You can usually tell which MSPs are growing by what they’ve stopped doing.
I just spent the better part of a week with over 1,000 of them in Dallas at our annual TMT Boot Camp, and between the sessions, the dinners, the hallway conversations, and the cocktail receptions… from what I can remember… three patterns came up over and over.
Different members. Different markets. Same themes.
None of these are revolutionary. None are wildly expensive. None require a marketing department of 12 people and a shaman.
But they are working. And the MSPs who are growing are the ones actually doing them.
1. Lean all the way into AI content
This was probably the biggest shift I heard all week.
Not “content” in the old sense where you post a generic blog called 5 Reasons Your Business Needs Better IT Support and sit around waiting for the phone to ring like you just wrote the next great American novel.
I’m talking about specific content for specific industries around specific problems.
That’s where the traction is now.
Picture a business owner typing this into ChatGPT at 9:47 at night:
“I run a 25-employee law firm in Las Vegas. I need managed IT services. What should I look for and who should I call?”
The AI answers the question and names three local companies.
That’s the game.
Because once Google or ChatGPT gives them the answer, they’re probably not scrolling down and doing a lot of extra research out of intellectual curiosity. They’re calling somebody.
The question is whether your name shows up.
And that is more doable than a lot of MSPs think.
One of the best examples I heard was QualIT out in Salt Lake City. They built out 11 niches on their website. Medical. Manufacturing. CPAs. The whole list. Then they used Prospect Hopper to publish content by niche, running it 11 times a week, once per niche, plus one general SMB blog. That’s 12 blogs a week. In under 90 days, they went from basically invisible to ranking 1 or 2 in the three-pack for every niche they target and pulling leads every week from AI search.
That’s not happening because they wrote the War and Peace of blog posts.
It’s happening because they got specific and they stayed consistent.
There are really two types of content at work here.
One is for humans. That’s the content that builds trust, gets engagement, and gives you something to send by email or post on social. This is the kind of content that helps prospects think, “Okay, these people get my business.”
The other is for AI and search. This content does not need to entertain anybody. It just needs to clearly answer the exact questions your ideal buyer is asking.
One builds trust.
The other gets you found.
You need both.
And yes, AI makes this dramatically easier. That is not cheating. It is leverage. Nobody should be hand-chiseling blog content in a cave just to prove they care.
The bigger point is this: if you are generally for everybody, you are specifically for nobody. That’s always been true. AI just made it faster and cheaper to stop being generic.
Smaller Live Events
This came up constantly.
And I think a lot of MSPs still talk themselves out of events because they picture some giant production with rented chairs, dry chicken, and a vendor banner sagging in the background like it’s been through a divorce.
That’s not what I’m talking about.
Small and consistent beats big and one-time, every time. Blow a big event and you’ve just blown your whole month. Blow a small one and you run another one next week. I’ll take that trade every day.
Three formats kept coming up.
The first is workshops in your own office. Maddie ran one recently. About 10 businesses in their conference room. Free venue. Lisa did something similar, and her topic wasn’t even IT, it was how to create marketing content faster with AI. That’s what filled the room. People left with appointments booked, software sold on the spot, and project work in the pipeline. First one they’d ever done. They’re already planning the next.
The second is CEO Networking Forums. Our members know this model, and there’s a reason it keeps coming up. When it’s done right, it works.
Because a CEO Networking Forum doesn’t feel like “Come listen to us talk.”
It feels like, “Come sit down with other smart business owners and be part of a conversation worth having.”
One feels like marketing.
The other feels like access.
And people like access. They like being included. They like being in the room with other successful people. They like being part of something curated instead of getting lured into another lunch-and-learn where someone eventually clicks to slide 42 and starts talking about compliance.
The strongest versions are small, selective, and built around a topic the audience actually cares about. Not always IT. Not always cybersecurity. Sometimes those are the worst places to start. AI. Hiring. Leadership. Productivity. Operational efficiency. Things owners actually want to talk about.
Serve what they care about first, and the business conversation opens naturally from there.
The third is canvassing.
I know. Not glamorous. Not exciting. Not the kind of thing anybody posts on LinkedIn with a caption about dominating Q2.
But it works. Walk into 5 businesses with a purpose and you’ll typically leave with 1 scheduled appointment. A good cold-calling campaign runs closer to 1 in 100. That math is wild.
And if it annoys you because it sounds too simple or too uncomfortable, I get it. There are plenty of things I’d rather do too. But “I don’t feel like it” has never been a serious business strategy.
One other thing too many MSPs forget: MDF. Your vendors often have market development funds available to help pay for events like these, including CEO Networking Forums. And a surprising number of people never ask.
That’s a little like standing next to a well and complaining you’re thirsty.
Make the call.
Stop doing what isn’t working
This one sounds obvious until you actually look at your own marketing.
Then it gets personal.
Because most MSPs are usually making one of two mistakes. They’re either continuing things that stopped working a while ago, or they’re quitting things before they ever gave them a real shot.
Both are expensive.
So start with a quick audit. Write everything down.
Every campaign.
Every subscription.
Every activity.
Every hour.
Every dollar.
Get it out of your head and onto paper. Because vague marketing always feels more productive than it really is.
Then ask what each thing is supposed to do.
This is where people get sloppy. They judge everything by whether it generated a lead directly, and that’s not always the right test. Some things are there to create visibility. Some build trust. Some help conversion. Some just make you look like a real, functioning business when a prospect checks you out.
That matters too.
Social media is a good example. Posting regularly may not flood your inbox, but it does help answer the question, “Are these people active, credible, and paying attention?”
But you still have to be honest.
I was looking at a member’s LinkedIn recently. They’d been posting multiple times a week. Real effort going in. Well-written commentary on cybersecurity news. Every single post had exactly one like, and when I clicked, that one like was usually from the marketing manager who worked there.
Same account, different post. The owner jumped on and wrote a quick two-sentence note about two cyber incidents they’d handled that day. No polish. No design. No thought-leader cologne sprayed all over it.
21 reactions. A comment. A reshare.
Because people engage with people. A real story from your day beats a cleaned-up industry summary most of the time.
So yes, stop doing what isn’t working.
But before you kill something, make sure you actually ran it the right way. “We tried that” is one of those phrases that deserves a little cross-examination.
Did you try it?
Or did you dabble in it?
Did you follow the model?
Or did you improvise your way into mediocrity?
Did you give it enough time?
Or did you quit right before it had a chance?
A lot of the time the problem is not the strategy. It’s the execution drifting off course.
That happens.
Just be honest about it.
Start with one
That’s really the takeaway.
Do not come home from Boot Camp, tear up your whole plan, and try to launch twelve new initiatives by Friday. That usually ends the same way most diet plans do.
Pick one.
One strategy.
One adjustment.
One thirty-day push.
Maybe it’s niche AI content. Maybe it’s a CEO Networking Forum. Maybe it’s finally getting honest about what your marketing is producing versus what it’s just pretending to produce.
Whatever it is, start there.
Because the MSPs growing right now are not always smarter than you, they’re not always more polished. They’re not always doing anything revolutionary.
They’re just doing the things that work.
Which, annoyingly enough, is still a pretty good way to win.
