The podcast powered by the MSP Marketing Edge

Welcome to Episode 312 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green. This week…

• Why being the cheapest MSP is a bad strategy: If your marketing strategy is to be the cheapest MSP around, what you’re actually doing is setting yourself up to attract the worst clients, who create the most noise and generate the least amount of profit.
• The #1 all time secret of epic MSP marketing: The marketing winners aren’t smarter and don’t necessarily work harder than everyone else. They just get more of the right stuff implemented really fast.
• DANGER: Most MSPs have confused messaging: My special guest is an expert at making messaging simple. Your eyes are about to be opened as to how confused messaging is killing your MSP marketing efforts dead.
• The Marketing Minute: Don’t miss this simple email signature marketing idea that can make a big impact.

Why being the cheapest MSP is a bad strategy

If your marketing strategy is to be the cheapest MSP around, then you’re setting yourself up for a world of pain. Lots of MSPs do this because when you’re not very good at marketing, which most MSPs aren’t, it just seems like the easiest thing to do… offer a good service, deliver it at a good price. But what you’re actually doing is setting yourself up to attract the worst clients, who create the most noise and generate the least amount of profit.

If you don’t today, have the confidence to put up your prices, to be the most expensive MSP in your marketplace, let me tell you why you owe it to your existing clients, your future clients, yourself and your family to do this.

On the surface, being the cheapest MSP feels like a good idea because everyone likes a bargain, but being the cheapest is not a winning strategy.

It attracts completely the wrong kind of clients. The ones who are constantly haggling, they’re always looking for shortcuts and they just don’t value what you do for them. In fact, they’ll leave the moment that someone else comes along who’s a pound or a dollar cheaper than you. And that is not really a foundation that you can build a profitable stable MSP on.

So instead, you kind of want to be at the other end of the scale, the most expensive MSP in town. Now, I know that you might maybe have tensed up when I said that and you might be thinking, Me, the most expensive, no way. I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to do that. But listen, just hear me out on this. The MSPs who charge the most are often the ones who are seen as the safest choice. It kind of seems crazy, doesn’t it? But actually, higher prices signal higher value. They signal better service, they signal more stability, more reliability, and guess what? The best clients, the ones who are really serious about their businesses and protecting their businesses and growing them with a proper partner, they want that reassurance. They don’t just want to spend money on a service and spend as little as they can. They want the best quality because they want a genuine partnership from someone that offers a very high quality of service.

So how do you do this? Well, there are two main approaches that you can take overt and covert. So overt is where you’re very upfront about being premium. In fact, you build your whole brand around expertise, trust, and high standards. You’re never apologising for your price, in fact, you’re proud of it. But then the opposite is covert because this is a little bit more subtle. And in this with being covert, you don’t shout about being the most expensive from the rooftops. Instead, you just focus on value.

One very smart way to do this is to use a three-tier pricing, like a good, better, best pricing where your good price, kind of like your entry level price is a very, very keen price. And when they’re comparing you to the other MSPs and you and I know they’re comparing apples to oranges, but when they’re doing that, they can see that you are a very good value price, but ultimately the package that you most want to sell than actually most people will want to buy because it’s the best value, there’s all of the stuff in there, it becomes your better package or your best package. And of course the price for that is a lot higher. So you’re the most expensive without essentially advertising that you are the most expensive.

But what if you’re thinking, Paul, this is all very good, but I just don’t feel comfortable charging more. Well, maybe that’s something called imposter syndrome talking. And we all get that, it’s the little voice in the back of our head that says, You’re not good enough. And sometimes it’s there and it’s loud and we listen to it and we let it dictate us, and we think, well, if we put our prices up, people are going to see that we are in an imposter that we are not worth the money that we want to charge.

