It's crazy to try to do your MSP's marketing on your own. There are so many great value services that you can rely on to give you white label content and hand-holding support. This is a faster way to put together an advanced marketing system for your MSP.
Every year, we meet hundreds and hundreds of MSPs all over the world, and we’re often asked the question, 'Who are some of the other MSP marketing providers out there?'
We're not shy when it comes to being honest about the competition, so we now do reviews of some of the other companies out there that we know are providing MSP marketing services.
We look at what they offer compared to us, their pricing and customer reviews, trying to be as unbiased as possible, to help you make an informed choice about who will be the best fit for you.
In this article we'll look closely at our service, MSP Marketing Edge, driven by Paul Green, and IT Rockstars, driven by Scott Millar. On the surface these are two similar offerings, both based in the UK and both looking after MSPs globally.
Which came first? MSP Marketing Edge or IT Rockstars?
The MSP Marketing Edge was the first to launch back in June 2017.
A year before, founder Paul Green decided to sell and exit the successful healthcare marketing agency he'd been building over 11 years.
Within six months he was bored of gardening and wanted a new business. Paul looked back over his marketing career from before he'd specialised in opticians, dentists and veterinarians, and remembered, "IT people are fun to work with" (dentists not so much).
He set up IT Support Marketing (later renamed MSP Marketing) and wrote a book called Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business. Paul gave thousands of copies away to MSPs all over the world to start his new business (it's now out of print. Try your local thrift or charity shop).
After selling hundreds of marketing manuals and filling two MSP Mastermind programmes, Paul decided to launch his MSP Marketing Edge monthly marketing programme the following June 2017.
We don't know exactly when IT Rockstars first started, but Scott Millar interviewed Paul for his podcast in October of 2018:
Paul and Scott chatted after the interview about how the MSP Marketing Edge worked, and IT Rockstars as an MSP marketing service was launched some time over the next few months.
The service: IT Rockstars
IT Rockstars bases its offering around four components;
- The first is a swipe file of resources provided to MSPs every month. Inside this swipe file are some white label articles, a technology video, a lead magnet (which is something you offer to a prospect in return for their contact details - often used to build an email list) and some landing pages.
- The second is an execution guide, which promises resources to help you generate leads within 4 weeks. This includes some kind of prospecting software, a strategy to find "easy to sell" prospects and some online resources for local lead data.
- IT Rockstars founder Scott Millar promises to act as your virtual sales director, helping you to build a direct mail sequence, an appointment-setting system and a pre-sales pipeline.
- And the fourth and final component is about accountability. It offers a weekly group meet-up and says you can share your story as a guest on IT Rockstars (presumably to other clients).
IT Rockstars has two levels to its programme - its standard level, which it says is the most popular. And a much more expensive premium offering, where your marketing and appointment setting is done for you.
The service: MSP Marketing Edge
The MSP Marketing Edge is only available to one MSP per area, a unique promise which means your direct competitors can't use it.
It has an easy-to-use breakdown to its programme as well:
- Marketing content you get weekly (as part of a lead generation system)
- Marketing campaigns you get monthly
- Evergreen marketing content
Its members are guided by a very simple but powerful three-step marketing system to:
- Build audiences
- Grow relationships with them
- Convert leads into appointments
The weekly content is positioned as the marketing basics every MSP needs. It includes social media, a syndicated blog article and video, and talking points to help MSPs create original LinkedIn content.
For the monthly content, members benefit from a marketing campaign to target at prospects - including an educational guide with promotional tools, educational emails, and a powerful 4 page newsletter to print and ship to prospects.
Many members say they love the evergreen content and marketing tools. These include:
- Videos showing what happens during common cyber security attacks (presented in a way that ordinary business owners and managers can understand)
- More than 100 How To and Tech Tips videos to demonstrate the MSP's expertise which can go on your website
- A book called Email Hijack that MSPs can use as a positioning tool
- An IT Services Buyer's Guide for the hottest prospects
- Clever engagement tools that work in almost any website
- Several multi-touchpoint marketing campaigns, including The Ultimate Lead Generation campaign
- Templates for sales proposals, strategic reviews (QBRs), technology roadmaps and cyber security upgrades
- A smart cyber hygiene video to show to new users
- MSP marketing training courses
- Direct access to Paul Green and his team through a members-only Facebook group, regular video calls and a huge 121 direct support operation
The cost: IT Rockstars
IT Rockstars has two levels of service available. As of July 2024, these were the prices on its website.
Its most popular package is the standard at $149 a month.
The premium offering where your marketing is done for you no longer has a price on the website. Previously this has started at $2,499 a month.
These services includes "free bonuses worth $15,498", and a guarantee of a full refund of your fees, plus a flight to the company's event in Scotland.
The cost: MSP Marketing Edge
The MSP Marketing Edge has a single tier with everything included for USD $199 a month (£149 + vat in the UK).
It only sells to one MSP per area, so members never have the issue of their direct competitors using the same marketing as them. Any MSP can check if their area has been locked by a competitor by entering their ZIP code or postcode on the website.
What MSPs say
The MSP Marketing Edge did a series of research interviews with its members in the summer of 2022. None of the MSPs interviewed mentioned IT Rockstars (several other competitors such as Robin Robins and The Tech Tribe were widely-discussed).
At time of writing, IT Rockstars has 6 Google reviews, dating from 2017 to now. Confusingly some are written by ordinary businesses rather than MSPs.
MSP Marketing Edge has 71 Google reviews at time of writing.
About Scott Millar and Paul Green
Scott has had a long career in the channel working for an MSP, and is well-known for being a technical SEO expert. He wrote a book called Bear Attack SEO in 2018, followed by Video Marketing for MSPs in 2020. Scott lives in Aberdeen, Scotland.
Paul was a journalist and radio presenter for 13 years before starting his first marketing business in 2005. Paul has written several marketing books, including Updating Servers Doesn't Grow Your Business, and has a popular weekly podcast for MSPs. He lives in a village just outside Milton Keynes with his daughter.
Both Scott and Paul will be appearing on stage at the ScaleCon event for MSPs in Las Vegas, in October 2024.
