Episode 230: How to attach MRR to hardware & project sales

NB this transcription has been generated by an AI tool and provided as-is.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. Around the world, this Paul. Paul Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast.

[00:00:09] Speaker B: And welcome to episode 230 of the podcast.

[00:00:13] Speaker C: Here’s what we got in store for you this week.

[00:00:15] Speaker D: I’m Kristi Mitchell. Come join me on Paul’s podcast, where we talk all about using strategic content marketing to help you attract, nurture, and convert your ideal clients.

[00:00:25] Speaker C: And on top of that interview with Kristi, we’ve also got five quick wins to help you improve your net profit margins.

[00:00:33] Speaker A: Paul. Paul Paul Greens MSP Marketing podcast of.

[00:00:38] Speaker B: The best things about being an MSP is the monthly recurring revenue, right?

[00:00:43] Speaker C: Because MRR is everything. It is absolutely the Holy Grail. The more monthly recurring revenue that you have, the better your cash flow, the more predictable your growth is, and ultimately, the more valuable your MSP will be.

[00:00:59] Speaker B: When you sell it.

[00:01:00] Speaker C: So let me set you a challenge in today’s podcast. How can you attach monthly recurring revenue.

[00:01:08] Speaker B: To every piece of hardware that you.

[00:01:10] Speaker C: Sell and every project that you deliver? Now, this is a heck of a challenge, but I do think with some creative thinking, it really can be done. And I was kind of inspired to.

[00:01:21] Speaker B: Talk about this on the podcast today by an MSP that I worked with years ago.

[00:01:25] Speaker C: I haven’t spoken to him for ages. His name is Darren.

[00:01:28] Speaker B: He’s based here in the UK.

[00:01:29] Speaker C: Hi, Darren.

[00:01:30] Speaker B: If you are watching this on YouTube or listening to this on the podcast.

[00:01:33] Speaker C: Now, Darren, when I met him, was.

[00:01:35] Speaker B: Very, very focused on only generating streams of monthly recurring revenue.

[00:01:41] Speaker C: That was his entire focus for the business.

[00:01:44] Speaker B: And he was always asking himself, how.

[00:01:47] Speaker C: Could I create a new stream of MRR? If I go and sell a project.

[00:01:53] Speaker B: Or I deliver some hardware to someone.

[00:01:55] Speaker C: How can I attach some MRR to that?

[00:01:58] Speaker B: And he opened up new revenue streams offering marketing services. Some of them he was doing in house. Some of them he was buying them.

[00:02:04] Speaker C: In, putting a margin on and selling.

[00:02:06] Speaker B: Them on, which is fine, because obviously his clients, you may have done this yourself. You have your clients saying to you, hey, you guys do computer things.

[00:02:15] Speaker C: Can you build me a website? Because that’s a computer thing.

[00:02:18] Speaker B: You and I know that websites aren’t computer things, but sometimes your clients think that. So Darren saw that as a revenue stream, and he started creating websites and selling those for monthly recurring revenue, not.

[00:02:29] Speaker C: As a one off project, but as.

[00:02:30] Speaker B: A monthly recurring revenue. But he was very, very focused. And Darren’s goal was to get to.

[00:02:35] Speaker C: 80, I think it was 85 and a half thousand pounds a month, which.

[00:02:40] Speaker B: Is a million pounds a year of recurring revenue. So every month he’d have done 85,000 pounds over the year. That’s a million of recurring revenue. And all the rest of his sort of turnover, his one off turnover, in.

[00:02:51] Speaker C: His mind, that didn’t count.

[00:02:53] Speaker B: It all had to be monthly recurring revenue.

[00:02:55] Speaker C: Now that is focused, and that’s the.

[00:02:58] Speaker B: Kind of focus that I think if.

[00:02:59] Speaker C: You are really serious about building up the business and staying completely focused on.

[00:03:06] Speaker B: Getting somewhere that you’ve never been before, that’s an incredible kind of goal.

[00:03:12] Speaker C: So let’s look at then the hardware.

[00:03:14] Speaker B: And the projects, and how do you attach monthly recurring revenue to something like that?

[00:03:19] Speaker C: So I’m not quite sure about laptops and desktops, but certainly when you add in other hardware, you can add in.

[00:03:27] Speaker B: Potential revenue, monthly recurring revenue streams.

[00:03:30] Speaker C: For example, if you sold a router.