But let me tell you something, you are worth that money. You really are. If you’ve been running your MSP for a few years, if you are good at keeping your clients safe, you’re good at not just the reactive stuff, but you’re good at the proactive stuff, you protect them. Sometimes you protect them from themselves and you help them to grow their businesses. If you do all of this and you’ve been doing it for a few years, you are already delivering huge value. You are not just fixing stuff here, you are so far past break/fix. You are safeguarding people’s businesses, you are safeguarding their livelihoods, you’re safeguarding jobs, you’re safeguarding whatever it is that they do for their clients. You are instrumental in this. And if you get it wrong, which you don’t most of the time, but if you get it wrong, it has lots of implications, but you don’t do this. You are a massive part of their success.

So instead of asking yourself, Can I justify charging more? Why don’t you try asking yourself, What do I need to do so that my clients see the value in what we do and are happy to pay more for it? It’s a tiny little shift in thinking, but it can change everything. So here’s my big takeaway for today. Don’t ever play the cheapest game. You’ll always, always lose in some way, either by attracting the wrong clients or just having to deal with the noise and the hassle and the lack of profits that they generate. Instead, play the value game. Position yourself as the MSP worth paying more for. And even if you don’t feel ready to be the most expensive in your marketplace, at least make sure you are never the cheapest.

The #1 all time secret of epic MSP marketing

Would you like me to tell you the greatest secret I’ve ever learned about marketing an MSP? It’s the secret every MSP has been begging me to reveal, and you’ll be surprised to hear that it hasn’t changed over the last decade. What I’m going to say is exactly the same today as I would’ve said to you back when I got into the channel in 2016, and you won’t believe how simple it is, but also what kind of dramatic positive impact it can have on your marketing. So let me reveal the number one all time secret of epic MSP marketing.

A member of my team recently paid me the highest possible compliment. Several months back I took over driving our MSP Marketing Edge development roadmap, mostly out of frustration at how long it was taking to just get things done. And my colleague said to me, it’s a lot more chaotic with you pushing things, but we’re getting so much more done, which is amazing. So obviously I gave him an immediate pay rise. No, I didn’t.

I do pride myself as an epic implementer because everything I’ve achieved in the 20 years now that I’ve been running my own businesses has been accomplished purely by getting things done. So I’m not the smartest guy in the room and I’m never going to be. This is an average brain that I’m carrying here, and I’m certainly not the most driven person. I’ll be honest, I’m comfortable and I prioritise being a present parent and a present partner above driving a sick Lamborghini. But I’m also the most impatient person you will ever meet, I just hide it really well. And I have a hundred marketing ideas a day, and I want to implement as many of them as I possibly can as quickly as possible. Because this is the only way to find out which ideas work and which suck.

Being able to rapidly implement marketing is a key skill to develop in your MSP. And the good news is that doesn’t mean that you have to do it all personally.

In fact, it’s better that you don’t try to do it all yourself. I can get more implemented by inspiring, guiding and driving my team than I can by trying to do everything myself. Being able to step back and take in the overall picture is valuable and almost impossible to do when you’ve personally worked for hours and hours and hours on something.

So here’s what that means for you. It’s one of two things. Number one, if you want to get more marketing implemented and you have the time and energy to do it yourself, then you must stay focused on implementing only the things that make the biggest difference. So what are those things for you? Well, it’s easy. What will help you generate a new lead? What will help you to turn a lead into a prospect? What will help you to get someone on a 15 minute introduction call? What will help you to sell more monthly recurring revenue to an existing client?

Make a list of all the tasks that come into those things I just said, and then remove the clutter from that list. And then just make sure you review that list daily and be ready to implement any time that you can clear time. Easiest place to do that, 6am every single weekday. That is a great time to get things done. In fact, if you could knock out 90 minutes a day of pure implementation at 6 till 7:30 in the morning when the rest of the world is asleep and isn’t expecting anything from you, you could change your whole business in just 12 months. I promise you, that is so real.

