Create a Quarterly MSP Marketing Plan with a Small Team

If you’re wanting to grow your MSP business, a marketing strategy can help you increase your opportunities to get in front of potential customers. As with everything, consistency matters most. We like quarterly marketing plans, in addition to the annual plan, because ideas need to be tested and optimized. Quarterly planning allows for more agile action.

With a quarterly MSP marketing plan, you will set and review goals every 90 days, adjusting and fine-tuning. Each 90-day marketing sprint will bring you closer to achieving your annual goals.

Annual marketing plans can be a great addition to your business strategy for the year and compliments your quarterly plan. That is where you will do a more comprehensive analysis, your SWOT, customer journey map, overall budget, and other larger-picture planning.

Here are the steps that our team recommends at C4 Solutions for creating a quarterly marketing plan for an MSP.

1. Decide Who You Are Targeting

Before you can list out actionable tasks for your MSP marketing plan, you need to do a little brainstorming with your team. What personas do you want to target this quarter? Don’t limit this to strictly customers. Think outside of the box. Are there strategic partners that you want to target to leverage each other’s networks? Are there present or past customers that you could target in a referral campaign?

Do a deep dive into who your customers are, what their problems are, and how you can be the solution to their problems. Meet with your sales team or engineers and answer these questions:

• Who is your ideal customer or profile that you’ll be targeting?
• What are their problems?
• Who do they trust?
• What will happen if they don’t solve their problems?
• How can we help them solve it?
• How will we create a clear message to tell them?
• Where do they hang out?
• How do we reach them effectively?

To gather this information, consider interviewing current customers and speaking with industry experts.

2. Brainstorm Tactics with the Greatest Traction

Next, identify the tactics that you want to try this quarter. Review your analytics from last quarter. What worked? What didn’t? Keep what worked and eliminate the rest.

Now, think of what new tactics you want to try. Think about the different stages in your customer journey. Where are there gaps in your marketing efforts? Could you use more case studies or testimonials? Would events or webinars help educate and convert customers? Would paid ads help you get in front of new customers?

The ICE framework is great for prioritizing tactics that can move the needle. It is a method where you put down a score from 1-10 in the following categories: impact, confidence, and effort. Choose a minimum of three tactics with the highest scores.

After this brainstorming step, you should be able to answer:

What tactics have the potential to reach my targeted persona(s)?

Finally, gather the tools and budget to tackle your tasks and measure your performance.

3. Create an Action Plan

Now that you have your tactics from your brainstorming session, write them down. Next, you'll be adding to that list. What else needs to happen across different channels to reach your targeted profiles and achieve your goals? Go down this list of channels as a starting point and write down all the items that are relevant to you reaching those customers. Add these to your action list. You don't need to do everything this quarter. Prioritize the low-hanging fruit and tactics that can move the needle the most.

Website:

What changes need to be made to better attract and convert your target audience? Do you have a simple and visible Call-To-Action on your home page? Is the messaging appealing and relevant to this customer? Is your value proposition relevant to their problems? Do you need new copy, content, or video?

Paid Ads

Do you have an ad budget? What ad platforms make sense for this vertical/customer? Do you need help with this?

Social Media:

Are they on Linkedin? What other channels are they on? Are you on the right channels to reach them? Where are they not? Do you have content that can be repurposed for social?

Email:

Does it make sense to create an email marketing campaign? Do you have any content or sequences that can be repurposed for this customer? Are you implementing personalization into your email marketing? Do you have automation capabilities?

Paid Partnerships

What publications appeal to this customer? What influencers have your same customer? What publications can you partner with?

SEO

What topics are your customers searching for? Are you listed in the right directories or review sites? Have you done a website health check or directory audit? Have you done an SEO audit? Are you providing valuable content?

Digital PR

Are there any online events that we should attend to get in front of our ideal customers? Can you guest speak? Can you submit content or quotes to any industry publications, podcasts, or webinars? What publications does your ideal partner or customer read?

Events

What events is your target profile attending? Can you get a booth or present? Should you go and network?

Content Marketing

Conduct a content audit: What has been the best-performing content? What’s not working? Do you have a list of publications to guest post on? What media format does your ideal customer prefer?

Other Channels:

Is Text Messaging a preferred channel? Do they listen to podcasts? Do they prefer video? Would direct mail be a more effective way of reaching them?

Look at your action list, set aside the resources, and create a quarterly action plan and calendar.

4. Measure and Track Results

Decide what KPIs matter for your goals. Do you want increased leads? Increased organic traffic? More impressions on your content? How often are you going to measure them?

Once established, make sure you put the right tools into place to track them.

Without this, you won’t know if any of your tactics are working to bring you closer to your marketing goals.

5. Adjust/Pivot

Look at the data and adjust your activities.

Hopefully, this content will help you break down the overwhelming aspect of creating an MSP marketing plan. Sometimes, it is helpful to bring on a fractional expert, like a vCMO to help with the bigger-picture planning.

The best strategy is simple and prioritizes consistency over the number of strategies and tactics. Building brand and community are strategies that are becoming increasingly important and will always pay the biggest dividends over time. They are your insurance against the digital channels and AI out of your control.

Contact our team at C4 Solutions if you’d like to explore other growth strategies for your technology business. Read more about growing your MSP business here.

Written by Holly Mack