You’re great at managing technology – but marketing your MSP services is a different beast altogether. Leads trickle in inconsistently, growth plateaus, and worse, you have no idea which marketing efforts are actually paying off.
You're not alone. With an estimated 40,000 MSPs across the U.S. competing for clients,1 standing out is harder than ever. The good news is that the global managed services market is forecasted to reach $1.3 trillion by 2030,2 so there’s no shortage of opportunity.
Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to simply be technically proficient anymore. Your prospects are conducting research online and comparing you against other MSPs before they ever pick up the phone. Without a solid MSP marketing strategy, you're likely not making any shortlists during the evaluation phase.
Read on to see what marketing for MSPs should actually look like and how you can master it.
What Is MSP Marketing?
MSP marketing is the strategic promotion of managed IT services through channels like content marketing, SEO, paid media, email, and social media. When done well, it generates leads, builds brand awareness, and helps sales teams close deals faster.
Because MSPs operate on recurring revenue models, your long-term relationships are critical – as is your ability to bring in the right-fit prospects who convert and stick around. The right marketing strategy can help you:
- Build trust and authority in your niche
- Educate buyers and shorten sales cycles
- Differentiate from competitors offering similar services
- Support upsells, cross-sells, and customer retention
In other words, effective MSP marketing fills your pipeline with leads who close faster, stay longer, and become advocates for your business. That's the foundation of sustainable, profitable growth.
Why Does MSP Marketing Need a Specialized Strategy?
MSPs face unique challenges that leave traditional B2B marketing tactics falling flat:
Technical Buyers Want Substance
A CTO or IT director evaluating MSPs doesn’t want to read fluff. They want content that speaks to their IT pain points, demonstrates expertise, and shows how you’ll add value to their operations. You're not just selling a service, you're selling expertise. Your messaging has to demonstrate both.
Trust is Everything
Managed services buyers are handing over access to their entire IT infrastructure. That's not a casual decision. Before anyone calls your sales team, they're vetting you – reading reviews, checking your credentials, and looking for case studies that prove you deliver. Your marketing is where you build that trust before the conversation even starts.
Long Sales Cycles Require Nurturing
B2B technology deals take months to close – 121 days on average.3 If you don't stay top of mind throughout that whole journey, you'll lose to a competitor who does. Your marketing needs a consistent lead nurturing strategy (think email sequences, retargeting, and relevant content offers), rather than capturing them once and hoping they remember you.
The 5 Pillars of Managed Services Marketing
Building a solid MSP marketing strategy means working across multiple channels strategically. Here are the five pillars that matter:
1. Positioning & Messaging
Before you build out a campaign, you need to know exactly who you serve and what makes you different. Are you the MSP for healthcare compliance? The expert in cloud migration for mid-market firms? The go-to for financial services security?
Get specific about your ideal customer profile (ICP) and write out your value proposition. Then make sure your messaging always reflects that positioning. When prospects instantly understand who you serve and why you're the right fit for their specific situation, they self-select into your funnel.
2. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Most buyers start their research on Google, which is why SEO for MSPs is one of the highest-ROI channels available. If you're not showing up for the keywords they're searching for, you're already losing.
Effective digital marketing for MSPs includes both on-page SEO (like blog content, keyword optimization, and site structure) and technical SEO (like speed, mobile responsiveness, and schema markup). Together, these elements signal to search engines that you’re a legitimate resource so that your website shows up when prospects are looking for MSP services.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing might feel outdated, but it's still one of the most effective channels for digital marketing. Nearly half (41%) of marketers counted email as their most effective channel in 2024, but 23% emphasized the importance of personalizing emails for different segments.4
Don’t send the same email to:
- A new lead who’s learning about your services
- A current customer you want to expand with
- A prospect who went cold six months ago
These people need different messages. For example, you might nurture new leads with educational content, upsell to existing customers with relevant promotions, and re-engage prospects at the right moment with the right offer. When segmentation and personalization are done right, email can drive real results.
