MSP Marketing is changing. Not just because the current times we’re experiencing, but because of the way people find businesses and buy products these days. If you’ve read some of our other MSP Marketing blogs, you’ll notice we recommend using inbound marketing and content marketing, including blogs, video, social media, etc. to draw in customers.
Two of the major roadblocks that cause most MSP’s to throw marketing by the wayside is time and money. This blog is dedicated to the latter.
As many expensive (yet awesome) tools there are out there, there are tons of great marketing tools that are either completely free or have extensive free offerings. Here are a few free tools that will boost your marketing efforts.
- Ubersuggest
- Google Search Console
- Canva
- Buffer
- Hubspot
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is an SEO tool created by Neil Patel. An SEO tool can help you do several things to boost your website traffic, from keyword research to blogging ideas. Here are a few things you can do with Ubersuggest:
- See what keywords your website currently ranks for and how high
- Research the best (and easiest) keywords to target
- Research competitors to see what keywords they rank for so you can target those
- Find topics that people are searching for so you can create content about them
Knowing what keywords and topics that are most worth your time will help you work smarter, not harder. There’s no sense busting your tail ranking for a keyword that nobody searches for.
You can get a lot of good information for free, and the paid option is much less than other SEO tools.
Google Search Console
This is another SEO/Website tool, but it’s completely free.
Google Search console allows you to track your website performance on Google’s search result pages. You can see impressions and clicks by keyword and see where you rank. Search console also detects errors on your site, and fixing these can drastically improve your SEO performance.
I recommend doing this, as it could save you the cost of hiring an SEO expert to audit your site.
Canva
Canva is an awesome tool. We use it here at Hook Security for several things.
Canva is a design tool for just about anything your business might need. They have templates for social media graphics, presentations, infographics, logos, ads, brochures, and more.
The drag and drop nature of the application makes it idiot-proof, too. You can whip up weeks of social media posts, create a slick slide deck, and mockup some business cards all in a few minutes.
Seriously. Try out Canva.
Buffer
Buffer is a social media scheduling tool. One of the best time-saving tips for social media marketing is scheduling posts ahead of time.
With a tool like Buffer, you can batch the social media scheduling process: Do all your post writing and creating in one go, and then spread those posts out across the next day or week with the scheduling tool.
If you’re looking to up your social media game but lack the time to devote to posting constantly, this is a great way to start slow and ramp up.
Hubspot
Hubspot can very quickly turn into a very expensive tool, but they offer a few totally free features that are really great and super easy to set up
A Basic CRM
If you don’t have any kind of CRM, the Hubspot CRM is a good tool to use. The key to good sales and marketing is organization. There’s nothing worse than spending money and effort to get leads, and not having the organization and infrastructure to follow up and close them.
Free Marketing Tools
The Marketing Free version of Hubspot gives you a couple of great tools to collect leads. You can create forms to embed on your site, as well as popup forms and CTAs (Calls-to-action) that you can use to generate even more leads and email subscribers.
Combining the lead gen tools with the CRM gives you insights on what your leads did before converting (pages visited, time on page) and allows you to track when they come back to your site, too.
Next Steps
Between these tools you have the ability to do market research, create marketing materials, share them on social media, and generate and store leads. Put them all together and you can run a full MSP marketing campaign totally free.
Here’s a short framework you can follow to launch an awesome MSP marketing campaign.
- Do research on what your target audience is searching for and the questions they have.
- Create videos, blogs and other content that answers the questions of your audience.
- Create, schedule, and publish social media posts that promote your content
- Use forms (embedded and popup) to collect information from those interested in your services.
- Leverage your CRM to track, review, and follow up with your leads
- Close new business from customers who already know, like, and trust you.
Bonus Tip!
If you are a Hook Security Certified Partner, we provide many of these services totally free for you. Our partners have access to:
- A giant library of graphics and marketing materials
- A portal for managing prospects and deals
- One-click social media campaigns
- Automated email campaigns
- Co-selling and co-marketing opportunities
If you are Hook partner, contact your partner development manager to accomplish any of this.
And if you aren’t a partner, come talk to us!
