Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

Let’s explore whether giving away something for free is a good marketing tactic for your MSP. Also this week, why you must put your personality in your MSP’s marketing, and the MSP that grew from $0 to $36m in 12 years. Welcome to Episode 322 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Is FREE a good marketing tactic for MSPs? Free. It’s a big, shiny word that always draws the attention of MSPs. No matter how much cash you’ve got, free is always an appealing proposition because if something’s free, there’s zero risk, right? So here’s a question, can you use giving away something free as a marketing tactic for your MSP? And more to the point, if you can, should you? Or does it risk devaluing what you do for people? Giving away something for free is one of the oldest playbooks in marketing. I mean, right back in the 19th century, Coca Cola was giving away free samples to promote itself. In fact, that was one of the ways that that brand became so dominant across the US. Free has always been a magic word, hasn’t it? It grabs attention, it lowers barriers, and it makes people feel like they’re getting something for nothing. In the world of B2B, and especially for MSPs, is free still a smart tactic? Or does it actually make people value you less? Before we decide, let’s be clear on something. Free doesn’t automatically mean bad. There are good kinds of free, and there are bad kinds as well. So let’s start with the good ones. When you offer free value, say a helpful guide, a webinar, a checklist, or even a 15 minute consultation, that’s a smart kind of free. It gives potential clients a taste of what you’re like to work with. They see your expertise, your communication style, and the way that you think, and that builds trust. People buy from people they trust, and small, risk-free experiences like that are a great way to earn it. But then there’s the other kind of free, the kind that feels desperate, like giving away months of support, doing unpaid audits, or fixing little things just to prove yourself. And that’s where free starts to devalue what you do. Because if you make it seem like your time, your skill, and your expertise aren’t worth paying for, why would anyone believe that they are? And here’s the tough truth. Once someone sees you as the free guy, it’s very hard to change that perception later. You’ve anchored your value at zero. So how do you walk that line? How do you use free strategically without shooting yourself in the foot? Here’s the test that I like to use. If it gives value but doesn’t cost you much time or money, then it’s “good free”. But if it costs you significant effort or replaces something you should be charging for, it’s “bad free”. So a downloadable guide that explains how to protect a business from phishing attacks, great free. But a two-hour deep dive audit of someone’s network, that’s not free, that’s a service. No pay, no play. Here’s one more thing to keep in mind. In 2026, attention is the new currency. So giving something away for free can be a brilliant marketing exchange as long as it earns you attention or trust. Thank you very much for those. But if it earns you nothing but extra work and frustration, it’s not marketing, it’s martyrdom. So is free still a good marketing tactic for an MSP? Yes, it is, but only when it’s intentional, limited, and built to lead somewhere valuable. Don’t give your time away, give away your thinking. That’s what positions you as the local IT expert and gets local business owners saying, wow, if this is what this person gives away for free, imagine what I get if I paid for it. Why you must put your personality in your MSP’s marketing Have you ever wondered what it’s like being an ordinary business owner or man...

We are continuing a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the third step: Convert relationships. Welcome to Episode 321 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Convert relationships Hello and happy New Year, and welcome to our final special episode of this podcast. We’re finishing a three part series this week. Last year, I released my book, MSP marketing: Start Here, about a 3 step lead generation system, which is trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world. In the first special, we looked at the first step – build audiences. Last week was the second step – grow relationships, and today, starting 2026, we’re going to do the final step – convert relationships. Let me paint a picture. You’ve built your audience, you’ve nurtured your relationships, but now what? How do you turn all of that goodwill into actually clients without feeling pushy, desperate, or salesy? Because no MSP wants to be like that. Well, that is where step three comes in – convert relationships. I like to think of this stage as harvesting, farming. You’ve spent months planting seeds – every post, every email, every conversation – and now it’s time to gently shake the tree and see what’s ready to fall out. And I say gently because good sales isn’t about pressure, it’s all about timing. Remember, business owners only switch MSPs when they are ready, not when you are ready, or you need more MRR. So your job is to make sure that when that readiness appears, when they finally get fed up with their current incumbent MSP, you are the first person that they think of. And that’s why conversion is as much about staying in touch as it is about asking for the business. There are a few practical ways to do this. The first is personal outreach, and by that I mean a phone call. But here’s the trick. It shouldn’t come from you. So I’m assuming that you are the business owner and you’ve already got a million other things to do, right? So hire someone, even if that person is part-time, to just make those calls for you. A back to work mom is great for this. Someone working two to three hours a day, two to three days a week, and you want someone warm, friendly, and curious. Their job is not to sell IT support, it’s just to have conversations on your behalf. Things like, Hey, we connected on LinkedIn a while ago, or you connected with my boss on LinkedIn a while ago. How’s business going? Something super simple like that, something human that starts and maintains and builds relationships that can turn into video calls. That’s the thing. Her job is to book a video call with you, a 10 to 15 minute video call, and then you do the hard work of turning the video call into a real sales meeting. Now, the other way that you can do this is through marketing campaigns. And I’m not talking about the one-off hit and hope campaigns that we all get tempted by or that we get from vendors, and you think, oh, this is brilliant, and you do one piece of activity and then you’re kind of upset that nothing happens from that. I’m talking about systematic outreach marketing campaigns that build on the relationship that you’re building with your prospects. So things like sending a physical letter out to a batch of prospects and then following that up with an email the next day saying, Hey, did you get my letter? And then making a friendly follow-up call later in the week. Now, this stuff is old school, but I promise you it works because most MSPs don...

