EP04 - Mastering MSP Marketing: Insights from Paul Green

Paul Green (00:00):

This is possibly the least interesting podcast on the planet.

Justin Esgar (00:10):

What's up everybody? Welcome back to the All Things MSP podcast with your host Justin Esgar, an OG host Eric Anthony, my friend. How are you on this weird supposedly spring day where it's 30 degrees in New Jersey,

Eric Anthony (00:24):

30 degrees, and we have like Gail warnings down here in the south, so, you know, Hey,

Justin Esgar (00:31):

I don't understand when we a as east coasters went from having four seasons to having 12, because we have winter, we have fake spring, we have second winter <laugh>, then we have maybe spring, then we have rain, then we have actual spring, then summer's like a week long, and then it's winter again.

Eric Anthony (00:50):

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, honestly, I haven't noticed, I haven't really looked outside because it's end of quarter and end of month and I have just way too many things to do today. So

Justin Esgar (01:01):

Yeah, that's what happens. A lot of it people, we get, we get stuck indoor. We're indoor kids. That's what happens. I

Eric Anthony (01:05):

Know we are, unfortunately,

Justin Esgar (01:07):

But we have a really awesome guest for the first time ever. Someone who's definitely not an indoor kid, I could tell by his jawline. He definitely has gone outside more than, than either of us. Ladies and gentlemen, all away from his podcast to ours. It's Mr. Paul Green. Paul, how are you man?

Paul Green (01:25):

I'm great. Thank you so much for getting me on. This is already, it's just hearing you talk about the, you talk about the weather, like you're British. What's wrong with you, Justin? You live in New York, you know, introducing a podcast with, with talking about the weather. That's what British people do. What, what's going on?

Justin Esgar (01:43):

What's going on is I listen to, I watch a lot of British element Taskmaster eight outta 10 Cats does countdown off menu podcast with Ed Gamble and James a caster. These are like in my like normal rotation <laugh>.

Paul Green (01:54):

Yeah. These are, these are very British comedies as well. I'm impressed.

Justin Esgar (01:57):

Yeah, yeah,

Eric Anthony (01:59):

Yeah. I was actually talking to a partner, I think it was yesterday, and he said, oh, it's, it's lovely outside. And he was describing the most dismal day and I forget where he was. He was somewhere in the West Midlands.

Justin Esgar (02:13):

I also only know one thing in Japanese, which is EO Teny Dee, which means it's nice weather outside. So like, I have a theme going, <laugh>,

Paul Green (02:24):

I like this. And I thought we were here to talk about like technology and stuff like that, but nah, just don't worry about that. Let's talk about this. This is weather, the podcast

Justin Esgar (02:33):

<Laugh>. This is the, it's yeah, at T M S P stands for all things Massachusetts State all things

Paul Green (02:40):

Meteor

Justin Esgar (02:41):

Local,

Eric Anthony (02:42):

All things technological. Yep. And Space

Justin Esgar (02:45):

Meteor Meteorological. So anyone, for anyone who doesn't know Paul, give a quick two liner who you are, what you do, and how are you helping the Ms. P market?

Paul Green (02:55):

Yeah, thank you. So my name is Paul Green. I'm an M S P marketing expert. I've been in this wonderful world since 2016 and I help more than 700 MSPs all across the world. And in fact, we have more members in the US than we do in the UK now. I help them with their marketing through our M S P Marketing Edge program. I would call myself a self-confessed marketing geek. I we're not going to, but I could talk for seven and a half hours about marketing for MSPs nonstop. It's literally what I do day and night apart from Marvel movies. And Dr. Who, which is again, a very British thing, which I'm, I know you know about Justin, but the apart from Marvel and Dr. Who the rest of my life is Ms. P Marketing,

Justin Esgar (03:37):

And I'm sure plenty of our listeners know all the Marvel and Dr. Who movies. I'm actually really excited for, I I, what is it with Dr who having like a, a a nine month waiting period in between episodes? We could talk about that later.

