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Justin Esgar:
I found, I figured out I drink a lot on our, on our show <laugh>. Like, whenever I'm not talking, you see me drinking something and I, and I have a plethora of drinks that I will go through, okay. Throughout the show. I kind of wanna make it a running gag. Now crack open some liquid death.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
I What is liquid death anyways? Is it
Justin Esgar:
Water? It's water. This infinitely recyclable can of stone cold sparkling water came straight from the Alps to murder your thirst. When a group of teenagers set off into the mountain for a weekend of drinking regular water in plastic bottles, they became hunt, hunt, hunted by an aluminum can of the mountain water that was dead set on murdering their thirst and recycling their souls once cracked open, no thirst is same, from liquid death After ritualist, after ritually dismembering, its thirst victims. This brutal can of water use the severed body parts of the dead thirst to build itself a flesh shoot in which disguise to get a job in marketing. But it liquid death. But liquid death never took the job. It just murdered a bunch more thirst instead ingredients. Mountain water and co2. Cheers. We're talking about marketing today, so I kind of feel like this is a great intro role. Are we ready to go? I'm giving arrogant heads up today before we start, cuz he usually gets mad that I start with going, what's up everybody? Welcome to the All Things M S P podcast. I'm your host Justin Esgar with OG host Eric Anthony. And today we have a special guest, l President Day Extremo of Rialto Marketing. I made up his title. He's the owner of President of Rialto Marketing, Mr. Tim Fitzpatrick. Eric. Tim, how are you today, gentlemen?
Tim Fitzpatrick:
I'm rocking, man. I'm ready to dig. Ready to dig into this?
Eric Anthony:
Yeah. Sounds great.
Justin Esgar:
Eric. What's going on? It's been a week since we last talked. How, how, how are we looking in the MSP world? How are things? Oh,
Eric Anthony:
In the s p world, I think it's great. I mean, we, obviously, there's been some breaches this week, which is kind of normal. On a personal note, I did cancel my dollar Shave Club membership this
Justin Esgar:
Week. Oh, <laugh>.
Eric Anthony:
And, and by the way, the reason this is important, the reason this is important, the other reason it ties into marketing, right, is because the reason I did it was because they changed out the razor. Like without telling me, I mean, I did go back and find a couple of emails, but they just decided to give everybody else a new razor. It sucks.
Justin Esgar:
Oh no.
Eric Anthony:
Okay. And it sucks all over online. Like everybody's complaining about this thing. <Laugh>. It is a experience nightmare and a PR nightmare that quite honestly, I don't know if their subscription based business will recover from,
Justin Esgar:
I used to be a Dollar Shave Club member, and then I just stopped shaving. I also, I I, they're marketing the o the original c e o I dunno if he's still there. Marketing genius, the way he sold Dollar Shave Club, the way he sold his other product, dude wipes. Also great marketing. I, I'm, I'm shocked and sad and to hear this. But luckily we have someone here who could talk about marketing. If we want to talk about dude wipes instead of M S P stuff. Now, we'll stay on target just for, just for you the listener, cuz we love you. If you can't see me doing it, cuz you're not watching our YouTube video, go to youtube.com/ Eric Anthony and see me do hard hands. Otherwise you can hear me. Yeah. Or you can just hear me doing hard hands. We have a special guest, Tim's here.
