Effective marketing strategies are essential in the world of managed service providers (MSPs). Paid advertising offers a pathway to increased brand visibility and client acquisition. However, careful selection is vital due to the array of available platforms.
By investing in paid advertising platforms, you can position yourself in front of your target audience to ensure maximum exposure and engagement. Doing so speeds up the process of reaching your target audience efficiently without spending too much time on organic reach.
However, using an IT marketing agency to get you through paid advertising is more beneficial for your time and productivity as a business, especially considering how significant the competition is.
The importance of effective MSP advertising
With as many as 11,500 MSPs in the UK, relying heavily on effective content marketing strategies is crucial. These strategies help build brand awareness, establish credibility, generate leads and drive conversions.
Educating your target audience about industry trends, IT concepts, best practices, and solutions allows you to position yourself as an industry leader and knowledgeable expert in the IT field. When SMBs (Small and medium-sized businesses) seek information or solutions related to IT services, they are more likely to turn to MSPs who have shown their expertise through content on platforms like LinkedIn, Google Ads, Meta, and YouTube ads.
Creating effective content marketing strategies is a powerful tool for lead generation. By creating content that addresses the challenges of your target audience, you can attract relevant leads who are actively seeking solutions to their IT needs. You can capture contact information through whitepapers, eBooks, or webinars.
Why going down the paid MSP advertising route is better for your business
Paid advertising presents you as an MSP, a powerful tool to enhance your visibility, attract leads and grow your business in such a competitive landscape.
Targeted reach based on demographics, interests, behaviours and more
As an MSP, you might have a specific niche you cater to and paid advertising allows you to target precise audiences on social media platforms based on demographics, interests, job titles, company size and more. A targeted approach like this ensures that your ads reach the correct people likely to become clients.
There are 11,500 MSPs in the UK – it’s a highly competitive landscape
Creating effective MSP marketing strategies against MSPs offering the same services can be challenging due to the highly competitive landscape. With one, it can be easier to get the attention of your potential clients. Paid advertising allows you to differentiate yourself and stand out from competitors. Stand out by demonstrating unique value propositions, expertise, and specific solutions to client challenges.
Instant visibility, unlike organic posts
Depending on algorithms and follower engagement, you might have a limited reach with organic social media posts. However, with paid advertisements, you can bypass that and instantly become visible to a larger audience. Doing so can be beneficial if you’re a newer MSP or want to expand your client base quickly.
Measurable results through analytics and reporting tools
Platforms like LinkedIn, Google Ads, Meta, and YouTube ads provide analytics and reporting tools to track how well your campaign is doing in real-time. You can monitor essential and relevant metrics such as click-through rates, cost per acquisition and (ROI). This approach lets you clarify strategies, allocate budgets effectively, and maximise ROI.
Flexibility and control to achieve desired outcomes
Following from measuring results through analytics and reporting tools, paid advertising offers greater control over marketing efforts than organic methods. Adjusting campaign settings, targeting parameters, ad creatives, and budgets based on performance insights and changing business goals can provide more value than organic posts.
Cost-effective compared to traditional MSP advertising
Paid advertising through social media is cost-effective compared to traditional advertising like print and television. You can set budgets depending on your goals and the performance of the ad campaigns.
As an IT marketing agency, LinkedIn is one of our favourite ways to help our clients market themselves. Having your profile on LinkedIn is a great start when it comes to content marketing. However, you must set up a LinkedIn page for your business to set up Sponsored Content and Messaging. You also need to set up a Campaign Manager account, which allows you to monitor ad accounts, run campaigns and control your budgets.
LinkedIn offers a range of different advertising formats, such as:
- Sponsored content
- Sponsored messaging
- Video
- Carousel
- Dynamic display ads
- Text ads
While many platforms offer specific targeting, LinkedIn features are the most advanced. You can target your audience by selecting criteria such as:
- Location
- Job title
- Job function
- Seniority
- Degree type
- Skills
- Company name and size
- Industry type
- Professional and personal interest
As your clients are businesses rather than individual consumers, LinkedIn’s B2B focus aligns well with your target market and offers a platform to reach potential clients in the corporate world. Whether this be IT managers, CTOs, CEOs or more, LinkedIn offers precise targeting options to tailor ads to the needs and interests of your ideal clients.
LinkedIn has lower competition than other advertising platforms like Google Ads or Meta, which results in lower cost-per-click rates. Lower competition means you can stretch your advertising budget further and achieve increased ROI. LinkedIn also seamlessly integrates with content marketing, allowing you to amplify the reach of your organic content through paid advertising.
Google Ads
Regarding MSP advertising, Google Ads is a powerful paid advertising platform offering an array of advantages for MSPs. Almost every time you view an advertisement for a business’ landing page, it ranks as the first, second, or third search result on Google. It isn’t just because of great SEO but because the company likely has an active Google Ads campaign. For this to work, you pay to display a Google ad to potential clients searching for relevant keywords on Google Search. It’s a great digital marketing tool for anyone looking to get their attractive ad copy in front of ideal clients.
