Episode 15: Customer Experience Matters
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Erick and Rich discuss how customer experience differs from customer service, and why it matters more than ever at a time when managed network and endpoint services have become commoditized. Then Erick offers a tip of the week on the right way to build service bundles. That’s followed by a can’t miss conversation with Andrew Smith, Channel Mastered’s digital marketing guru, on the inside secrets to constructing online lead generation campaigns that deliver big, consistent results. And finally, one last thing: how a microbrewery turned a brewhouse mishap captured on viral video into a brilliant marketing hook.
Discussed in this episode:
Crafting the Perfect Lead Gen Offer: A Game Changer
Tank malfunction drenches brewery employee with beer
Transcript:
Rich: [00:00:00] And three, two, one, blast off, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of the MSP Chat Podcast, your weekly visit with two talking heads talking with you about the services, strategies, and success tips you need to make it big in managed services. My name is Rich Freeman. I am Chief Content Officer of Channel Master, the organization responsible for this podcast.
And I am joined, as I am every week, by your other co host, Erick Simpson, our Chief Strategist at Channel Master.
Erick: It’s going great, Rich, now that we’ve solved some technical issues for this this particular episode of our podcast. It sounds like we can forge ahead now. What do you think?
Rich: I agree. I agree.
And I can’t help but think to myself, boy, technical problems that we can’t fix or diagnose ourselves. If only there was an MSP in the house, of course, we’d have nothing about MSPs in the audience, but can’t get their help. This particular moment here, but I think we’re ready to go, Erick. So let’s we’ve got a by the way, folks, stick around.
We’re going to do our usual story of the week and tip of the week, but we’re going to be joined by our fellow channel mastered colleague, Andrew Smith, to talk about digital marketing a little bit later in the show. So you’re going to want to be around for that, but let’s dive into the story of the week first.
And this is derived from a a recent post from my blog channel. Which our audience could find at channelholic. news. And it was about customer experience. I’ll be really interested to get your input on this. Because Canalys and Enable recently published some data. They are projecting that there are 340, 000 companies this year worldwide who are going to be billing at least some money for managed services.
And it’s going to add up to half a trillion dollars actually in 2024, but the key number there is the 340, 000 company, a little bit hard to stand out in a crowd of 340, 000. And so if you’re just doing the genErick network management, device management, and 365, you are running a risk basically of being commoditized.
And so what can you do to set yourself apart a little bit? Maybe you’re going to specialize in security. Maybe you’re going to specialize in AI, for example. There is the possibility, though, and I think it’s a somewhat easier route to pursue than investing in skills in AI and security, for example, there is the possibility to just get better at customer experience because there are a lot of MFPs out there who aren’t especially good at that.
So what are we talking about? Customer experience. This is not customer service. Customer experience. Is how every impression, every interaction you have with the client from the very beginning of the relationship the very first time somebody visits your website until the renewal cycle when you’re a year, two years, three years in.
Every interaction that you have with a customer is going to make an impression on them, and you want all of those impressions to be positive ones. And just to quantify why and why you want those impressions to be positive, there’s a consultancy specializing in customer experience called the Alexander Group.
They recently published some data that said customer experience leaders Are 30 70 percent better at new low bill acquisition. They’re 22 percent better at customer retention. And oh, by the way, their EBITDA, Erick, is 13 percent higher on F. Meanwhile, Vonage, the Voight company, published some research recently.
And 46 percent of the companies that they surveyed will probably just dunk you. This is not specifically an MSP they were talking about. But for any company they do business with, one or two bad encounters. Is all it takes for them to at least think about switching to somebody else. Your customer experience matters a great deal.
And there are some pretty simple things you can do to get better at that, and I’ll just focus on one in particular. Which is to appoint yourself a secret shopper. Go ahead and test out every impression that you make. Every touch point in that relationship and that life cycle with the customer.
See what happens when you go to the website. Is that a good experience? Go ahead and ask for somebody to follow up with you. And and talk to you about a business need you have. How long does that call take to arrive? Call the number listed on the website. Does somebody answer? If you leave a message, does somebody get back?
And you can just go from there, folks, and see what the experience feels like yourself. Every place you are not 100 percent sure this is a great experience that’s going to turn you [00:05:00] into a repeat customer. Look to enhance that. And I really do think Erick given that customer experience is not a strong point for so many MSPs, that might be all it takes for a lot of folks in the audience to differentiate themselves from that 339,999 other MSPs out there who are otherwise doing the same stuff.
Wow,
Erick: rich, this is such a unique differentiator in the sea of sameness that. I hope our listeners take heed of because, when I had my MSP practice, we were at the very beginning of managed services. In fact, we called what we were doing flat rate IT services. It was we were still in that kind of transactional mindset.
We really were trying to explore what the distinction and differentiator was for our clients and our prospects. And. Because it was so new, that was the differentiator. It was that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. It’s always more cost effective to do preventative maintenance than it is for reactive firefighting.
And that was a unique differentiator. Fast forward today, 15 years later There are 340, 000 of you out there. What is the next level of differentiation? We talk a lot, Rich, about being more strategic and that’s great, but it’s the experience that really gets your clients to stay with you and to refer you to other business opportunities.
And it’s the reason why, we see all aspects of anything that we do as a consumer. Being defined by that experience. Think of a very highly regarded luxury expensive automobile brand. And think of the experience in that dealership, if you’ve had the opportunity to, experience that and in another dealership that isn’t.
Perceived as being such so high level and luxurious. I’ve been in some very high level dealerships, not that I’ve purchased these vehicles, but just, I’m curious, let’s see what it’s like. And boy, the lounge area, they offer you food and cappuccinos. The experience, the pampering, and even when you bring your automobile in.
Services included while you’re there, they’ll give you a loaner vehicle, which may even be nicer than the vehicle that you have purchased. So it’s all of that experience and clients will pay for that experience more than they will pay for sometimes what they consider other, what you think is a value, but they don’t.
So it’s the experience that matters. And I would argue rich that when we’ve had a long term clients, cause I’ve had them, I experienced this. And they churn out and you’re trying to figure out why it’s because you’re not, they’re not feeling that same level of specialness, that VIP treatment. You sign them up 10 years ago and they were one of a handful of your clients and you were loving on them, giving them that experience as you grow.
