7 Website Design Pitfalls That Can Hurt Your IT Business

7 Website Design Pitfalls That Can Hurt Your IT Business

In this digital age, having a killer website is an absolute must for success. Your website is like your virtual storefront, representing your brand and reeling in potential clients.

But guess what? Many IT business owners are unknowingly making some common website design blunders. These mistakes can seriously hurt your online presence and, ultimately, your business.

Below, I’ll explore some of these pitfalls and provide practical tips to help you avoid them, ensuring that your website becomes a valuable asset rather than a liability.

[Read more…]

How To Use Growth Marketing to Continually Improve MSP Sales Results

How To Use Growth Marketing to Continually Improve MSP Sales Results

In today’s highly competitive market, managed service providers need to be proactive in continually improving their sales results. Growth is often the mantra that business owners are driven by.

One effective way to continually grow your sales is through growth marketing. This is a data-driven marketing approach that combines creativity, experimentation, and analytics to drive revenue growth.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how IT business owners can use growth marketing to steadily improve their sales results.

What Is Growth Marketing?

Ps come to us asking for help to improve their lead conversions. They get into a rut and aren’t sure how to get out of a stagnant growth rate. Some are just starting out with their IT business and trying to learn the sales and marketing ropes. They realize that word of mouth isn’t going to be enough to increase revenue to the level they’d like.

Growth marketing can help.

How does “growth” marketing differ from just regular marketing? It’s in the strategy and approaches you use.

In a traditional content marketing strategy, business owners often set-it-and-forget-it. Meaning, they add a new blog post to their website and maybe send out a social media post about it, then they consider the heavy lifting of marketing done. They wait for it to bear fruit and move on to the next thing.

Growth marketing is about going beyond that stage. It relies heavily on analytics and A/B testing as well as generating revenue throughout the prospect journey and the customer lifecycle.

This marketing approach also drills down into the customer’s journey and personalizes that journey wherever possible to drive better results.

49% of people have made an impulse purchase based on a highly personalized experience.

Some of the core components included in a growth marketing strategy are:

  • Run A/B experiments that inform marketing decisions
  • Map the customer journey to identify growth opportunities across the sales funnel
  • Automate and personalize the customer experience in email campaigns, etc.
  • Identify growth areas in the post-sale customer nurturing stage

In a nutshell, growth marketing is aimed at growing revenue through a hyper-focus on the numbers and details and adjusting to what’s working vs what’s not.

Simple Growth Marketing Strategy You Can Use

Content marketing is all about the basics. You engage prospects and customers with meaningful and helpful content. But what happens after you put out the content? Do you just sit back to wait and see?

Growth is proactive. It’s about looking at things like which blog content gets the most visits and the most conversions, testing one email against another to see which one works best, and continuing focused engagement after the initial sale.

Here are some steps you can use to take your marketing to another level and improve your revenue growth.

Step 1: Define Your Goals & Target Audiences

The first step in using growth marketing to improve your MSP sales results is to define your goals and target audience. This involves setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals and identifying the ideal customer for your services.

Some examples of SMART goals for MSPs include:

  • Increasing the number of leads generated
  • Improving the conversion rate of leads into customers
  • Increasing the average deal size

To define your target audience, you’ll need to create buyer personas that capture the characteristics and behaviors of your ideal customers.

Why take the time to define goals and audiences? Because these will be the metrics you’re tracking when analyzing what’s working and what’s not. You can also improve results when identifying the things that specific audiences react to.

For example, some customers may react more when you provide content related to improving compliance efforts. Others may be attracted to digital optimization messages. Knowing what triggers leads and conversions for each audience helps you drill down into those elements to increase your numbers.

Step 2: Develop a Data-driven Marketing Strategy

Once you have defined your goals and target audience, the next step is to develop a data-driven marketing strategy. This involves identifying the marketing channels that are most effective for reaching your target audiences and using data to optimize your marketing campaigns.

Some effective marketing channels for MSPs include:

  • Search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
  • Social media marketing
  • Email marketing

By analyzing data from these channels, you can determine which marketing campaigns are generating the most leads and conversions and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Step 3: Experiment and Repeat

One of the key principles of growth marketing is experimentation. This involves testing different marketing strategies and tactics to identify what works best for your business goals. By experimenting and iterating, you can continually improve your sales results and stay ahead of the competition.