Tim's from Rialto Marketing. We're gonna talk a little bit about marketing for MSPs. We've covered a lot of stuff about marketing recently. And it's, it's almost getting to the point where like, that's all we're gonna talk about. I promise you it's not, but it is such a huge part because as MSPs like, we're so used to being like, fix the printer, like, whatever. But, you know, this goes back to the whole reason why this podcast exists, which is talking about working on your business as opposed to in your business. And marketing is such a major part of it because at least for me, whenever I ask potential members to come to the conference I'm putting on or some of the other things, I always go like, what do you wanna learn about? And they always, the answer is always get more leads. Right? How do I get more clients? How do I get more Leh? It's, it's, and it's been that way for years. Years. And I think it's just because we as MSPs need to understand that we need to dedicate, I'll throw some percentage into our ti 25%, I dunno, we'll get into that in a second, but like some percentage of our time straight up on marketing. And so there's no better person here to have than Tim. Tim. Our backgrounds look like they're connected. Now that I'm seeing this in the screenshot,
Eric Anthony:
I was noticing that,
Justin Esgar:
Yeah, we ran a little bit. We ran outta brick, and then we went <laugh>, and then we went to like, and then I got the crappy vinyl version of it. See, this is why you gotta check it out and subscribe on YouTube instead of just listening in your car. Pull over, find us on YouTube, hit the subscribe button, then continue going on to work. Anyway. So Tim one tell people who don't know you, a little bit about you. And then two, touch a little bit on, you know why we think you're important for the MSP marketing conversation.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
<Laugh>. Cool. I'll do, I'll do the best I can with that one. How's that? So I am, I'm a marketing consultant and an outsourced or, or fractional part-time chief marketing officer. So I primarily work with B2B professional service firms like MSPs, IT consultants, those types of folks who need a marketing leader to accelerate growth without the full-time cost. So I live in, I live in three areas of marketing which I we're, we're at least gonna touch on some of these today, which is strategy, which I think of like fuel planning, where you're outlining the vehicles that you're actually gonna use. There's all kinds of marketing vehicles and then leadership where, you know, either we jump into the driver's seat or we help guide and coach the owners so that they feel confident in leading their marketing efforts. You gotta have all three in alignment for, for marketing to work well and to maximize roi. So, you know, I see so many people getting very tactical, taking action immediately with marketing. I've gotta be on YouTube, I've gotta have a podcast. I gotta do my website. I gotta be on, on social. And there's just not enough thought into the strategy and the planning behind it. And when that happens, you know, you got vehicles but no fuel, and that's not gonna work long term. So
Justin Esgar:
I feel like you hopefully perfected this conversation. Like, I feel like you say this a lot in front of a mirror, the vehicle fueled conversy thing.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
I actually, I say it every morning when I get out of the shower and just stare in the mirror and I just start talking.
Eric Anthony:
Yeah. To me it's very similar to the darts and dart board, you know, analogy as well. Yeah. Where you're just not get gonna get the results if you're not aiming, you know, if you're not aiming, you might get lucky every and once in a while. But if you're not just, you know, realizing what you're doing and practicing the motion that repetitively gets you results, it's just gonna be random.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. Well, I know one of the things that you guys inter had a, a recent podcast where you talked about avatars and you know, your ideal clients. If we don't hone in on who those people are, we're trying to hit this really broad target and broad target. Well, you, you can't see the entire picture of a broad target <laugh>, which makes it really hard to hit. So we've gotta, you've gotta focus in everything from a marketing standpoint, starts with your ideal clients. If you don't understand who those people are, everything else is gonna be out of alignment. And it's, it's not just what you do with marketing, but it's the sequence of what you do with marketing that's really, really important. And so many people get the sequencing mixed up.
Justin Esgar:
So if you haven't listened to our episode on the avatars, we, we were talking about honing in on your, on your ideal client, right? Building out exactly who you want to be targeting, because as, as MSPs, I mean for, again, I'm the Apple guy, right? It, we hone in a little bit because we have Apple. But even at that, it could still be too broad from, from many perspectives, right? I know a particular Apple on who only does lawyers like that is honed in and niche, right? If you're an MSP and you're like, I do small to medium business in all of New Jersey, like, that's not, that's not an avatar, right? You need to dig in deep. So, so let's, let's table that. Cause I think we've covered that well in another episode. And if you haven't listened to that episode download the rest of the library on your favorite podcast app shelf.
I'm, I'm all about the shameless self emotions, like within the show itself. It's very metal. So let's say we have our avatar, Tim, right? Like, I know who I'm going after and, and you know, my target is 30 person companies using max graphic design firms in, in Manhattan, right? I'm looking for the CEOs of these graphic design firms. Usually they're already a designer themselves. So I think I'm kind of honed in on this one a little bit. Okay. and we could probably go deeper, but let's not for the sake of this conversation, what's my next piece of the strategy? Because we've, we've talked to other people in marketing, right? And we know about like, making connections and like warming the leads up and like doing this kind of stuff. But like, that's, that, that, that seems very tactical. There may be something before that we're missing. There might be something in between that we're missing, like help fill in some of those blinds for us.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. So there are a couple things that immediately come to mind. One, once you know who your ideal clients are, you wanna start to hone in. And I, I call this an ideal client, g p s. All it is, is a list of where the heck those people are. Where do they congregate? Online, offline, just start with the list, right? So I'll give you an example. We have a client who is their, she's a CPA and a, a tax advisor. She targets veterinary practice owners when we started working with her. This is super sophisticated, okay? It's a Google doc, all right? It is about 25 pages of all the places the veterinarians are, we're talking associations. They belong to trade shows, events that they go to influencers in the space that they may follow websites or email lists that they're subscribed, that they subscribe to, YouTube channels, you know, social groups that they're involved in.
