5 ways MSPs can use AI

Today in 2023, the AI revolution is happening right now. 

Like the experts at SuperOps.ai, many MSPs are leading the charge in the AI revolution. The ones embracing AI are going to lead the industry, while those resisting will be left behind. 

There’s a general sense of fear across the business world that AI is going to replace a lot of jobs. 

This fear is justified. 

There’s a common saying being thrown around:

“You’re not going to be replaced by AI. You’re going to be replaced by someone who is using AI.”

At my MSP marketing company, Tech Pro Marketing, we’ve been using AI for years.

Our goal is to help as many MSPs as possible generate more leads and scale their business. AI has helped us achieve this by enabling our staff to perform certain day-to-day tasks much more efficiently – so we can focus our energy on creating better results for our customers. 

There are many ways MSPs can use the advancements in AI to work more efficiently. 

In this post, I want to touch on five of the big ones. 

1. Long-form content for SEO 

If you want your MSP website to show up on Google for searches like “IT services in Boston” or “managed IT support in (YOUR CITY)”, you’ll need content on your website that uses those words. 

You can’t just cram keywords on a random webpage without context and expect to see good results. You need content that answers your clients’ questions and provides useful information.

Quality SEO content takes expertise, actionable insights, and most importantly, relatability. 

AI can’t do all of this for you, but it can help you move in the right direction. 

AI content writing tools have been around for a while – but ChatGPT really brought it to the next level over the last few months. 

By using the right prompts in ChatGPT, you can create general knowledge content that answers questions like: 

• What is managed IT support?
• What are the pillars of IT security?
• What should you look for in a managed IT services partner? 

Now here’s the deal with using AI writing tools for long-form SEO content:

You can’t just plug in prompts and get a bunch of publish-ready articles in seconds. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. 

You’ll need to go in and polish the content by making sure keywords are included naturally, your webpages are interlinked properly, and you’re adding some of your own unique perspectives. 

At Tech Pro Marketing, we’ve found that using AI can cut our SEO content writing time in half – compared to writing from scratch. 

Think of tools like ChatGPT as “AI-assistance” – not “do it all for you”. 

2. Find strategic partners 

As the owner of an MSP marketing agency, my strategic partners are platforms that speak directly to IT companies – SuperOps.ai is one of them. 

Building my list traditionally involved researching prospective partners one by one to see if they matched my criteria. This used to take me hours and hours. 

I recently tried using ChatGPT for this – and was blown away by the results.  

I entered the prompt “Please give me a list in table format of blogs and podcasts targeted to Managed IT services providers”, and the tool gave me a list of 88 potential partners within seconds.

From here, all I needed to do was comb through the list and confirm they were a good match. 

MSPs can do the same thing. 

Say you are an MSP that targets law firms across the country with remote desktop support. You can ask ChatGPT to “provide a list of blogs and podcasts that cater to law firms and legal professionals across the United States.” 

It should give you a nice list of websites. 

Now, you can reach out to those blogs for a column to submit articles related to IT support for legal practices – promoting your expertise directly to your target clients. 

This is the bread and butter of most marketing strategies – and AI has made the process of finding strategic partners super easy. 

3. Email campaigns 

ChatGPT does a remarkable job of writing cold outreach emails. 

The tools can generate full email messages based on a prompt. 

What you need to do is map out the theme of the email campaign – including the overarching topic, your goals, and the target audience. For example, let’s say you want to run a cold email outreach campaign around cybersecurity for law firms. 

A good prompt would be: “Write a cold outreach email from an MSP to a law firm about the importance of cybersecurity”.

ChatGPT will generate a full message for you in seconds. Here’s what it gave us:

Pretty cool, right? 

Like long-form SEO content, ChatGPT is not a perfect science with writing. 

You’ll still need to go into the email and adjust the message around your brand voice and add a personal touch that humanizes the message. 

But as you can see, the tool can do most of the heavy lifting for you. 

4. Intelligent chatbots

Chatbots are nothing new to the MSP space. 

At Tech Pro Marketing, we see chatbots as a non-negotiable on an MSP website.

People want answers to their questions in real time – and you need the capability to provide them around the clock. If you can’t do this, your customers will have no problem going to a competitor that can. 

AI-powered chatbots take this capability to the next level. 

These bots are programmed to analyze natural language, content, and detect patterns in inquiries to provide complete answers to frequently asked questions. You can even program them to handle more complex issues – which could involve troubleshooting or performing an update.

By incorporating AI into your help desk, you can field a considerable volume of questions/concerns from customers with zero human intervention. 

This means your technicians will spend less time on the phones – lowering your overhead costs. 

The human power in your MSP can then focus on solving more complicated requests and providing excellent customer service. 

Knowing where to start with an AI chatbot is not always easy. Feel free to reach out to us at Tech Pro Marketing. We’ll guide you in the right direction. 

5. Onboarding

Onboarding is usually a slow and inconvenient process for MSPs. 

It’s a frustrating job that takes a lot of time and money. 

A lot of companies (Tech Pro Marketing used to be one of them) have shoddy onboarding processes for the sake of convenience. 

We used to share logins and passwords for company applications because it was much easier than having separate accounts. This gave everyone in the company blanket access to our programs. It wasn’t an issue when we only had a few employees. 

But as Tech Pro Marketing grew, this became more of a security risk. 

AI-managed workflows can handle the time-consuming, mindless tasks in the onboarding process. There are AI-powered tools out there that can answer onboarding questions like:

• Which line of business applications will new users need?
• Which directory groups should new users be added to?
• What data storage locations do new users need access to? 
• Which applications will users need their own account for?

Whether it’s for new clients or employees, onboarding has a bigger impact than many MSPs assume. 

If this process causes problems for your MSP, get in touch with us. We recently started using a fantastic provider for onboarding – and we’d be happy to point you in their direction. 

The big takeaway

One of the biggest criticisms of AI in the business world is that it takes away the human element of serving customers. 

This just isn’t true. 

If used properly, AI can help you spend less time on the monotonous tasks involved in running an MSP –  so you can focus more of your energy on that crucial human element. 

AI isn’t going anywhere. 

We’re going to see it do great things for companies across the business world – and MSPs will be at the forefront of it. 

If you’re like most MSPs – and are looking for ways to implement AI into your workflows – I’m happy to add some insight. Feel free to DM me on LinkedIn.