MSP marketing beyond your referrals

MSP marketing services are the outside work that wins a managed service provider new clients: outreach, search pages, ads and follow-up on every inquiry. In Kaseya’s 2026 State of the MSP report, a survey of 1,061 MSPs, 71% put acquiring new customers among their three biggest issues. Growigami runs each channel as a process your CRO builds, from $1,999 a month.

What is MSP marketing?

MSP marketing is how a managed IT company finds and signs new clients for monthly contracts. The services it sells include help desk support, network monitoring, backup, cloud and security work such as endpoint protection. Clients pay a monthly fee under a managed services agreement, so each new agreement adds revenue every month the client stays.

Two things make MSP marketing hard. The services are hard to explain to a business owner who does not work in IT. And many prospects already have an IT provider. In Kaseya’s 2026 report, 33% of MSPs said their new clients were mostly switching from another MSP, and 49% saw a mix of switchers and first-time buyers. Only 12% said most new clients were outsourcing IT for the first time.

Who are MSP clients?

Small and mid-size businesses without a full IT department, plus larger companies that hand off part of the work. Many MSPs pick a region and a few industries, such as clinics, law firms, accountants, manufacturers or defense contractors, because each has its own rules and software. Marketing works best when it names that industry and the problem it brings, such as a cyber insurance renewal form or a new office to wire.

How do MSPs win new clients in 2026?

Most often by referral. In a reader survey MSP Success published in December 2025, 43% named referrals as their top way to gain customers, ahead of cold outreach at 18% and SEO or the website at 16%. The article does not say how many MSPs answered. Referrals come on someone else’s schedule, so owners who want steadier growth add a channel they run themselves.

Kaseya also asked MSPs for their single biggest challenge in winning clients. Increased competition led at 22%. The share naming the inability to show value quickly almost doubled, from 10% to 19%. Another 15% named the lack of a dedicated sales rep, and 12% named having no lead generation strategy.

What is MSP lead generation?

It is the work of starting conversations with businesses that could sign a managed services agreement. Outbound is the part you control most: a list of target accounts, a reason to write to each one and a message for each contact. Our outbound lead generation services page covers the method in depth, and B2B lead generation services compares it with inbound channels.

For an MSP, the reason to write is usually an event at the prospect, such as a new office, a jump in headcount or a new compliance rule. A message that names that event reads like it came from someone local who pays attention. MSP Success readers listed “customer inertia to move on from their existing MSP” among their hardest problems. A message tied to a dated event gives that business a reason to look now.

Does SEO work for an MSP?

It works for the searches owners make when they are ready to switch, such as “managed IT services” plus a city. Tech Pro Marketing, an MSP agency, says an owner making that search is “ready to make the switch” to a new provider. Good MSP pages also answer the follow-up questions: what managed IT costs per user, what is included and how onboarding works.

Search pages take months to rank, so they suit an MSP that can wait. Pronto Marketing, an agency whose clients are about half MSPs, sells local SEO from $1,099 a month and advises MSPs to budget at least $1,500 a month for Google Ads.

What do MSP marketing services cost?

On 4 November 2026 we read the pages that rank for this search (Ahrefs, US, October 2026) and the pages its AI Overview cites, then opened each firm’s own site. Pronto Marketing, Tactics Marketing and Marketopia publish prices on their MSP pages. Tortoise and Hare Software publishes one price list for all its B2B tech clients. Tech Pro Marketing publishes the budget it looks for, and Jumpfactor publishes no price.