Google Ads works through pay-per-click (PPC), which means you only pay for actual, measurable results such as website clicks and business calls. There are five types of Google Ads to consider: Search Network campaign, Display Network campaign, Shopping campaign, Video campaign, and App campaign.
Meta (Formerly Facebook)
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, offers an exciting platform for MSP advertising. With billions of active profiles across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, Meta provides MSPs to a large and diverse audience. One of the main benefits of advertising on Meta is the ability to choose from various formats, including image ads, video ads, carousel ads, and more. The flexibility of format choice means you can tailor your ads to suit your content and campaign objectives, whether that might be showcasing your services, promoting events or driving traffic to your website.
Unlike Google Ads, which works through pay-per-click, Meta uses a CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) model where you’re charged based on the number of impressions or views their ads receive per thousand. Meta offers a range of campaign objectives that can help you reach your specific marketing goals and requirements; you can get your target audience through services, cybersecurity solutions, cloud services, or disaster recovery. You can even create a lookalike audience by uploading your existing customer list. The idea is to find users with characteristics, interests, and behaviours similar to your existing audience. Doing so increases the likelihood of taking action with your ads.
One of the main benefits of Meta is the opportunity to target various placements through one ad platform. Meta offers Facebook News Feed, Instagram News Feed, Stories, Right-Hand Column, Instant Articles, Marketplace, Audience Network, and Messenger.
YouTube Ads
With billions of users worldwide, a great marketing strategy for MSPs is through YouTube ads. You can increase brand exposure by showcasing your servers through engaging video content. Whether it’s a short, skippable ad or a longer, more informative video, you can tailor your ads to draw the attention of your desired audience through TrueView. Additionally, YouTube Ads provides advanced targeting options to reach your audience through demographics, interests and behaviours, from targeting users based on their search history to reaching viewers who have interacted with your channel or videos. The analytics and reporting tools will provide insights into your ad performance, including metrics such as views, engagement and conversions.
YouTube ads offer flexible budgeting and bidding options to set your desired budget based on your advertising objectives and resources. In conclusion, YouTube ads are highly effective if you want to reach a broader audience, drive engagement and achieve marketing goals. Not only is there a vast audience base and diverse ad formats, but you can also target advanced audiences.
Which platform is best for you?
Each platform has its benefits for MSP advertising. LinkedIn offers the most specific targeting and, overall, lower costs. To summarise:
- It offers various advertising formats like sponsored content, sponsored messaging, video, carousel, dynamic display, and text ads.
- Low barrier to entry
- Audience targeting is based on employer, job title, years of experience, education levels, industry, personal certifications and more.
- Retargeting possibilities to impact your audience once they’ve interacted with your business
- Research by HubSpot found that, on average, LinkedIn ads converted users to leads at a 6.1% conversion rate.
- Connect with individuals directly through Sponsored Inmail.
While advertising on LinkedIn, you can present yourself as a thought leader for MSPs. Sharing valuable resources and engaging with the community builds credibility among your target audience. Not only does it enhance the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, but it can adopt long-term relationships with clients.
LinkedIn’s precision targeting, professional network, thought leadership opportunities, lower competition, B2B focus and extensive analytics all play a massive part in why it’s the best choice for MSP advertising.
Why outsourcing MSP advertising is essential for maximum ROI
There are complexities to understanding how the algorithms and mechanisms of each advertising platform work. They all work on their own unique set of rules, algorithms and bidding strategies. Another complexity refers to audience behaviour and preferences, which could vary across demographics, locations and industries. Creating effective advertising strategies requires a comprehensive understanding of your target audience’s interests, needs and pain points. Furthermore, digital advertising constantly evolves with new trends, technologies and regulations and keeping up with them can become complicated if you’re not a marketer. Staying on track involves ongoing education and experimentation.
Outsourcing paid advertising is beneficial if you want to see results from agencies and professionals with in-depth knowledge and experience in paid advertising strategies. At xpandly, we achieve 47x more engagement on LinkedIn due to our expertise in the ad platform. We stay updated on the latest trends and algorithm changes to ensure effective campaign management and marketing strategy for MSPs.
Managing paid advertising campaigns requires time you don’t have, which can detract from core business activities. Using xpandly to manage your paid advertising allows you time to focus on your essential tasks while we focus on campaign setup, monitoring and optimisation. We can allocate budgets more effectively to reduce wasted ad spend and maximise results with access to advanced tools, analytics platforms and industry resources.
xpandly is an IT marketing agency that focuses on driving success and revenue growth for businesses across the IT sector. We’ve also delivered more than £30 million in recurring revenue growth for MSPs. By continuously monitoring the IT industry to get ahead of new technology and service trends, we can create the right messaging for your business to stay ahead of the competition.
We understand that every MSP is unique, as are your goals – so we don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all marketing approach. Our team specialises in tailoring strategies specifically for MSPs, ensuring they align perfectly with your objectives, whether expanding your client base or boosting brand awareness. With over 15 years of experience in technology environments, we understand the technologies and services you sell. 5.7x is our average return on investment for our clients.
Check out our MSP Marketing Services to learn more about what we do and how we can help ignite your marketing journey.