4. Content Marketing
Educational content helps you demonstrate expertise while guiding buyers through their journey. An effective MSP content marketing strategy should include:
- In-depth blog posts on topics like cybersecurity, compliance, or cloud strategies
- Case studies that show how you've solved real problems for real clients
- Explainer videos and how-to guides that educate prospects
- Downloadable resources like security checklists or assessment tools
When a prospect reads your detailed guide on ransomware protection or watches you explain your disaster recovery process, they're getting a sense of your expertise. Content is your chance to show, not tell, that you understand their world.
5. Paid Advertising
Paid ads can amplify your growth efforts fast, with 84% of brands seeing positive pay-per-click results in 2025.5 Paid search (Google Ads) captures high-intent users, while paid social (LinkedIn, Facebook) can build awareness and target specific roles or industries.
Managed service provider marketing should blend organic and paid strategies. Organic channels like SEO and content marketing build momentum over time and create sustainable traffic. Paid channels fill your pipeline immediately while you're building that organic foundation. Together, they create a consistent flow.
Tips for Building a Better MSP Marketing Strategy
Ready to move beyond the basics? These best practices can amp up your MSP marketing efforts:
Prioritize Quality Over Quantity
Publishing a blog every week won’t help if the content doesn’t serve your audience. Focus on creating fewer, higher-quality pieces that address actual pain points, use relevant keywords, and reflect your brand’s expertise.
Automate the Repetitive Stuff
Your marketing should free up time for your team, not create more work. Marketing automation tools like HubSpot handle the repetitive tasks that drain your team's energy, tracking engagement across channels, scoring leads based on sales-ready criteria, and reporting on pipeline attribution.
At Mojenta, we help MSPs implement and optimize marketing automation platforms so that your teams can focus on closing deals – not chasing down leads.
Get Consistent With Branding
Your logo, voice, tone, and visual style should be consistent across LinkedIn, your website, emails, case studies, and everywhere else. When a prospect sees consistent branding across multiple touchpoints, it signals professionalism and reliability. Inconsistent branding screams amateur hour.
Measure What Matters
In HubSpot’s 2025 State of Marketing report, 35% of respondents said using data to inform marketing efforts became more important in the past year.6 Learn what’s working by tracking KPIs that align with your goals, like:
- Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
- SQL-to-close rate
- Organic traffic growth
- Email click-through rate
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Use these numbers to figure out what's working, double down on it, and pivot away from what's not.
Align Your Sales & Marketing
The biggest waste we see is when marketing and sales teams aren't aligned. Marketing generates leads, sales say they're terrible, and everyone blames everyone else.
Stop the cycle by building your marketing strategy alongside sales. Collaborate on buyer personas, handoff processes, and what qualifies as a sales-ready lead. When both teams agree on these fundamentals, conversion rates go up, and friction goes down.
Master MSP Marketing With Mojenta
Marketing for MSPs isn't a mystery. You need to be visible where your prospects are searching, build trust, and nurture prospects with the right message at the right time. But whether your in-house team has the time and know-how to execute an effective managed services marketing strategy will make all the difference.
At Mojenta, we’ve helped MSPs build marketing strategies that actually work for nearly two decades. From positioning and branding to SEO, content, email, and paid ads, we know what drives real results in this space.
Our full-funnel approach to digital marketing for MSPs is built on deep experience in the IT and telecom space. That means we’re not guessing what works. We speak your language. We know your buyers. And we have proven playbooks to help you grow faster and smarter.
Let’s elevate your marketing strategy together. Get in touch with us today to get started.
Sources:
- https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/united-states-managed-services-market
- https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/managed-services-market
- https://focus-digital.co/average-sales-cycle-length-by-industry
- https://www.hubspot.com/hubfs/2024%20State%20of%20Marketing%20Report/2024-State-of-Marketing-HubSpot-CXDstudio-FINAL.pdf
- https://www.seo.com/blog/digital-marketing-statistics
- https://www.hubspot.com/state-of-marketing