We tend to forget that and some clients will pay more for that. So that should be something that we bundle in. To every bundle of services that we provide clients. Now, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to treat every client the same, but to your point, rich, every interaction that they have with us as an MSP, as a service provider has to be top level.
We’ve got to provide that luxury experience for clients at every level. So they feel. That differentiation against those 339, 999 competitors that we’re working, that we’re competing against. And if you
Rich: think about the businesses that you interact with in your personal life at least as much as in your business life.
The ones that really get customer experience, right? There’s no way you would think about switching, right? It’s it’s always so great to talk to those people, to deal with those people. The experience of interacting with that company or using their app or whatever it is. It’s always seamless and easy and effective.
Why would I even think about going somewhere else? That’s where you want to be.
Erick: Yeah. And when we have switched and because of costs or whatever we thought. And you get what you pay for kind of thing. You’re like, Oh no, I missed that experience. No matter, even if it costs me more, I know that I am taken care of.
And if I have a problem, it’s responded to in a very, in a great way. And it gets handled rather than, trying to haggle. Another provider or another service, think about taking your car to your favorite [00:10:00] mechanic, right? You have a favorite mechanic because you’ve been through all the other ones.
I have a favorite mechanic for our vehicles that when I don’t need to take them to the dealer and yeah, they’re a little bit more expensive, but holy cow, with a couple of times that I’ve had a problem and brought it back, they have like redone all the entire service at no charge and said, don’t worry, we’re going to take care of it.
And you know what, that’s awesome. That’s why I keep going back. So just
Rich: something to think about folks, if you haven’t before. And like we’re saying a low hanging fruit opportunity to maybe set yourself apart a little bit from people who do not delight their clients at every interaction and Erick, let’s translation over to your tip of the week.
What you got for us.
Erick: Ripped from the headlines, rich as most of my tips of the week are this one is just fresh working with a. An MSP partner and helping them get their arms around a service delivery approach that is very customized for many of their clients. So not, more customized than standardized, let’s say.
And so going through this journey with them and sharing best approach to strike a balance between the right services. The right SLA that can be standardized across three types of clients rich that need the basics. So we build our good, better, best bundle of solutions and services.
The good bundle, and I’ve talked about this before on the show, is what you require every client to subscribe to in order to be your client. The better adds more, more perceived value, but also A better SLA response time, more strategic time, a little bit more V-C-O-V-C-T-O, maybe VC o time for the better.
And then the best clients, they’re going to get the most perceived value, the most strategic time. The client experience should be the same as we just expressed here, where some of the partners I work with struggle is in, in trying to construct these bundles in a way that. adds enough value, but adds enough separation in order for them to charge more for them.
So the idea here is the minimum bundle the good bundle, the better bundle, and the best bundle, each should share a commonality in terms of the basics. So if we say rich that we require every one of our clients to have at least these things, including managed IT services and cybersecurity and all that, then That should be at least a minimum across all.
And then we add additional features and benefits. So when we bundle these and price these services, it’s not 10 licenses. Of this service or solution, our M365 in the good bundle, 25 in the better bundle. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about adding more distinct and unique value.
So in this bundle, you’ll get, that minimum bundle of services, but in the next bundle up, we’re adding more unique, valuable services that you can only get in the next higher bundle. Think of the old days, Rich, when we were. Cable TV subscribers. And we were trying to figure out, okay, what package or bundle now it’s streaming.
And it’s, the Apple cart has been completely upset now. Cause I think I’m paying more now for streaming than I was in the past when, people would have to come out and put a dish on my roof and things like that, but that’s beside the point, but. You can only get certain channels and certain packages as you buy up, or if you want something unique and separate, it’s going to cost you, so much more that it just makes sense to pay the little bit of interest to get that.
Now, I’m not suggesting, Rich, that we All a cart some things, maybe but we want those to be the outliers not, the common theme here. So your good, better, best, you’re going to have at least the same minimum set of services and the distinction being in uniquely different enhancements to those services.
So you may have a basic cybersecurity bundle of services in your good bundle. And you may have an advanced or in it, and let’s call it enhanced level, right? More stuff, more cybersecurity stuff, more managed it strategic meeting time. And then in your highest bundle, you have that advanced. So your entry level, your enhanced and your advanced or value.
And when we do it in the right way and add the differentiator in addition, [00:15:00] that is the SLA response time. So let’s say in our. Our good bundle. You’ve got a four hour response time for a priority one issue and priority two and three are greater than that in our better bundle. It may be a two hour response time and in our best bundle.
It may be a one hour response time for a priority one issue. This gives the
this gives the sales team the ability to. Bring on new clients and then have a conversation that says, Hey, we can start you off here, but we really think you should be in this bundle of services. So let’s have a conversation in a few quarters and see where we are. So again there’s a lot of mystery in how to do this when you’re just starting out.
But remember, no matter where you’re no matter where you start in trying to establish these bundles of services, It’s that perceived value and unique differentiator that allows you to increase that, that retail price along with more strategic time along with better SLA, and then manage to those metrics.
So for instance, someone will say to me, Rich, Erick, we really don’t make our clients wait four hours, for a priority one issue, even if they’re in our good bundle. And to that, I say, You may not, right? But this is a sales and marketing approach that allows you to get a client to subscribe to your services, and you may respond faster than that.
But what happens when you have a site wide outage, when you have to respond to many clients at the same time? That’s when that SLA comes in handy when you let the clients know, Hey, we’re having, an increase in call volume because of this site wide outage. We will meet our SLA to you or if our response time is X or what it is, and you can automate some of this in your PSA based upon the ticket that’s being open, prioritizing what type of issue it is, and then aligning that with the appropriate SLA response time.
In fact. That’s something I like, that I like to do anyway, whenever someone opens a ticket, have the automation figure out, okay, based on the ticket and how we prioritize and categorize these things, we send them the response, hey, thanks for opening the ticket, here’s your ticket number, based upon what you’ve shared with us, your expected response time is this, we’ll do our best to, to beat that.
