A great local company just invited Smart Dolphins in as their new MSP. New opportunities are always exciting, but what was notable about this one was how easy the sale was. I inquired a little and I guess we had this person well-surrounded by great Dolphin advocates. Apparently, he asked three business peers who they would recommend for IT support and all three of them responded with, “Smart Dolphins.” He mentioned their names and I was only familiar with one.
I share this story as I think so often as an MSP, branding and marketing seem intangible and so they can appear to lack value. I also think the industry has so many cookie–cutter marketing offerings that really don’t do anything but make a bunch of noise. So, regularly investing in marketing is indefinitely put off to more concrete investments that may have a more direct, tangible line to the ROI.
Just because something can’t be measured, does not mean it provides no value. Smart Dolphins’ investment in marketing continues to pay off.
One of our first PoplarMSP customers, Kevin Studley, from The Network Pro shared something similar with me on Monday. I think he was maybe a little surprised how quickly his investment in thought leadership and technology training with PoplarMSP built a brand following and resulted in new business. I asked him for something quotable to capture his experience:
The classic line comes to mind, “half of my marketing works, I just don’t know which half.” The nice thing about marketing through events is that you can more directly see the flow of attendees through a sales pipeline, unless of course you’re not doing any — then that is a whole different concern.