[00:03:32] Speaker B: I know some MSPs that well, first of all, I know some MSPs that don’t sell hardware. They only lease hardware. And I know that sometimes you can lease it through some of your suppliers, but other MSPs, they will go and buy the laptop for 1000 pounds or $1,000 or whatsoever, and then they will lease it to their clients on a three year deal. I appreciate that there are some financial.

[00:03:55] Speaker C: Risks that you’re taking on with that.

[00:03:56] Speaker B: You’re putting out the big outlay at the front and then obviously you’ve got that revenue coming in. But typically after, I don’t know what, 1215 months you are in profit. You need to sort the figures out from that.

[00:04:07] Speaker C: Or maybe it’s easier or less risk.

[00:04:10] Speaker B: For you to lease it from your supplier and then put some margin on top and send it out. But that’s one way you could turn, I guess, a laptop or a desktop into some recurring revenue. Some other MSPs that I know, they.

[00:04:23] Speaker C: For example, will take something like a router, they won’t sell the router again.

[00:04:27] Speaker B: They will lease it.

[00:04:28] Speaker C: They may only buy this router for.

[00:04:30] Speaker B: A few hundred pounds, but they’ll lease that out for 50 pounds or $50 a month.

[00:04:33] Speaker C: Or another way of doing it is.

[00:04:35] Speaker B: You do sell the, you sell the router onto the clients, but then you.

[00:04:40] Speaker C: Charge them a fee every month to manage that router.

[00:04:43] Speaker B: And managing that router, of course, means monitoring it. It means making sure the updates are done. It means, I don’t know, maybe you do a speed test every day or something like that. You know the kind of things that you can do. And obviously you want to make all of these automated as well, don’t you? So there’s no actual work for you to do, but you’re getting a fee every single month to manage something.

[00:05:04] Speaker C: In fact, I think when it comes to projects or hardware, adding on some kind of recurring management fee is the.

[00:05:11] Speaker B: Right thing to do.

[00:05:12] Speaker C: And we’ve got to strike the right balance here because we’re not trying to wash the clients. We’re not trying to wash them and ring them and get every single drop.

[00:05:20] Speaker B: Of revenue out of them.

[00:05:22] Speaker C: Some MSPs do do that, but that does create a sort of a retention tension. I’ve just invented that phrase. I’m going to use that phrase again in the future. I like that one. So we don’t want to ring them too much, but at the same time we want to charge them good fees in order to do a good job. Right. So if you are genuinely managing their router and you’re genuinely monitoring it and updating it and watching the speeds, and you can automate all of this in some way, I don’t know how you do that.

[00:05:49] Speaker B: I guess you’d know that. But if you can do all of that and it’s all automated and you.

[00:05:53] Speaker C: Get an alert once or twice a month that your text can then go in, fix whatever the problem is with.

[00:05:58] Speaker B: The router and it’s all done.

[00:06:00] Speaker C: Fantastic, right? Someone somewhere. Well, the right clients with the right mindset will pay for that because they understand that not having to lose an hour or 2 hours of their life.

[00:06:13] Speaker B: Resetting things, listening to their staff moan, just coming in in the morning, everything works, we can get on with business.

[00:06:19] Speaker C: Boom. The right kind of clients with the.

[00:06:22] Speaker B: Right mindset, they completely understand that.

[00:06:24] Speaker C: And to go with that, as well.

[00:06:26] Speaker B: As having the right clients, you have got to have the right positioning as well. You’ve got to have the right positioning for what it is that you do.

[00:06:33] Speaker C: If you say to someone, look, we.

[00:06:35] Speaker B: Can supply you with this new router.

[00:06:36] Speaker C: In fact, we would prefer that we.

[00:06:39] Speaker B: Supply you with the router. This is the one that we recommend because of ABC, we’re going to sell that to you.

[00:06:44] Speaker C: It’s going to cost you this much. It will last at least three years.

[00:06:48] Speaker B: But we hope to get a five to six year life out of it. And there is a fee of, I don’t know, $50, $100 a month. And that’s for us to manage it.

[00:06:56] Speaker C: I can tell you the details of.

[00:06:57] Speaker B: What we do when we manage it.

[00:06:58] Speaker C: But essentially what we do is make.

[00:07:00] Speaker B: Sure that everything just works. That’s what you’re paying that fee for.

[00:07:05] Speaker C: And that’s really good positioning. If you say that and you genuinely mean it and you know that you can add value. Why wouldn’t you add that kind of.