Rich: We’re going to have to move on to our interview segment here in just a moment here, and so we don’t unfortunately have the time to get into the specific mechanics of this, but I will just quickly point out best in class MSPs do have good, better best practice. Packages, different labels attached to those typically, and they’re separated from one another in exactly the way that you talk about in, in my experience covering MSPs thing to keep in mind is that research, and this is not specific to I.
T. Just in general, that you give a customer three different options. The science says they’re going to gravitate towards the middle one. So just think very carefully about the better and that good, better, best trio there. And think about the pricing and the margins and so on, because you’re going to have a lot of people kind of land there.
And then, as you were saying, Erick, over time, you want to get them up to best. You want to get everybody up to best. Just be aware. You’re going to have a lot of better is going in and
Erick: that’s the intention. Rich, I know we’re running short of time, but I just will say, if we do this correctly, what we tend to find is 60 percent of your clients will take that better option.
25 percent will take the best option, leaving only 15 percent to take the good option. So think about that. So it makes a difference and look up the power of three. Okay. In your browser and just understand that’s why we do three. We don’t do two options. We don’t do four options, a power of three.
That’s the special kicker here, and I’ll leave you with that. And
Rich: it’s a great place to leave folks. But we’re going to take a break now and we come back in the other side, we’re going to be joined by our channel mastered colleague, Andrew Smith for a conversation about digital marketing. If you’re not really thinking about digital marketing a lot, you’re not quite sure why it might be relevant to you trust me on this is going to be a very interesting conversation to you because Andrew knows a ton about how to generate leads.
Online, and you’re gonna learn some very specific actionable examples of that in a moment, so stick around, we will be right back.
Andrew: Alright,
Rich: and welcome to part two of this episode of the MSP Chat Podcast, our spotlight interview segment. This week we are joined by a colleague of ours at Channel Mastered, Andrew Smith. Andrew is a digital marketing strategist he is a demand gen expert. He got his start in that field actually over a decade ago, working with companies like Amazon, Google, BMW, [00:20:00] Canon, many others.
Since registrations for dozens of IT conferences and online summits. He’s generated over 25, 000 B2B magazine subscriptions. And manage ad campaigns for some of the largest and most recognized vendors in the MSP channel. That is a huge part of why he is a part of the team at Channel Master. Andrew, welcome to the show.
Andrew: Good to see you guys. Good to chat.
Rich: So I, I gave people a, the highest of high level overviews of who you are and your background and so on. But tell folks a little bit more about your background in digital marketing, what you do for your clients
Andrew: today. Yeah that was quite the intro, to be honest.
The simple version is that the first few companies you mentioned, it was really, I was in the B2C world. I was at agencies, and we were doing a lot of content. All the way from consumer products to movie launches to applications to all these things that, consumers would get their hands on.
And then I started working for like a TV show in the Middle East and it was sponsored by Google and it was very social media heavy. And there’s another crazy story but I ended up getting a gig in Australia with Tourism Australia. It was actually a well publicized contest for this job called the best job in the world.
And 330, 000 people applied for this spot I ended up getting. And, all of that was crazy and this was 20, 12 to 14, 15 when I was really focused on B2C content, a lot of social media. The term influencer was a joke. Back then all the, all of these titles that are now well received didn’t exist.
So it was the Wild West but once I moved back from Australia, started consulting and started doing some more work and actually took a chance initially. This was many years ago, but one of the first B2B experiences I had was working with a company that I’m sure people listening know well as Channel Pro Network.
And this coincides with their live events, but then we started doing some online events and I was tasked with figuring out how to get people to sign up for these things and register. And I was like, okay, B2B is very different, but we’ll figure it out. And turns out there’s more similarities than there are differences, even from B to C to B2B.
And there’s this prevalent thought. Oh, this won’t work because, Facebook, for example, or Instagram, that those are fun platforms. It’s not meant for businesses and relationship building. It turns out we generated hundreds and thousands of opt ins and registrations from those exact platforms for B2B.
And then from there, yeah, it just spiraled into, I primarily work with a lot of trade publications and, industry rags where. It doesn’t matter which industry it is. Could be it, but also could be HVAC plumbing, home remodeling, very distinct niche industries.
And we’ve generated tens of thousands of subscribers using the same exact methods. At this point feels a little ironic, but I’m not doing hardly any B2C, and it’s mostly all B2B now, so that’s the full story arc of, going from jumping out of planes in Australia to sitting here talking with you guys,
Rich: much less dangerous I would think, talking
Andrew: now. Yeah. Yeah I get much less sunlight now. So yeah,
Rich: so I should say for folks who don’t know on top of his many other talents, Andrew is an excellent writer. He’s contributed a number of posts to the channel mastered blog. Which you can find on under articles on channelmaster.
com. There are two particular posts that you’ve written for us that I want to get into a little bit here. Cause some of what you’ve written about before, I think would be really applicable to vendors in the audience. But I want to talk about something that I think every MSP in our audience cares about as one going to want to know about, which is the secrets to effective lead generation.
Through digital marketing. And so the first of these two posts that you wrote was about building a lead gen offer. There are like seven principles in that story for how to do that. And we’ll get into some specifics here in a moment. But big picture, just to kick things off at a big picture level.
What’s the challenge to have in mind as you’re thinking about a lead gen offer? And what are the goals you should be driving towards as you actually come up with something a little bit more specific?
Andrew: Yeah I think it’s the same as it’s always been, but the stakes are higher now, and it’s really, you have to cut through the noise social is more saturated than ever, because adoption is ubiquitous at this point, seven, eight years ago, there, it was true, there were a lot of people who still just weren’t engaging or on social networks, and you can see where that idea came from, where, oh, B2B is not going to work, because Plenty of people don’t have Facebook accounts or, TikTok didn’t even exist, right?
But now It’s more true than ever that basically [00:25:00] everybody is on social media. Some people are on different platforms, right? LinkedIn has its own cut out specialty. And so does Facebook groups and et cetera, but everybody’s basically on social media. And so your job when you’re making it a lead magnet or an offer is that you have to cut through the noise.