You start to look at providers like manufacturers in the space distributors in the space. I mean, people, other people that serve and call on vets. Who are those people? 25 page list. Are you gonna target all of those? Heck no, you're not. But you now know when you go back to that list, you're gonna fish where the fish are every time. Yeah. I'm not going into a small business owner group hoping that I'm gonna talk to a vet. I know that when I go to this event, all I'm talking to is vets. I, I, like, I can't help but bump into a veterinarian. That's what we talk about when we really hone in on targeting our marketing. Don't target broadly. Go where the fish are. Man, if I wanna catch trout, I'm gonna go down to the freaking trout farm and stick my line in the water.
I know I'm gonna catch trout. I'm not wasting my time catching fish that are not gonna be a good fit. So once you've honed in on that avatar, create that list. Now you, now you have choices. Which of the things on this list do I wanna start to test and get out and, and get out in front of? That's the next place that we lead to. Once we've identified who those ideal clients are, I've got my list Now, before I actually go out and start to take action, I need to create a message. What's my marketing message to that audience gonna be? And look, I'm not gonna single out MSPs in for this conversation because I see this in almost every industry. But if, just as a test, when you're done listening to this, or right now, pause it. Go, go pull up five of your competitor sites. Take the logos off and tell me if you can identify who the heck they are. My guess is most of 'em are saying the same darn thing. It's just, it's a slightly different flavor, but it's the same message.
Justin Esgar:
So I, I have something on that, but I want to come back. I wanna come back. You said you were talking about vets and you were, and you <laugh> and you said vet influencers. And I cannot get the concept of that out of my head. <Laugh>. I'm trying to think of like, who, like, I'm, I'm picturing like a, like a, like a TikTok person being like, I'm here to sell you. Like, it's just like, I, it's not working for me. The, the website thing is actually really interesting. So ACEs conference 1, 20 15, we had a branding and marketing person on this wonderful woman, Pia Silver. And she actually did exactly that. She pulled randoms cause we gave her the listen event. She pulled random attendees websites, took off all of our logos and put 'em all up on the screen, and they all looked the exact same.
And what pissed me off more anything else was that she put mine on there also. And I was like, <laugh>, I told we were friends, man. Like, what happened? And so and so, yeah. So I re we, we, we rewrote all our content only to find out, like one of my good friends, Tim stole all of my content and has it on his, because he's in a, he I'm in New Jersey. He's in Washington. And then we found out some guy in like, Reno, Novato, Renova stole it from him and like, tweaked his version of my version. Like, yes, you're right. I I, there is a point where I think in terms of messaging, like there's only so much that unless we really hone in and talk about this is what we're gonna get into. Like how many times have we seen a website for an MSP being like, I'm smart and I'm responsive, and like, I get to your tickets quickly.
Like we all say that, right? Yeah. Like there, everyone needs to have a a u I'm pretty sure uvp, right? Unique value proposition. What makes you different? This guy who's the Mac lawyer guy, there's no other Mac lawyer guys. He goes to all the law conferences, he does mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. He, he probably has lawyer influencers on TikTok. I'm gonna tell you this law book, sorry. But like, he, that's, that's his thing. Like, I think this guy's got it honed in tight. However, here's my kick, and this is, and and we can come back to this part later. Is he limiting himself?
Tim Fitzpatrick:
That's a common roadblock. I, my answer to that would be no. Because
Justin Esgar:
I would love So <laugh>,
Tim Fitzpatrick:
The reality is what his message resonates so much better with the, with the target market that he's focused on. My, my guess, I don't know this guy, but what I have seen is he's generating more leads and he's converting a higher number of those leads to clients. Here's the other thing. Just because you hone in on a specific market doesn't mean that those are the only referrals you get. You're still gonna get referrals, and you can choose whether you want to, to do that business, right? But here's the other thing too. If, if he starts plateauing in the, in the attorney market, okay, cool. He's nailed the attorney market. Now I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna nail the architect market or the design, the graphic design market. You can always expand if you need to, right? But think about, think about Amazon, Amazon, when they first started was not the fricking behemoth that they are today.
