The Pay Per Click Advertising Opportunity
Most MSPs Are Ignoring
The MSP industry is one that's almost unreasonably focused on sales, sales, sales! What is the obsession with cold calling when there's so much more money to be made via online advertising at a fraction of the cost!?
MSPs sales consultants will happily tell you that it can take 18+ months for a rep to ramp and up to 3 years to be profitable and that's if they work out at all. In today's employment climate where reps will happily jump ship every 18 months for a pay raise it's no wonder that almost 30% of MSPs are losing money and many more can't seem to scale their revenues.
MSPs haven't gotten the memo that other B2B industries and other parts of the tech sector have figured out: marketing comes before sales. Stop setting your sales reps up to fail and wasting 6 figures a year on go-nowhere sales initiatives and start building your lead generation pipeline.
Once you've got that steady stream of leads coming in that you as a founding executive can no longer find time to work on and close - then it's time to hire for sales. Until then, you're better off focusing on filling up your pipeline with a steady stream of new leads.
Tortoise and Hare can help you generate leads through pay per click advertising campaigns that help raise your MSP's brand awareness and connect with in-market buyers that are already searching for the services you offer.
Breakout Growth In B2B Digital Ad Spend
Digital advertising spend in B2B has more than tripled in the past 5 years. Digital advertising spend in B2B is also growing at more than double the rate (11.6%) than traditional advertising spend is (5%).
The landscape for generating leads in B2B has changed dramatically and in a short time frame. This was a trend that was well under way before the pandemic and pandemic digitization only accelerated the process.
MSPs are underweight in their digital advertising spend and stand to benefit from expanding their reach via pay per click advertising campaigns.
The Way People Shop For An MSP Has Changed
There's 7.5 billion people in the world and that number is growing towards 10 billion quickly. The number of vendors a business engages with has also increased. All that's led to more and more massive scale of sales reps trying to connect with buyers.
B2B buyers are increasingly fatigued with the constant barrage of cold calls and cold emails that assault them and increasingly prefer to do their own research before adding themselves to yet another salesperson's hit list.
In fact according to a 2023 survey by Cognism, only 27% of sales teams reporting calling at the best way to book meetings and only 17% of B2B marketers reported cold calling as their primary customer acquisition channel.
People still want to talk to sales, and experience better buying outcomes when a rep is involved, but they want to talk when they are ready and when they have done their own research. Enter PPC.
Prospect And Nurture Leads With MSP PPC
Don't surrender these key digital battlegrounds to your competitors. Pay per click platforms offer you the chance to both prospect for new leads and nurture those already in your funnel.
MSP PPC can help you:
- Connect with in-market buyers at the time they are shopping for providers.
- Stay top of mind with low cost display ads to get those brands touches.
- Distribute blogs and whitepapers to help educate, and attract attention from buyers.
- Distribute rich media that helps socialize your brand values and company culture.
- Capture email addresses with lead magnets for ongoing email marketing.
MSP PPC Readiness Checklist
Running PPC campaigns for your MSP can be a very profitable endeavour but it's not without its challenges.
We've helped MSPs generate thousands of leads and add millions in revenue through pay per click advertising efforts and learned many lessons along the way.
Before you start an MSP PPC advertising effort we recommend you have these items in place:
- An established brand
- A quality website that already generates occasional leads
- A social media presence and quality graphics on your pages
- Reviews on platforms like Google or Facebook
- A budget of at least $5,000/month you can spend on advertising
- A budget that can sustain at least 3 months of advertising but ideally 12 so you can understand seasonality impacts throughout the year and see the big picture
Not all of these are required to launch a successful advertising effort, but customers who meet these criteria tend to realize the most success.
How We Can Help
Configure Ad Accounts
We can help you configure your ad accounts for success by installing conversion tracking, remarketing pixels, and deploying optimal settings to help you maximize PPC performance.
Create Effective Marketing Campaigns
We'll help you refine your targeting and messaging in order to create effective MSP PPC campaigns that reach your target audience. We write all the copy and assist with basic creative.
Optimize PPC Performance
Launching campaigns is just the beginning. Tortoise and Hare uses our deep experience running PPC campaigns for MSPs to refine your campaigns and generate profitable growth.
Platforms We Support
Why Choose Tortoise and Hare?
At Tortoise and Hare we've helped numerous MSPs generate durable growth via pay per click advertising campaigns. We have a strong idea of what works and what doesn't in the MSP sector. We've developed assets like negative keyword lists that can save you thousands in wasted spend and time spent experimenting right out the gate. Fast track your pay per click advertising efforts with Tortoise and Hare.
Ad Spend Managed
New Revenues Generated
Leads Generated
Why Do We Succeed In MSP PPC
When Other Agencies Have Failed?
Some of the reasons we succeed where other agencies have failed with your MSP PPC efforts:
- We only work with clients that we think we can help. Choosing our clients carefully is a big part of our success.
- We focus on the MSP sector exclusively, where other agencies are splitting their time and focus.
- We specialize primarily in search engines, instead of splitting our focus into a million different areas, we keep a focus on what's most important, quality search engine traffic.
- We are technically savvy and are using our technical skills to take full advantage of what advertising platforms offer. Many agencies fall short here.
- As a small team, we're all experts, therefore you get experts working on your account, not interns.
Listen To Our PPC Advertising Podcast Episode
Listen to Tortoise and Hare Software founder and President Hunter Nelson talk about PPC advertising with Taher Hamid on the No Fluff MSP Marketing Podcast.
Watch Our Mastering Google Ads For MSPs Presentation
Listen to Tortoise and Hare Software founder and President Hunter Nelson talk about running paid search campaigns on Google to add leads to your MSPs marketing pipeline.
What Some Of Our Clients Have To Say About Working With Us On Their PPC Campaigns
Frequently Asked Questions About MSP PPC
This answer varies on factors like locations targeted, verticals targeted, growth goals, and more. Generally we recommend a minimum of $5,000/month put towards pay per click advertising.
We have a flat fee + percentage of ad spend model. Our minimum retainer is $1,500/month.
We frequently get customers that generate a lead in their first month of advertising but it can take 3-6 months to get campaigns dialed in and performing profitably.
Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook at a minimum.
Generally it takes about a month for us to get initial campaigns and configurations completed.
Pay per click advertising use machine learning to set their bids in dynamic auctions. They are dependent on you feeding them back data on what clicks turned into "conversions". We help you set up conversion tracking for activities like:
- Form submits
- Phone calls
- Newsletter subscriptions
- Other valuable actions on your website
Apply Now For A Free
MSP Pay Per Click Advertising Consultation
We offer free 1-hour digital advertising consultations via a Microsoft Teams video conference to discuss your pain points and determine if Tortoise and Hare Software is the right fit for you.
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