And then the other option number two, if you want to get more marketing implemented but you don’t have the time or energy to spare, just get someone else to do it for you. There are lots of people you could talk to. You could talk to Mark Copeman at Wingman MSP Marketing or Nate Freedman at Tech Pro Marketing and MSP Sites or Paul Charnock at Plexor. Or better still, you could join my MSP Marketing Edge if it’s not locked in your area, and you can ask our Done for You team to implement your MSP Marketing Edge marketing for you. But whatever you do, whichever of those two options you take, just remember this, the winners aren’t smarter and don’t necessarily work harder than everyone else. They just get more of the right stuff implemented really fast.

DANGER: Most MSPs have confused messaging

Featured guest: Jesse Flocken brings a unique and engaging perspective that resonates with audiences navigating personal and professional growth. His journey—from pre-med to a 15-year career in firefighting to becoming the founder and CEO of a successful marketing agency—is both inspiring and relatable.

Jesse specialises in helping people turn big ideas into clear, actionable plans, drawing from his expertise in branding, entrepreneurship, and personal coaching. As a certified StoryBrand guide, Jesse helps individuals and businesses clarify their message so they can connect with the right audience and grow with purpose. He brings real-world insights, practical advice, and thoughtful conversation around life transitions, mindset, and business growth. His calm, grounded approach makes complex ideas feel accessible and leaves listeners feeling motivated and empowered to take their next step forward.

If I looked at your website and your other marketing materials, what would I think about your MSP? Would it be really clear for me who you serve, what you do, what you are great at, and more importantly, why I should choose you instead of the 20 or 30 other MSPs in your marketplace?

Well, most MSPs just don’t have that kind of clarity in their messaging. And I’ll tell you something, it’s killing your sales. So my special guest today is an expert at making messaging simple. Your eyes are about to be opened as to how confused messaging is killing all of your marketing efforts dead.

Hi, I’m Jesse Flocken. I’m the CEO of Clearly Relevant, and I’m just excited to be here today.

Not as excited as I’m Jesse, because we are going to be talking about telling stories, we’re going to be talking about getting your marketing message clear. And you and I both know, obviously we both work with MSPs, we know how difficult it is for most MSPs to understand what story they should be telling and get that message across, get any message across to their audience. You and I have both been on lots of MSP’s websites and seen the same thing again and again and again, and we know how damaging that is when you see the same thing again and again because to the prospect who’s trying to pick an MSP, they don’t which one to pick. So we’re going to explore those kinds of themes today, but you have an awesome backstory. Give us the brief version of your life up to this point.

Yeah, the brief version is that I was a firefighter for almost 15 years. And the one thing that firefighters are really good at is just that overwhelming, excellent customer service at all costs. And so through that, I had taken customer service classes and other things, and as I started continuing my education, I actually was starting to go to medical school. I had not started yet, and I was in the process and we accidentally started a business and our first client was a Fortune 100 client. And so it was really just a wild ride and there’s a lot of pieces to that backstory, but it was really neat.

That was the inception and now I’ve owned this business for 12 years. I left the fire department four years ago, and it wasn’t until I really found that radical purpose and clarity in what I was doing, and today we’ll talk a little bit about messaging, but in my own life, and even my wife and I did this little workshop that we do for people, and it was just about finding radical clarity about what I want to be known for at the end of my life. What does that look like? And if that’s going to be true, what has to happen today in order to help make those things come true?

And so that was when I really just went all in and in the last 12 years, now I’ve been the CEO of the company and it’s been growing. We’ve had some twists and some turns and some evolutions, but it’s really been a wild ride. And now we’ve done everything from take 80 or so adults to Disneyland with some author and some other folks just to have a little bit more whimsy in their life to, we’ve taken people on marriage retreats all the way to Hawaii. So it’s really just this all encompassing crazy journey to where we started in customer service and the internal marketing space. And now here we are working with authors and speakers and financial advisors and MSPs and alike.

Yeah, I love that you’re going to have an awesome next 30 years. It feels like you had an awesome first 30 odd years, however old you are right now. So let’s talk about messaging then. So we know that MSPs struggle with messaging. It’s one of the hardest things. In fact, it’s the question I get asked that I struggle to answer the most, which is, how do I differentiate myself from the 10 other competitors in town, the 30 in our surrounding area, the 40,000 that are out there? Because in theory, every MSP is against up against every other MSP, and a lot of that comes down to messaging. Why do you think MSP owners struggle with messaging so much?