Some examples of experiments that MSPs can conduct include:

  • A/B testing different landing pages
  • Testing different email subject lines
  • Experimenting with different ad copy in PPC campaigns
  • Testing email personalization vs non-personalized

By testing and measuring the results of these experiments, you can identify the most effective marketing strategies and optimize your campaigns for maximum ROI.

If you’re using a tool like Google Ads (for PPC) or MailChimp for your email newsletter, you can use the features they have available to do A/B testing. The interfaces will allow you to send a percentage of your campaign with version “A” vs version “B” and you can see how numbers, like click-through-rate, differ.

Once you get a winner, test that against another contender. This helps you continually optimize the most effective marketing for the target audience.

Step 4: Use Analytics to Measure Performance

To effectively use growth marketing to improve your MSP’s sales results, you need to use analytics to measure performance. This involves tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the number of leads generated, conversion rates, and average deal size.

Where do you get that data to analyze?

There are a lot of different analytics tools out there that you can use. If you want to start for free, set up a Google Analytics account and conversion tracking. A simple one to add is a contact form conversion that triggers a conversion goal. Google Analytics can then tell you the keywords or other referral methods that triggered that lead conversion.

Learn more: “8 of the Best Ways to Use Google Analytics for Your Tech Business Website”

By monitoring these KPIs, you can identify trends and patterns in your marketing performance and adjust your strategy accordingly. For example, if you notice that your conversion rates are low, you may need to adjust your messaging or offer to better resonate with your target audience.

Step 5: Generate Leads Throughout the Customer Lifecycle

Once someone converts from a lead to a sale, the sales cycle isn’t finished. While you aren’t doing any type of hard sell to existing customers, there are often other ways that you can help them, and thus generate more revenue.

One way is by offering them another service or product that they need. For example, a client may sign up for your managed IT services, and then a year or two later after reading your blog post about the benefits of VoIP, contact you to sign up for business phone service.

This is where an email newsletter is your best friend. It continues your engagement with current customers, letting them know in a helpful way about other services your IT business provides.

Another way to generate revenue from existing customers is through a reviews management process. Their reviews can easily be the thing that attracts more business. On the flip side, if you don’t have any reviews, leads might wonder why and choose a competitor instead.

72% of customers will share a positive experience with at least six people. So, give them a great experience and then ask them politely to review the service they’ve received.

Step 6: Focus on Customer Retention

Finally, it’s important to remember that growth marketing isn’t just about acquiring new customers – it’s also about retaining existing ones. By focusing on customer retention, you can generate repeat business and increase the lifetime value of your customers.

A 5% increase in customer retention rate results in a nearly 30% increase in revenue.

Some effective strategies for customer retention include:

  • Providing exceptional customer service
  • Offering loyalty programs and discounts
  • Regularly engaging with customers through email marketing and social media
  • Touching base with customers in-person or by phone quarterly

By keeping your existing customers happy, you can generate more revenue and improve your overall sales results.

Use Growth Marketing to Continually Improve Sales

You can get out of a rut and improve your revenue growth by following a growth marketing strategy. By taking a proactive approach to sales and marketing, MSPs can stay ahead of the competition and achieve long-term success.

Need more help with marketing? Check out Tech Marketing Engine for à la carte marketing solutions to supercharge your business.

Do you have any questions or feedback about growth marketing? Share your thoughts in the comments!

7 Reasons Using a DIY Website Builder Might Be Hurting Your MSP Business

Many types of online cloud tools have made it easier to do things that used to require a professional. You can now put together a social media graphic in a few clicks and build a website yourself without needing to know any code.

But just because these tools are there, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to choose them over a seasoned pro. This is especially true when it comes to your website – a main driver of prospects and sales for many IT businesses.

If you’ve been contemplating or using DIY tools like Wix, Weebly, WordPress, or Squarespace, you may want to rethink that. Read on to find out why trying to build your website yourself could cost you a lot more than having a professional build it.

[Read more…]

How to Leverage Chat GPT to Improve Your MSP Marketing (and Pitfalls to Avoid)

Chat GPT MSP Marketing

Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve likely heard about ChatGPT by now. This AI-powered natural language bot has been the talk of the internet. It’s also had Microsoft and Google racing to introduce their versions to the world.