They were, they were an online book seller, man, that's what they did. They sold books online. That was their niche. Now they have since expanded into every single thing out there, <laugh>. But that's not how they started, right? They started with a niche and they nailed it. And you know, the, here's the other thing to consider most of us as an msp, how many clients do you need a year to really transform your business? The answer for most is not a lot. And if it's not a lot, do you really need to target broadly? I mean, if there's a conference, if there is a conference around the specific niche you're thinking about, my answer is it's big enough. It's big enough for somebody to have an event around it. So there's certainly more than enough people for you to target in that audience. So go narrow now. Because here's the other thing, when you focus, things become much easier. Yeah. You're not so overwhelmed with, oh my God, I could be here, I could be here, here, here, here. No, it's a limited list. Much, much easier. Life becomes way, way easier. So I, do you guys want to interject in that? I, well,
Eric Anthony:
I would just say that you know, when you're talking about messaging and, and kneeing down, I think one of the primary reasons, and Tim, you, you're the expert, so, so tell me, one of the reasons for nicheing down on your messaging is to make that messaging more effective so that when it's hitting that audience, it's actually having more of an impact.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
A hundred percent. Right? Because the, the language you use for an attorney might be different than Frank. Frankly, we know it's different than if you're trying to reach doctors, right?
Justin Esgar:
Yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
Attorneys talk about clients, doctors talk about patients. You know, if you're outreaching to doctors and you're talking about clients <laugh>, they're gonna be like, dude, where is this guy from? So you, it helps you really understand their lingo, how they communicate it, because our message needs to be in their words, not ours. When, when the message is in their words, they're like, oh my gosh, like Tim's talking to me, Justin's talking was Eric in the meeting we had last week? Like, he's talking about all the stuff that we were just talking about. That's what we wanna have happen. And there's, that's, it's impossible for that to happen until we understand who those ideal clients are.
Justin Esgar:
I, I need, Eric, I need you to put, I need you to put hashtag truth bomb right after that sentence that Tim said about, about talking in the client's language, right? Because that is, you were talking about lawyers and like, the one thing that always, that always gets me is how lawyers bill every six minutes, right? They, if anyone knows this most law firms, while they're working, they get a pop up on their screen every six minutes. Are you still working on this project? And may have to hit yes. That's how they track their time, right? No other industry does that, right? No. A gra graphic design firms, marketing agencies don't do that. So, like, that's a great thing. Like you have to know that industry well enough and speak in their language. I think that's one of the reasons why that we do pretty well with nonprofits, because I can speak nonprofit.
I understand the difference in a nonprofit when it comes to operating expenditures versus capital expenditures as it re as it relates to their GuideStar rating. So for anyone who doesn't know, if you're working with a nonprofit, they're rated, there's a website, I think it's just guidestar.org and it's their total revenue minus their operating expenses to, and that profit margin is where they fall within the GE star rating. But there's a loophole, which is if it's a capital expenditure, they don't have to, if you don't work with nonprofits, you don't understand the words that I'm saying right now. But if you wanna work with nonprofits, you need to understand those words because that's part of your messaging when you're talking to them. Yeah. When you're pitching the CFO who's gonna sign off on your contract, you need to explain to them that you understand the difference. And here's how you're gonna help them by taking care of their stuff and not affecting their operating expenditures. Like this is what we're talking about when it comes to messaging.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
So one of the things that comes up is people often ask, well, like, so how do I do that? So here's two super tactical ways that the MSPs that are listening to this can, can take one, take the time to interview your ideal clients, 10, the more you can, the more you can do this, the better. But if you can do 10 to 15 of those, the information you will get from that, if you, this is the, if that's a one thing you do from this, this episode, it will be absolutely invaluable. Take the time to talk to them. How did they find out about you? You know, what was the buying process like? Why did they choose you? What was the problem that they were having? What, what result are they now experiencing? What's the benefit? What's life look like? Now? You want to hear all of that in their language.
The other thing you can do is look at online reviews. Online reviews are a treasure trove of valuable information. Cuz oftentimes people talk about what they didn't like. They talk about what they liked, they talk about the problem they had. I'll give you a a perfect example. We worked with a a residential sighting contractor. This was before the pandemic. It was like four or five years ago. And mean contractors are notorious for the same thing. We already touched on, you go to like siding, you know, residential siding, Denver, they all say the same thing. Like high quality siding, number one siding contractor in Denver. It's like, who cares? Like, that is not about me, it's about them. Our message needs to be about the client. So we started looking through their reviews and there was a woman in there who said one of the best things about these guys was they treated my house like it was their own.