I think there’s a couple of things. The first thing, honestly, I think that most of the MSPs that I meet, they’re actually struggling with one or two things. And the first thing is they’re usually not struggling because they’re bad at tech. They’re usually stuck because their messaging is really confusing or they’re actually invisible to the people that need them the most. And so some of those common pain points I see is they’re actually competing on price instead of value. The other one is struggling to explain just what makes them different. Like you said, if you had a hundred websites, they would all kind of feel the same. And even nowadays with ChatGTP and with all this AI and everything, you could even put it up to them to say, what’s the difference? You can’t often tell there’s just a little maybe a slow list of pros and cons of whatever’s publicly available.

Because of that, marketing efforts feel scattered or reactive. And then it really creates this feast or famine client acquisition style. I really think that you know you’re great at what you do if your ideal customer essentially can get what you do in 10 seconds. Because if the ideal client doesn’t get in that first 10 seconds, then they’re just going to go find someone else who can explain it better. It doesn’t matter if you’re actually better at it, they’re just going to go find someone to explain it better. And one thing that we will talk about later is truly how that trickles down. So it’s not just from you to your customers, but it’s also about giving your customers the words to talk about you to other people.

In our own business, we have a launch market and grow silo. And most people always want it, and I’m sure you see this in your lead generation and all the other things that you do, most people want to go right to, I need more leads, I need more ads, I need all those things. And I’m like, if we don’t get this message right, then we’re going to pay money to get this message out there, to get people to your website only to confuse them. And so now we’re actually paying to confuse your customers rather than get really, really clear on who you are and what you can do. To the point where our team right now for our own silos, is actually redoing each silo and package and offering one by one so that we don’t get stale in this and that we’re consistently evolving.

Yeah, I completely agree with you there. Spending all of that money when you haven’t actually got the basics right, the fundamentals right is kind of nuts, but it’s what most people do. And by the way, I’m with you in saying how difficult it is in saying ChatGPT for something that has become such a massive service so quickly they could have given it a much better name. I mean, even alternatives, I suppose Claude is okay, but Perplexity and that’s an even harder one to say. Google have got it right with Gemini.

So let’s look at those fundamentals and talk us through more about your, you called it your silo, and I forget the three elements to it, but I love a system. I love it when someone’s got a framework and it’s something you can look at it and you can say, right, I need to do A, B, C, 1, 2, 3. Just talk us through a little bit more of that. And for the MSPs who are listening to this or watching this on YouTube, what are some specific things that they could do to help get themselves clear on how they would communicate their message briefly and succinctly to their prospects?

I think it comes down to five or six steps here. And number one is something that if we reveal the curtain a little bit, and this is Viktor Frankl and StoryBrand and Donald Miller and all these folks have talked about this, but truly you have to take yourself out of the hero position. I think the best example is plumbers. Everybody has seen a plumber commercial where there’s like 10 guys getting out of a van. They’re like, we’re here for you, we’re here for you, all these things. But honestly, if there’s a plumber commercial that just says like, Hey, you wanted your spouse to fix that leaky faucet for six months – we show up on time, we’ll be there when we say we’ll be there, that leaky faucet will no longer be there anymore, and you can go about and enjoy your day. Something that’s actually placing you as the person to help them get what you want. I will talk about that a little bit later, and I’ll give some laser focused examples that any MSP entrepreneur can put into action today. Because truly, again, the common mistake is they’re trying to sell the drill or the hammer when really what they need to be selling is the picture frame hung on the wall.