We are continuing a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the second step: Grow relationships. Welcome to Episode 320 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. Grow relationships Hello and welcome to another special episode of the podcast. We are continuing a three-part series this week. Earlier this year I released my book, MSP marketing: Start Here, about a 3 step lead generation system trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world. Last week, we looked at the first step – build audiences. Today it’s the second step – grow relationships. I want to tell you a secret about marketing that most MSPs miss. It’s not about technology. It’s not about your tools, your stack or your accreditations. It’s about trust. Because nobody’s buying from you until they trust you, and they can’t trust you until they like you, and they can’t like you until they know you. That’s why the second step, growing relationships, matters so much. Think about your own buying habits. When was the last time you hired someone for your business – a supplier, a consultant, or an agency – where you knew deep down, these are my people, this is my person. That didn’t happen because they cold called you at the right moment, right? It happened because you felt like you already knew them. Maybe you’d seen their content or you’d heard their stories or maybe laughed at their bad jokes, or maybe a friend had talked about them, or maybe you just liked their energy. You trusted them before you ever met with them. And that’s what you’re trying to create for your prospects. Growing relationships is about showing up regularly with something useful, human, consistent. And the good news is it doesn’t need to be complicated. You don’t need to become a social media influencer or hire a full-time marketing team. You just need to keep feeding your audiences with what I call edutainment – education and entertainment combined, something that teaches and makes them smile at the same time. Now, that’s your weekly email, that’s your blog on your website, that’s your LinkedIn posts which should go out every day, it’s your videos that you make or that you get in for your business. It’s not about talking tech, it’s about talking people. Business owners don’t care about patching, monitoring, or endpoint protection. They care about whether their team can get work done without tearing their hair out. They care about productivity, they care about growth, stress, risk. So talk about those things. Show them that you understand what it’s like to run a business because that’s what builds connection. One of my favorite ways to do this is through storytelling. Tell stories about your clients with permission of course, or at the very least, anonymise it. Tell them how a small tech change made someone’s life easier, about mistakes that you made early in your business and what you learned. Because stories stick and if you can make someone feel something – curiosity relief, even a little amusement – they will remember you. And the magic is that over time, these people start to feel like they know you. They see your face on LinkedIn every week. They read your newsletter over their morning coffee. They might even forward one of your emails to a colleague. They’re building a relationship with you even though you’ve never met. That’s the heart of marketing today. Asynchronous relationships. You build them slowly with every piece of content that you publish. And one day out of nowhere, that quiet relationship becomes real. Someone you’ve never spoken to sends you a message saying, Hey, do you know we’ve been following your stuff for ages, can we talk? And that’s wh...