[00:07:13] Speaker B: Monthly recurring revenue onto a hardware or a project like that?

[00:07:17] Speaker C: That’s my challenge to you. In the next couple of weeks, every time someone says to you, hey, can I get a quote for this? Or you find yourself specking out a project for someone, just have something at the back of your mind that constantly asks you, how do I add monthly recurring revenue to this?

[00:07:34] Speaker A: Here’s this week’s clever idea.

[00:07:37] Speaker C: Let’s talk about five quick wins to improve your net profit margin. And first, to define what I mean by net profits, we’re all talking about the same thing. If you take your accounts, and obviously.

[00:07:48] Speaker B: I’m in the UK, but I assume that accounts, although they have their differences, they’re pretty much fundamentally the same the world over.

[00:07:54] Speaker C: So you’ve got your top line revenue.

[00:07:57] Speaker B: That’S your money that you’ve brought into the business, and then you take off your fixed costs and that gives you your gross profit. So your fixed costs are things like your office, your staff, stuff like that. That’s your gross profit, and then you.

[00:08:10] Speaker C: Take off the cost of sale. So, for example, if you sell a laptop and you sell that for $1,000.

[00:08:16] Speaker B: But it’s cost you $700, then your cost of sale, of that, you wouldn’t.

[00:08:21] Speaker C: Have had to have paid that 700.

[00:08:22] Speaker B: If you hadn’t sold it.

[00:08:23] Speaker C: So that cost of sale, and with.

[00:08:25] Speaker B: The same for all of your services that you buy in as well, that all comes off from the gross profit. So you’ve got top line revenue, then you’ve got gross profit, then you take off the cost of sale and that’s what you’ve got then, is net profit. Net profit is typically. Well, certainly in the UK, it’s the figure at the bottom of the PNL.

[00:08:41] Speaker C: The profit and loss sheet. Oh, my goodness. I just did account stuff.

[00:08:45] Speaker B: I’m really bad at numbers.

[00:08:47] Speaker C: I’m great with words.

[00:08:48] Speaker B: But numbers, even though I’ve been a business owner for 19 years, I still struggle today with PNL and balance sheets and stuff like that.

[00:08:54] Speaker C: And I just explain net profit to you.

[00:08:56] Speaker B: I know you know what it is, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

[00:08:59] Speaker C: So, five ways that you can improve your net profit margin, and the first.

[00:09:04] Speaker B: Of those is the easiest one to do. You put up your prices for new clients.

[00:09:08] Speaker C: Now, if you reduced your prices by 10%, you’d need to sell 33% more just to make the same amount of profit. Do you get that? It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it? But the good news is it works the other way around. So if you put your prices up for 10%, and so long as your cost of delivery doesn’t change, then you will make the same profit on less volume of work. Or if the volume of work stays the same, you will make more profit. Now, I’d advise you not to put.

[00:09:38] Speaker B: Up prices for existing clients.

[00:09:40] Speaker C: That needs to be done very carefully so as not to affect your retention.

[00:09:43] Speaker B: And that subject is another podcast subject for another day.

[00:09:48] Speaker C: But for new clients, you should be constantly nudging up your per user or per device charge until you discover the.

[00:09:55] Speaker B: Limit of what your local market will buy.

[00:09:58] Speaker C: So someone who buys at, let’s say, $35 per user today, and then tomorrow.

[00:10:03] Speaker B: The price, if they sign up is.

[00:10:05] Speaker C: $37 a user and that sells, and you could nudge that up to $39 a unit. Does that make sense? But if you find that at 39 it doesn’t sell, we hit the barrier.

[00:10:16] Speaker B: Then you can return back to $37 a user.

[00:10:20] Speaker C: But price testing should be sort of.

[00:10:21] Speaker B: A permanent thing that you’re doing within.

[00:10:23] Speaker C: Your business, and price is only one component of your offering that potential clients consider. In fact, I believe that they’re actually persuaded to buy or not buy by the four p’s, which is pricing, positioning, packaging, and promotion. So pricing really is only part of the overall story. And actually, you’ve got to remember that clients who buy on price alone are.

[00:10:46] Speaker B: Not necessarily the right clients that you want.

[00:10:49] Speaker C: Okay, number two, win higher quality clients. Exactly what we were just talking about. Because higher quality means they pay more, they buy more, they moan less, and.