Paul Green (03:51):

Well, cuz they have film. I will, I will give you an answer. It's, it's cuz the BBC has, doesn't have any money. And this new doctor who, that they're doing this year, they've actually got into bed with Disney Plus and Disney Plus has given them like 10, $10 million. They've literally just given them tons of cash. So, and they, they're creating something called the who Universe. This is their version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. See, we've been talking about weather, we're now talking about Dr. Who this is possibly the least interesting podcast on the planet. No offense, Harry. No, no,

Justin Esgar (04:18):

No. It's the most interesting podcast in all of time and space. See what I did there? There you go. I think that's good. So, so Paul, you, you produced all this content. I've been a big fan of your podcast for a long time. In fact, actually, I think the one way I got in with you and, and, and even to be a guest was you had a, a guest star. I was listening to your podcast. You had some a lady on talking about cybersecurity, and she said during the show, you wouldn't let a bear steal your server. And I was in a, like, I'm gonna make funny t-shirts phase, which I'm still in, but, and I, I made a picture of a bear stealing the server and I sent you the link to the T-shirt and then you were like, this is genius. And, and then I was on your show and I appreciate, and we've been friends since. And, and I love all of that. How how are you helping these MSPs? What, what are the things that MSPs need to learn from you specifically to help them grow?

Paul Green (05:15):

Sure. So MSPs are generally wonderful people and they're very genuine. And I say that with no sarcasm that I, I mean it, I've never known such a bunch of incredible people. You know, the, the, we all know MSPs will work with their direct competitors if, if, if they can help them. You know, most, the vast majority of MSPs got into this cuz they love tech, they love fixing problems, they love helping people. The one big downside of that is, as MSPs start their own business and get a bit busier and take on staff and get to the point which, you know, ev everyone gets to that point eventually where the referrals stop coming in. And you, you're suddenly sitting there and you've got this payroll of 2, 3, 4 people and you've got some clients, but not quite enough clients and you, and you need more business.

(05:58):

And suddenly, as, as the MSPs have to transition into being this proper business owner and they need to do marketing, they suddenly realize that this marketing thing is terrifying. In fact. So I'm not a tech, I'm, I was a radio presenter for, for sort of 10 years and had my own, I started my very first marketing business in 2005, which I sold in 2016. So the way that you feel about technology is how I feel about marketing and vice versa. So to, to me, marketing, I'm rubbing my thighs, you know, it's exciting, it's brilliant. It's also very, very simple for me. Whereas technology is terrifying. You know, as I'm, as I'm putting a cassette into my Beam Max video recorder to watch something on tv, that, that's me in technology. So I understand why MSPs find marketing terrifying that my, my approach and what I say to most MSPs is, first of all, relax.

(06:48):

Secondly, try not to think about marketing too much and, and don't make it such a big thing in your head. Marketing is not magic, right? It's very easy to look at something you don't understand and think, woo, it's magic. I need to be a wizard. You don't need to be a wizard. Marketing is a science, right? And if it's a science, that means we can break it down into a series of small steps and then we can turn those steps into a system. So in terms of what, what I bring to marketing, I've been working for, what's it nearly seven years now of, of just trying to simplify it. And obviously on day one, you know, when I first entered the MSP market in 2016, my thinking on this wasn't as clear on it as it is today. In fact, today as we record this, my team and I, I, I now have 10 people on my team.

(07:33):

My team and I we, we sat and had a, a strategy meeting this morning and we had this massive breakthrough, this epiphany about how we can simplify things down even more and make it simpler and simpler and simpler. And I think that's gotta be another key message to MSPs is that good marketing is simple. If I look at our own marketing, so you, you mentioned the, the, the podcast Justin, and thank you. You, you've been on the podcast twice, I think possibly three times. And, and actually for a while you were, you were starred in the the most listened to episode. And you've, you've since lost that crown. I think you, I think you've been knocked off that crown by Mar Mark I know by Marcus Sheridan, who is a, a top selling author. But we'll come onto that later on. But if you look at something like our, our pod, you know, we we're everywhere.