We are kicking off a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the first step: Build audiences. Welcome to Episode 319 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge Build audiences Hello and welcome to a special episode of the podcast. We are kicking off a three part series this week. Earlier this year, I released my latest book, it’s called MSP marketing: Start Here, and it’s all about a 3 step lead generation system trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world. It’s super simple and yet incredibly powerful, and that’s by design. So starting this week, we’re doing a deep dive into it. Let me tell you what the 3 step system is, and then this week we’re going to look at the first step. I see my job as making marketing super simple for you, which is why I’ve pulled together an entire marketing strategy, a whole 3 step system into just six words. Let me tell you what they are – Build audiences. Grow relationships. Convert relationships. Super simple. But as you’re about to hear today and over the next couple of weeks, there’s a lot of detail within these three steps. This week’s special, we’re just going to focus on how you can build audiences. So let me start with the question. If I asked you right now to name 10 local business owners who would love to hear from you about their IT, could you do that? Most MSPs can’t, and that’s not a criticism, it’s just the reality of how most MSPs build their businesses. They focus on doing great work for the clients they’ve already got, which is great. They rely on word of mouth, referrals, and maybe the occasional inbound lead. Here’s the truth, if you don’t have an audience to market to, then you don’t really have a marketing engine. You’ve got luck but you haven’t got control. Building audiences is the foundation of everything else you’ll do in marketing your MSP. And yet, it’s the bit that most MSPs skip because it feels slow, it’s not sexy. You can’t post a selfie about it on LinkedIn and get a dopamine rush of likes. But when you’ve got an audience, a real audience of people who are listening to you, trust me, everything changes. Let me tell you where this hit me the hardest. Back in my first business, a marketing agency that I built up between 2005 and then sold in 2016. Back in the early days, I was desperate for predictable leads and I tried everything… one-off campaigns, buying data lists, I was spending too much on ads and some things worked a little bit, but most of these things didn’t work. And then one day I realised something painfully simple. I didn’t have an audience. I had a client base, and I had some people on my email list, but I didn’t have a community of people who wanted to hear from me. And that’s when I stopped chasing leads and started building lists. Lists of people who liked what I had to say. People who might not buy today, but who might remember me when they were ready to buy. And that’s when things really started to change in that previous business. So what does building audiences look like for you as an MSP? It’s not complicated. It’s small, deliberate habits that compound. You start by finding the right people on LinkedIn. What if you were to attempt 10 new connections every weekday? And here’s the thing, it’s not about the numbers that you build up. It’s about doing this intentionally, because you’re not connecting to just everyone, you’re connecting to the right kind of people, the people you’d like to do business with – the decision makers, the people who run businesses that match your ideal client profile. Because when your connections are right, your content really starts to land in front of the right people. And then you engage with the...

I’ve asked five people, who are both friends and MSP experts, what they think is going to happen to MSPs next year. Let’s jump straight into our experts’ predictions for what could happen in your world in 2026. Welcome to this SPECIAL Episode 318 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge. 5 expert predictions for MSPs in 2026 Hello and welcome to the first of four special episodes to take us through Christmas and into 2026. And that’s actually where we’re starting, with predictions for next year. You’re going to hear predictions about the demand for cyber security, how content marketing might die as a marketing channel, a really cool idea about creating free apps as lead magnets, why you should help your clients reign in the usage of SaaS tools, why you should invest into your leadership and how to beat much bigger MSPs in your marketplace. And as you’d expect, there’s a lot of talk about AI.   Hi there, it’s Jamie Warner, CEO of MSP eNerds and SAS vender, Invarosoft. So what are my predictions for 2026 in the MSP industry? Well, I’ve got a few to tell you. First one is SMB, small to medium businesses, are always going to need an IT partner. I think people have been saying for many years, our relevance won’t be there in the future. As long as you have non-technical people that don’t understand technology, we’ll always have a huge amount of business to chase and a huge amount of opportunity there for outsourced IT services and to be an IT partner for them. I think the number one trend though will always continue to be cyber security. I’m definitely noticing in my world, in the eNerds world, that new clients are always very cautious and worried about their security posture. So certainly focusing on that and ensuring that you’re following one of the best practice frameworks so that you can articulate how your service delivery will meet those cyber security requirements is going to be important. Another one, artificial intelligence, obviously it’s a huge buzzword. How do MSPs get engaged? There’s a lot of people out there trying to tell you how you can just do certain things around AI. I think firstly, let’s get the platform right as MSPs, and then of course it’s going to be the Microsoft platform with Copilot. So making sure that you are crystal clear on how Copilot works. One of the things we are doing is running webinars with the big vendors and distributors with their experts around this space. Or you could become your own expert if you like, and making sure that you are being proactive with your advice around how to actually use AI in the Microsoft Suite. It tends to be 90+% of businesses are on the Microsoft platform unless you’re purely a Google shop or the like, but ultimately that’s a really good place to start and make sure that you are best in class around. The last one that I would say, and it’s that my biggest bug bear if anyone see me talk, is just how we articulate our services when you get a new business lead. One thing that will not change in 2026 is that when clients are looking for a new IT partner, they’re essentially looking for a step up in service delivery and in the experience they get. So when you get a new lead, your only job is to convince them that your service delivery methodology is going to be a step up. And so your job is to argue the case of how you are going to deliver a service that will be best in class. So what are you going to talk about? The big things is actually explaining and visually explaining, for example, your customer experience technology, how visibly you’re going to provide them with a one pane of glass. It could be your technology business reviews actually showing them how you’re going to do a gap analysis, a traffic ligh...