[00:10:58] Speaker B: They respect you and your staff’s time.

[00:11:00] Speaker C: This is like the nirvana of clients. So where do you find these people? Well, I’ll tell you where not to look. The very bottom of the market. And this is where far too many MSPs hunt for clients. People at the bottom are buying on price alone and they’re making distressed purchase decisions. These are the people who will sort of suck the profit out of your business, along with sucking out your very life spirit.

[00:11:25] Speaker B: Look again at that list of the four p’s that I just spoke about.

[00:11:28] Speaker C: And ask yourself if your positioning, your packaging, and your promotion is talking to the best possible potential clients at the top of your market. Because if it’s not, well, you’ve got to remember that like attracts like. Yeah, so crap marketing attracts crap clients. Number three, then sell more to your existing clients.

[00:11:48] Speaker B: Now, that’s the other reason that you.

[00:11:50] Speaker C: Want better quality clients, because it is a lot easier and more profitable to sell something else to an existing client than it is to sell something to a new client, to your existing clients. They all want, or they need something else from you. It’s just that they don’t know what it is yet. This is why I recommend you take your clients to lunch for a strategic review every year.

[00:12:10] Speaker B: It’s a great chance to talk about.

[00:12:11] Speaker C: What they’re trying to do with their.

[00:12:13] Speaker B: Business, and then you can suggest things.

[00:12:15] Speaker C: That would help them get there faster. And they may need those things, or.

[00:12:19] Speaker B: Better still, they may want them.

[00:12:21] Speaker C: Number four is to improve retention. Now this is the other benefit of a strategic review.

[00:12:26] Speaker B: It’s the impact that it has on retention, and it’s how you can share.

[00:12:29] Speaker C: Out the most senior resource in the business, which is probably you, in a way that has the maximum impact on the greatest number of clients without burdening you down with a greater workload. So once you’ve worked out something called the average lifetime value of a client, that’s you take their monthly recurring revenue and you multiply it by the number.

[00:12:49] Speaker B: Of months they stay with your MSP.

[00:12:51] Speaker C: So, for example, if they’re spending $1,000 a month and they stay for five years, which is 60 months, then they’re worth $60,000, right? That’s their average lifetime value. And you can work this out across all of your clients. Once you’ve worked that out, your goal should be to constantly grow that figure by systematically selling more to clients and retaining them longer. Those are the two things that you.

[00:13:13] Speaker B: Want to be working on.

[00:13:14] Speaker C: And retention isn’t just about doing a great job and great customer support. In the highly competitive world of managed services, that kind of goes without saying. The question to ask you and your staff is, what else can you be doing that has minimum profit impact on the business and minimum impact on your time, but offers the greatest value for your clients? For example, with my core service, the MSP marketing edge, I make myself personally available every day in a members only Facebook group. And I have a trusted colleague called Amy who is available for one to one marketing calls on Zoom. So this doesn’t take up a huge.

[00:13:49] Speaker B: Amount of our time and it certainly.

[00:13:50] Speaker C: Doesn’T cost us a great deal of money. It’s a very simple addition, but it’s immense value because all of our members.

[00:13:57] Speaker B: They know that they can access me on a daily basis and they can.

[00:14:00] Speaker C: Literally jump on a zoom with someone.

[00:14:02] Speaker B: Who knows exactly what they’re talking about.

[00:14:04] Speaker C: And they can have that one on.

[00:14:05] Speaker B: One conversation and say, right, hang on, what would I do with this. Can you help me with my marketing?

[00:14:09] Speaker C: Any marketing question is something that will.

[00:14:11] Speaker B: Help with so what are the easy.

[00:14:13] Speaker C: Value adds in your MSP? Okay, and we are on to the fifth one, which is to reduce overheads.

[00:14:20] Speaker B: If you buy a commodity product, then someone somewhere will sell it to you for less.

[00:14:26] Speaker C: And a commodity is where the exact same product can be bought somewhere else for less. This, by the way, is why you’ve seen hardware sales go down dramatically over the last decade, because clients have learned that they can buy their kit cheaper elsewhere. And you’ve now got to apply that.

[00:14:41] Speaker B: Thinking to your business.

[00:14:42] Speaker C: So look for reductions in hardware. Compare your suppliers, software, insurance, utilities. Now, I appreciate often with software, you’re not comparing like for like. So the PSA that you’ve got today is not necessarily the same as the.

