How to choose the best CRM for your MSP by answering a few key questions. Also this week, the most important metrics to focus on, and how MSPs can actually make money from AI.

Welcome to Episode 345 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

The 4 types of CRMs used by MSPs (and which is best)

One of the most common questions I get from MSPs when they start thinking seriously about their marketing is, “Which CRM should we use?” And on the surface that sounds like a really simple question, but actually the more you dig into it, the more complicated it becomes. Isn’t that always the way? Because this isn’t really a question about software. It’s a question about frustration.

What MSPs are really asking when they ask me about CRMs is, “Paul, where do I put all my prospect data? How do I build a pipeline that I can actually see? How do I know who to follow up and when to follow them up? How do I stop things falling through the cracks? And why is all of this giving me such a headache?” Those are all the kind of questions that MSPs really have.

So before I walk you through the four types of CRMs that MSPs tend to use, let me say something to you. It may be slightly controversial.

I believe there isn’t one best CRM for MSPs. There’s only the best CRM for how your MSP markets and sells itself.

And those are two very different things. And the reason so many MSPs end up with the wrong tool or with a perfectly good tool that they never really properly use, is that they chose the software before they defined the marketing process and that’s backwards. The tool should serve the process never the other way around. Let’s look at the four types of CRM based on the four types of MSP.

The first type is what I’d like to call PSA led MSPs. So these are MSPs who basically live inside their PSA. ConnectWise, Autotask, HaloPSA, Synchro, Atera, Kaseya, whatever it is. Their agreements are in there and this may be you. The billing’s in there, your tickets are in there. So for you, the idea of keeping your sales activity in exactly the same place feels logical and tidy. And actually if your sales are largely driven by referrals or renewals and everything’s kind of straightforward and simple, then this can work perfectly well. If you’re not trying to build a sophisticated marketing engine but you just want visibility on leads without having more software, then that might be the right answer for you.

But a big word of caution. When a PSA vendor says their platform has a marketing module, that’s a little bit like a Swiss Army knife saying that it has a saw. So technically, yes, it’s true, but it’s not what you would choose if sawing things was something that you did every day. You can’t use that tiny little knife every day on a tree, can you? It’s just for the odd job. And it’s exactly the same with your PSA. Most marketing modules in PSAs, and I haven’t looked at all of them, so if I’m wrong on this, please email me and let me know. But most marketing modules in PSAs are not really up to the job of actually doing good comprehensive marketing every day.

The second type then is marketing-led MSPs. And these tend to be MSPs that don’t have enough leads and know that marketing has to be their principle growth activity. Again, you may be in this category right now. So they want to run campaigns, they want to publish content consistently, they want to capture leads through forms, and importantly, and this is the right thing to do, is use automation to follow up all of these leads.

So if that is you, the platforms to look at are things like HubSpot, making sure that you’ve got the marketing hub, HubSpot’s broken into lots of different hubs, so you’ll need the marketing hub. Or you could look at ActiveCampaign or look at Zoho One, or the...

MSPs must build audiences and relationships before selling IT support, which is why marketing is so important. Also this week, why technically superior MSPs lose deals to “average” competitors, and how MSPs can build resilience every day.

Welcome to Episode 344 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Every MSP is now a media & marketing company

I want to start today with something that landed in my email inbox a few weeks back from a guy called Tom Orbach. Now, he writes a newsletter called Tom’s Marketing Ideas. I’ve been a paying subscriber for a while. He’s sharp, he’s very original and when he says something, I really do pay attention.

Now, the subject line of his email was this… Every company is now a media company. And after I read the newsletter, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it because I believe he’s absolutely right and I believe it matters enormously for your MSP. Let me explain what he wrote about and then I’m going to add my own layer on top of that.

So Tom’s argument started with a data point. It was about OpenAI and how they’d recently spent over $100 million to acquire a podcast, which is kind of weird if you think about it because they didn’t acquire another technology company or any kind of software platform, they spent all that money on a podcast. In fact, it was two guys who’d been doing a live tech show for just 17 months. And then the week before that, a fintech company called Plaid, which by the way is worth $8 billion, they bought a newsletter with 200,000 subscribers and actually Tom listed company after company after company that have done the same thing.