And it doesn’t mean necessarily being louder. Or more annoying or something. It means you really have to think of an offer. That’s just going to differentiate you and separate you from the rest of the crowd. And that’s where all the work goes in, because a lot of people want to know, Hey, if I’m going to advertise on social media, how much is this going to cost me per lead?
And that is absolutely impossible to answer. If you don’t know what the offer is. Because if your offer isn’t very good, it’s going to cost you a thousand dollars a lead. And if you have a killer offer, it’s going to cost you 10 bucks. So that’s number one is what is your offer? What are you actually asking people to do and what do they get out of it?
So that’s just the overarching principle. It doesn’t even matter what platform you’re on. So when it comes to offer creation, that is a huge discussion to have, because what do you have to offer? And if you don’t have something that’s a no brainer opt in experience, can you make one? What can you put together with the tools and opportunities you have.
How much can you give away without really hurting yourself too much? And as things do become more saturated, you have to have better and better offers, and you have to be willing to give more and more to get less these days. And that doesn’t mean it’s gonna fail. Because when you offer a lot of value, you get trust, you get goodwill.
And then the question is, all right, how long is it going to take for that person to convert? You get them into your world depends on your on your product. It might take a long time, there’s months of trust building. And then other products, it also depends, you might be able to get them to become a buyer quickly.
A lot of moving parts really, but the question is, how much value can you create for that person for free? And generally that is what’s going to set you up for success. It’s all numbers. The more people you get in the top end, the more you get on the bottom, and based on your budget, it’s a really important thing
Erick: to nail.
Hey, Andrew, sticking with that, that one blog post that Rich referenced, it outlines again, those seven specific principles of effective offers, and we’re talking about the offer topic now the first two on the list are. The, what you call the irresistible trade and instant value. And speaking to an audience of MSPs, what are those concepts for an MSP, some ideas.
And how can MSPs, construct those in an effective lead gen campaign for new prospects?
Andrew: Every business is going to have some things that they’re doing, like all the other MSPs, and then you’re going to have some specialties. So if you have any specialties or things that differentiate you from competition, lead with those.
But, a lot of things that MSPs do are as free threat analysis, right? Or they do dark web scans or. Similar things like that. Do them for free, right? And do your targeting for free. And see if you can get people in the door. But, if you have something better than that, because a lot of MSPs are doing threat analysis and dark web scans, if you have something that sets you apart, make that your offer, if possible.
And give away as much as you can without hurting yourself, free analysis free 30 minute calls, free free plans. I don’t know, anything you can think of. That you’re willing to do and is worth your time will build a relationship because you got to open those doors, right? And the irresistible trade, what I mean by that is everybody knows that when you sign up for something, you’re signing up for emails, phone calls, you’re going to be sold something.
And that is what people think of and then leave the page. Because they go, Oh, this isn’t worth it. What you need to offer has to be worth even getting called and getting emailed, right? It has to be so good that it’s worth it. So it really depends on your business and what you can offer. But you need to think about what differentiates you because this is all about continuity as well.
When somebody’s in the door and they take your free offer, that should be the first step. And the next steps have to be obvious too to keep working with you. Can’t really be like disjointed like, Hey, get a free Amazon gift card. But then, get our managed services. It just doesn’t flow. So step one has to lead into step two.
But beyond that, yeah, try to make it as irresistible as possible, and even if it makes you wince, even if it hurts a little bit to give away that much value in the end, if you get a good client out of it, you won’t care.
Erick: Yeah, I’ve seen that that strategy [00:30:00] work well with partners.
And then I’ve also seen it fail miserably, like where it fails miserably, the ones that I’ve seen and are like, your first hour of service for free. And then you just get inundated with these calls for unqualified prospects. So you have to be really careful. I would think. in how you’re targeting that message.
Any thoughts on that side?
Andrew: I think the targeting might be good, but maybe the qualifying is bad. Forums themselves are amazing, because they will do most of the work for you if you ask the right questions. And like I mentioned before, in this B2B space, especially for magazines that are audited by third parties, We have to ask so many questions, like to the point where I initially thought years ago, this wasn’t even going to work like 26 to 28 fields.
How many employees you have, check every single box of every specialty you have, give me your address, all your phone number, like so much information that I, I was convinced it wasn’t going to work, but people really like community and they really like free magazines, I’ll tell you that much but the qualifiers in there, if you’re not in that industry, that form is actually impossible to fill out.
So in the same way, you need to build your forms in a way Borderline impossible to fill out unless you’re the right person, and if you can’t do that within the form itself, have a second step where somebody follows up and say, hey, we just want to check on, two or three more things to make sure it’s the right fit.
And and do it that way because, yeah, you don’t want to give away your time because time is money and have them not turn out to be qualified individuals, but a lot of times that happens on the front end, not the back end. So I would really advise using your form as the gatekeeper up front, and if you need to put a person on it on the back end to further qualify it, just say, hey, this is part of our process,
Erick: yeah, I’ve also seen a tactic used, Andrew, where it’s a complete this questionnaire and see if you qualify for our special thing or this or that a certain way to say. You’re going to, you have to be vetted a little bit in order to qualify for this thing. I think it’s a little bit of trial and error, A, B testing maybe?
What are your thoughts? Yeah,
Andrew: and you can also make your offer kind of two pieces where there’s this very low hanging fruit thing that is attractive, interesting, builds curiosity, tools, calculators, those types of things. And you can even mention This other amazing offer like free service, free analysis, free on site consultation, something like that.
But in order to get that second piece, you can have a second opt in or a second filtering mechanism on that thank you page. Hey, thanks so much for opting in. You’re going to love this first thing. But let’s talk about that second thing real quick. Here’s what you’re going to get. You resell it for 30 seconds and then you say But look, this is so good and we get so much interest in this that we have to do the following to make sure that it’s worth our time.
Because we don’t have enough time to actually fulfill all the interest we’ve got. And you can be transparent. And it’s interesting, I think when people feel like they have to do something, or you’re telling them how valuable it is, it almost makes them want to opt in more. But you’re selling and filtering at the same time.
