The Compound Effect, and how it helps MSPs do better marketing

You see that there book? It's one of my all-time favourites. READ IT.

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy shows how tiny actions, done every day, can lead to big success over time.

It teaches how good habits and smart choices add up to amazing results, while bad habits hold you back.

Let me give you two examples, one about eating well, then one about your marketing.

EATING: After your dinner tonight you choose fruit instead of a chocolate bar

A tough choice! I battle with that one every night. And there's no immediate pay off is there, other than the short-term feeling of being a bit smug.

But repeat that for 100 nights, 200, 500, 1,000... and all that fruit adds up. Your body is healthier and your weight might be lower. Because you haven't eaten a thousand chocolate bars. Or taken a thousand hits of high sugar and calories.

MARKETING: Today you find 10 mins to post a decent piece of content on LinkedIn, instead of dealing with tickets

It's tempting to jump onto your PSA and do a few password resets or set up new users, to save your helpdesk team the hassle.

But in the spirit of "you should only do, what only you can do"... please don't. Because your technicians can't post great content on LinkedIn. Only you can.

And choosing to do something difficult like creating content - versus something easy like password resets - is exactly the same as chocolate vs fruit.

Repeat that for 100 days, 200, 500, 1,000... and all that activity adds up.

Never forget that ordinary business owners and managers don't know what they don't know about technology. That lack of knowledge encourages something called inertia loyalty. It's where they stay with their incumbent MSP way past the point they're fed up with them.

Put another way - people only buy when they are ready to buy. And on that day, the very day they wake up finally ready to speak to other MSPs and think about switching... that's the day you finally benefit from the compound effect of a thousand days worth of work on LinkedIn.

If they've read some of your posts and like what they see, it doesn't mean you're guaranteed to get the sale. But you should get a place at the table to fight for the sale. That's a good start.

You can extend this across more than just LinkedIn. Imagine you've developed great habits sending out regular marketing across multiple platforms. Imagine that prospect waking up on the day they are ready, and over the previous thousand days they have:

• Seen a handful of your posts on LinkedIn, and commented on one or two
• Read several of your weekly LinkedIn Newsletters
• Chatted briefly with you over a few DMs
• Opened about 1 in 4 of your weekly educational emails
• Read a few blogs on your website
• Watched a couple of your tech update videos on YouTube
• Read a few of your printed newsletters and stashed the rest into a desk drawer
• Briefly chatted to your phone person a couple of times

How likely is it that this prospect will want to talk to you today? All that content creates the perception that you are THE local tech authority. And the best prospects want to hire experts (and are willing to pay a little more to do so).

SIDE NOTE: Best of all, you don't need to actually do all of this work yourself. You should retain responsibility for making sure it happens, but you can get your team or virtual assistants to do the work. This is one of the most important ingredients at the core of my MSP Marketing Edge.