How to Give Your MSP Audience Content They Want
The key to content marketing success for an MSP (managed service provider), as with any other business, is also the biggest challenge – consistency. Once you’ve answered your customers’ questions, what do you do next? How do you keep writing or creating content for people who will hopefully become customers? You have to give them what they want.
Content marketing is about being helpful – giving valuable information away for free to show that you know what you’re talking about and you’re trustworthy. Do that, and you will have loyal customers who recommend you to others.
When you work in IT or tech, there’s always new and exciting products to talk about. You want to share these with your audience, to explain the features and how these are better than the previous iteration. And when you do this, you’ll probably use a lot of jargon and acronyms that are familiar to you, but won’t be to your readers.
Your audience is looking for solutions, not bells and whistles. If Microsoft is introducing Windows 7 EOL (end of life), don’t focus on why Windows 10 is better software anyway. Instead, explain what EOL means for businesses still relying on Windows 7, and show them that continuing to use it means no upgrades and fixes (don’t use a term like ‘patching’) and increased risk from external threats.
MSP Customer Pain Points
What are the problems your potential customers face? What keeps them up at night? Use your content to show them that you understand their worries and that you have a way to help them fix those problems.
For instance, just sharing the latest statistics on cyber crime is not enough. Focus on how smaller companies are now just as likely to be targeted as larger organisations, and they’re more vulnerable because they probably haven’t invested in proper security. Paint a picture of the implications of being hacked and their (and their clients’) data being compromised.
Likewise, when you sell data backup and disaster recovery, the frequency of backups and the speed of restore is only relevant in the context of keeping a business operational and to prevent a loss of income while things are put back to normal.
Remember, your audience wants to feel like they’ve learned something that can save them time or money, or help them grow their business. They don’t want to be patronised or feel stupid by being confronted with a table of technical specs that they can’t apply to their company.
How Your MSP can Help Your Audience
Next, think about what other things you could tell your readers about. What might they not be aware of that could have a significant impact on their business if they don’t act on it? Is there something that’s coming in a few months, so people think they’ve got plenty of time to prepare for it when actually, they haven’t?
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and MTD (Making Tax Digital) are recent examples which have had implications for thousands of companies in the UK and Europe, but if you provide MSP services in a particular niche, are there legislative changes you can explain to your reader?
Help them to solve problems or proactively prevent issues they don’t even know exist yet, and they’ll come to you for the solution. If you’ve been helpful to them, when something goes wrong, you’ll be top of mind when they need a quick fix.
What Else Can Your MSP Write About?
If you’re still stuck, ask your customers what they’d like to learn more about, or what they wish they’d known when they set up a business, before they got an IT support partner or began working with an MSP. Can you help them make more of your services?
Ask your online followers too, especially if you’d like to convert them into paying clients. You can also take inspiration from industry newsletters and publications and even your competitors, so long as you put your own slant on the topic and don’t just copy them directly.
Don’t forget, your audience don’t really want to read about your latest hire or an award you’ve won – unless there will be a benefit to them because of it – so be sparing with your company news stories. Of course, these things show that your business is growing and successful, so do mention these things in passing so people know how active you are.
If you want to know more about blogging, you can read my post here.
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