That's it. Simple. Very simple. But don't we all want a contractor working on our house? Who's gonna treat it like it's their own? Because I mean, it's not like they're throwing their crap all over their own house. It's not like they're doing a bad job on the work that they do for their own house. They're taking that meticulous time and detail to do the job, right? And that was it, that became their core message because high quality siding and showing up on time, like, you know what, that's table stakes. Everybody expects that. It's not a differentiator. What's a differentiator is we're gonna treat your house like it's our own. So that's just an, that's just a simple example, but that's what we wanna do. Our messaging needs to focus on the clients and how we can help them. Cause they really, at the end of the day, they don't care about us, right? That's it.
Justin Esgar:
I'm wondering now, Eric, I'm wondering what our messaging needs to be for this podcast. Cuz like we, our whole podcast is we're helping MSPs, but there's plenty of podcasts that help MSPs our needs to be tweaked a little bit. We can even, let's have a business meeting right here. So if we were to take a vote on, on, on our messaging, like we're helping MSPs with knowledge and humor. Like I don't really, we, we, I, this, this can be a good example, like for people to listen. Like how do you figure that out, right? We, we don't have any reviews to work on.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
Well, and so early on,
Eric Anthony:
What do you mean we have those two? But here's the thing, five star reviews.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah, but here's the thing. You, well, Justin, I know you're, I know you're an Ms. P Eric, do you have an Ms P or you just work in the space? So
Eric Anthony:
I, I was an M S P, now I work on the vendor side in the space. Yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
So this is a perfect example. You guys are already, you already have experience being your own ideal listeners here, right? So you have that experience. What are the things that MSPs struggle with that you can help them with through the podcast, right? It's from what I know of the space, right? There's a lot of great tech people, but man, the, the running the business side of it, the marketing side of it, like that's not their thing, right? They need help to level up those skills or at least get the guidance to know where to go to get the help that they need, right? So, I don't know, one of the initial things that's coming to my mind right off the bat is you're, I mean, you're just helping 'em run a better business, right? You're making business easier for them. Life is hard enough in the IT space. I mean, you're getting calls g people go going, man, my my stuff is down <laugh>. My, I am out of business right now. You need to fix this now. Like the rest of their business. Sh shouldn't be difficult, right? The easier you can make that man, the easier their life is, right?
Justin Esgar:
So yeah, a hundred percent. Sorry, I was getting a message. <Laugh>, my phone keeps going up. <Laugh> do not disturb. So yeah, I mean that, and that's exactly what this is, right? I think we should, I think that all things m MSP should become now all things marketing. I couldn't figure out an s and then p was gonna be procurement. But yeah, that's, that's exactly what we're trying to do here. When we told this to the listeners, like if you have questions, we want you on the show, there's a link in the, the description down below and on the YouTube, like, we wanna bring you on the show and talk about the problems that you're having, which is what I think is our unique, our U V p, our unique value Yeah. Is that we wanna bring, we're not just gonna keep blasting you with experts like Tim, we wanna bring you on the show to talk about your specific problems.
Kind of like a, like an old helpline back in the day, <laugh>, like, I'm thinking like a 1990s helpline. Oh my lord, that drew be a great, like <laugh>. I'm thinking this stupid stuff where like the, the intro music now just needs to be like a phone ringing, like <laugh>, like, like a call bank. Sorry, I'm di I'm diverging off of this. Okay. So we have our, we have our, our, our avatar. We understand that we need to work on our messaging. So yeah, your first, your first tactical item is interview your existing clients to find out why they, why they went with you, what their pain point were, that you may, because you may been with a client for 10, 15 years, you don't remember. And get those, and get that language from them because you wanna Yes. Most likely. And if I'm interpreting this correctly, if you're working with a particular firm, type of firm or vertical, whatever the language they use, the other firms that you wanna work with are going to use the same language.
Tim Fitzpatrick:
Yes.
Justin Esgar:
Right? Okay. Yeah. So, and
Tim Fitzpatrick:
You, you hear about the problem, right? In their words, what was the problem you were having? Like, why did you reach out to us? Right? You have to understand that.