It’s not just the value, but rather than selling the drill or the hammer, the client just wants their family picture hung on the wall. That’s it. In the same way, there’s a whole lot of different things for the actual business owner that they want. I’m going to skip to the end just a little bit, but we’re going to come back, I think just that practical piece is really thinking about an MSP that might be selling 24/7 monitoring. Now, what they actually need to do is start selling peace of mind for a business owner. That business over and over, there’s case studies, those businesses double in monthly reoccurring revenue in 18 months every single time. And it’s because you are not selling you, your service or anything else. What you’re selling is the end result of what your customer actually wants. And so there’s a few ways that we’ll actually break it down.

Number one is I think just placing yourself as the person that’s going to help them win the day. In the StoryBrand or in the Viktor Frankl, they talk about that guide. And so for me, I was a firefighter to the CEO journey. I’ve helped Fortune 100s and financial advisors and entrepreneurs and speakers and authors, all these things. But truly, I built Clearly Relevant to solve the biggest small business failures known, which is they’re not clear and they need a scalable message. I just saw friend, after friend, after friend and business owner, after business owner where they had a great service, they were actually really awesome, which goes into the silos that I’ll talk about, but they couldn’t get the word out. They couldn’t get people to come, and they had these businesses that hit these ceilings. And so truly where that came from, and you asked me about our silos, like the launch market grow, the launch silo. Again, everybody wants to go right to the end or they have a really great service offering. I would say MSPs are also specific to where they usually have a lot of systems and processes and people that are more on the analytical side of thinkers, but usually they’re imbalance with sales, sales folks in a way that are not technical sales, they’re relational sales. And so this is where I think messaging brings internal communication to a head in a positive way. It gathers your team around the right vision or core values or things like that. And then also the external message that actually gets your customers excited. Like, oh yeah, I want that.

It’s no secret that a common sales question is like, Hey, truly aside from all these things we’re talking about, what keeps you up at night? And some people might say, oh man, family or whatever, there might be actually some other things going on that’s a really important relational sales tip. But most of the time they’ll say, in that analogy that I said about 24/7 monitoring, Man, I just keep wondering what if these sites go down or if I can’t get hold of people or I have a team in India, and so the time zones from the US or wherever we are just flip flopped or the Philippines. So it’s those things where once you hear those things, you are now as an MSP owner, you need to be selling the outcome. And so that’s where you’re shifting from tech support to a business growth partner and you’re breaking into a premium market where you’re actually able to clarify and say, Hey, you need to hire the right people and scale without some chaos.

And so that’s where you say when you change your story, you’re actually changing all the type of clients you attract. This is something in a real life scenario, in the last 24 hours, I’m working on a trademark for “be a lighthouse, not a firehouse”. And we talked a little bit before this about firefighting background, but essentially most businesses are just going and putting out fires over and over. MSPs know this probably more than almost any other industry because IT is a constant situation of where they are calling you because they need you to respond to their fire in some capacity. So there’s lots of different speakers, and if I ever write a book, it’s going to be a combination of all these different things in how we do it. But I think that the common thread is that essentially, and this is true in any industry, but if you are even real estate financial advisors, you are absolutely a commodity. If you are not standing out and leading your industry in some way that’s unique to you. You don’t have to be better, you don’t have to be cheaper, you have to be leading in a way that truly you’re a lighthouse to your audience. And so just by doing that before we go to this next piece, if you just think about an actual lighthouse, by projecting that light out, it’s literally drawing in people, it’s also protecting people from what they don’t want to hit in a real life situation. But it’s something that the more you put out the light of your leadership and what you guys do really, really well, and you’re selling those outcomes and that peace of mind as a business owner, now business owners are not looking for an MSP company. They’re looking for that peace of mind.

So the MSP owners are looking truly for that outcome and how to be this guide rather than this hero. And so with that, just some really practical pieces of that so people know what it looks like is right away in your own team, you don’t have to outsource this yet, this is if you’re a one person or a five person or a hundred person team, take just one service offering, write it down, rewrite it in plain, absolutely benefit driven language where it sounds like something that anyone can say. Then rewrite it until it’s unique to you. But the more you compare it down to get that simplicity, that clarity, and then get it to where it’s unique to you, clarity wins every single time. The second piece I would say, and the final piece is really a strategic piece, and that’s just pick some 90 day marketing goal and commit to ignoring every other shiny object, distraction, anything else, because they’re all going to come at you at once. Just focus on that one 90 day marketing goal and commit to getting rid of everything else because getting clear is going to be the single most thing that’s going to change your business.