But I think this comes up in another blog, but never waste a thank you page. Oh my god, the amount of thank you pages that are wasted kills me. That’s your best that’s your best asset. Not the opt in, it’s your thank you page. Because that’s when you take that person from step one to step two, and you can sell even more, you can qualify even more, you can, warm them up, you can give them more value.
You can create new problems and do new opt ins, you can do all sorts of things.
Erick: Yeah, that’s an idea that you brought to the team that blew my mind. Andrew is like that thank you page is gold. It’s almost like that second, they’ve already given you all of this other information. Now you can ask for, this other thing.
And I think what seems to me to feel more compelling as you’re alluding to it on the thank you page, it’s almost like you’re creating scarcity by saying, look, not everybody qualifies for this. It’s almost takeaway close. We don’t really think. We’re a fit or we don’t really know if we’re a fit yet.
And then that forces the really interested prospect who may have been. Playing it cool to say, Oh wait a minute. And then start qualifying themselves to you. Then, you’ve got a fish on the hook at that point.
Andrew: Yeah. And you can either do it there. Reality is you will lose some people in that process.
Every step you add to a funnel, the numbers, get divided. Cause you’re not going to have a hundred percent often everywhere. It’s it filters down, which in this case is good because if your offer takes your time and effort and resources, you. You want that but you can do it on the front end too.
Some of the coolest email list opt ins I’ve seen from thought leaders in different industries have Google forms to get in their email list. And the first [00:35:00] question, it, is this full paragraph description about how This list is for serious people in this industry, and this list is going to have a lot of great information, and I don’t want any people on here who aren’t going to read every single email that comes in here.
Please tell me about yourself, your business, and your aspirations. And it’s a long form field. So what it does is it puts that person in the mind frame of, Oh, I have to apply to get on, onto this list. I need to try. I need to be transparent. So by the time you get to the end where it’s like, Hey, what’s your name and email?
You’ve already told them everything. You’re already like committed, so you can do that as well on the front end. Yeah, or you can split it up on the back end. And you pitch in the ad creative the whole offer. You get this and this, but maybe that piece. That you really need to filter out.
That’s where you use the thank you page to explain it further or create scarcity or urgency,
Erick: yeah. And you’ve shared some of those landing pages, those kind of, qualifying pages. And I’m blown away at how effective they are because, you’re laying out, look, I’m going to email you every, some of these, right?
I’m going to email you every single day with a tip. And you need to read that and you’re asking that, that participation. So it makes them, okay, yes, I will sign up. That’s a better prospect now. Yeah. I,
Andrew: I, one of my favorite ones I’ve ever seen is I’m going to email you every single day.
Do not check this box. If you do not plan on reading all of them, if you do, please check this box. It’s crazy, but it works, you
Erick: know? Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. It’s actually,
Rich: it’s a great transition maybe to the second of your blog post because that is all about landing pages and I’ve got to read the title of the blog post exactly as you wrote it, Andrew, to put people in mind of why Erick and I are both such big fans of it.
The title of that post is nine reasons my landing pages convert at 47 percent when the average is 4. 02%. Yeah, you’re doing some things that are pretty effective Andrew, and again, we’ll get into some of the specifics here, but the very first point you make in the post there is that technology or it is a tech heavy kind of engineering field and effective landing pages are all about connecting with an audience’s emotions.
What, I guess explain, for the engineers in our audience here, why connecting? With an audience’s emotions is so important for an effective landing page and what can make that difficult.
Andrew: I think in Just b2b industries as a whole so not just IT, but this is everything and I’m talking about, you know all these different clients I work with home remodeling and Hydronic plumbing and things like that.
These magazines are all about tech specs gear hardware Firmware, all these things that are really important. And that’s what these businesses are tasked solving for their clients, right? But at the end of the day, their business folds. If they don’t make enough money, they don’t hire the right people. They don’t keep the right people and they don’t work themselves to death working 14, 15 hour days because other things aren’t figured out.
So you can talk tech specs all day. A lot of times these business owners, when their head hits the pillow, they’re stressed out of their minds, right? Or there’s jealousy, right? Man, I’m working so hard, but my peer is doing triple the revenue and just bought a Porsche. And it’s driving me insane, and you go to these events and you hear people talk and you hear speakers and there’s a lot of these things swirling in people’s heads that don’t have anything to do with tech specs, right?
If your product can solve those emotional issues, as well as the technical issues you’re going to crush it because people are emotional beings. There’s no possible way to separate that. We do the best job we can when we’re at work because it’s all business and we want to talk numbers and spreadsheets.
But on a landing page, you are appealing to people’s emotions. And a lot of times it’s there’s these three categories that have performed better in marketing than anything ever. And it will be this way forever. It’s make more money. Relationships, and health. Those three categories are the mass of 99 percent of marketing.
And believe it or not, I would argue that any B2B segment can also fit into those. Because if your business isn’t running very well, your health is probably suffering. If your business isn’t running very well you probably have wealth concerns. Relationships is a bit of a stretch on this one. But there are a lot of angles that you can create.
Even with the most technical software, what are the emotional benefits that person’s gonna get? Are they gonna get some of their time back? Is their stress gonna be lowered? [00:40:00] Can they manage this stuff remotely? Can their clients start calling them less? Especially the ones that are super annoying.
All of these things actually do have to do with the product. And so I think it’s important to write copy and write landing pages that acknowledge the human benefits that they’re going to receive, as well as the technical benefits. Because, at the end of the day, a lot of products are extremely similar.
You can have a grid that says, this product checks all these boxes, and this one checks most of them except this one. And there’s a whole marketing campaign about one differentiator. But then there’s ten more products that are similar, and it becomes overwhelmed. But if one can reach through to that human ele element, and promise that you’re gonna be less stressed, a lot of people are gonna want that.
Or if you can make more money, that’s, that was the best the opt in messaging that worked the best for all of these events always had to do with growth and a lot of times the negative headlines way outperform the positive headlines. Like here’s why 60 percent of MSPs lost money or didn’t grow last year.