(08:16):

We have a weekly podcast, which is, we've been doing for three and a half years. We output two really high quality studio based videos a week. We do we sort of do three new articles on our website. We have paid ads, we have a, a Facebook group. We have 5,000 connections on LinkedIn. There's a LinkedIn newsletter. You'd look at all of this and it, you'd think, oh, this is, this is just overwhelming. Where would you start? Well, the answer is it's all systemized. The whole thing is completely systemized. And I as a, as a human being, do very little of that. I originate the ideas and I originate the content and I have a great team who pick it up and they go and do all the work. And, and this is the secret to great marketing. In fact, there's lot, lots of great secrets in that there.

(08:59):

It's turning it into a system. It's, it's, so, it's breaking it down into small steps. It's turning it into a system. And the key thing, and if, if you take one thing away from this podcast, it's this, you as the M s p owner should not be doing your own marketing. Now that does not mean go and hire a marketing agency. There are good agencies and there are bad agencies and there are some that, that are worth talking to. But for, for the vast majority of MSPs, you figure out what marketing actions you should be doing. You break it down into small steps, you turn those into systems and you find other people to do that work for you. And that could be someone on your team, it could be a virtual assistant, it could be someone on five or Upwork. It could be chat G p T or Bard.

(09:47):

You know, these tools now are really ready to replace entry level writers. We did a test the other day. We hired some entry level writers on five and we gave them the exact, the same brief that we gave to chat G P T. Which do you think was better? Well, I can tell you, which was cheaper and faster and it certainly wasn't the humans on five. So you've got all of these things floating around. But the key thing comes down to it is keep it simple, break it down, turn it into a system and get other people to do it for you.

Justin Esgar (10:19):

I love that. And I think this is one of those things, Eric, where as he Paul saying, and we're gonna put these like big pop-ups, like keep it simple, sit ize and have other people do it for you, like underlined, because that's super important. And I think it's also that when it comes to the systemization of things, like as it folk, we love systems, right? So it makes sense that we wanna follow that path and and do that, right? We wanna make things easy for people. So let's make it easy for ourselves. We want systems for people, make systems for ourselves. They hire us, they're hiring outside. Let's hire someone else to do the marketing. Like we're just have to eat our own dog food, basically.

Paul Green (10:57):

Hmm.

Eric Anthony (10:57):

Yeah.

Paul Green (10:58):

And, but I'll tell you why MSPs don't create systems. I'm sorry to interrupt you there. The, the, because because marketing is, is that mystic cloud? What, what are the systems? What are the steps? You know, if you've gotta add a new user to, to a 365 account, you you break that down into five steps. It's, it's very tangible. It's very logical. But if it's a case of, oh, I've gotta build my LinkedIn connections and warm them up and turn them into leads and try and get meetings with them, wh what are the steps? And, and actually, yeah, there's 20, 30, 40 different steps in there. But as I was saying, you can break it down into a series of small actions and, and it can be checklist. It's a, it's amazing when you look at it with that approach.

Eric Anthony (11:35):

So, funny enough, that's almost exactly the answer that I was looking for to the question that I was going to ask is what is the typical thing that gets in the way of us, you know, MSPs turn, you know, their technicians turned entrepreneurs that are getting in the way of us starting a marketing process. And, and I think that's a great answer to that is we get in in our own way because we don't look for that process. And and that's what you bring, right? You bring that process that tried and true, you know, thing that you've already worked through, discovered and are constantly evolving to help these partners you know, move forward in their marketing.

Paul Green (12:23):

Yeah, exactly. That. It's, it's funny you say about us being the, the thing that holds us back. I believe every business owner, me, you, Justin, all of us, we are, we should be on the balance sheet of our, of our business as the biggest liability, but also the biggest asset to the business. Cuz we, we bring the greatest skillset, right? But we're also, my God, we hold ourselves back, we hold all our team back, we, we make all the mistakes. And it's because we're un fireable, it's because we don't have bosses. Isn't this the best thing about running a business, right? You get to do stuff your way and you get to make stupid decisions, screw everything up, lose tons of cash and no one fires you. It's amazing. I love that. Let me, lemme

Justin Esgar (13:04):

Tell you, I think every one of my team would, would vote me as the biggest liability for sure, <laugh>.