[00:14:56] Speaker B: Other PSA that you’re looking at that’s cheaper.

[00:14:58] Speaker C: But you got to ask yourself, what are we paying for with this complicated PSA with all the bells and whistles?

[00:15:04] Speaker B: Do we really use those?

[00:15:05] Speaker C: Or could we save $200 a month.

[00:15:07] Speaker B: Moving to this lower cost PSA where perhaps there’s less bells and whistles, but.

[00:15:12] Speaker C: The core functionality, which is mostly what.

[00:15:14] Speaker B: We use, is better, and we’ll save some money on that.

[00:15:17] Speaker C: Every penny that can be stripped from your overheads will be another penny of net profit. And assuming that you are the owner of the MSP, ultimately that penny is going to fall into your pocket.

[00:15:33] Speaker B: You know how I just mentioned that my MSP marketing edge members have a members only Facebook group where they can access me?

[00:15:39] Speaker C: Well, I spend a lot of time in that and I get quite in.

[00:15:42] Speaker B: Depth into a lot of marketing discussions and there’s always ideas and new things in there.

[00:15:47] Speaker C: I do have a second Facebook group, and this is for any MSP. So if you want to join that and you want to come and chat marketing with me, I don’t go into it in quite as much detail as.

[00:15:58] Speaker B: I do with my members. Of course not that kind of makes sense.

[00:16:01] Speaker C: But it’s a great place for you.

[00:16:02] Speaker B: And me to talk about your MSP’s marketing, and it sits very, very nicely with this podcast.

[00:16:08] Speaker C: Just go into Facebook, go into the search bar and type in MSP marketing, then go to groups. And you should see me up at the top. It’s Paul Green’s MSP marketing. That’s the Facebook group. Now apply to join. It is a vendor free zone.

[00:16:21] Speaker B: So I’m so sorry if you are a vendor, unfortunately, you won’t be able to join the group and we do ask some qualifying questions to check. Please don’t try and sneak in because it’s just embarrassing for everyone. But it’s just MSPs in there and me. So if you want to join me.

[00:16:34] Speaker C: In there and compliment your listening to.

[00:16:36] Speaker B: This podcast, get on that Facebook group.

[00:16:39] Speaker C: It’s just for MSPs to talk about improving your marketing.

[00:16:46] Speaker D: Hi, I’m Kristi Mitchell and I’m a marketing strategist for small business owners.

[00:16:50] Speaker B: And thank you for joining me on this podcast, Kristi, because we want to talk about the work you’ve been doing.

[00:16:55] Speaker C: Over the last couple of years with MSPs.

[00:16:57] Speaker B: We were connected when you said you’d been helping some MSPs review the work that they’ve done, their marketing work, and of course improve it and make it better to generate more leads.

[00:17:08] Speaker C: That’s what everyone wants.

[00:17:09] Speaker B: So I thought it would be really good to get you on here talking about kind of the things you discovered.

[00:17:14] Speaker C: We’re not going to name any names.

[00:17:16] Speaker B: So you can talk really openly about what you’ve discovered in people’s marketing. I thought other MSPs would find that quite an insight to have an expert in a view of looking at someone’s marketing, taking it apart and making it better. Before we do that, let’s just talk a little bit about you. So tell us the brief version of your story. How did you get to where you are today?

[00:17:35] Speaker D: Brief story is I spent over ten years in the corporate space. I had a young child at the time. He’s getting older now, and I just decided I couldn’t do the corporate thing anymore. I really wanted to have the freedom and flexibility to structure my work around my son. And so I set out to start my own business. So I’ll be celebrating five years in.

[00:17:56] Speaker C: Just a few months here, and congratulations.

[00:17:59] Speaker B: For doing five years. I’ve always said that running your own business is both the best job in.

[00:18:03] Speaker C: The world and the worst job at.

[00:18:05] Speaker B: The world at exactly the same time. But I think if you can get to five years, then you’re definitely going to do this for the rest of time.

I think that’s how it tends to work. Those who really aren’t cut out to be business owners, I think, tend to crash out in the first two or three years. So you’ve been working with lots and lots of different businesses, and I know you kind of stumbled into the MSP space and you’ve been working with some MSPs. Now, as you and I both know, a lot of MSPs, the ones that come to you and the ones that talk to me, they often by their own admission, they’re not very good at marketing. They don’t really know what they’re doing. They’ve never really done it with a strategy. They’ve just sort of built a website and done some stuff and kind of kept their fingers crossed and hoped for the best.

