November — A Time for MSPs to Reflect, Strategize, and Set Goals for Success

As the end of the year approaches, it’s time for MSPs to take a moment for meaningful reflection. Let’s explore how you can leverage these last few weeks of the year to assess your progress, set goals, and strategize for the coming 12 months. This is part one of a two-part series dedicated to empowering your journey with actionable insights on reflection, goal-setting, and preparing a winning marketing strategy for the year ahead.

1. The Value of Reflection

Taking a retrospective look at your performance is essential for growth and improvement. Reflecting on key performance indicators (KPIs), campaign effectiveness, and client feedback can provide invaluable insights into what’s working, as well as where there’s room to evolve.

Assessing the Year’s Performance

When it comes to being able to analyze your performance there are two key things to look at:

Review KPIs: Set measurable KPIs to track lead generation, customer engagement, and service delivery. For example, if you aimed for a 20% increase in leads, dive into your analytics to understand where growth happened and where it lagged. Analyze your web traffic and social sources to see which channels drive leads most effectively.

Analyze Campaigns: Campaign metrics can reveal a lot about audience response. If, for instance, you ran a targeted email campaign on cloud services, check your open and click-through rates. High engagement rates suggest resonant messaging, while lower rates highlight areas to rework. Each campaign in N‑able MarketBuilder has a dashboard associated with it that allows you to see the engagement results at a glance.

MarketBuilder is a resource that is included as part of your N‑able product subscription and contains content and campaigns that can help you attract new customers, and retain your existing ones. If you’re an N‑able customer, you can sign up for MarketBuilder now.

Gathering Client Feedback

Client feedback can be crucial to understanding how you are performing, here are two of the most effective way to get that feedback:

Survey Insights: Consider surveying clients with questions like, “On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with our services?” or “What additional services would you like to see from us?” This feedback can guide your service offerings and customer experience initiatives.

Social Listening: Pay attention to recurring themes in client comments on social platforms. If you see frequent mentions of cybersecurity concerns, for instance, that’s a strong indicator to expand your cybersecurity offerings or build a content campaign around this need.

2. Goal Setting with Purpose: The SMART Approach

Setting clear, achievable goals can keep your team aligned and motivated. Focus on creating SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

In order to create SMART goals, you must set specific targets. An example goal could be, “Increase LinkedIn-driven leads by 30% by Q2.” Defining exact objectives ensures you have full clarity.

On top of this, your outcomes should always be measurable. This is where Google Analytics, comes into its own, allowing you to monitor traffic sources, engagement, and conversion rates to get real-time feedback on your progress.

Engage Your Team

It’s also important to make sure you engage your whole team in this process. Your plans are unlikely to be as effective if you don’t have buy-in across the company. Here’s a couple of good ways to engage your staff and take your planning to the next level:

Brainstorming Activities: Host a workshop where team members can brainstorm new campaign ideas. Jot ideas on sticky notes and group them by theme—this fosters collaboration and ensures diverse perspectives.

Establish Feedback Loops: Hold monthly check-ins to review goal progress and adjust as needed. Regular discussions ensure that team members feel valued and empowered, and any challenges can be swiftly addressed.

3. Budgeting to Drive Success

Budgeting isn’t just about numbers; it’s about prioritizing investments that align with your strategic goals and bring the highest return on investment (ROI). And it is also about time. Have you budgeted enough time to marketing this past year? If not, make sure you are including the time you and your team are spending on marketing and include that in your budget planning. Here are two ways that properly analyzing the financial impact of your plans can help improve your projection:

Increased Forecasting Effectiveness: Compare the ROI of past marketing efforts. For instance, if a webinar series cost $5,000 and brought in 50 clients, while an ad campaign cost twice that but brought only 20, it’s clear which channel performed better. Use this data to guide next year’s budget allocations.

More Targeted Spend: Prioritize your high-performing channels. If email marketing consistently drives conversions, allocate a larger portion of your budget here.

Conclusion

This month, give yourself the time to reflect, set meaningful goals, and budget thoughtfully. By reviewing your year, setting team-driven goals, and budgeting with purpose, you’ll lay a strong foundation for a prosperous year.

In the next part of this series, we’ll look at building a dynamic content strategy, exploring new marketing channels, and enhancing your brand for 2024. Stay tuned!

Tracy Trottier is a marketing manager and heads up the MarketBuilder program at N‑able