ChatGPT generates unique answers written by a bot in a human-like conversational style. This offers an opportunity to leverage its capabilities to power your marketing while saving you considerable time.

But the tech is still in its infancy, so caution is the key word. I’ll give you some tips on how you can take advantage of this new “toy” without stumbling into any pitfalls.

[Read more…]

8 Great Tips to Grow Your MSP Brand via an Instagram Business Account

8 Great Tips to Grow Your MSP Brand via an Instagram Business Account

Right out of the gate, Instagram made a big splash on the internet scene. It’s come a long way since 2010 and has generated more than a few social influencing millionaires.

But you don’t have to be a trendsetter to leverage Instagram for your MSP business. The platform has a lot to offer small business owners that want to grow their brand and capture more leads.

If you’ve been baffled by Instagram or thought it wasn’t well-suited to an IT business, then you may just be surprised at all it has to offer these days.

[Read more…]

Generate Sales for Your IT Business by Hosting an Awesome Webinar

Generate Sales for Your IT Business by Hosting an Awesome Webinar

There are many ways to market your IT services online. One that has a particularly good lead conversion rate is webinars.

Overall conversion rates for webinars range from 40% to 55%. And you can expect between 40% (B2C) up to 73% (B2B) of webinar attendees to become leads.

Has something been holding you back? Maybe you tried webinars and didn’t get much out of them. Or you may not even know where to start. In this article, we’ll give you several tips for preparing and hosting a great webinar that can help you achieve impressive results.

[Read more…]

MSP Recession Survival Guide: 5 Ways to Recession-Proof Your MSP Content Marketing (Just in Case!)

MSP Recession Survival Guide: 5 Ways to Recession-Proof Your MSP Content Marketing (Just in Case!)

The economy is in a very uncertain place right now, which can make people feel powerless. But there are things you can do now to “recession-proof” your IT business. We tell you what those things are in our 3-part series – the MSP Recession Survival Guide.

In this part 2, we discuss how to build up your marketing content without breaking the bank, and why times like now are the best time to plant the seeds that will carry you through a tough economy.

Stopping your marketing is the last thing you want to do. It will just make things worse during a recession. Instead, you want to have plenty of marketing power ready to go and the flexibility to use it in multiple ways.

[Read more…]

Tips for Putting Out an Engaging IT Business Newsletter in Less Time

Tips for Putting Out an Engaging IT Business Newsletter in Less Time

Newsletters are an effective way to nurture new leads and to encourage repeat sales from existing customers. But many MSPs just can’t find the time to put them out regularly.

They might start off with a bang, putting out three newsletters in a row, but then either lack the time or the content ideas to keep them going consistently. Thus, they miss out on the benefits that a regular newsletter can bring.

Do you want to put out a monthly email newsletter, but aren’t sure how you’ll find the time or content? We’ve got several tips below that can optimize your process, so you won’t dread when “newsletter time” rolls around each month.

[Read more…]

Reel in More Sales Using These Popular Lead Magnets on Your MSP Site

Reel in More Sales Using These Popular Lead Magnets on Your MSP Site

Lead generation is one of those vital activities that can be “feast or famine.” While some weeks you have more leads than you know what to do with, others go by with zero leads, and it seems like your website has dropped off the face of the earth.

One way to kickstart your marketing efforts and drive more leads is through lead magnets. They’re called “magnets” for a reason! They’re designed to reel people in by giving them a shiny object so you can then add those leads to your sales funnel to convert them.

There are several types of lead magnets you can use to attract different target audiences. I’ll go through some of the most popular below and give you actionable ideas you can use on your own site to supercharge your sales.

[Read more…]

8 Best MSP Website Elements for Converting Visitors to Clients

8 Best MSP Website Elements for Converting Visitors to Clients

The most successful business websites are those that act as 24/7 digital salespeople. They’re informative, engaging, and help make the case for your products or services.

Putting up a great MSP site means more than getting pages, navigation, and content posted online. You have to have the right mix of elements to make a great first impression because it’s often the thing that’s going to determine whether all your hard work and marketing dollars are going to convert to revenue.

Is your digital salesperson falling down on the job? Learn how to boost your website’s appeal to visitors and increase your conversion rate by adding a few helpful pieces that it may be missing.

[Read more…]