[00:18:46] Speaker C: Talk us through what common problems you see. I tell you what might be easier.

[00:18:51] Speaker B: Kristi, is if we take your most recent MSP client, don’t name them whatever you do, because that way we can talk in big terms about everything you’ve looked at.

[00:19:01] Speaker C: If you were to think about their.

[00:19:03] Speaker B: Website and their marketing and their general.

[00:19:06] Speaker C: Approach to lead generation and how to turn those leads into clients, what were some of the things that you saw that they were doing well and what were some of the opportunities to improve.

[00:19:15] Speaker B: That you came across?

[00:19:16] Speaker D: Yeah, what I really liked about them is that they were already doing content marketing. And that’s really what I believe very strongly in is creating content that’s helpful, relevant, solves problems for your target audience. And they were already doing that, which was great. The challenge was really that they weren’t speaking in terms that were really going to resonate with their audience. And so a lot of the work that we did was around content strategy. I took a look at their website, I did a full audit and assessment, including their website, their email marketing, their social media, kind of taking a look at everything they’re doing, looking at the data and the content, and using those findings to really drive a strategic path forward so that they could have better luck resonating with their target audience, generating those high quality leads for their business and gaining new, new clients out of it.

[00:20:01] Speaker B: Okay, so I’m going to ask you to explain some of those things that you were just talking about there. So first of all, it’s easy for all of us to think we know what we’re talking about when we say content marketing, but you give us the explanation of what exactly content marketing is.

[00:20:13] Speaker D: So content marketing is putting out helpful, relevant content that solves problems for your audience. It’s valuable. It’s not salesy messages. It’s not, hey, come work with us, we’re so great. It’s not, hey, here’s a testimonial of our clients saying why we’re so great. It’s really rooted in what are the problems that your target audience has and how can you create content that’s helpful for them. So an example of that could be if you are an MFP and your target audience is small business owners who don’t have enough financial backing to be able to have their own in house tech team. Right? So you are speaking to the chances are the business owner of that small business and you want to think about ok, where do they sit in their business? What are the challenges that they have? Oh, I have a marketing team who wants to be on Macs and I have my services team who would prefer to be on Windows and we don’t have a tech team to help manage this. And so how could I create a piece of content? Because I as the MFP could provide the service to them. How could I show them an easy path forward to have both Mac users and Windows users and make everybody happy at your really about, it’s about showing rather than telling, I think.

[00:21:25] Speaker B: So when you say show rather than tell, you don’t actually mean sort of talk them through all the different solutions. How would you go about turning that into a piece of content? And the follow up question to that is what would you then do with that content? So I presume it goes on the website and you distribute it on different channels.

[00:21:39] Speaker D: Yeah. So maybe it’s a blog saying yes, it is possible to have Mac users and Windows users all under the same roof getting along something along those lines, showing them through a blog. Let’s say it’s a blog that you start with, a blog that walks you through. Like here’s how both of these can coexist and how you can meet the needs and how it’s not going to cost you any more or it’s not going to create additional headaches for you as the business owner. So if you start with a blog piece that goes up on your website, that helps with things like SEO, people finding you, right. Going to Google, searching for the services that they’re looking for, finding you through your blog, and then you distribute that. So that can go through one blog could be broken up into multiple social media posts that go out on the channels that you’re on, that blog could be featured in an email campaign to everybody who’s on your list. So you’re nurturing them, letting them know, hey, this is a resource that might be helpful for you too.

I’m glad you brought that up because it’s a matter of the strategic approach of coming up with a piece of content that’s showing rather than telling a solution for them. And then it’s the distribution. How do you get that message out?

[00:22:46] Speaker B: Yeah, and you have to have both of them, don’t you? There’s no point creating content and not having a way of pushing it out there just in the same way that there’s no point having a great distribution network and no original content to push out there. I do find that making sure both of those are in place is really important, as clearly do you. So you mentioned that the work that you’d done with this MSP was also about strategically focusing in on who is the client and how are we going to reach them. And I guess as part of that, why would they want to work with you guys? Did you go as far as putting together like a buyer Persona with them?

