Paul Green's MSP Marketing Podcast

Social media for MSPs… here’s my platform by platform verdict on the best options for your business. Also this week, the comparison trap: why watching other MSPs’ success can sabotage yours, and the most common questions when thinking of selling your MSP.

Welcome to Episode 364 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Which social platforms should you be on?



There are more social media platforms than ever, and it’s easy to feel a pressure for your MSP to be on all of them. But my view on this is that you should resist that pressure because I believe it’s far better to do really well on one or two platforms than to be average across several. In fact, a half-hearted presence everywhere is worse than a very strong presence on a very specific platform. So right now, I want to give you my platform by platform verdict for MSPs.

We’ll start with LinkedIn. In fact, with LinkedIn, you should go all in. If you’re only going to be active on one platform, make it LinkedIn because this is where the decision makers are. The business owners, the operations directors, finance managers, IT directors, if you’re doing co-managed IT, they’re on LinkedIn every single day. And the platform is actively rewarding consistent, human, non-AI generated content right now. So the kind of stuff that you should be doing because it’s good for the humans is what the platform is rewarding. So I believe that every day on LinkedIn, you should be making connection requests to the kind of people that you would like as clients. And then post at least every 24 hours, and that includes a LinkedIn newsletter once a week. And of course, that newsletter counts as a piece of content within a 24-hour period.

LinkedIn is where you build audiences and grow relationships. And of course, some of those relationships will eventually turn into clients. Now, I’ve been recommending LinkedIn to MSPs for about seven or eight years out of the 10-odd years that I’ve been running the MSP Marketing Edge. And I’m still completely convinced that right now, as we’re heading towards the start of 2027, LinkedIn is the single best organic marketing channel available to an MSP. So if you haven’t got that much time and you know you need to do some marketing, LinkedIn is absolutely the place to throw yourself in. Please don’t spread yourself too thin across other platforms. In fact, I wouldn’t even look at other platforms until LinkedIn is working well for you.

Most MSPs never get to a point of doing LinkedIn really well because they don’t stick at it long enough or put enough resources into it, be that time or cash.

The next platform to look at once you’ve got LinkedIn mastered, have a look at YouTube because YouTube is the world’s most used platform for watching video. And that alone makes it worth you having a presence on. Now, I’m going to be honest with you, building a big YouTube audience as an MSP is genuinely hard, and we’ve certainly found this hard. We’ve put significant time and effort into our own YouTube channel. And if you’re watching this on YouTube right now, you can have a look at our followers, our subscribers, and see that our audience is still relatively small. That’s partly because we are targeting a very specific niche, you, and rather than chasing random subscribers for the sake of it, I only really want MSPs subscribing to this content.

And you would be doing the same kind of thing. I don’t mean in terms of getting MSPs to subscribe, but you would want business owners in your area or within your vertical or your niche, or of course IT directors if you’re doing co-managed IT. So I wouldn’t worry too much about building big subscribers, that’s what all of the professional YouTubers are doing because they make money from having big audiences. The value of YouTube for a...

MSP’s should build their marketing around a personal brand rather than building it around the business, and here’s why. Also this week, hiring your first marketing person: what to look for and when to do it, and what a second generation MSP owner knows that you don’t.

Welcome to Episode 363 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Building a personal brand when you genuinely hate self-promotion



If you’ve listened to or watched last week’s show, we were talking about the power of having a really strong opinion in your marketing. And I want to build on that right now because actually there’s a bigger idea underneath having a strong opinion but this big idea is something that makes a lot of MSP owners genuinely uncomfortable. They really resist it. The idea is about building your marketing around you personally rather than building it around your business. And I know why that makes a lot of MSPs uncomfortable. So let’s talk this through properly and see if I can convince you that it’s a good thing for you to do.

Most MSP owners push back on the idea of building their own personal brand for one of two reasons. And the first is just discomfort, because what if it feels like you’re showing off? What if it feels like you are coming across as arrogant or attention seeking? That’s the first fear and that’s a very real fear. But the second reason that they don’t want to do it is more strategic and it is a very real objection. If you build all of your marketing around yourself, doesn’t that make your business harder to sell one day? Because of course, a buyer isn’t just buying your client list, they’re buying a business. They’re buying a business that can run without you and that has marketing and has branding. It’s the whole thing, that’s what they buy. So both of those concerns are very valid.

Let me answer the second one first because I believe that changes everything. So if you build your MSP’s marketing around your own personal brand, yes of course it makes the business a little bit harder to sell. However, it makes it a lot easier for you to build something to sell along the way.

A business that’s built around a trusted, well-known personal brand grows faster, wins more clients, and commands more loyalty than a faceless business ever will.

