A sound marketing strategy is more important than ever. As businesses face challenges linked to shrinking profit margins and heightened competition, generating a steady stream of leads and forming strong connections with prospects and customers can create a path forward.
For many organizations, in-house capabilities aren’t always a good match for the challenges linked to developing a digital marketing strategy. As a result, outsourcing marketing to managed service providers is on the rise.
What do these vendors do? Learn more about MSP marketing services, how these partners can develop customized strategies, and what the main benefits of working with an MSP are.
What is an MSP?
Outsourcing is on the rise. For many businesses, COVID-19 accelerated digital transformation and resulted in new workflows that facilitate working with remote partners.
A majority of small businesses plan on outsourcing some tasks this year, and 24% are planning to outsource marketing.
The traditional agency model isn’t always a good fit for these small and medium organizations. As more SMBs seek digital marketing services packages, the MSP model emerges as a solution.
Managed service providers appeared in the late 1990s in the IT field. These businesses offered a subscription model with a monthly fee for a variety of IT services. One of the advantages is to have access to a flexible offering with different service tiers or customizable packages.
This model translates well to marketing. Between the rise of the omnichannel model and innovations in analytics, many marketers find that they need a flexible partner who can take a customized approach.
What do MSP marketing services do?
MSPs typically have a flexible model where customers can build digital marketing services packages with different elements. The services can vary from one vendor to another, but most MSPs offer these core building blocks.
SEO
Search engine optimization can get technical with practices like managing redirects or adding no-follow tags to your links. A successful SEO campaign requires skills and a thorough understanding of the signals search engines use to rank pages.
You also have to find the right balance between optimizing your content and developing copy that remains engaging and easy to read. It’s crucial to keep up with the latest trends, such as mobile-friendliness or Google’s recent helpful content update.
Visibility in search results has become a major differentiator. Competing with in-house resources is often not realistic. Plus, implementing SEO in-house means you’ll have to go through a trial-and-error process to figure out which strategies yield results.
Outsourcing SEO to an MSP makes sense:
- MSPs have SEO experts on staff. These professionals have years of experience and will know right away which on-page and off-site strategies are relevant to your goals.
- An MSP can improve your ROI by taking a strategic approach. Experts can analyze what your competitors are doing and keep track of search trends for your niche to focus on the most profitable SEO strategies.
- Having the same team work on your SEO campaign and other aspects of your marketing strategy means that you’ll get more out of your marketing budget as content creation or social media linking practices support your SEO strategy.
Content creation and publication
Prioritizing content creation is more important than ever:
- Google’s latest update favors quality content that delivers value to users.
- The buying journey is becoming increasingly digital and self-directed. Content plays a crucial role in supporting a wide range of buying tasks.
- With the end of third-party cookie support, a content-first strategy can replace retargeting campaigns.
It’s no surprise that 71% of the most successful businesses describe their content creation strategy as mature while only 5% of the least successful organizations have a mature content strategy.
Like many other aspects of your digital marketing plan, managing content creation in-house can be challenging. On average, it can take five hours to create an 800-word blog post. This process involves multiple employees and takes up valuable time.
An MSP can complement your team’s ability to write, or take over the entire content creation program:
- MSP marketing services give you access to talented writers who use their industry knowledge and writing skills to create content that supports conversions, a top content marketing goal for 65% of brands.
- Editors can oversee your campaigns and make sure content is consistent with your branding preferences. They will also ensure that content meets spelling, grammatical, and readability requirements.
- SEO experts can optimize your content to generate more organic traffic.
Beyond writing and editing, an MSP can help with publication:
- You can work with your MSP to create a content creation schedule. The MSP will deliver fresh content regularly to keep your audience engaged and support your SEO efforts.
- A steady stream of content will help you stay active on channels like social media or email.
- Publishing content regularly makes it easier to establish your brand as a thought leader by discussing the latest trends.
- An MSP can use data to identify the best channels for content publication based on your target audience’s preferences and behaviors.
Social media
Social media users now exceed 58% of the world’s population. Social media usage keeps growing with the user base increasing by 10% between 2021 and 2022.