Find out what the other 40 percent did differently. Sign up, right? So those human elements can be rewritten into almost anything, is what I would argue. And I think that’s what landing pages have to acknowledge. And your product copy has to acknowledge that. What is the person you’re talking to going through?
At the end of the day, they’re a person. Even if they run a business or especially for vendors too they’re talking to MSPs like, what do they want from a human angle too,
Rich: we were talking before actually about the step two which could be something that appears on the thank you page.
But basically that gets to the call to action. Which is the linchpin for the landing page, and one of the principles in the blog that you discuss is to have a single, clear call to action. Single I’m going to guess is self explanatory. You don’t want to confuse the audience with multiple calls to action.
But give folks a little bit of more of a sense, a more specific sense for what a clear call to action is versus the kind that you will sometimes see MSPs and others use.
Andrew: Yeah this one’s pretty, it’s pretty simple actually. A lot of times you’ll see a landing page that will say, Get a demo, and then you’ll go down and it says, Check out our pricing, and then another one says, Download this white paper, and then another one says, Watch this webinar, all on the same page.
So which one do you really want somebody to do? At the end of the day, pick the one that’s gonna move the needle for you, and is the most enticing for them, and then put that one there five times. Every single spot that those other call to action were, swap them out, go for the jugular. What do you want to do?
Who are you targeting? Make that over and over and over again. That’s what I mean by single call to action, clear message. And again, it goes back to technical overwhelm. A lot of companies and even MSPs pitch the whole sync. The whole bathtub and the bath water and say we can do this and this and there’s all this technical stuff and the person reading the page is like, where do I start?
And they leave. Or their phone rings and they just start watching TikTok instead, like You need a call to action. Okay, if they’re not sold yet, go down more selling on that call to action, more selling on that call to action, more selling on that call to action. You’ll get them somewhere, right?
And if not, you’ll get them back on that page again, and then you’ll try and sell them again on the same call to action. Just simple. It’s just all about simplification. And it also helps your A B testing. Because if you have too many calls to action, too many messages, how do you even know what’s working?
How do you know what to improve or what to tweak? It’s really hard to tell. Simplification is gold in terms of marketing campaigns.
Erick: Andrew you’re such an expert at digital marketing and funnel building and these concepts that are relatively new, especially I think to MSPs who’s, and I can speak with with authority on this that, are not good at marketing or even sales because we’re so technically minded.
Speaking about and, and I know, I’ve built websites and in my time and I built some marketing material and I always get nailed on well. Obviously an engineer built this thing, right? Because it’s just all about, how, it’s how we do the thing rather than building this emotional connection and leading someone through to the call to action.
You made a, you’ve been hammering that point. And we know, those of us that, try to become better students of marketing and sales. People buy based on emotion, so the more emotion you can generate, the more sense of urgency, the more FOMO you can build, gets them to buy. So they buy based on emotion and [00:45:00] they justify that purchase to themselves through logic later.
Okay yes, I feel this way. I’m working my, myself to death. I haven’t had a vacation in three years. This and then yes, you’re speaking to me. I want to buy and then the justification becomes. Oh, yes Because I can increase my efficiencies with this product or service or I can outsource this thing or I can market better Whatever that is you make a point in that blog post, but the second one about simplifying The landing page and just, delete, if in doubt, delete.
You’re using terminology around, look, don’t overthink this thing. Focus on this for the ISAs really have no clue like me before, working with you, how to design good landing pages and basically just leveraging you to do it for us and want to just throw up. With copy and text and all this stuff.
Cause we’ve seen some of that stuff to the super long landing pages, but the super long landing pages that engineer minded MSPs build are more speeds and feed stuff rather than the long landing page that you may AB test that is really building that emotion. That urgency to get that emotional response to say, yes, I want to do this simplified call to action.
So tell us about eliminating all distractions when in doubt, delete. Some philosophy around that to help, folks like me that are, more of the engineer side of the house to, to review even our landing pages or our websites today and make them more effective.
Andrew: So there’s there’s a term that agencies will use, especially when addressing B2C companies or e commerce, and they call them BDQs, buyer decision questions.
And you’re supposed to build landing pages that address all BDQs in order of priority, or at least what you are guessing to be order of priority. So what are the main resistance points that people would have to engaging with you or buying your product? You have to answer those, right? It’s extremely important because when somebody has a doubt or a question, if you can answer it and you can validate it with social proof, which is even more important then you’re breaking down those walls each time.
So you need to answer all those BDQs and basically don’t answer anything else. There’s that phrase if they don’t ask them, then don’t tell them. And so if from previous client interactions, you should be. You should be asking all of your clients exactly why they signed up.
A lot of times you will know their problem. A lot of companies won’t go out and say, Hey, why did you end up going with us? Or who else were you looking at? What made the difference? Once they’re signed up they just start going to the work, but they don’t dig a little bit and figure out what the difference was.
If you can find out what that difference is, build your page around it. Answer those questions and answer those fears, answer those problems, and prioritize. The most important ones, and just get rid of everything else. If they want white papers, they’ll find them. You could even say, Hey, and for all the technical people, we have plenty of resources here.
Hyperlink it. But answer the main questions, and focus on those main questions. Very simply, paragraph. Video, photo, next section, next buyer decision question, next section, next buyer decision question. Same call to action in every section. And especially if it’s a landing page coming from traffic on ads, right?
Do not have a header menu. You don’t want people clicking anywhere else on your site, at all. If they click your logo, they can go to your home site. But you don’t want a menu, you don’t want related articles. You do not want a footer with all the stuff. You want only your call to action for that page.
That’s how you convert. And to go back to that the title I picked for this blog, which is a little bit of click bait, right? It’s wait, what? No, that page, the page I referenced really does have 43 percent or whatever the conversion rate is. But it’s coming from traffic on an ad that says sign up for this magazine.
If you’re a qualified pro, they land on the page. Sign up for this magazine. If you’re a qualified pro hundred percent continuity, and then they go down the page, join 45, 000 other professionals, just like you shaping the future of this industry. Get the latest products and news. Here’s some testimonials.
Here’s all this great stuff. You’re going to see no header, no footer, no button other than to subscribe five times over. That’s it. There’s nothing else to do. If you’re not going to subscribe, you have to leave. There’s nowhere else to click. So treat your landing pages that are coming from paid traffic like silos, like a box.
