For managed service providers, content marketing can generate thousands of dollars in net-new monthly recurring revenue. Every month, dozens of ready-to-buy businesses in your city are actively searching for IT services. A strong content marketing strategy is what separates the MSP owner who books sales meetings while on vacation from the one who has to make hundreds of cold calls to land a single conversation.
MSPs that run marketing campaigns powered by effective content marketing consistently close larger deals. High-intent inbound leads discover them, build trust, and contact them ready to buy.
In this guide, we will cover the fundamentals of content marketing, how it works for an MSP business, and the first practical steps you can take to get started.
At its core, content marketing is about serving your audience before asking for anything in return. It's the strategic use of blogs, videos, case studies, and other formats to educate prospects, address their pain points, and guide them toward a positive outcome.
For managed service providers, content marketing is an especially effective lead generation strategy. Unlike other lead generation methods that use an outbound approach to interrupt potential buyers, content marketing uses an inbound approach to attract in-market buyers through local SEO and social media marketing. When executed properly, it can scale MRR with little to no added pressure on the sales team, creating predictable growth without increasing headcount.
Your prospects are doing their research with or without you. A strong content marketing strategy ensures that when they go looking for answers, they find your expertise.
Content marketing for managed service providers delivers compounding returns that most other marketing strategies can't match. It attracts in-market buyers, shortens the sales cycle by pre-educating prospects, and builds genuine credibility in a market full of MSPs making identical claims.
In addition, content marketing is also more cost-effective than other marketing strategies. According to Forbes, content marketing campaigns cost 62% less compared to other channels.
In Minneapolis, there are ~5k monthly searches for IT-related services. Conservatively, say 10% of this search volume represents a legitimate business that is in-market. That means there are 500 businesses actively looking for IT services each month. At an average deal value of $3k/month, that would equate to $1.5 million in net-new MRR that MSPs in the Twin Cities are fighting over.
If an MSP obtained 5% search visibility (which is very doable) and had a 20% close rate on pipeline they would generate $15k in net-new MRR every month from content marketing.
As a managed service provider, content marketing is too important to ignore.
Not every prospect consumes content the same way. A strong managed service provider content marketing strategy draws from multiple formats to meet your audience wherever they are.
Best for: search visibility and lead generation.
Blog content helps brands attract organic traffic, share insights, and build long-term credibility. It is one of the most versatile and cost-effective forms of content marketing.
When executed well, blog content supports every stage of the funnel, from awareness through conversion, and provides a strong foundation for repurposing into other content formats.
Best for: customer engagement and community building.
Social media content supports brand awareness and engagement at scale. Managed service providers should focus efforts on LinkedIn above other social media platforms. Every piece of content on LinkedIn should either be educational or engaging. No exceptions.
Both organic and paid social can deliver measurable results, but consistency, creativity, and timing are critical to sustained performance.
Best for: lead generation and building trust.
Case studies showcase real-world results that make it easier for prospects to understand what you can do and how it can help them.
Best for: Storytelling and customer engagement.
Videos are a great tool for communicating complex ideas or evoking emotion that can drive conversions. We especially like to use videos within retargeting ads as a way to clearly communicate how our MSP clients are better than their competitors.
A content marketing strategy helps guide managed service providers on content creation, delivery, and measurement. In order to create an effective content marketing strategy, you need to align your audience, message, and offer (AMO) into a unified plan.
Start by defining your target audience based on their location, roles, demographics, and primary pain points. Here’s a short list of questions to help you get started:
The sales funnel is made of three steps: awareness, consideration, and conversion. Also known as top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel. Prospects in each stage of the buying journey will have different questions which will require different pieces of content. This is why your content marketing strategy needs to cover all three stages, so you are showing up with the right message at the right time.
In the first stage, the prospect is beginning to feel the pain of a problem but isn’t yet fully aware of what that problem is. The goal of top-of-funnel content is to help them recognize and define the issue, understand why it matters, and introduce a few high-level ways the problem can be addressed.
What to focus on: primary pain points experienced by the prospect.
Content suggestions:
In the second stage, the prospect has a clear understanding of why their problem exists and they are looking into types of solutions that could address it. The goal of middle-of-funnel content is to clearly communicate what your unique approach to their problem is and why it's better than alternative approaches.
What to focus on: your unique approach and its real-world impact.
Content suggestions:
In the final stage, we want to incite action. Our prospect is aware of their problem, vendors they can choose from, and now we want to help guide them towards a meeting with sales.
What to focus on: reduce the perceived risk of your solution and maximize its perceived value.
Content suggestions:
Creating content is easy. But creating valuable content that resonates with your audience and can incite conversion is hard and takes time. Quality is always better than quantity. To get started, set a realistic target for new pieces of content to publish every week and block off time in your schedule to make it happen. If you need help getting started or would like a hand to architect a content strategy, let me know. I am happy to help – no strings attached.