These platforms have changed the way we communicate. They’re also shaping our buying habits. Consumers are likely to turn to social media to discover new products or find reviews, but social media is also important for the B2B niche. LinkedIn is now a top platform for 40% of B2B marketers.
Managing social media in-house is time-consuming. Tracking results is challenging since vanity metrics can reduce visibility over your ROI. Plus, managing some aspects like paid ads or analytics can be technical.
MSP marketing services can help:
- Social media marketing experts can develop a strategic approach and identify the right platforms and content formats.
- These experts can also optimize your posts for engagement with engaging copy, hashtags, or images.
- They can even track engagement and determine the best time of day to post.
- You can work with an MSP to develop guidelines employees can follow when interacting with social media users for branding purposes.
- An MSP can track results and uncover your social media ROI by focusing on meaningful KPIs.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing has an average ROI of $5.78 for each dollar spent. Over 90% of marketers are now using influencer marketing, and this fast-growing channel goes beyond consumer products. There is an emerging market for B2B influencers who can make a difference by using their industry expertise to endorse products.
Launching an influencer marketing campaign can yield drastic results. Tempesta Media was able to increase leads by more than 300% for a customer by leveraging a mix of content creation, social media marketing, and influencer marketing strategies.
Getting started with influencer marketing can be intimidating. Finding the right influencers, managing these partnerships, and developing guidelines for content creation and endorsement requires some experience with this channel.
Reaching out to an MSP will ensure that you get the most out of influencer marketing. A vendor can help you leverage this trend by using data to identify the right influencers, vetting these partners, and tracking results.
Email marketing
Branded emails remain an effective way of keeping prospects and customers engaged. Delivering the right email at the right time can help a prospect move along their buying journey or cement a long-term relationship with a customer.
Email marketing spending is up. While only 50% of marketers described their email strategy as aligned with their other marketing practices in 2020, this percentage was up to 95% in 2021. A growing number of marketers are taking a deliberate and strategic approach to nurturing leads via email.
Nurturing email has the potential of becoming a cornerstone of your marketing plan. It’s a channel that allows you to engage and nurture leads while delivering personalized content that meets the expectations of your audience.
However, managing email marketing in-house includes a few challenges:
- Implementing segmentation and other personalization techniques can be difficult.
- You’ll get more out of your email marketing efforts if you rely on software designed to help you track results, automate tasks, and more. Choosing and learning to use the right email marketing software is a potential barrier.
- Tracking your open rate, click-through rate, and other KPIs will help you make better decisions for your email campaigns. However, implementing an analytics campaign represents an investment of time and resources.
- Coordinating your email marketing efforts with your overall content marketing strategy and other channels can be challenging.
MSP marketing services can help you get more out of your email campaigns. You’ll get to work with experienced professionals who can design and implement successful campaigns:
- Your MSP can take steps to improve your email deliverability rate and avoid spam folders and filters.
- A vendor with a strong data strategy can leverage analytics to improve your open rate and boost engagement.
- Outsourcing content production means you’ll get a steady stream of fresh content for your email list.
- You can also count on your MSP to optimize email series and turn this channel into a reliable qualified lead generation tool.
- An MSP partner can also help you keep up with the latest privacy trends and best practices for sending emails.
Paid ads
Half of the marketing budgets don’t invest enough to maximize ROI. Marketers are turning this trend around by increasing spending, and social advertising and paid search are emerging as the top spending categories.
Paid ads are an opportunity to improve visibility in search, reach out to specific audience segments, and more. However, several obstacles can prevent you from optimizing an in-house paid advertisement campaign:
- The bidding process can be technical. A sound bidding strategy ensures that you’re not overspending on ads while delivering the best ROI possible.
- Third-party cookie support is coming to an end. For many marketers, switching to a strategy that relies on first-party data can be a challenge.
- A successful paid ad strategy needs to account for your SEO efforts and other organic strategies. Failing to coordinate your efforts can result in unnecessary competition between your different pages or ads.
- It’s also important to analyze how your competitors use paid ads. Once you know more about the channels or keywords used, you can adapt your approach to limit direct competition.
- Paid advertising is a long-term commitment. You need to invest time and resources to test strategies, track results, and optimize campaigns.
