The managed IT services market is crowded - it can be difficult to set your company apart from the competition and showcase what makes you unique.
In this blog, we will identify 5 strategies to increase your visibility and differentiate your business in a crowded market.
1. Build packages that make sense for your clients
Few businesses can credibly claim to be good at everything. Differentiating in a crowded market and maintaining high-profit margins requires an MSP to build packaged offers that make sense for its ideal customer target.
By creating a packaged offer, MSPs can reduce the learning curve associated with each new client, become more efficient at service delivery and enhance their ability to leverage existing tools and assets. MSPs can charge premium pricing for these bundles and then further boost margins and profits with tailored add-ons.
MSPs can also leverage existing sales and marketing materials, like customer references, to win each new deal more quickly and easily.
Focus on what you do best, package it for your customers, and then offer additional specialized services tailored to each specific client’s needs.
2. Track your clients’ requests to identify the right services to offer
Don’t overlook what your customers are looking for. You want to build your service offering around core competencies, but continue to grow and tailor as you notice customer needs and demands evolving.
Survey your customers’ needs and take notes of what concerns they have - you might find there are other services they need that you haven’t considered.
Maybe they don’t want to run the infrastructure 24/7 for 8-hour workdays.
Maybe they need to implement a Disaster Recovery plan.
Maybe they are considering moving to the cloud.
MSPs can play a big role in helping customers anticipate and solve their problems. So, talk to your customers. Find out what their concerns are and what products they want – before any of your competitors. Then figure out how to add it to your service offerings.
3. Pick third party providers that fill gaps and offer flexible support
As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, new ideas and innovations spread quickly. Speed to execution becomes critical for you to maintain pace as a technology leader in the market.
This places a lot of pressure on the MSPs. If it takes three months to architect and build out a service that your customers request, you are likely to lose that opportunity to someone else who already develops that line of service.
Keep an eye out for providers that can offer you services that might be beneficial for your customers. You can resell their services and cut down the time-to-market.
For example, find a cloud vendor you can trust, someone who will back you up and help you grow your business. Choose the one that will offer good support services and reseller resources.
4. Leverage the right technology to grow
A successful MSP business requires a good product with quality service and customer support.
However, many MSPs hold themselves back by the lack of or outdated infrastructure management tools and processes. In the past, they treated each new service as a one-off – implementing custom tools and processes to address a specific opportunity. As a result, their businesses were saddled with too much complexity and too many time-consuming, labor-intensive processes.
MSPs can now take advantage of the new cloud infrastructure and management tools – which make it significantly easier to deploy new services while eliminating unnecessary costs and maintenance time.
A comprehensive cloud desktop and app delivery platform, such as MyCloudIT, can automate the provisioning, management, monitoring, and billing from a single pane of glass. This solution will enable MSPs to deliver and scale their Remote Desktop Services without having to pay for on-premises servers, hardware maintenance, or cloud training courses.
Therefore, to meet with today’s high demand for quality service, MSPs will need a new approach – replacing ad hoc, bespoke systems and processes with standardization and automation.
5. Show yourself off
You can differentiate yourself by the way you are presented. More important now than ever in the age of digital transformation.
An online presence is a must – you must use different digital channels such as website, email, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Because marketing is now the new sales, you can speak to your potential customer even before the face-to-face conversation begins.
A few tips to set yourself apart from the crowded online market:
- Develop an authentic voice instead of normal business jargon – make IT transparent and comprehensible even for non-technical people.
- Communicate early and regularly – create engaging welcome emails and regular, helpful updates for your leads as well as your customers.
- Offer value through online networking – identify the key channels on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Reddit to answer questions and provide insights.
- Optimize for conversions – make it easy for people to contact you, whether it is putting a CTA under every piece of content, having a clear, relevant CTA in your email and signature, or engaging web analytics to identify the content and strategies that are most effective.
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Tags: Managed Service Provider