Paul Green (13:11):

Oh, and, and do you know, every business owner's team would vote the business owners to be the biggest liability. But as I say, we're also the biggest asset because we, we have created what, once you've got past three years of business ownership, you are a business owner for eternity, right? So I, I know a couple of people who started a business and they didn't, they didn't like it. And within a couple of years they'd kind of just taken the excuse of, oh, I was, I was offered a job and it was too good to turn down and they, they weren't like us, you know, whereas we we're, we're unique people and, and we really are. If you, I'm sure you guys still have friends who are wage slaves, right? And they may be on, they may be corporate wage slaves earning more cash than you, but they're deep down they're miserable cuz they have no control.

(13:51):

And I, I gen, I'm a, I've, I'm a business owner of 18 years now. In fact, I've just celebrated my 18th year anniversary and literally nothing. You could take my arms and my legs off and I would, I would still find a way to operate a keyboard, you know, and do this kind of stuff because I cannot think of anything worse than having a job. There we go. Eric, you mentioned a about bringing order to it. Let me give you the ten second version of the marketing strategy that works for every single MSP and to prove that it works for all MSPs. It's exactly the same strategy I use for my own marketing and have done across a number of different ventures. It's, it's three steps. It's really simple. First of all, you build multiple audiences of people to listen to, listen to you.

(14:33):

So for most MSPs, that's your LinkedIn audience and that's your email audience. There are many others you can do, but for most MSPs, those two audiences will do. So. More people on your email list, more connections on LinkedIn. Second step you build a relationship with them and that's done through content marketing. So putting onto LinkedIn every day and sending out an email to your email database once a week. So immediately now we've just turned that into part, part of a system. So we know now from those first two steps every day we've gotta go and build some LinkedIn connections and we've got to post some content on LinkedIn. Simple as that. And then we've got the third step, which is to commercialize the relationship. Now that one gets a little bit trickier cuz that has the awkwardness of we need the phone for that. We need to make outbound phone phone calls, not cold calls, not selling calls.

(15:21):

We're gonna pay someone, it's probably a back to work mom to work two to three hours a day, two to three days a week, just phoning your LinkedIn connections on your behalf. And her goal is to book them a 15 minute zoom call with you. And then you do the hard work of qualifying the lead, seeing if you wanna work with them and actually asking for a sales meeting. Now what I've just given you there in like 20, 30 seconds is that exact same system that we're talking about. And any M s P anywhere can put this into actions. Really cool.

Justin Esgar (15:52):

Yeah, that's awesome. You make it sound, you make it sound so easy. That's like, that's the one thing I think I love about you and your content is like you make it seem you, the way you explain it and the way and these steps, they are like dead simple for people to do. They just have to be like kicked in the butt to do it. Which is I think a hilarious thing also cuz like, well I am calling the kettle black here. But it's so simple and it, and, and that's why I think a lot of people have gravitated towards you and your content as well. It's cuz you tell it like it is, you make it super easy for people to understand it. You break it down and you have that really nice posh accent and people like to listen to

Eric Anthony (16:33):

<Laugh>. Yeah.

Justin Esgar (16:34):

And, and

Paul Green (16:34):

If you, if you're Brit, you wouldn't think my accent was Polish.

Eric Anthony (16:37):

I would say that you, you don't even that, that word seem that you used. It's not even that he's making it seem simple. It actually is pretty simple. I mean, those steps, you're right, anybody can do that and anybody can can work on their LinkedIn work on the content. It doesn't take a long time per week. In fact, a lot of that, you know, if you get the right tools, you can batch some of that work. So you work on it for a couple hours straight and then it just, you know, automatically schedules and does all the things for the week. So there are ways to really systematize that, like you're talking about, to make it work very, very well and very, very conveniently for an MSP owner who is a relatively busy person.

Justin Esgar (17:25):

Yeah. So Paul, lemme ask you this question

Paul Green (17:27):

And that's why the secret is not to do it yourself.