So my advice is simple. If you build all of your marketing around you, your personal brand, assuming that you are the owner of the business, and you do that for the vast majority of your ownership, that’s a very smart thing to do. And then in your last couple of years before you plan to exit, you shift the marketing away from you and you shift it back onto the business, back onto your team.

That transition can be done in six months, but if you do it slowly over two years, it’s not going to have a negative effect because by then you’ll know what marketing works, how to have a trusted brand, how you can help prospects to know, like, and trust you. And you just shift that onto the business, onto the team just before you come to an exit. When you’re having a conversation with a potential buyer, the conversation is around the fact that you’ve got all of this great marketing, it’s helped the business to grow, and you not being there is not a problem at all. That’s exactly what a buyer wants to hear. And that transition period is actually how you get the best of both worlds. You’ve got the growth benefit of a personal brand for most of your ownership journey, but then you have a sellable independent business at the point of exit, which is brilliant.

So let’s go back to the first objection, which was, “But I don’t want it to be all about me. I don’t want people to think I’m a narcissist. I don’t want to be a show off.” What we are talking about when you build a personal brand and you build...

Is your lead magnet being ignored? It’s a common experience for MSPs and today I want to talk about why that happens and what actually works. Also this week, the power of a strong opinion in your marketing, and the fascinating insight of why this MSP sold… and why the buyer bought.

Welcome to Episode 362 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Best lead magnet for MSPs in 2027



Let me start today by asking you a question… have you ever put something on your website that says “Sign up for our newsletter” or “Get our free guide” or something like that? And then over a number of years you’ve discovered that nobody ever does it. Maybe your mum fills in the form or something, but she’s the only one. No one else does it. If that’s happened to you, then you’re not alone, that’s a common experience for MSPs. And today I want to talk about why that happens and what actually works instead.

What we’re talking about there is something called a lead magnet. You’ve probably heard that phrase thrown around the internet. It’s a common phrase in marketing. And we’re going to talk about the kind of lead magnet that works best for MSPs, not just at the end of this year, but in 2027.

Put simply, a lead magnet is something that you give away in return for someone’s contact details or to start a conversation with them.

That’s the whole concept. It’s not new at all. In fact, the concept of a lead magnet actually predates the internet. It was something that was being done in the 19th century where people would give out samples to start a conversation with people. That’s how old it is. But in the internet age, we give away a thing, a PDF or a physical thing, and we do it in order to get their contact details and then we can do some automated marketing to them. That’s the theory.

However, it’s 2026 and nobody wants more emails, right? If you just say to someone, “Please sign up for our newsletter,” they’re not going to do that. That’s actually not a lead magnet and that hasn’t worked for 20 years because that’s just asking someone to add another task, to get more unwanted emails in their already overflowing inbox. And no one’s going to take you up on that. They haven’t done for the last 20 years. But they will still do it, they will join your mailing list if you offer them something that’s of such a high perceived value that they really, really want it and they will happily hand over their details. And I know this is the case because I’m doing this every single day of the week. And I’ll tell you more about that in a second because I’ve got a freebie for you, my lead magnet. I’m going to give it to you in just a few minutes.

But let’s talk first about the options for you. I’ve been doing lead magnets for around about 15 years or so. So I started doing it really well in my last business and this whole business started with a lead magnet. I built a list by putting a lead magnet out there just to MSPs in the UK about 10 years ago, and that’s how I got this whole business started. So we can talk about what works and what doesn’t work because I have learned this the hard way by doing it. And I’ve generated, I reckon it’s getting on for nearly 30,000 leads over the last 20 years, which is not the biggest number in the world. Someone like Alex Hormosi has generated millions and millions of leads in just five or six years. So I know it’s not the biggest number in the world, but I’ve done it consistently across a whole number of different sectors. So MSPs is just the last sector that I’m ever going to work with in my working career. I’ve previously worked with veterinarians, dentists, opticians/optometrists, and a whole bunch of other business owners, and they all came from lead magnets.

So when you are putting together a lead magnet for your MSP,...

The vast majority of MSPs are introverts but you can still go out and do networking or speak at a public event, if you know how. Also this week, why you should be thrilled when a Super MSP comes to your town, and what’s working best in MSP search lead generation right now.

Welcome to Episode 361 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

How to ace networking, even if you’re an introvert



I want to start today by sharing something personal. For most of my career, I thought that I was an extrovert. I mean, after all, I was a radio presenter, literally on the radio every day for 10 years. And now today I speak at conferences, I did ScaleCon this year, I did MSP Global again this year. And I host this podcast. These are all the activities of an extrovert, right? Well, it turns out no.