There’s nothing else to do. Once they’re in that box, they can either come out the way they got in, but there’s nothing else to do [00:50:00] in there. There’s no other toys. There’s no distractions. It’s just that thing, right?
Erick: Yeah. Eliminate all distractions. Just Do what I need you to do. And if you don’t, then you’re probably not qualified, at this moment in time.
Maybe it’ll be back. Yeah, maybe
Andrew: it’ll be back. Sometimes it takes people four and five times, right? And maybe you’re lacking a little bit of social proof. Eventually, when you spend enough traffic, the comments on these social sections start to fill up. And if you have a good offer or you have a good product, people will come back and comment and be like, Hey, just got my first issue for these magazines, right?
Love this. Guess what? The conversion rate goes up at that point. Or even better, is this a scam? Why are you farming so much information? It’s actually a chance for us to come back with a full paragraph. Hey, this publication’s been around for 40 years. We have this many subscribers. Here’s why we ask for so much.
We’re audited by a third party company. whatever actually helps,
Erick: Yeah. You touched on social proof. Can you take a few minutes and expand on what that is for MSPs that are curious about it and why it’s so important? Yeah.
Andrew: So social proof comes in a few forms. The one I was just talking about is if you’re running, ads on social for a long time, so wild west out there You will get absolute garbage comments.
There’s no way around it, but people will come out and they will vie for your product or your company or not. And so that can be tough to manage depending on your company’s history and product and everything. But generally if it’s good stuff, more people will sign up. But even more important than that is on a landing page.
You want either, you want client or user testimonials, as many as you can get. And not just hey, I took somebody’s photo and typed it into the font that’s, we’re using for this page. Screenshots are amazing. Screenshots from your email, from your text messages, from Facebook Messenger or LinkedIn messages.
All different forms showing that no matter where you are, You’re getting these great interactions with clients, or or users, right? You cannot beat the authenticity of that. At the end of the day, why is Yelp, and Maps, and all these other rating companies, or like Amazon Reviews, do you buy anything before looking at the reviews at this point?
No. And even though it’s very contentious, like people go on Yelp and talk about a, they don’t like the way the bathroom smelled, so they’ll give it a 1 out of 5. And, you get those reviews, but overall, you can go on and you can learn pretty quickly and trust your gut if you’re gonna something or if it’s trustworthy or not.
In the same way, you need to build as much of that as possible on your pages. Ask your clients for testimonials. And ask them via text. Ask them via video. Ask them via email. Ask them via LinkedIn. Any way possible and just screenshot it and say, Hey, do I permission to just put a little snippet somewhere?
It does wonders for your conversion rates people want to know that they’re not signing up for a scam And so if they see other people interacting or other trusted clients, right? Especially MSPs, if you have big name clients, throw them on your page. What small business is gonna look at a huge company as one of your clients and be like, turned off by that?
They’re gonna love it. It’s safety, it’s security, brand images, testimonials, quotes, especially as raw and authentic as possible, literally get on your phone and text some of your clients. Say, hey, we love working with you guys. You’re one of our longest standing clients. I would love to hear one or two things about our, that you think about our company.
Like, why do you keep working with us? And ask if you can take a screenshot of what they say back. It’ll do wonders for your site.
Erick: Yeah, I like that rawness. I’ve started, I’ve seen, I’m starting to notice that more as people are clipping from all of these different social networks, specifically, just screenshot click.
And that, like you said it certainly delivers the impression, not only that people like working with you, but also delivers the impression that you’re everywhere, right? So that’s that subconscious wow, these are, we’re getting these testimonies from all of these platforms. These folks are hitters, right?
Andrew: And I should flip it too. If you’re a vendor, right? And you’re working with MSPs or users You need to champion, or you need to go dig and find out the crazy stories that these guys have that your product solved. And you could end up making an entire ad campaign out of that. Like some of the stories.
That these MSPs have about basically, salvaging absolute crazy situations or like total crashes and takeovers or, hacking and all this type of stuff. There might be stories out there that you don’t know about because you haven’t asked. And so if that’s happened, it’s, I don’t know, it’s worth so much money.
It’s worth a [00:55:00] month of fees. It’s worth whatever you gotta do to go get that story, go get it on video and writing or something. You want those things really bad. And Because if you’re on a landing page and there’s other MSPs, just like the one who are telling this amazing story, they’re going to look at their own kind saying, wow, these guys saved me.
What more can you ask for?
Erick: Yeah, this is great insight, Andrew. If, if you were to speak directly to the MSPs in the audience and say, hey, if I were you, here are the, here is exactly where I would start, like three things. That they could do tomorrow that could improve or get them on the road to improving their lead gen using some of these tactics.
What would the top three be?
Andrew: Yeah first, first things first is if you aren’t absolutely clear why your clients work with you, go find out why are they still your clients and why did they sign up and go get it in their own words and ask for permission to share that if possible. So they might not all do it, but some will, and especially the ones that love working with you, go find out because that will give you so much data to go back and say, what is the messaging on our site, right?
Because we keep seeing this trend with people who work with us. Maybe we need to address the reasons why people are signing up with us, not why we think people want to work with us. Go hear it from them. So that would be step one. And step two would be to change your messaging around that.
And if you can get social proof, go put it everywhere. And if you don’t have social proof, go ask for it. And there are so many mechanisms to help businesses get this. Now there’s ones that are like automated, where when new clients sign up, it’s automatically asking for feedback and make it enticing too.
Make it so worth their while to give you a testimonial, even if it means giving up some revenue. Hey, listen, we’re going to give you X discount or we’re just going to, if you do this for us, it would mean the world to us. What can we do for you, makes a huge impact. And the last thing last thing I would ask is how complicated is your offer?
How complicated is your messaging in your site? Is it overwhelming? Maybe look for opportunities to simplify and pair things back. I would just say that in this industry, it just seems like. Such a common issue because it’s tech heavy. There’s a tendency to throw everything at a person and that actually can be one of the biggest turnoffs.
