The Power of Content Marketing: Transforming Your MSP’s Outreach and Success

Last month the MSP Sales and Marketing Book Club held its second meeting and discussed the book ‘They Ask, You Answer’ by Marcus Sheridan. The primary focus of Sheridan’s book centers around the concept of ‘Content Marketing’, as this is the marketing strategy that he advocates many small- and medium-sized businesses adopt, if they are looking to significantly grow their customer base and annual revenues.

If you are wondering what ‘content marketing’ is, it’s a marketing strategy where material is created that aims to teach and problem solve to earn a buyer’s trust. In the author’s words, it is a philosophy where you strive to become ‘obsessed with what your prospect is thinking, feeling and fearing. It is an absolute willingness to be so focused on your prospect’s wants, desires and needs that you evolve your marketing model around producing content solely focused on understanding these elements.’

Unfortunately, in my work as N‑able’s Head Sales & Marketing Nerd, I find that many MSPs don’t understand this model of marketing, and as a result, their marketing messaging misses, and fails to attract the type of leads they were hoping for.

3 Reasons You Should Implement a Content Marketing Strategy for Your MSP

1. It’s a practical and straightforward methodology to differentiating your MSP from the competition

As reported in our 2024 Horizons Report, and updated in our 2025 Horizons Report, there are now over 338,000 IT channel companies delivering some form of managed IT service globally – making it increasingly more difficult for MSPs to stand out and get noticed. But one way to break through the sea of sameness, is by producing marketing content and campaigns that leverage thought leadership with the goal of educating prospects.

2. It provides a mechanism to better connect with prospects

By creating and delivering content that is relevant to them and their industry – addressing the problems, challenges, and concerns they are experiencing within their industry – it affords you the opportunity to foster stronger connections. During February’s Sales and Marketing Book Club discussion, we examined the pros and cons of specialization and the benefits that arise when MSPs create niches for themselves. We did a quick survey of Book Club attendees, and found that 85% operate a generalist type of MSP, supporting businesses across all industries. Only 15% said they specialize by exclusively supporting key businesses within specific industries.

Operating as a generalist MSP could potentially limit growth because supporting all businesses in all industries may result in broad but shallow knowledge. This can make it more challenging to create content that resonates deeply with prospects, conveying an understanding of their business needs. Conversely, focusing on a specific industry allows for deeper expertise, enabling the creation of content that businesses within that industry would find useful and valuable for improving their operations.

3. It eliminates the practice of self-centered marketing by encouraging an outward customer-centric approach.

Prospects are attracted to those organizations that appear to understand their respective priorities, challenges, and concerns, and which can offer resolutions to those issues to improve their business operations. Unfortunately, many MSPs’ websites and social media efforts do not communicate their problem-solving capabilities well, and therefore, fail to create a meaningful connection with their website visitors because they are not offering content that is helpful or meets them where they’re at in their buyer’s journey.

If a business owner is visiting your website, it is typically because they have a problem and are seeking a solution. Likely something has happened with their current MSP partnership and they are seeking to make a change. Hence, one direction your website could take with its messaging is how to best educate visitors on what to consider when choosing a new MSP. Producing blog content such as “How to Select the Best IT Network Support Partner for your Business” or “What You Should Be Looking for in Your Next IT Support Provider” can demonstrate that you understand their current situation and are willing to provide valuable assistance in their decision-making process.

Unfortunately, what I see via my website reviews, are websites that over-emphasize their services, offerings, and business achievements rather than providing content that addresses how they can help resolve organizational challenges or acknowledges why prospects are even visiting their site in the first place. It is important to keep in mind who your target audience is: typically non-technical business owners who may not have extensive technical knowledge, who believe that an MSP’s primary job is fixing computers. But as MSPs, your skillsets and expertise extend far beyond merely ‘fixing computers’. As such, your web and social media content should reflect this, but in a more influential way that extends beyond showcasing a laundry list of services you can provide.

Why Are MSPs not Adopting Content Marketing?

As practical and seemingly straightforward as implementing a customer-centric, content marketing approach is, many MSPs will not adopt this highly effective marketing model due to two significant reasons:

1. Lack of ownership

Producing content takes work. For this strategy to work, there must be someone in charge – and sorry Mr. MSP Business Owner, this isn’t you! Producing content and managing the editorial schedule cannot be another plate that you try to keep spinning in the air, along with all of your other responsibilities. This strategy requires a dedicated person to manage the entire content production lifecycle. In Sheridan’s book, he advocates hiring a few key positions to bring about greater degrees of success and to stimulate growth. Besides the Content Marketing Manager, he also strongly advocates hiring your own videographer, as video content is more engaging and increasingly how prospects prefer to consume content. Including a video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by over 80%, and viewers are also 95% more likely to remember a call to action after watching a video verses 10% when reading it in text format.

2. Lack of buy-in from the leadership team and the failure to create a ‘culture’ around marketing and sales

Creating a culture where everyone – despite their actual role in the company – is in sales and marketing, starts at the very top. As the MSP Business Owner, your mandate is to create the culture within your MSP that everyone contributes to the growth of the business, and therefore, plays a hand in the ongoing success of a business. Although you might not be the one doing the actual marketing ‘work’, the focus, dedication, cooperation, and enthusiasm you demonstrate will send a clear message to the entire team that marketing and producing quality content is everyone’s responsibility and contributes to everyone’s benefit. When it comes to this marketing approach, the mindset of leadership is everything. If leadership doesn’t truly feel this marketing strategy would work for their MSP or it can’t be done, then the MSP will continue to struggle with sales and growing the business.

Ultimately for true marketing success, for those MSPs that can cross the marketing chasm and transition from utilizing overly generalized, self-promotional marketing tactics to more of a customer-centric, consultative and informative marketing model that aims to build credibility and buyer’s trust, they will leap-frog over their competition and will be wildly more successful in the long run.

If you are interested in placing a dedicated focus on your marketing and lead gen efforts this year, then consider signing up to participate in my monthly MSP Sales & Marketing Book Club. Our next Book Club Meeting will be taking place April 22^nd, where we will be discussing the book by Chet Holmes “The Ultimate Sales Machine.”  Everyone is welcome to join – whether you are an N‑able MSP Partner or not. All I ask is that you read or listen to the selected book and be ready to participate and share your thoughts and insights with the group!