[00:23:17] Speaker D: Yeah. So that’s part of my content strategy process. So the first thing we do well, I do the audit and assessment, and then we sit down, we set up a meeting to go through buyer personas. So we usually craft out three ideal buyer personas for this particular client. We did five because they had very specific niche audiences that they already had in mind that they’re working with. And so we crafted those out. And then that feeds into a content strategy exercise that I take clients through, which focuses on the jobs to be done theory. Some people are familiar with it, some aren’t. It comes from the product innovation space.

So then we do that process and then we also do a content pillars exercise so that we kind of have this guide to move forward for any future content that’s created. Whether it’s a webinar series you’re doing, or a blog or a social media post or whatever it is, it all needs to kind of filter through these content pillars that we’ve created to make sure that you’re staying with the strategy. Because a lot of times I’m sure you see it too. Business owners get really excited about this idea. They’re like, everyone needs to know about this, we need to tell them. But if it’s not framed in a way that makes it relevant and important to your audience, it’s not going to hit the mark, it’s not going to resonate.

[00:24:29] Speaker C: Yeah, you’re right.

[00:24:30] Speaker D: Like a good guide to follow going forward for any content creation.

[00:24:34] Speaker B: So you and I have just done what MSPs do to ordinary business owners, which is we’ve just dumped a whole load of marketing jargon on our audience and some of them will be thinking.

[00:24:45] Speaker C: What are these things they’re talking about?

[00:24:46] Speaker B: So I’m going to get you to do the hard work on this. So you need to explain for us, please, what a buyer Persona is. You need to explain what content pillars are and then we can explore the jobs to be done framework. It’s something I am familiar with because we’re actually going through a product review with our MSP marketing edge. And we’ve got a UX expert, like a user experience expert, who keeps using that exact framework, the jobs to be done framework. It’s good to hear someone else banging on about it, but if you can explain those three things, that would be great.

[00:25:11] Speaker D: They’ll thank me for me bringing it up with you. Right?

[00:25:14] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:25:15] Speaker D: Right. So buyer personas are fictionalized representations of your ideal client. So it’s really getting a very clear vision. So a lot of times, the clients that I work with will have a specific person in mind, which is fine. We can use them as long as they have the understanding right. It’s specific enough so you can visualize, okay, this is the type of person we want to attract with this content we’re going to create. But it’s generalized enough that you’re like, okay, well, typically it’s female, but maybe sometimes it’s male. So obviously there’s going to be a little give and take with it, but it’s meant to give you a very clear vision. I get all the way down in the weeds with my clients. It’s like, okay, what type of job do they have? What type of business are they in? Are they married? Do they have kids? What age range are they in? What type of area do they live in? And then we get into the root of, like, okay, what are the challenges that they have, and what are the goals that they’re trying to achieve? And that’s really, like, the root of what then feeds into the content strategy exercises, understanding the challenges, the pain points, whatever you want to call them, and the goals is really key, because that’s where you, as the business owner, creating your company, creating content to solve for those challenges, those pain points, is really where the gold is. And so the buyer personas are getting that fictionalized representation of those ideal clients you’re trying to attract. That’s first. And then the jobs to be done framework that I use as applied to content marketing is really taking those pain points, reframing it. So the common example for jobs to be done is people don’t want to buy a quarter inch drill, they want a quarter inch hole. So the idea is your audience kind of knows what their problem is, and they know what they’re trying to do, but they don’t necessarily know that you’re the solution to help them get there. And so that kind of gets to the core of the process that I take clients through, using that jobs to be done theory to shape your future content. The result is a laundry list of content ideas that could take the form of blogs or webinars or downloadable resources. Right? Freebies, lead magnets that can go up on your website behind a form to help you generate those leads. It could be social media posts. The type of content at that point doesn’t necessarily matter. It’s just all of the ideas that we generate. And then from there, when I talk about content pillars, I say, when we do that content strategy exercise, it’s like in the weeds, right? We have this long laundry list now, and it’s exciting usually for them because they’re like, these are really great ideas. I can’t wait to go write this or get my team to write this. But then it’s like, okay, it’s a lot to handle. So I say that the content pillars exercise is where you come out of the weeds and kind of look down at everything that 1000 foot view, like, okay, let’s look at all of the pieces and say, how do we start to categorize these things? What are the three main buckets or core topics that all of these things kind of fall under so that we have that guidepost as we move forward? So the way that I typically do it is there’s three core, main topics and then we fit subtopics underneath them. So it’s just a nice way to kind of organize everything. So like I said, when you do go to create future content, it’s your guidepost. Anything you create should relate back to this document because that shows that it’s rooted in strategy and not just the fancy new shiny object that came up that someone wants to do.