So how do you simplify and how do you position your product to solve the human need? Is that addressed or is it all technical? Those are the first things I would go look at in terms of connecting with more people and converting more people. And really getting to the heart of the issue,
Rich: And always an education for me, always a pleasure to have these conversations with you.
I’m just like Erick, I’m a content guy. I’m not a marketing guy. So there’s so much I don’t know, but I’m just, find intrinsically interesting about this stuff. I really enjoy hearing you. Share your experiences with us. Now, obviously, I am biased, so I’m going to encourage anyone in the audience who wants to get in touch and talk more about how you can help them to contact Channel Mastered.
We’d be happy to put you in touch. But for somebody who wants to get in touch with you, connect with you on social media, whatever, how can people
Andrew: Yeah for this LinkedIn is great. Come find me via channel mastered or just on LinkedIn. I’m always talking about this type of stuff. I get really passionate about landing pages and offer creation because it’s fun.
At the end of the day, it’s human psychology. It’s doesn’t matter what the product is. It’s how we all tick. So I’m always talking about this and trying to. Get technical too. There’s a lot of technical stuff on the back end to really make optimizations go up. So yeah LinkedIn’s a great spot.
Or yeah, like through Channel Mastered. That’d be perfect.
Rich: All right. Andrew, thank you again very much for joining us on MSP Chat. Folks, we are gonna take a break. When Erick and I come back on the other side, we’re gonna have a few closing thoughts about that very interesting conversation with Andrew, some Thoughts about maybe something else a little bit fun happening in the news to as we wrap up the show so stick around We’re gonna be right back.
All
Welcome back to part three of this episode of the MFP chat podcast you know what it is. It is gauche Erick It is uncool to brag about how awesome your company is And so I you know don’t want to do it and yet Every time we have one of our Channel Mastered advisors on the podcast here, I am so tempted to boast a little bit because Andrew is a perfect example of the kind of experts who we bring to bear for our clients here.
And that conversation it, trust us folks that was a classic example of [01:00:00] every conversation, including the internal ones, forget about the ones with clients, but even just in internal meetings at Channel Mastered. Every time you talk digital marketing with Andrew, that’s what it’s like. Very specific experience driven, actionable.
He’s just a wealth of information about something that most of us don’t know
Erick: a lot about. Yeah, he’s a time traveler, Rich. He’s from the future. The things that he has been able to overcome the challenges that he has been able to overcome for our clients and his clients include, the changes in The, the privacy concerns and data concerns that he talks about, and he talked about during that conversation and just how difficult it is to cost effectively conduct digital marketing the way we used to five years ago.
It was a, it was, a, an expectation that we would spend X amount of budget and get this number of leads, but because of all these changes that have happened in the last several years. The crumbling of the cookie as it were the cost for that same lead for that same click has sometimes increased to five or 10 times what it used to be.
So what Andrew’s been able to do is overcome some of that to make sure that we can cost effectively continue to market digitally because the, the challenge becomes. Identifying that, that very specific target audience because now the lines are blurred and it’s very difficult to do that.
So it’s really interesting, as you say to get a conversation with Andrew, especially when we’re having conversations with our clients and have him review, I just asked him to review one of our clients. And this is something that we’re doing as part of a digital marketing program for them and just in just 30 minutes or so for him to just come up with, here are the 55 things that need to be fixed on this landing page, almost like, holy cow you don’t run into that kind of experience and expertise very often at all.
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that understands digital marketing and all the drivers, not only. You know how it’s supposed to work, but writing the correct copy writing the, constructing the landing page properly, having the offers constructed just in, in where things appear on the landing page, it just blows me away.
Rich: And needless to say we are more than happy to set you up for a one to one conversation with Andrew if you’d like to maybe have him take a look at your website et cetera. And so go to ChannelMaster. com to see how you can get in touch with us. But that leaves us with time for just one last thing on this episode of the show.
And Erick you would think there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing. But this story concerns a little too much beer. Actually, it comes to us from a microbrewery in Spring Park, Minnesota, called the Backchannel Brewing Company. It is based on a video that went viral not too long ago.
They were in the course of doing their work and making beer in the brewery there, and I guess they had a surveillance camera or something going. And in the video, one of the workers walk up to one of these big tanks, these big vats, and make an adjustment, and this hatch just blows open knocks the poor guy I mean he, he flies back like six feet lands on his back which is a little bit scary, but he pops right up, he’s able to go over to this thing and close it up, he’s fine, he wasn’t hurt by this all’s well that ends well in that sense, but this is one of those stories, Erick I love it when somebody takes advantage of something unpredictable like this, so the the beer that came flying out of that tank was originally called New England IPA they have renamed it Blowback, and they have they’re marketing it now as a limited release, obviously, so they’re taking advantage of the fact They lost a little of that inventory.
Kind of turned this into a collector’s item. With an at name attached to it. Blowback IPA.
Erick: Yeah, kudos to the marketing team and the marketing department that came up with that. Like you say, got a couple of limits here. We’re going to make some lemonade out of it. And the video I think is the key component there.
So it’s this viral opportunity to say, Hey, check this out. Limited time. It’s our new, it’s our limited blowback run. And when you, when it’s done, it is done. Nice.
Rich: All right. Folks, that is all we’ve got for you this week on MSP Chat. We thank you so much for joining us. We’re going to be back again in another week with another episode for you.
Until then, if you are watching us on YouTube, but you’re into podcasts on audio, wherever it is, you get your podcasts Google, apple, Spotify, you name it, you’re probably gonna find us there. If you are listening on audio, but you [01:05:00] would be curious to check us out on YouTube, you can find us on YouTube as well.
Wherever it is you get us, please subscribe, rate, review. It will help other folks find the show and enjoy it just the way you are. So we appreciate that very much. This show is produced by the great Russ Johns he can produce podcasts for you to learn more about that and more about him check out russjohns.
com Channel Mastered is the company responsible for this podcast, you can learn more about us and learn how to get in touch with us at channelmastered. com and so folks, once again, we thank you for joining us, we’ll see you on the next episode of the show, until then, please remember, you can’t spell channel.
Without M. S. P.