Justin Esgar:
So we've now, we've now constructed this messaging. We know what we wanna say. How do we get it out there? Who are we telling it to?
Tim Fitzpatrick:
<Laugh>? Yeah. Yeah. Well that's where the ideal client gps, right? That list comes into play. So that you can choose what's gonna make the most sense for you. And then you gotta, you gotta put that plan together. Like what is your plan gonna be so that you know where your priorities are. Because the thing with marketing, especially today, there's so many different channels and so many different tactics. If you don't have a plan that outlines what your priorities are, you're gonna be like a squirrel chasing a nut. Like you're gonna be chasing every shiny object that comes across your, your computer screen. And that's gonna be daily. So you have to have something that allows you to eliminate that distraction. And that's what plans do for you, right? They outline your priorities so that you have clarity. And when we have clarity, it reduces our stress. So we gotta put a plan together. If you want look, I use a 90 day marketing plan for our business, for our clients. If you want, I can walk, walk the audience through the, those six steps to try and help people with that if we, if we've got time for it. I don't know.
Justin Esgar:
Time timekeeper. Eric, what do you got? We got time. Oh, I think you're muted, dude. Can't hear you. Alright, now you're gonna have to edit.
Eric Anthony:
Oh, well, because I have the tornado blowing in the background, which is why, you know, I, IM mute it
Justin Esgar:
Myself. We, I think you were trying to say we have time. So
Eric Anthony:
I was saying we're getting close on time, but this is our podcast. We decide what time is <laugh>. Yeah. So Star
Justin Esgar:
Podcast. All right. Yeah. All right, Tim, let's, let's do the first, let's do the first three and that way we'll leave people hanging because then they need to call you to get the other three, right? So there you go. There's,
Tim Fitzpatrick:
Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. Here, let's do this. Let's do the last three, because I think those are probably where they're gonna get the most value. Perfect. so the last three steps. One is you have to understand where you're starting from. You have to get a baseline. So you've gotta do an audit or you know, an assessment of what you're, what you're currently doing from a marketing standpoint and what you continue to do. What do you have in place? Think of this like your gps. It can't tell me how to get to the airport until I tell it where I'm starting from. Same thing with the plan. You, in order to craft your plan, you have to know your starting point. So that's the, that, that's the fourth step in this six step plan. The fifth step is what are my priorities for the next 90 days?
This is where you're gonna be outlining. What, what am I gonna focus on in the next 90 days? The biggest question I get here is, how do I know what to focus on? Here's the lowest hanging fruit one we've already talked about target market and your message. If you do not have those two things, go back to the starting line and do that. Cuz if you just skip it, you're gonna waste time and money and you're gonna come back to it six months, nine months, 12 months, however far out, you're gonna come back to it at some point and go, my God, I should have done that. I just wasted all this time and money. Second, your website, even if you're a hundred percent referral, people are not just picking up the phone and calling you or emailing you. They're going online to check you out.
If your website has lousy messaging, they don't see the value. It looks like it was built in 1995. You're not, you're losing business and you don't even know it. Okay? Website's super important. Everything you do from a marketing standpoint drives people back there. So think of it like the hub, the third thing that's low-hanging fruit is what's already working. People are al always focused on, what do I need to do next? What new thing should I be doing when the reality is there's something that's already working in our businesses and I guarantee you it's not fully optimized. Guarantee it. Like I can't tell you how many people I talk to who are like 80% of their leads are referral. And I'm like, how do you, like, what's your system for that? How do you do that? What do you mean? When do you ask for a referrals?
We don't ask. It just happens cuz we do great work. Whoa, what would happen if you actually asked throughout the, the, the, the customer journey, if you had a referral program or you, you know, you reached out strategically to referral partners, right? There are gaps in what's already working. Fill those gaps, you're gonna get much quicker results starting there. The other one related to that is what used to work that you stopped doing? Cuz that happens too. So those are, those are four pieces of super low hanging fruit for your first 90 days. The last step is the metrics. What numbers am I gonna track? So many people don't track numbers or they track the wrong numbers to me. There's tons of vanity metrics in marketing. Like I don't care how many followers you have on Facebook. Like if you're not generating leads from that that are becoming clients, then who cares. So yeah, three metrics that, that are an easy place to start. How many leads are you generating each month? Where are those leads coming from? So what's the lead source? When I understand the lead source, I'm starting to get information about which marketing activities are actually working. And the third is how many new clients with how many new clients and how many leads I know what my conversion rate is.