Justin Esgar (17:31):

Yeah. So lemme me, lemme ask you this first time someone who's listening to us who's never listened to you yet, what's the first thing they should be posting on LinkedIn to garner as much attention? Like, like if, if this is day one, what's the first thing someone should be posting on LinkedIn?

Paul Green (17:47):

So that's kind of the wrong question. And don't be offended by this. I know you won't. We are friends and I've, I've said worse things to you in a, in a, in private than I have in public <laugh>. But the reason that's the wrong question is, is marketing is is a 10,000 mile marathon. And that, that question was a hundred meter sprint question. The, the whole notion of what should I post on LinkedIn to, to, to get to, to blow it up to, to buzz. It's, it's like, no, no, no, no. What what what we're trying to do here is we're trying to find people that could give us money one day and then we can build a relationship with them. And you know, Justin, I know you've been married two or three times, so you know, you've got you, you, you know how, how you have to meet someone and then build a relationship before you get down on one knee and, and ask them to marry you.

(18:33):

It's exactly the same with business owners. Cause actually picking a new M S P is a bit of a distress activity for business owners. It's like switching cpa. We all stick with our CPAs way longer than we should. You know, we, we, we think we should father now and three years later we're still with them. And the reason we do that is because of something called inertia loyalty. It feels easier to stay with someone that's an okay supplier than go off and find a, a new exciting supplier. Now with MSPs, you can, you can times that time type 10 x that because the ordinary business owners and managers that you're dealing with, they don't understand technology. They're a bit scared of the clout, they're vaguely aware of malware and all of this stuff, but they're, they're not that aware of it and they've delegated responsibility for it to the M S P.

(19:20):

So they know if you switch to a bad C p A the worst thing that could happen is you screw up a year's worth of, of tax returns and stuff, and you could always switch to someone else. But if you switch to a bad M S P and, and they take you down and, and you, your, your data's vanishes, you're dead. The the business is dead. And business owners know this deep down. They might not be able to verbalize it, but they, they know that emotionally. So that, that's why we wanna build a relationship with 'em. And that's why it's a 10,000 mile marathon. So actually the, the, the trick is not to just jump straight to the, the, the buzzy oo, whatsoever. It's, sorry to bring it back to the system again, but it's put in place a system. So go, go and find some content, right?

(19:59):

There's, there's tons of places to get content. I I do content with the MSP marketing edge. The tech tribe gives away content to all of its members. The, the, the difference between us is we only work with one MSP per area, but I'm a big fan and a member of the tech drive. Half of the big vendors out there just give you, give you social media content of variable quality. I've seen some incredible stuff and I've seen the worst content you would ever believe. And I'm not naming names either, but this, this, you know, or go and find an MSP on the other side of the country that you're a fan of, right? So if you're on the East coast, find some MSPs on the West Coast to a posting content that you love. Just double check. It's not that they're not getting it from a service and you're not gonna get sued and just look at their content and be inspired by it.

(20:39):

Get someone to rewrite it, get hire a writer, get chat G p t to do it. Finding content isn't difficult. It's perhaps coming up with ideas is, is the most difficult thing. But actually making a commitment to every single day I'm going to post on LinkedIn, whether it is canned content that I've got from someone else, whether it's content that's been written for me or just my own things. You know, I, I, I know an M S P here in the UK every day just goes on LinkedIn, little video in his car on the phone and it's whatever's, whatever's on his mind. He, he could be driving back from a client's site and he's just had to deal with X, y, Z problem. So he just grabs his phone, little video, post it onto LinkedIn and he, he does that every single day, five days a week.

(21:19):

And are they the best videos in the world? No, most of the time do they get the most event engagement and attraction? No, but here's the point. He's connected to several thousand prospects and much of marketing is about being in front of the right person at the right time, the right person at the right time. It's that morning that they wake up and think, right, I've had it with my incumbent M S P, I need a new IT support company. That's the day that that video that you've put onto LinkedIn or that post you put onto LinkedIn helps you be in front of them. It has to be on that day, but we never know when that day is. So we wanna be connected to thousands of people because there, there are lots of that days and we wanna make sure we're putting out content on a regular basis and then keep doing that until we are dead or we sell the business, whichever comes first.