Due to the technical nature of paid ads, MSP marketing services can make a difference thanks to their expertise. Paid advertisement is an area where an MSP can deliver measurable results and help you maximize your ROI by targeting the right keywords, creating compelling ads, and actively optimizing your campaigns.
Remarketing
Repetition is crucial for awareness and information retention. With the average internet user seeing thousands of ads every day, it’s easy to develop ad blindness and ignore branded content.
Remarketing helps users remember and notice your brand. It increases awareness by creating a series of connections with a user.
Remarketing isn’t about showing the same content repeatedly. Instead, a sound remarketing strategy should deliver value and promote engagement by following the user through the different stages of the buying journey.
Once you combine your remarketing strategy with your sales funnel model, you can create meaningful touchpoints at different stages of the user’s journey. Each touchpoint can deliver a memorable experience or provide the user with the information they need to move to the next stage. Creating a succession of touchpoints helps users remember your brand. It also establishes your business as a trusted source of information.
With the end of third-party cookie support planned for 2024, there is a strong need to take a new approach to remarketing that prioritizes first-party data.
MSP marketing services can help you plan a successful transition to first-party data. You can also work with an MSP to uncover valuable insights into the buying journey to identify the best touchpoints for remarketing. Plus, digital marketing services packages that include content marketing will result in a more organic experience as your content marketing strategy supports remarketing at different stages of the buying journey.
Fully customized digital marketing packages
There is no one-size-fits-all in marketing. With MSP marketing services, you can expect a flexible and highly customized approach.
The offering will vary from one vendor to another, but MSPs stand out thanks to their fully customized solutions. You’ll typically work with a professional who acts as an account manager. This expert will get to know your organization, goals, and challenges.
Your go-to person will develop a customized package with marketing services and service tiers that make sense for your goals and budget.
In most cases, MSPs complete audits or assessments to learn more about your current marketing efforts. They will look at your current results, the audience you’re targeting, and the channels you use. They can also analyze your market and competitors.
This initial assessment is a strong baseline for building a marketing plan that addresses your unique goals and challenges. Your MSP will use this initial assessment to recommend digital marketing service packages with content, channels, and strategies that make sense for your organization.
This approach ensures that you don’t pay for things you don’t need. You can also expect fast results and an optimized ROI.
The benefits of MSP marketing services
Why outsource marketing to an MSP? Let’s recap the main benefits of working with these highly flexible and result-oriented partners:
- An MSP helps you save valuable time by taking over a wide range of marketing-related tasks. Your in-house team can focus on other important things.
- Managing costs is easy. Most MSPs have a monthly subscription model. Costs are transparent and you can plan future spending. Plus, you can adjust your personalized package if your budget fluctuates.
- MSPs have employees with years of experience when it comes to working on content creation, SEO, paid ad campaigns, and more. You’ll benefit from this extensive expertise at a fraction of the cost of hiring in-house experts.
- Thanks to their highly personalized approach, MSPs are able to offer customized digital marketing services packages that reflect your needs and goals without having to pay for things you don’t need.
- The MSP model values transparency and is result-oriented. You can expect regular reports to track how your marketing campaigns are performing, constant optimization, and recommendations for taking your marketing efforts to the next level.
- Besides being comfortable with the latest marketing software, MSP employees keep up with the latest trends and best practices.
Summary
The MSP model is on the rise as more businesses decide to outsource marketing. It’s also emerging as an ideal solution for small and medium organizations due to the highly personalized nature of this model.
From saving time to reducing costs and getting measurable results, there are many benefits associated with MSPs. The capabilities can vary from one vendor to another, but you’ll typically build a customized service package with elements like SEO, content creation, email marketing, paid ads, remarketing, and more.
Does the MSP model sound like a good fit for your organization? Tempesta Media has over a decade of experience in helping clients achieve their marketing goals.
Our first step is to complete a thorough 90-point digital marketing assessment to get to know our new clients better. We can then work together to build a customized service package with our Performica framework that includes modules for content marketing, email marketing, social media, influencer marketing, SEO, and much more.
Learn more about our Prova digital assessment to get started, find out more about our Performica framework, or take a closer look at our pricing options.