A few years ago I had a guest on this very podcast who said something that completely stopped me in my tracks. They explained that extroverts gain energy from being around people, while introverts lose energy from being around people. And it made me realise that every networking event that I’d ever been to and every conference that I’d ever spoken at, basically every room full of new people that I’d ever walked into, I’d come home and I needed a very long lie down. And my partner at the time used to find that hilarious. I would literally come back from a two-hour networking and I just needed to be on my own and recover. And neither of us really understood it at the time, but now I understand why this happened.

I am an introvert who has learned to be extroverted when the situation demands it, and that’s become normal for me. And because of that normalisation over 30 years, that’s why I thought I was an extrovert. Now, I know that a lot of MSPs are in exactly the same position. So today I want to show you how you can do the same thing, because the benefit for you is you can go out and do more networking, you might even get up on a stage and speak at a public event, which might be a nightmare idea for you right now, but very powerful if you have the power to do that. Because experts speak and experts go networking, right?

So let’s understand what’s actually happening. Let’s focus on networking. If you come away from networking events and you feel completely drained, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be an introvert. And the vast majority of MSPs that I’ve spoken to over the years, not all of them, but let’s say 70, 80% are definitely introverts. It seems to be the channel is an introverted channel. And of course, being an introvert is not a weakness or a flaw, it’s just how you and I are wired, right? We are wired to be introverts. And the difference between introverts and extroverts is fundamentally about energy. So as I said, extroverts get energised by social interactions, so they go and look for more of that social interaction. Whereas introverts are depleted by it.

Both introverts and extroverts can be brilliant and can perform well in a room full of people. It’s just the introverts need to go and do some recovery afterwards.

Recognising this about yourself is the most important step because once you understand this, you stop fighting it and you start working with it. So the goal is not to try and turn yourself into an extrovert, you can’t do that. The goal is to go and do the networking or the public speaking or whatever you do, and then protect yourself so you can recover and you can go and do it again. So here’s a couple of ways that you might do this.

Before the event, you need to protect your energy. And this is something that most advice about networking kind of ignores, it kind of bypasses or doesn’t acknowledge it. And this is where as an introvert, you can make the biggest practical difference. So you need to treat a networking...

The most powerful way for an MSP to let a prospect know who you are before they’ve ever spoken to you, is to tell them your origin story… find out how. Also this week, can you use your local community to generate leads?, and what if you could own your MSP but not have to run it?

Welcome to Episode 360 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

How to use your MSP’s origin story as a marketing asset



People buy from people, not from logos, not from service descriptions, and not from lists of accreditations. They buy from people. And the most powerful way to let a prospect know who you are before they’ve ever spoken to you is to tell them your MSP’s story. Today, I want to talk about your origin story, what it is, why it matters, and where to use it across all of your marketing. So let’s start by talking about why origin stories are so important for MSPs.

Every prospect who lands on your website or your LinkedIn or just looks at any of your marketing materials is subconsciously asking themselves the same question. Who is this person and can I trust them? A list of services that you do that doesn’t answer that question, a load of certifications or qualifications or memberships, or even talking about your tech stack which is weird and bizarre but some MSPs do it, none of those answer that at all. But a genuine human story does because you are talking to people who do not understand what you sell. They don’t know what they don’t know about technology, but they are wired the same as all other humans.

As humans we’re wired for stories. From childhood stories are how we learn, how we connect, and how we decide who to trust.

And this is built-in behaviour. It’s been the same behaviour for hundreds of thousands of years since humans first evolved into the kind of people we are today. In fact, we used to use stories to pass down knowledge from generation to generation before we had written languages. So we are hardwired to really respect and respond to stories. And so a prospect who reads your origin story and feels something, they can recognise parts of that story, they’re curious about it, they feel a warmth about you and what you’ve done with your life and your business. This is a prospect who has started to trust you before they’ve even met you. That is so powerful.

The commercial reality is that people buy from people that they know, like, and trust. Those three words are the most important things: know, like, and trust. And your origin story is the fastest route for you to achieve all three. So let’s explore what an origin story actually is. First of all, it’s not your resume, it’s not your CV. It’s not a timeline of what you’ve done within the business. It’s if you like the human narrative behind why you do what you do and how you came to do it in the first place. We all have an origin story. And there’s broadly two types of origin story that works really well for MSPs.

The first is the founder’s personal journey. So how did you come to be a business owner in the first place? What drove you to start your own MSP? What did that transition look and feel like to you? This works really well because business owners are universally interested in other business owners’ stories. So there’s an instant recognition and kind of like a feeling of solidarity there. If your prospect is a business owner who themselves took a leap of faith, then they will feel something when they read about your leap of faith.

The second type of origin story that works well is the businesses evolution story, how you came to work with the kind of clients that you work with, how a natural connection or some kind of happy accident led you to focus on a particular sector or type of business, and why that specialisation has made you genuinely better at what...