Eric Anthony (22:07):

<Laugh>. Yeah, that, so I

Justin Esgar (22:09):

Feel like my question was right cuz I kind of wanted to cue you up to do that whole rant. So <laugh> <laugh>,

Eric Anthony (22:16):

That's exactly why we used Billboard advertising back in the day because people were in their cars every day. This was back when I was in the pool table industry, okay? And the, the best way to sell a pool table or the best time was when they were building a house or building an addition on their house. And so it was very much exactly that same example where you have to be in front of them all the time so that you're in front of them that one time when they actually need you and then you're there standing front and center to be the one for them to call.

Justin Esgar (22:51):

Yeah.

Paul Green (22:52):

Yeah. I can actually tell you the science behind this. If, if you don't mind me going down that route for 10 seconds. In our brains we have a thing called the reticular activating system, which actually does lots of important things, but it's most critical task for what we're talking about is it acts as a relevance filter. So if you think of all the sensory information that's coming into your brain, everything through the ears, everything you smell, everything you see, everything you taste, everything you touch. We don't actually have to consciously deal with all of that. All of that goes through the reticular activating system. And the very first thing it does is it decides, is this relevant to you right now? If it perceives it is relevant, then you become consciously aware of it is if it perceives you are not, it's not relevant, then it's it ditches that information.

(23:38):

So here's what happens. You go on vacation and you're driving through a new town you've never been to before. You are driving along and suddenly at the corner of your eye, you spot computer repair shop. And the reason you spot that is because it's relevant to you. Here's the thing. Your wife or your partner or whoever is who sat next to you in the car who is a dentist, they, they spot at the corner of their eye, the dentist, the local dentist practice, but they never saw the computer repair shop. Just like you didn't see the dentist because to a dentist, other dentist is relevant to a, to a technician. Computer repair shop is relevant. That is the reticular activating system in action. And it explains why you can, you can say something to someone a thousand times, but until the point it's relevant to them, they, they will not process it cognitively.

Justin Esgar (24:24):

And this is why you're the best at what you do right there, you la you nailed it in one. This is why everyone should be joining your programs and paying you thousands of thousands of dollars for your to just have access to your brain because, you know, you're, you're a very smart person. You know exactly what's going on. You have your finger on the pulse when it comes to this stuff. And everybody should be, everybody should be following in your footsteps and listening to your words at all times.

Paul Green (24:50):

<Laugh>, thank you. And this is, and this is me on a Friday night just before I'm about to start a beer. So, you know, imagine what I'm like on a Monday morning,

Justin Esgar (24:57):

Paul, where could people find you online and buy into your, all of your amazing wears.

Paul Green (25:02):

Sure. Thank you. Well, we, we have, we'd like to start relationship building rather than, than sort of jump straight into the sale so we have so much free content at my website. So if you go to paul greens msp marketing.com, it has got an S in there. So Paul greens msp marketing.com. We've also got the podcast. It's the world's most listened to podcast about MSP marketing. That's a nice little strap line that we've just added into that. You can find that wherever you listen to podcasts. It's also on YouTube. Just look for Paul Green's m s p marketing podcast and particularly look for episode 100. Starring, you know who

Justin Esgar (25:40):

Yeah. Will O'Neill and Rich Wingfield. I, I <laugh>. They're also on that show. They never get credit.

Paul Green (25:47):

They don't,

Justin Esgar (25:48):

Dude, you're, you're a great friend. I thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being our first guest on the All Things M S P podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Paul Green joining Eric Anthony, and myself, Justin Esgar on All Things MSP podcast. Drop a like and follow. Tell us what's going on in your MSP and what you want us to talk about so we can talk about you. Not really behind your back cuz we're doing it, you know, while we record, but, you know, we'll help you with your business and, and help you move along. But if you have marketing questions, check out Paul Green's stuff. He's the best. Paul, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for listening. See ya.