Why Do Solution Providers and MSP's Suck at Marketing?

In his recent blog post, Joe Panettieri, Editor in Chief of TechIQ, reports on Larry Kesslin’s views of why MSP’s find marketing so challenging, as voiced at the recent Cisco Marketing Forum in Miami, Florida.

Larry, President of 4 Profit, an organization that serves both Solution Providers as well as Vendors, hits the nail squarely on the head, and offers these 10 reasons that Solution Providers don’t invest in Marketing:

10. Claim: “We have no time to deal with it.” Reality: “I wouldn’t know what to do even if I had the time.”

9. Claim: “I can’t afford it.” Reality: “I don’t have have marketing budget so I rely on joint marketing funds/market development funds as my marketing.”

8. Claim: “I tried it before and it didn’t work.” Reality: “I had unrealistic expectations and wasn’t committed to the outcome.”

7. Claim: “The ROI won’t be fast enough.” Reality: “Should I take profits for myself or make a growth investment outside of my comfort zone?”

6. Claim: “We don ‘t have the staff to manage or implement marketing.” Reality: “No one on staff knows what good marketing looks like so we don’t explore it.”

5. Claim: “No one owns the process.” Reality: “It’s too much work for a staff that has limited expertise in this area.”

4.Claim: “Fear of the unknown.” Reality: “Fear of the unknown being a bust.”

3.Claim: “Uncertain of the message.” Reality: “We don’t have a clear value proposition ourselves.”

2.Claim: “The ROI is uncertain or unclear.” Reality: “How much will it cost and what is the real return?”

1. Claim: “What should we do first?” Reality: “We don’t know where to start, so we don’t.”

How many of you identify with some or many of these attitudes?

These perceptions are the reasons that our Collateral as a Service, Marketing as a Service and Sales Training as a Service are among the most popular among our Partners – because we do all the heavy lifting, and guide them through these unfamiliar processes.

The sooner we as Solution Providers and MSP’s embrace the horror that in order to chart our own destiny and manage and control our growth, efficiencies and profitability, we need to not only develop a consistent marketing strategy, but invest in our marketing.

See the entire article here.

Erick Simpson
MSP University
www.mspu.us 

Comments

[John Beagle]

I agree with the premise of this article Marketing for most MSPs is not something that is commonly done.

Being owner of a MSP, we fight entropy everyday. Its hard to put on your marketing hat when you are putting out operational fires everyday.

[David S. Mulvey]

Larry Kesslin is right; IT integrators will always find a "reason" for why they did not invest in marketing their business. Eric Simpson your IT marketing book is spot on, as integrators we need a consistent marketing effort during good and bad times. We need to understand our marketing data with the same level of knowledge as we understand out gross profit margins. How many emails are required to get a sale? Which marketing lists are more effective than others? How many dollars do we need to invest and what is our typical return on marketing dollars? I am afraid that until the business principle can really understand what their marketing ROI actually becomes, the owner will rarely embrace the blind investment. It becomes the classic chicken before the egg; we need to spend some money to see what the real ROI is going to look like, a leap of faith that tragically many integrators are unwilling to embrace.

[Andy Wendt]

That is hitting the nail on the head and I agree 100% that there is, and perhaps always will be, a segment of the business world that thinks this is something they don’t need to mess with or have time for. Of course it would come as no surprise to most of us in a marketing position that a good number of these people will not succeed or at best have their success limited by their narrow mindedness.

[Joe Panettieri]

Erick,

Thanks for the link and the mention of MSPmentor and TechIQ. Please get in touch with me at the email address I provided. I'd love to discuss potential synergies for 2008. We're working on a few things that may greatly interest you and MSP University.

All the best,
-jp

[Anne Stanton]

Marketing when done right does not have to be invasive, expensive, painful or boring.

It is a chance to be creative, to reach out and touch someone and to help.

so many of the smaller IT firms are so good at caring and yet they forget to show they care when crisis is not the motivating factor.

And so many of the larger and enterprise companies forget that marketing is about caring and sensitivity to each individual.

Getting better at marketing is a gift you give yourself and your network of contacts.

Cheers
Anne Stanton
The CRM Lady at www.crmlady.com

[Stuart Crawford]

Erick

I am slow to the dane on this one..really need to put a feed to this on my Facebook and my personal site http://www.stuartcrawford.com

Larry's comments are so true, actually this will give us something to talk about as Larry will be the guest on my Small Business IT Radio Show on January 18th (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/smb).

Marketing is the key to growth in 2008, without it, you might as well close the doors and turn out the lights. MSP's or even Small Business Specialists will have a hard time surviving as the big boys or as you call them, the 800 lb gorillas market into the small business space. It is happening! How will you survive? The one with the biggest marketing voice will win! Trust me on this one.

I have a little plug for my eBook "What small business specialists need to do in 2008" is available at http://www.itsuccessmentor.com.

Happy New Year to you Erick and all that you do in the market and for all us.

You are truly one of the greats...

Stuart Crawford
Calgary, AB