WTF! How One MSP Marketing Company Qualifies Adwords Calls

WTF! How One MSP Marketing Company Qualifies Adwords Calls

When you hire a marketing company, that part of the business is no longer of your concern, right? You can forget about it, sit back, and trust them with all things SEO-related while you wait for your Google rankings to skyrocket, right? You don’t have to ask any questions or find out what they’re doing behind the scenes, right?

No.

You should find out what the marketing company is doing. The earlier you can find out what they’re doing, the better chance you have of determining whether they are helping or hurting your MSP site. With so many MSP marketing companies, it can be easy to be fooled by false promises and bad SEO techniques wrapped in a pretty gift box of dishonesty.

Is Your MSP Marketing Company Hurting Your Business?

So you have an existing marketing company. Congrats on understanding that MSP SEO is a great cost-effective way to bring potential clients to your site. SEO is an essential part of any successful MSP marketing strategy.

I know many businesses that have placed their trust in a marketing company, only to have their sites and their business put in jeopardy through poor SEO techniques. I’ve seen other businesses spend thousands of dollars trying to get to the top of the Google search rankings, only to realize they’ve been scammed.

I don’t want that to happen to your MSP business. I don’t want you to waste your money or ruin your MSP website.

Your current marketing company could be hurting your business and you may not know it. You probably hired the company because it seemed like a good fit at first or maybe you had little time to perform a thorough search. So, what do you do when your marketing company is not performing well or not performing as expected?

Whatever your reason for hiring your existing marketing company, you’re now in a difficult position because your MSP marketing company is not delivering the results you expected. You are losing patience and confidence and you don’t know whether you should stick with them or move on from them.

How can you identify and avoid bad MSP marketing companies while making sure you are working with marketing professionals who use solid techniques and truly want you to excel in your business?

Here are some warning signs that your marketing company could be a problem.

Your Marketing Company Doesn’t Take Accountability

Rather than being held accountable, or producing positive results, would your MSP marketing company rather lie? Or make excuses? Or blame you?

If your marketing company avoids your questions or gives you the runaround when asking about bottom-line results, then you have a problem. One of the things you should do when it comes to your business’s MSP marketing strategy is to ask questions. You have the right to know what your MSP marketing company is doing with your business site, and most, of course, your money. The marketing company should be able to explain the marketing techniques and tactics they are using for your website.

When you tell your marketing company their leads aren’t turning into consultations or that you want to make changes, and you hear:

• Not our problem.
• That’s your job.
• It’s your fault.

These are red flags. If there’s no way to measure the quality of the leads coming in, how can you hold the marketing company accountable? Your current MSP marketing company wants you to believe that a call is a call and that you should be happy. Your phone is ringing, so the marketing company feels as if it has done its job. However, you know this is not the case.

You understand that not every call is the same. A call for managed IT support services is not the same as a 12-year-old calling because he/she needs help troubleshooting a PlayStation or Xbox at 3 AM on a Saturday.

Marketing companies that don’t specialize in MSP and IT don’t know the difference. They don’t know the difference between IT support and Xbox support.

You Are Ranking for the Wrong Keywords

Within a short time of partnering with the MSP marketing company, you see keywords jump to the first page. Which is great, right? Wrong. Page rankings continue to come but you don’t see any new leads, you only see rankings.

This leads you to take a look into your keywords, only to realize the keywords you have been ranking for might not even be 100% relevant to your MSP business. Unfortunately, this mistake resulted in little to no monthly search volume. This means you wasted your time and money with a bad marketing company.

One of the most common problems encountered when dealing with a website’s SEO is when a site is ranking for the wrong keyword. It could turn out to be frustrating, because what good is a high ranking on Google if the targeted keyword is not correct? It could do more harm than good to your MSP marketing strategy.

You should know what your target keywords are. In addition, you should have an idea of how your keywords are driving traffic and/or ranking in the Search Engine Results Page. Well-targeted traffic is associated with an effective MSP marketing strategy. If you are not aware of your target keywords, then find out. In addition, find out how keywords are driving your ranking as per Google Analytics.

Your Marketing Company Is Not Adapting to Changing Times

SEO tunnel vision can be costly. SEO tunnel vision is when only one factor of SEO is focused on. Failing to pay attention to the overall picture of your MSP website’s SEO can not only cost you organic traffic and keyword rankings, but it could lead to your competitor’s outranking you on search engines.

Tunnel vision has no place in the SEO world. Why? Search engines and algorithms are always updating and changing. With all the changes that are being made, people must adapt. You can’t just have a good website. You need to focus on providing a great user experience. This is similar to the way you have to create good content and promote the content.

Keyword stuffing and random backlinks and directory listing may have worked in the past, but sticking with a marketing agency that still uses these tactics could equate to disaster for your MSP website.

We know your industry. We know your target audience. We also know that search engine rankings aren’t the only things that matter. A healthy MSP marketing strategy will draw clients from multiple sources like social media and other channels. When done properly, MSP marketing can make a world of difference to your MSP business’s success.

Get the full picture from whatever marketing company you choose to understand and learn from your mistakes as well as theirs. Transparency is key. Are you currently working with a marketing agency and are not getting your desired results? Are you ready to get serious about enhancing your MSP business? We would love to hear from you. Give us a call today at 716.799.1999.

Stuart R. Crawford

Stuart Crawford serves as Creative Director and CEO with Sebring, FL Ulistic, a specialty MSP Marketing firm focused on information technology marketing and business development. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience pertaining to how technology business owners and IT firms can use marketing as a vehicle to obtain success.