You can track a ton of other metrics. Those are the three best places to start. That's awesome. So that's the last part. Did I do that concisely enough?
Justin Esgar:
Yeah, no, that's awesome man. I was just texting Eric cuz I don't want to, I don't want his tornado blowing, but I was like, I was like starting on number four. I feel like we're doing like a Star Wars thing, which might be the title of the episode. <Laugh> Star Wars. I think we
Eric Anthony:
Can, I think we can throw a Star Wars theme in here.
Justin Esgar:
We can <laugh> it's your YouTube channel. I don't get, if you get it pulled down, it's not on me. No, but that's awesome Jim. And I, I I think there's a lot to be said here. And again, you know, marketing for MSPs is, is is such a broad thing, but the points that you're making here of using the, the marketing GPS as it were, honing your messaging, honing your avatar or who your target market is gonna be. Like, if you the listener, think about this, right? You went within the episode today with Tayman on a previous episode with Paul Green. Like your marketing efforts went from a funnel that's 4 45 miles wide to like pinpoint accuracy to be able to get more clients because now you know who you want, how to talk to them and what to do, right? So right here, I don't, I don't know what episode number we're up to at this point.
It's already feel, it already feels like we've been doing this for, for three years, but like within the short amount of episodes we have, everyone who's listening right now should be able to get at least 10 new clients just from this information alone. This, this stuff is so important. Excuse me. This stuff is so important for businesses to understand. I, I implore you to take a quarter of your week and work on your business and work on things like this. Reach out to people like Tim and, and and his company Realto marketing for help. I mean, you gotta pay 'em, but like it's worth it. Like come out, you know, go for them to help these, these resources are there. And Tim, I mean Tim, you've been doing a lot of work you said earlier with a lot of MSPs. I know you and I are doing some work together and you've worked with a couple of my friends.
Like work with people like Tim, like Paul who, who work within the space who understand it. If you can't do it yourself, there's a reason why you're not in marketing. You're in a, you, you own an msp. There's a reason why Tim is in marketing. There's a reason why I'm not in marketing. I'm in business coaching. We'll go with that. Eric, you have anything else you wanna say or is the tornado still like bla it's not a real for the real for the listeners. It's not a real tornado, Eric. It's safe at home. <Laugh>.
Eric Anthony:
That's true. I should explain just briefly. It's the air conditioning my third floor when it's the only thing being air conditioned has two vents and so the entirety of the AC system is blowing through those two vents when my zone is the only zone that's on. Yeah, but I mean I think this is a great episode. I think it's a great way to kind of continue on the topics that we've had in terms of marketing and I think to that point, you know what you said earlier, Justin marketing is one of the biggest things that MSPs just don't know how to do. Cuz they've never had to do it before.
Justin Esgar:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well everyone listen, thank you so much Tim. Where can people find you online and hire you immediately to help them with their marketing <laugh>?
Tim Fitzpatrick:
Thank you. There's two places they can go. Rialto marketing.com, that's R I A L T O marketing.com. You can connect with me there. The other thing I'll make available to your audience is@revenueroadblockscorecard.com. At revenue roadblock scorecard.com. We put together a, a tool there where you can diagnose which of the nine revenue roadblocks is slowing down your growth takes less than five minutes, really hones in on the nine things that we see slowing down growth reports customized based on your answer. So go check it out@revenueroadblockscorecard.com. Justin, Eric, thank you so much for having me. I've enjoyed connecting with you guys. So thank
Justin Esgar:
You. And Tim, that's awesome. Thank you so much for, for offering that to all of our listeners. For everyone else, don't forget to like and subscribe, follow us, join the Facebook group, facebook.com/group/all things MSP or just search all things MSP or search for Eric Anthony. You'll find it cuz he's the admin of the group asking questions all the time. We're on YouTube. We're on your favorite podcast app. We're on Spotify now, right Eric? Yes. Thumbs up. We are. Yeah. Oh wow. We're Spotify. Spotify, go
Eric Anthony:
Spotify, Google, audible, and of course Apple Podcasts.
Justin Esgar:
Nice. That's what I'm talking about. Get the messaging out there, get your friends listening. My mom listens to this show and she doesn't un understand anything we're talking about. Totally. Okay, <laugh>, get out there and hope everyone else enjoys their day. That's it for us.