HubSpot bought a newsletter with 2.5 million subscribers. Stripe bought a founder community. Semrush, which is an SEO tool, they bought several SEO publications. And these are not media companies, these are software and technology businesses, but they’ve all been spending hundreds of millions of dollars to own audiences. So before we explore why, let me first of all just put something out there to the universe. If there’s any business that wants to come and buy this podcast for let’s say $100 million, then please email me. Obviously I’m joking. (I’m not joking. Email me.)

Anyway, let’s look at why all of these big businesses are doing this and why even though these are big businesses buying podcasts and newsletters and stuff like that, it’s still relevant to you as an MSP. They’re doing it because they figured out something that most businesses are still catching up to. In a world where AI can produce infinite content at practically zero cost, the one thing that can’t be replicated is a trusted human voice with a loyal audience. Attention is the scarcest resource in business right now and the companies that own attention don’t need to chase customers anymore. The customers come to them. Tom Orbach in his newsletter puts this brilliantly. He says,

“The company that teaches about the industry earns the right to sell the tool.”

And that sentence is basically the entire philosophy behind what I do with this podcast, with my LinkedIn newsletter, with my weekly emails, with all of my content. I’m not really selling my MSP Marketing Edge membership. I’m building audiences of MSPs who trust me. And when they’re ready to take their marketing seriously, I’m the person they’re going to think of.

Now, here’s where this is applicable for you because the good news is you don’t need to spend $100 million on a podcast network, but you do need to think of your MSP as a media company. And what does that mean in practice? It means you should be publishing content consistently. Something that educates the business owners and managers that you want to work with. At the very least, a weekly email, a weekly LinkedIn newsletter, a sh...

MSPs love healthcare practices for many reasons, so here’s how to reach them and win them as clients. Also this week, the 5 questions your MSP website’s MUST answer (or prospects go elsewhere), and the scary implications for MSPs when your clients buy cyber liability Insurance.

Welcome to Episode 343 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Deep dive: How MSPs win healthcare clients

Let’s talk about one of the most attractive client verticals that any MSP can go after. Healthcare practices. And when I say healthcare, I mean private practices specifically. So doctors, dentists, dental surgeons, optometrists, or opticians as they’re known here in the UK, veterinarians, we call them vets here in the UK, physiotherapists, cosmetic clinics, all of that kind of stuff. The kind of practice that’s owner operated or partnership run.

I mean somewhere that’s got a reception desk, clinical staff, and a growing pile of technology holding the whole thing together. This is not about hospitals or large health networks. This is about those small to medium-sized healthcare practices that need IT support and they’re probably getting it from someone who maybe doesn’t really understand their world, and that is your opportunity.

A heads up that this podcast is consumed all around the world and obviously there are lots of different healthcare systems out there. So for example, here in the UK, most doctors and what we call general practitioners, GPs, they work within the National Health Service, which is run by the government. So this means I’m not going to dive into specific details or specific laws for any particular country. Instead, I’m going to talk generally about how you can reach all of these kind of clients, whichever country you’re in. Because even though there are different laws and different systems around the world, these healthcare professionals all think and feel and act pretty much along the same lines.

So why do MSPs love healthcare practices so much? Well, let me count the reasons…

First of all, they’re almost entirely recession proof. People don’t stop going to the dentist when the economy wobbles. They don’t stop taking their dog to the vet. I mean, they might cut back on the extra spend such as having all their teeth replaced with those weird looking teeth that Hollywood people have, but they still maintain the basic essentials. So these businesses have a good solid base of revenue still coming in no matter what’s happening to the economy. In fact, these are businesses typically built on recurring appointments, loyal patients and services that can’t be postponed indefinitely.

Second, they are deeply dependent on technology. The appointment system, the patient records, the digital imaging, the billing software, the online prescribing, the payment processing. It’s all technology, right? And all of it needs to work all day, every single day, because when it doesn’t work, the consequences are immediate and painful. A dental practice that can’t access its patient management system on a Monday morning isn’t just frustrating. It’s losing appointments and revenue and it’s letting its patients down. And that’s the kind of downtime that gets you fired as their IT provider and the kind of risk that makes them incredibly motivated to find someone they can genuinely trust.

A side note, I worked with dentists in a previous business, one that I sold 10 years ago, and here in the UK, they call helping the patient’s “chair time”. That’s all the dentist wants, they want chair time. They want the patient in the chair, they want their fingers and metal things in the patient’s mouth, that makes them happy because they’re earning money, and anything other than chair time is losing them money. So it’s really good for you to get into the mindset of what is most import...