Oh, Jesse, there is so much there to unpack. I think this is going to be one of those podcast episodes, YouTube videos that people kind of go back 30 seconds and just be like, wait, hang on. That guy just dropped another value bomb. Another one, another one, another one. There are so many good ideas to unpack there. What you could do actually is just help us by summarising all of that for us. So for an MSP that’s sitting there, they know they’ve got this problem, but they’re not quite sure where to start or what’s the main thing that you’ve come up with there? How would you summarise that? What would you be your closing point, as it were?

Thanks. I really appreciate that, and I think that if I could just have one business owner walk away from an MSP, it’s just knowing that the silent killer of MSP growth is not competition, it’s confusion. And the last thing about that is that the human brain ignores whatever it doesn’t immediately understand. And so that’s where you can just take that one offering. You actually take it from a way where you’re not selling what you offer, you’re selling the outcome that they want, and that’s where the 24/7 technical support now to peace of mind for the business owner.

Yeah, exactly. So 24/7 technical support is a feature, but the benefit is, Hey, you know when you’re working at home at 9:30 at night and the printer just won’t work, you’ve got someone to help you and you don’t have to feel bad about calling that person to help you. Which of course is the benefit. Jesse, amazing, we’re going to get you back on the show in the future. I think you might be a special episode just waiting to happen where we can give you space to explore some of these massive, massive ideas. Just for now though, tell us exactly what you do to help MSPs and what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Right now, you can currently go to clearlyrelevant.com, and really we like to just really drive down on the messaging. The messaging is so important. We can do websites, we can do lead generation and other things, but that’s something that I honestly, I defer to you for the lead generation in those areas. For us, we want to get people laser focused on their internal messaging for their team, for great hiring and getting the support they need, but their external messaging. So when they are ready to go out into the world, most companies are great, we just want to tell the world that they’re great, but we got to start with that messaging piece.

And what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Clearlyrelevant.com, we have a short discovery link on there, so if they go and book a free discovery link, then it’ll break up a 15 minutes. It’ll be directly with me or the team, and we’ll kind of dive into what the biggest problem is, the challenge is and how we can help. And often we’d like those free discoveries to also be something that you can walk away with and do without ever needing us. You don’t have to be our client for us to help you. We always want to provide that. So go to the website, clearly relevant.com and book a discovery call.

The Marketing Minute

Rhonda from Naglotech here I’ve got a simple marketing idea that can make a big impact, and that’s email signatures. If you think about it, every single day, you and your team are sending out tons of different emails to prospects, customers, partners, and suppliers, and that’s a huge amount of free marketing space that really does go untapped. An email signature is already built into apps like Outlook, so it can cost nothing, and it’s really easy to update with things like your monthly promotions, special offers, linking people to your social media channels.

You can include a professional photo of yourself because let’s be honest, people are naturally curious and love to put a face to a name. You can add links to your most recent blog post or an event that you’re running, or even a simple call to action like booking a meeting or a demo or downloading your company brochure. And because it’s right there at the bottom of every email, it feels more subtle and not too pushy. So really, it’s a marketing tool that’s free and effective and already at your fingertips. You just have to get around to using it and making the most of it.

Mentioned links

• This podcast is in conjunction with the MSP Marketing Edge, the world’s leading white label content marketing and growth training subscription.
• Join me in MSP Marketing Facebook group.
• Connect with me on LinkedIn.
• Connect with my guest, Jesse Flocken, on LinkedIn, and visit the Clearly Relevant website.
• Connect with my Marketing Minute contributor, Rhonda Baker, on LinkedIn.
• Got a question about your MSP’s marketing? Let me know.