Most MSPs are wasting time, money, and opportunity when it comes to marketing. Not because they’re lazy or incompetent — but because they’re doing the wrong things, in the wrong order, with no real strategy.
If your phone isn’t ringing, if your closing rate is dropping, or if you feel like you’re stuck working with low-paying, high-demand clients who don’t value what you do, there’s a good chance one or more of these mistakes are at the root of it.
Here are the seven most common marketing mistakes I see MSPs making — and more importantly, what to do instead.
1. Waiting Until You’re Desperate To Start Marketing
This is the classic MSP mistake: sitting back and coasting when things are good, then frantically throwing something together the moment a big client cancels, cash gets tight, or your project pipeline dries up.
Marketing isn’t a Band-Aid you slap on when things go south — it’s a machine you build and run before you need it. If you only market when you’re desperate, you’re always going to be in a reactive, feast-or-famine cycle. You’ll spend weeks scrambling to generate leads, finally land a few clients, get buried in the work, then stop marketing again — until the next dry spell hits.
The most successful MSPs have marketing campaigns going all the time — not just when they’re slow. That includes outbound prospecting, lead generation ads, email newsletters, referral campaigns, and conversion tools running in the background so that new leads are always coming in. That’s how you create predictable, scalable growth — not random bursts of activity.
2. Leading With “We Do IT Support” Instead Of A Clear, Compelling Offer
One of the fastest ways to lose a prospect’s attention is to lead with some variation of “We provide reliable IT support and cybersecurity solutions for small businesses.” Congratulations — so does every other MSP in your city.
Your prospects don’t care about your tools, your uptime, your ticket resolution times, or your technical certifications — at least not at first. What they care about is solving a problem or avoiding a painful risk. That’s what your marketing needs to lead with: a clear, specific offer that taps into a result they want or a threat they’re worried about.
A generic “Free Consultation” or “We’re a Trusted IT Partner” isn’t going to cut it. Instead, offer something tangible that positions you as an expert and gives them a reason to engage. Think “Free Cybersecurity Risk Assessment” or “Ransomware Readiness Audit” or “Executive Briefing: The Top 5 Tech Risks Facing Small Businesses in 2026.”
Make your offer so good, so relevant, and so specific that your ideal prospect feels stupid saying no to it.
3. Copying What Other MSPs Are Doing (Who Also Don’t Know What They’re Doing)
There’s a lot of “monkey see, monkey do” happening in the MSP space. You see another IT provider post a fancy graphic on LinkedIn or launch a webinar, and you assume it must be working — so you do the same. Or worse, you rely on vendor-provided templates, canned marketing copy, or swipe-and-deploy email blasts that go out to a thousand other MSPs’ lists that same week.
Here’s the truth: just because you see other MSPs doing something doesn’t mean it’s working. In fact, most of them are just guessing — and copying from someone else who’s also guessing.
Marketing that works is customized to your voice, your market, your services, and your positioning. It needs to be strategic. It needs to reflect your value. And above all, it needs to be measured — which means you’re tracking what works and constantly refining it.
If your entire marketing strategy is built on copying what you think others are doing, you’re not building a business — you’re following the herd right off a cliff.
4. Putting Too Much Faith In SEO, And Ignoring Conversion
I’ve said this a thousand times: traffic is useless if it doesn’t convert.
Yes, SEO matters. Yes, you should optimize your Google Business listing and your website for local search. But what’s the point of ranking on page one if all that traffic hits your homepage, pokes around for 30 seconds, and bounces without ever taking action?
I’ve seen MSPs spend thousands of dollars on SEO campaigns or PPC ads that drive visitors to a brochure-style website with no compelling offer, no lead magnet, no call to action, and no follow-up system. That’s like pouring water into a leaky bucket — all that traffic is just slipping away.
Your website is not a digital business card. It should be a lead conversion machine. Every page should guide the visitor toward the next step — whether that’s downloading a report, scheduling a consultation, or registering for a webinar. You need trust builders like testimonials, case studies, credibility logos, and benefit-driven copy that explains why someone should work with you over all the other MSPs in town.
5. Sending Cold Emails With No Follow-Up Or Strategy
Sending one cold email and expecting a meeting is like tossing a business card at someone’s feet and hoping they hire you. It’s lazy, it’s ineffective, and it makes you look like every other noise-making amateur in their inbox.
If you’re going to do cold outreach — and yes, it can work — you need a real strategy. That means:
- A compelling, relevant message that talks about their business, not your services
- A clear call to action (and no, “Let me know if you’d like to chat” isn’t enough)
- A multi-step campaign with follow-up sequences via email, phone, or even direct mail
- Persistence — because it often takes 7–12 touches to get a real conversation going
One email is not a campaign. One voicemail is not a follow-up. You need a system that nurtures the lead until they’re ready to talk — and keeps you top of mind until they’re ready to buy.
6. Relying Only On Referrals And Word Of Mouth
This is the trap a lot of MSPs fall into early on: referrals come in, business grows, and they think, “I don’t need to market — my clients send me new business.”
That might work for a while, but it’s not sustainable. Referrals are great — they’re warm leads and they often close quickly — but they’re not predictable. You can’t scale your business on hope and luck. You need a reliable marketing engine that produces leads even when no one is talking about you.
The MSPs who win long-term are the ones who diversify their lead sources. That includes referrals, but also outbound prospecting, email campaigns, educational webinars, social proof marketing, client mining, and website conversions. When one channel slows down, the others keep flowing.
Relying solely on word of mouth is like fishing with one line in the water — and hoping a fish swims by. Smart MSPs use a net.
7. Not Tracking Metrics Or Testing Anything
You can’t fix what you’re not measuring. And yet, I see MSPs making marketing decisions based entirely on gut feelings. They’ll say, “Email doesn’t work,” or “We tried that already,” or “Nobody clicks on our ads,” but they don’t have a shred of data to back it up.
If you don’t know your numbers — how many leads you’re getting each month, where they’re coming from, your conversion rate, your cost per acquisition, your list growth — then you’re guessing. And guessing is expensive.
Even worse, if you’re not testing your campaigns — subject lines, offers, landing pages, formats — you’re leaving money on the table. Sometimes a small tweak (like a stronger headline or a different call-to-action) can double your response rate. But you’ll never know that if you’re not tracking and testing.
Marketing is math. Track it. Test it. Optimize it.
Final Thought
Every MSP I’ve ever worked with has made at least one of these mistakes — and most are making several. The good news is that once you see what’s not working, you can start to make better decisions.
You don’t need to become a marketing expert overnight. But you do need to stop winging it and start thinking strategically.
Marketing isn’t something you do when you “have time.” It’s something you build into your business — every single week — so you never have to wonder where your next client is coming from.
Be consistent. Be intentional. And for God’s sake, stop copying the clueless guy down the street.