[00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Kristi, final question for you, and again, just thinking about that MSP that you dealt with most recently, if you could wave a magic wand and improve one other area of their marketing that perhaps you didn’t get time to look at or they didn’t ask you to look at, what would that be? What would you change and why would you change it?

[00:28:56] Speaker D: So for them specifically, the one thing I really would do, and I’m not sure that they, it’s a recommendation I gave. I don’t know if they’re going to do it, they really need to repair their email reputation. Their email open rates are very low. They have a very large list. And clearly it’s not a very current and valuable list from the standpoint of the open rates and click rates showing the engagement. And so they specifically are on HubSpot. And it’s a platform that actually gives you, they call it an email repair plan. It kind of tells you step by step what to do to repair that email reputation. Because from what I’m seeing, it seems like a lot of their emails just aren’t even making it to inboxes. And so if I could wave a magic wand for them, it would be to fix their email issue because they do have a lot of great content they’re putting out and they’re sending a lot of emails, but I think that they’re not going to see that big of a return for what they’re doing because for whatever reason, their email reputation has just gone down over time.

[00:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah, this is fascinating, isn’t it? And you and I are marketers, we’re doing different things, but ultimately we’re trying to help MSPs generate leads and close new clients. And it sometimes is so frustrating when, as you’ve clearly got a client here who’s invested money and time in you and other resources to create great content, and then it’s like they’ve got a van for distribution, but the van can only drive within the same two streets. They can’t get out to new streets or even go and reach clients of where it’s delivered before. That was the worst possible analogy I could come up with. But yeah, fixing that email reputation, especially if HubSpot actually gives them a plan to do it, because that’s often the hardest thing, isn’t it? Is where do I start with something like this? But yeah, and I’ve seen email deliverability within our business and within some of our MSP marketing edge members businesses that’s got harder and harder and harder in the years, in the last few years. It’s certainly not something that’s getting easier. So yeah, hopefully you can wave that magic wand or get out the magic hammer and do some bashing and actually help your MSP client to go and improve that.

[00:31:08] Speaker C: Kristi, tell us just finally a little.

[00:31:10] Speaker B: Bit about what you do to help.

[00:31:12] Speaker C: MSPs and what’s the best way to get in touch with you.

[00:31:14] Speaker D: You can find me on LinkedIn. I’m really active there. I think my spelling of my name, Kristi Mitchell, if you type it in, I think I’m one of the first, if not the first result that shows up on LinkedIn. So you can find me there and you can certainly go to my website, kristimitchell.com. There’s a bunch of free resources there. I practice what I preach when it comes to content marketing. And yeah, I enjoy working with MSPs. I enjoy being that outsider looking in, assessing all of those pieces, doing that audit and assessment like I said, kind of diving in as an extension of your team, evaluating everything that you have going and really giving you that strategic plan to say, okay, this is how we move forward. This is the type of content we need to be creating and this is how we distribute it through all these channels so that we can attract and nurture and convert our ideal clients.

[00:32:02] Speaker A: Paul Green’s MSP Marketing podcast this week’s.

[00:32:06] Speaker E: Recommended book hi, I’m Tom Andrulis and the book I recommend is called the coaching habit. After reading hundreds of books, this book is one of the top five best books that I’ve read. Definitely one of the top three business books that I’ve read. And the book will really help you, help you with coaching people in general. So when someone comes to you with an issue, how do you get yourself out of fixing the problem for them and helping empower them to fix the problem for themselves?

[00:32:34] Speaker A: Coming up next week.

[00:32:35] Speaker F: Hi, my name is Michael Nelson and I’m the founder of Scaled, a staff augmentation firm that places South African talent with MSPs across the world. We’re going to help you understand how to successfully pull remote techs into your culture to make sure that they represent you, your company and your culture well.

[00:32:53] Speaker C: And on top of that interview next week we’re going to look at the difference between features and benefits. People don’t want MFA, but they do want security so good they don’t have to lose sleep at night. In fact, we’re going to turn some features into benefits together. We’re also looking at three killer offers that will make you stand out from every single other MSP out there. Join me next Tuesday and have a very profitable week in your MSP.

[00:33:21] Speaker A: Made in the UK for MSPs around the world, Paul Green’s MSP marketing podcast.