just because that's not happening doesn't mean that it's not important for you to continue to do. So there are some shifts that are happening there. And we certainly need to keep an eye on those from a marketing tactics perspective.

But it appears that things are starting to shift and you may not have as much traffic coming back to your website. And if that's the case, what do you do? How do you shift?

So those are things that we're looking at and considering as we put together plans and what are you going to focus on with your marketing?

[Uncle Marv]
Right. So while you were going through that, I just briefly went into my AI platform. Cool.

Cool. And I said this, I'm a law firm in Fort Lauderdale. I have 20 attorneys and staff.

I use this name of a case management software. I need a network support company to help me. So it just went through and it gave three names.

Yeah. Two of the three I know. The third one is not me.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
There you go. Now I'm sitting thinking, okay, I've got to figure out how to get into that list. So when.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
So here's another question, a follow up question you could ask. Why did you recommend these three? And see what that's going to help give you an idea of like, what data is it pulling?

Like, what did it see? Right. So that gives you an idea.

So like in that particular search, if you're an MSP specializing in attorneys and you have all kinds of content on your website about attorneys, there is a much higher likelihood you're going to show up in that type of prompt.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Right. So, but it's also going to, that's going to help tell you like, Hey, why did it, what did it find that it thought these three were the right fit?

[Uncle Marv]
So here's exactly what it did. So I typed that in there and it's got a, it's got a few other, it's got a few other bullet points, but the first one under the first company is legal industry expertise.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Okay. There you go.

[Uncle Marv]
This company is, they specialize in providing IT solutions tailored to law firms. The second company customization for law firms. They have a proven track record for working with law firms and offering services like managed IT, blah, blah, blah.

And the third one focus on legal practices.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Okay. So my guess is, well, I was just going to say, sorry, if you go to those websites, it would be interesting to see how front and center that messaging is like, are they speaking about attorneys right on the homepage? Do they have you know, an attorney's page dedicated to them?

Maybe they have case studies or reviews from attorneys, right? All of that data is information that the AI tools are pulling in, which goes back to, again, the more specific we can get, the higher likelihood we're going to show up in those types of searches. Right.

And you know, a lot of MSPs, so like, for example, I mean, you brought it up like attorneys, a lot of MSPs are hesitant to focus on any one specific industry vertical, but the reality is like, how many new clients do you actually need this year for your business? What's your goal? What would be life-changing for most MSPs?

They're not trying to bring on hundreds of new clients. It's, you know, a client a month would be life changing.

[Uncle Marv]
Right.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Well, there's, there's plenty of attorneys to get one a month. Okay. Right.

So when you think about it from that perspective, what do you have to lose to focus your marketing efforts on a specific industry vertical? Because when you do that, and this is not the only way to do this, but it is one of the simplest ways to do it because when you start to, your messaging can get much more specific. You can, you know, in your case, you know, like how many attorneys do you currently work with?

[Uncle Marv]
Oh, you're asking me the answer? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

I'm asking. So out of my, let's say out of my top 10 clients, six are law offices. Okay.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
So client and, and do you like working with them? I tolerate them. Yeah.

Yes. No. So I typically ask three questions to hone in on your ideal clients.

You love working with them. They're profitable and you're getting great results for them and outcomes.

[Uncle Marv]
So two out of three ain't bad.

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Two out of three ain't bad. You know, if you find another vertical that checks all three of those boxes, then that's one to consider. But I, in your case, I've been, you know, my thought is in your case, you have six that you're already working with.

You could get testimonials. You could get case studies from those clients. You've already got a toehold here.

Then it's okay. Great. I'm going to, I'm going to spend my marketing efforts and my outreach trying to find more attorneys.

It becomes much simpler to then create a message that's going to attract them, right? Because look, the problems you're solving for them, there's a lot of crossover for that with other industries, but they use specific types of software in their business, right? When you can call out that software, how do you speak to them, right?

How do they refer to things within their business? Your messaging can get much more specific, which means it's going to resonate much better. The other thing is once you know who they are and what you're going to say to them, then you can start to think of, well, how do I get in front of them?

Well, to create a list of how to get in front of attorneys versus how to get in front of small businesses in Fort Lauderdale or Orlando that meet this criteria, way different, right? The list for SMBs is too broad, right? Too many of those people that you try to get in front of are just not going to be a good fit at all.

Whereas if it's attorneys, you can start to look at where do they congregate? Like local bar association, right? Maybe you could join the local bar.

Like what organizations are they part of? Who are they following online? Like what websites do they go to?

The service providers they already work with, those are great people to be potential referral partners. You can start to reach out to them. You know, it's what podcast do they listen to?

What social media groups are they a part of? All of these are places that once you've created the list, I call it an ideal client GPS, helps you find them. You have a list and now you know where you could go to get in front of them.

You're not going to go to every one of those places, Mark, but you could at least identify, hey, these are two things or three things that I'm going to try and start doing over the next 90 days. And going to the local bar association meeting is way different than going to a local networking meeting. Because you go to local networking, maybe somebody there might be a fit.

You go to the local bar association, your ideal clients are there and other people that want to work with them are there too, as vendor partners. And those are great people for you to connect with. So your marketing efforts become much more targeted.

And the more targeted it is, the more effective it's going to be.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Very nice. But Tim, I think I took us off track.

I don't know. It's okay. So let me at least circle back around and ask you if there was anything specific that you had that was either new for 2025 or a new focus that you've got.

Any new offerings that you want to promote?

[Tim Fitzpatrick]
Yeah, I appreciate that. The newest thing that I am promoting now is my group accelerator, which we didn't have before. It is a much lower priced offering.

And what I was talking to too many MSPs that needed that strategic coach and advisor, but they just didn't have the budget for a more in-depth one-on-one type interaction. And so the group program does that. I call it the marketing engine mastery accelerator.

And it's a hundred bucks a week currently. It's very reasonable. And like I said, all the tools that we utilize when we do this work for clients are there.

And as you take the steps and we start this by giving you a high level roadmap, where should you be focusing? And that drives what we recommend you utilize from a tool set in the accelerator. And so you have an experienced strategic marketing coach and advisor looking over your shoulder as you start to do the work to build your engine.

And it's super helpful, right? Because a lot of the MSPs I come across, maybe taking advantage of some great programs, but they're not sure how to utilize that, right? The program they're in is giving them a bunch of content.

How do I make this content my own? How do I leverage that and utilize this? That's the type of support that you're going to get within the accelerator.

So that's a big focus for me right now.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So realtomarketing.com, just as it sounds there, go there, check it out. And I should also, I did mention that I'm listening to his podcast.

The Rialto Marketing Podcast is there. You can get some great advice from there, including the nugget that I pulled out of my backside when we were chatting, just because I knew it was there. Well, Tim, thank you for hanging out today.

Awesome. Thanks for having me, Uncle Marv. I appreciate it.

All right. We'll have to get you back on. Maybe in my next marketing journey step, we'll see if you approve.

Cool. I love it. Thank you.

All right. That's going to do it, folks. Thank you for tuning in to this marketing and money special edition.

We'll be back with more. I've got several of the ASCII Orlando Edge recaps coming out and getting ready for pitch it. So should be good.

Anything you want to see about the show, check us out on all the social medias, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and of course, head to the website, itbusinesspodcast.com and sign up with your favorite pod catcher so you can listen anytime you want. That's going to do it, folks. We'll see you soon.

Holla!