Making the most of LinkedIn - exclusively for MSPs

Get a few MSPs in a room and ask them what they struggle with, and quite a few answers will be marketing. Marketing was never easy for MSPs, now there’s social media marketing in the mix. If you haven’t really tried out marketing, then my suggestion is you should start with something simple but effective. That’s where Linkedin marketing comes in. 

Why Linkedin? Here’s why:

• LinkedIn is 277% better at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter.

• 43% of marketers have made at least one customer from LinkedIn. 

(Source: https://kinsta.com/blog/linkedin-statistics/) 

LinkedIn works great for B2B businesses and hence is a goldmine for MSPs. But the spray and pray method of trying a few things inconsistently doesn’t work. The key to any type of marketing, including on Linkedin, is consistency.  

Connect with the right people   

We’ll start with nailing down your target audience (TG). You would agree that your service as an IT service provider is not meant for everyone on LinkedIn and that not everyone who is on the social media platform would have the authority to bring you onboard as their company’s IT service provider. 

Let’s tackle the latter first. Finding out the decision makers who can actually give you business is critical. Here are a few roles that come with the power of providing you business as an MSP.   

• Chief Executive Officer 

• Chief Information Officer 

• Chief Security Officer 

• Vice President, IT  

• Vice President, Operations 

• Director, IT  

The above list is just representative and not exhaustive of job titles that have the ability to decide on a new IT service provider for an organization.   

This also doesn’t mean that you can target everyone with profile titles as above. You might be an MSP specializing in IT services for hospitals or public sector units or fintech companies. Connect with the right people in the right niche.  

Specializing helps you greatly in two ways—connecting with the exact people who can give you business and letting you create content that resonates with them. 

Remember, the riches are in the niches.

Create content that helps

Now that we know the right people who can give you business, it’s time to create content that’ll grab their attention. But for this, we’ll need to dive into why people come to LinkedIn:  

1. Connect with people from their industry

2. Lookout for jobs

3. Consume content that’ll help them grow professionally 

We’ll need to tap into point three. Your TG is out there on LinkedIn looking for information that can enhance the IT systems in their company. If you start putting out content along the lines of how to improve the IT infrastructure of a company, your TG will start noticing you. As you keep posting consistently, they’ll start trusting you more. Maybe they aren’t going to buy your service immediately. But the next time they are in need of a service that you have spoken about, be assured that you’ll be the first one they’re going to contact. 

Make a note of all the problems your prospects could be facing. Answer them in your posts and make this a discoverability engine for your profile.     

Put out case studies of how you’ve helped other companies ace their IT game. Generously give out as much information as possible and don’t worry about giving out extremely valuable information. One out of 10 might use your strategy without asking for your service; the other nine will get back to you when the need arises. 

Look at how Hubspot’s winning the trust of their prospects and customers:

Also, you don’t always have to be serious in your posts. Share memes! Nothing better than giving people a good laugh. 

This one from Gong is going to crack up sales folks (who’s their target audience):

Try out different kinds of posts - videos, infographics, atomic essays. Keep a track of how each of these media types is performing and double down on what’s working best.

Here’s Canva acing the infographics game: 

Though it could be very tempting to be “salesy” on LinkedIn, never do so. Provide valuable information and watch the inbound magic happen. 

Creating content on LinkedIn is a long-term game. There are going to be a lot of passive observers who’ll not even interact with your posts but keep following you closely. Keep posting and manage to stay in their visibility. They will come to you when the need arises.       

This is just the start. I haven’t even touched on active outbound prospecting through LinkedIn. That’s an article for another day.