Let me be blunt: most MSP marketing is a disorganized mess.
It’s a patchwork of half-baked ideas—maybe a few cold emails here, some social posts there, a website nobody’s touched in three years—and zero results to show for it. If you’re relying on referrals, “word of mouth” or the hope that someone stumbles across your site, you don’t have a strategy. You have wishful thinking.
The good news? You don’t need to be a marketing guru or hire some overpriced agency to turn this around. You need a plan. A real, repeatable, measurable MSP marketing strategy that actually works.
Here’s how to build one that does just that.
Why Most MSP Marketing Fails
Let’s start with the obvious. If you’ve ever said, “I just need more leads,” but don’t have:
- A defined marketing calendar
- A clear ideal client profile
- A budget tied to ROI
- Or even a clue where your next appointment is coming from…
…then you’re not marketing. You’re guessing.
The biggest failure I see? MSPs think “marketing” is just activity—posting on LinkedIn, hiring someone to run a Google Ads campaign or launching a blog and hoping for traffic.
Newsflash: Activity isn’t strategy. If it’s not tied to a goal—and tracked—you’re just spinning your wheels.
The Core Elements Of A Winning MSP Marketing Strategy
1. Know Who You’re Targeting (And What They Care About)
Your marketing doesn’t need to reach everyone—it needs to reach the right people. That means you need to pick a niche and own it.
Are you focused on financial services, healthcare, law firms? Then speak directly to their problems: cybersecurity threats, compliance nightmares, billable hour interruptions. Don’t talk about your “24/7 monitoring”—talk about how you eliminate downtime and reduce risk.
2. Create A Content Marketing Strategy That Actually Attracts Clients
Content is one of the easiest ways to establish authority, educate your prospects and generate leads—if you do it right.
Here’s the formula:
- Start with your audience’s biggest pain points. Cybersecurity, compliance, downtime, slow response times.
- Create content that answers their questions—blog posts, webinars, eBooks, FAQs, case studies.
- Use SEO best practices so it gets found. (And link internally to cornerstone pieces like What Is MSP Marketing?)
- Repurpose the hell out of it. A blog post becomes a LinkedIn article. A webinar becomes a YouTube series. A podcast episode becomes three email campaigns.
- And always, always, include a call to action. Invite them to schedule a consultation. Download a resource. Sign up for a webinar. Push them down the funnel.
You don’t need to be everywhere. You need to be where it counts—with consistency and value.
3. Build Campaigns, Not One-Offs
Marketing without a campaign calendar is like going to the gym and lifting random weights—you’ll sweat a lot, but you won’t make progress.
You need to structure your efforts:
- Quarterly campaigns that focus on one offer or theme
- Multiple touches: email, direct mail, phone follow-up, webinars, ads
- Metrics that matter: How many appointments? How many proposals? How many clients?
Random acts of marketing lead to random results. You need a SYSTEM.
4. Align Marketing With Sales (Or Nothing Happens)
Marketing isn’t there to “build awareness.” It’s there to generate qualified leads that your sales process can close.
If you don’t have a sales process? That’s another problem—but assuming you do, your marketing must feed it. Don’t hand your sales team lukewarm leads with no context. Use marketing to warm them up—pre-educate them. Get them excited before the first call even happens.
And if you don’t know how to package and price what you sell? Read this: How To Sell MSP Services: A Guide To Packaging And Pricing Managed Services
5. Track, Tweak, Repeat
If you’re not measuring the ROI of your marketing efforts, you’re flying blind.
You need to know what’s working and what’s not. How much did you spend last month—and how many new clients did it actually bring in? This isn’t guesswork; this is business.
Set targets. Track conversion rates. Cut what’s not working. Scale what is.
Next Step: Get Serious Or Get Left Behind
Most MSPs won’t do any of this. They’ll read this post, nod their heads and go right back to aimless marketing that doesn’t work.
Start building a real marketing strategy. One that brings in leads like clockwork. One that positions you as the go-to expert in your market. One that makes sales easier—because the hard work was already done by your marketing.
