How do you reach your MSP's leads and prospects? If it's primarily through a "borrowed audience", such as social media, you need to read this...
Imagine you're at the movies back in the 1990s, and the trailers are showing.
All movie trailers were the same back then. A voiceover guy with a really deep voice talking about the main character (usually Bruce Willis) being "the wrong man, in the wrong place... at the wrong time..."
Well, that was my friend and channel legend Matt Solomon ⭐ on Christmas Eve just gone. I was flicking through Facebook, scoffing a mince pie, when I spotted this post:
As the voiceover guy would say...
"Matt was an innocent man - locked in prison, for a crime he did not commit."
What a nightmare.
Matt had 17,000+ connections on LinkedIn. And it looks like something he posted inadvertently tripped a safety algorithm somewhere. His account was automatically suspended.
What's scary is that this could happen to any of us at any time.
LinkedIn is an amazing platform. I use it every day and recommend it as the number one place MSPs go fishing for business.
But its greatest limitation is that it is a borrowed audience.
You do not own your connections, content or interactions on LinkedIn. They belong to LinkedIn. You just get to borrow them, because that benefits you and the platform at the same time.
Other borrowed audiences include:
- All other social media platforms
- YouTube
- Online communities that you contribute to
- You appearing on someone's podcast, or in the media
The alternative is owned audiences. These are safer as you have direct 100% control over what happens with them. Examples include:
- Your email list
- Visitors to your website
- Subscribers to your podcast
- The list of people who visited your trade show booth
The downside of owned audiences is that it takes a LOT more work and cash to build them and get something from them. LinkedIn can make a post go viral with no work needed from you... but your podcast won't go viral unless you push it and push it for years.
I believe you need a blend of both kinds of audiences.
Matt does this. He has a lot of followers across social media, but also has a huge email subscriber list. In the unlikely event his CRM declined to send his emails tomorrow, that data is his - and he can take it to an alternative CRM.
I recommend to my MSP Marketing Edge members that they turn LinkedIn connections into data in their CRM (and we give them a checklist to do this). This allows them to reach the same people through two different channels, but also gives them a safety barrier.
What's the situation in your MSP? If you lost your borrowed audiences tomorrow, could you still reach your leads and prospects?
PS... just like a 1990 Bruce Willis movie, Matt's story has a happy ending...
😃 Fixed 😃
