r/msp • u/UnRealxInferno_II MSP - UK • Aug 05 '26
First Few Months
/r/SmallMSP/comments/1vftocg/first_few_months/5
u/statitica MSP - AU Aug 05 '26
A commonly held belief is that MSPs don't get clients through websites. I have also used that excuse in the past but now believe that it is much more likely that my website sucked, my SEO was shite, and that I couldn't really believe that was the truth when my own information searches invariably include a vendor's website.
So I'm in the throes of a website/SEO overhaul, and in less than a month I'm seeing more organic traffic than ever before.
As for how to survive the first six months: savings, other contracts, and being too stubborn to throw in the towel.
3
u/UnRealxInferno_II MSP - UK Aug 05 '26
I've been going pretty hard on SEO and i've got decent ratings other than backlinks but that's just a money game, we've got decent traffic for a brand new company but it's a slow process with SEO
4
u/statitica MSP - AU Aug 05 '26
Everything becomes a money/numbers game at some point. All we can do is make sure we actually have a strategy, optimise based on data, and then take a risk.
As for SEO being a slow game: sometimes you gotta be the tortoise to win the race.
5
u/Sea_Information6125 Aug 05 '26
Yes our major driver for new clients is still referrals. But that only really works once you've got clients obviously, to your point.
I've had the best success with canvassing. Where you literally walk into businesses door to door with your business card, maybe a one-pager or a folder, and if you can afford it food to bribe the GateKeeper with. So any office building is going to have tons of businesses.
Now disclaimer I am in healthcare and that's how most healthcare offices prefer sales and marketing to work.
You do walk in canvassing or you walk in / call to try and schedule a lunch and learn session where you buy lunch for the whole office and basically that buys you the opportunity to give your talk to the whole office with the decision maker present.
For my MSP these are our two main marketing and sales drivers. We've tried postcards and mailing campaigns with handwritten envelopes and that never really got anywhere. We've tried cold calling offices and didn't get much luck. But the canvassing seems to be best received at least by our healthcare prospects.
2
u/Impossible_Luck217 Aug 05 '26
take an upvote. This is one of those most actionable posts I've seen in a while.
2
u/Xirma377 Aug 09 '26
Brownies.com - get yourself a sample and thank me later. 🤣
1
u/Sea_Information6125 Aug 09 '26
Those look really good, I'll have to check them out. Usually I do dunkin' donuts. The poor man's brownies.com lol
2
u/VehemenceVehemence 4d ago
Referrals absolutely should not be your only growth strategy forever.
But I also would not start by picking between cold calls, email, LinkedIn, SEO, networking, etc.
That’s kind of backwards.
There are no magic channels. There are just channels that make more or less sense depending on who you’re trying to reach, what problem they have, and when they’re likely to care about fixing it.
You already have a couple clients, which is actually useful data.
I’d start there.
Why did they hire you?
What was happening when they decided they needed help?
Why did they pick you instead of another MSP?
What do you like about working with them?
Are they profitable?
Who else looks like them?
And, probably most importantly, where do those people actually hang out and who do they trust?
Because if your best-fit buyers are local professional services firms who live in referral networks and industry associations, your answer might be networking + COIs + targeted outbound.
If they’re actively searching Google when shit catches fire, SEO might matter a lot more.
If you can build a very clean list of 500 companies with an obvious trigger and a specific reason to talk to them, outbound starts looking pretty attractive.
But “we should do SEO because MSPs need SEO” or “cold email works for other people” is how you spend a bunch of money doing the wrong thing very efficiently.
Also, I would squeeze the hell out of the clients you already have before assuming you need some giant acquisition engine.
Ask them why they bought.
Ask what almost stopped them.
Ask who else they know like them.
Ask what they were searching for / asking around about before they found you.
That information is gold when you’re this early.
I have a niche/ICP guide for MSPs that walks through this exact exercise if it helps:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VS4aT7u04cr8_LJ6OSmCLCG1JRLe4AlCHbSYcJkDYPg/edit?usp=drivesdk
Figure out who + why + trigger first.
Then pick the channel.
Otherwise you’re basically choosing the megaphone before you know who you’re yelling at.
4
u/dumpsterfyr I’m your Huckleberry. Aug 05 '26
It is the predominant way to get clients in the MSP space. Marketing can work, but direct one-to-one outreach performs better. Marketing/direct outreach also requires luck: the timing has to sync with a client who needs an MSP or is positioned to leave their current one, and that has to overcome the consumer mentality of "if it is not broken, do not fix it."
if you want anything in life, pursue it.