Every preacher needs a pulpit to sermonize from. The other day I found an old fall conference message from 2011 that spoke to me: PIVOT! That was nearly six years ago and the early evidence was mounting the traditional SMB technology motion was pivoting away from server-side bits to cloud-based business solutions. The server box in the corner was quickly becoming the black box containing the magic of marketing analytics.
The transformation has been profound and while I can’t make America great again with a server inside every SMB business location, you can turn-on and tune-in to Marketing as a Service (MaaS). Don’t turn-off and tune-out (kids won’t get that).
Really the choice is yours. You can get ahead of the curve as so many of us did charging full steam into the client/server era or you can face irrelevancy. I vote relevancy and I want to help you pivot to the new realities of IT service delivery today.
Superstar MSP Carl Mazzanti (eMazzanti, Hoboken, NJ) said it best in a recent conversation with me. “If we do TODAY what we did YESTERDAY then we won’t be here TOMORROW.” Another superstar MSP, Jamison West, whom I profiled HERE has taken business transformation to a whole different level by exiting his long-standing and respected MSP business and launching a new business services start-up. If you want to have what successful MSPs have, act like a successful MSP!
Which gets us to the one-day Pocket MBA MaaS workshop tour in 2Q, 2017. The topic has several attack vectors.
MSP Marketing ROI. The first is to attack head-on that 50% of all marketing dollars are wasted. If you apply simple digital marketing techniques (well known to any Millennial) along with basic analytics, you can dramatically increase your own marketing results. In fact, you should insist on a 10:1 return on any marketing dollar spent just as internal report cards at Microsoft do (did I just break my NDA?).
Strategy. Eating your own dog food by living and breathing the new Marketing 2.0 makes you competent and qualified to interact with your SMB clients in a new, elevated fashion. Here is what I mean. As you master MaaS (or even observe it), you’ll be able to offer similar services to your clients. This is an important point. Much of the technology budget is now inside the Sales and Marketing department and less so in the IT department. Ergo you need to align with where the money is – case closed.
Life Learner. If you aren’t willing to grow intellectually, you better get the hell out of the tech sector. This is a thinking man’s game: Marketing as a Service in a Marketing 2.0 world.
Weekend Executive Workshop. I only want serious and committed MSP practioneers at my workshop. I’ve structure this as an Executive Pocket MBA one-day on a Saturday. It’s akin to how I earned my MBA in Project Management as a night and weekend student. Plus you’re not fighting traffic to get to class!
Learn more about our upcoming Executive Pocket MBA MaaS one-day HERE and discover how you can participate in a workshop that will deliver the tools you need to pivot your MSP practice ASAP!