No vertical for your MSP? That's a mistake

Breaking into a new vertical is one of the smartest marketing decisions you can make for your MSP, here’s how to get started. Also this week, why MSPs are terrified of guarantees, and the huge AI revenue opportunity for MSPs. Welcome to Episode 327 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. No vertical for your MSP? That’s a mistake

One of the smartest marketing decisions you can make for your MSP, is choosing to break into a new vertical. Because marketing to a vertical is easier, more effective, and ultimately more profitable. A lot more profitable. And a lot of MSPs want this, but they don’t know where to get started. So let’s talk right now about how to enter any vertical you like and get traction quickly and easily. Choosing to work in a vertical is like switching from a megaphone over to a sniper rifle. Most MSPs marketing sends a pretty generic message, something like, We help businesses of all sizes, any kind of business, with their IT, which is very lovely and friendly but also utterly forgettable. Vertical focus marketing says, We help dental practices eliminate downtime, secure patient records, and keep imaging systems running smoothly, and suddenly with a message like that you are relevant, you are specific, and you sound like someone who understands that exact person that you are talking to. The thing is that humans, we respond to familiarity. Prospects respond to relevance. Marketing responds to focus.

When you pick a vertical, your story becomes sharper, your audience becomes easier to find, your content becomes dramatically better, your conversion rates jump, and you instantly differentiate from every generalist MSP around you.

This is especially true in professions like accountants, lawyers, dentists (like I was just saying), medical clinics and manufacturers. These groups all share similar software compliance concerns, workflows, frustrations, and even buying psychology. This is marketing heaven, but how do you actually break into one? Let’s get into the practical stuff. There are three phases to entering a vertical. First, understand the vertical. Next, build the assets and the messaging. And then thirdly, build the audience. So let’s do phase one, understanding the vertical. This is kind of like the homework phase and it’s also where most MSPs skip straight ahead to the marketing and you kind of miss out on all the prep work. So please do do this bit. To break into a new vertical, you must first understand the software that they use, the regulations that they’re bound by and maybe even that they fear, and the workflows that frustrate them. You’ve got to understand the downtime disasters that could ruin their day, the KPIs that they care about, the conferences they attend, the associations that they belong to, the influencers they listen to and the language they use. If you talk their language, even just 70% of it, you instantly feel to them like your one of them. And no, you don’t need decades of experience in their vertical. You just need curiosity, a bit of research, a handful of conversations, and the ability to turn what you’ve learned, your insight, into content for them and to adapt your conversations to take all of it into account. Once you understand their world, you are ready for phase two, which is building up your assets and your messaging. And the question I always get from MSPs on this is, Paul, should I have a page on my website or should I have a whole separate website? Well, my recommendation for this is to start simple. So yes, you begin with a single vertical specific page on your main website. Don’t go building 17 new websites before you even know whether or not the vertical is going to respond to you. So your vertical page on your existing site should inc...