Option	Published price	Terms	Source
Pronto Marketing, Google Ads	From $500 a month	30-day rolling contract	Pronto’s MSP page
Pronto Marketing, blogging	From $549 a month	30-day rolling contract	Pronto’s MSP page
Pronto Marketing, link building	From $900 a month	30-day rolling contract	Pronto’s MSP page
Pronto Marketing, local SEO	From $1,099 a month	30-day rolling contract	Pronto’s MSP page
Tactics Marketing, Findable plan	$1,000 a month	Month to month	Tactics’ pricing page
Tactics Marketing, Familiar plan	$4,000 a month	Month to month	Tactics’ pricing page
Tactics Marketing, Famous plan	From $8,000 a month	Month to month	Tactics’ pricing page
Marketopia, entry program	From $199 a month	Not stated	Marketopia’s MSP page
Marketopia, BDR appointment setting	From just under $3,000 a month	3, 6 or 12 months; shorter terms cost more	Marketopia’s MSP page
Tech Pro Marketing	Custom quote; best fit at $50,000+ in MRR with a $1,000 to $6,000 monthly budget	Money back if unhappy in the first 30 days; no term stated	Tech Pro’s MSP page
Tortoise and Hare Software	Fractional marketing management $2,500 a month; content and SEO $5,000 a month	Not stated	Its pricing page
Jumpfactor	No price; sold with a lead guarantee	Not stated	Jumpfactor’s MSP page
In-house marketing specialist	$78,760 a year, median pay	A permanent hire	BLS, May 2025
Growigami, one process	From $1,999 a month	Minimum three months, then 30 days' notice	Our price list
Growigami, one process with a monthly CRO review	$3,498 a month	Minimum three months, then 30 days' notice	Our price list

A process costs $500 more in its first month while we build it, and your first build is on us this month. Ad spend on the Paid process is paid at cost. The prices above buy different things, so compare the work each one includes. A blogging package and an outbound process do not do the same job.

What Growigami runs for an MSP

Each week AI agents research the businesses on your target list, draft a message for each contact and send interested replies to you or your sales rep the same day. Your CRO builds that process with you first and runs it by hand until it produces replies, then the agents take over. Your team answers the replies, runs the discovery calls and writes the proposals.

Find the contactHubSpot · VP Operations or QA lead

Draft the emailAgent · In Marcus’s voice

Done

Copy checkEvery claim has a source

Passed

Marcus sends each oneGmail · Head of Sales

Each of these is its own process, from $1,999 a month at its first size:

• Outbound (Pipeline): 500 target accounts researched a month, with an email and LinkedIn message written for each contact. Each follow-up says something new.
• Search (Search): city, service, cost and comparison pages drafted from your engineers’ answers. 200 pages a month, or 500 on the larger size, built to rank on Google and get cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity.
• Paid (Paid and creative): Google Ads and your Google Business Profile, plus a second channel such as LinkedIn, with up to $25,000 a month in ad spend. AI agents draft the ads, and spend moves each week to the campaigns that book calls.
• Partnerships (Partnerships): up to 40 companies a month that already serve your buyers, such as accounting firms and phone system dealers, researched and pitched as referral partners.
• Inbound lead follow-up: up to 300 leads a month, each researched and scored, with a first reply drafted for you to send.

Pick outbound first if someone on your team can answer replies. Search builds slower, and paid fits a market where owners already search for managed IT in your city. Your CRO reviews the whole system with you if you add the optional review, at $1,499 a month for monthly sessions or $2,999 for weekly ones.

How to choose an MSP marketing agency

Ask every firm the same questions in writing, then compare the answers side by side:

• What does the fee buy each month? Pronto sells blogging, local SEO and ads as separate modules. 100signals, an agency that published its own comparison of MSP marketing firms, warns against reading an entry price as the cost of a full program.
• Who answers the leads? Ask what happens between the inquiry and the meeting. If nobody on your team owns it, fix that before you buy traffic.
• What is guaranteed, and how is it measured? Read the guarantee’s terms. A guarantee measured by the agency’s own definition of a lead is weaker than one tied to your CRM.
• How do you leave? Month-to-month firms exist in this market. Ours has a minimum of three months, then 30 days' notice.
• Who checks security claims? A page that overstates your response time or your compliance work is a liability. Your engineers should sign off on those lines.

When an MSP marketing specialist or a hire fits better

• You want a firm that works only in managed IT. Tech Pro Marketing says it works only with MSPs. Jumpfactor says it is 100% focused on MSPs and cybersecurity firms, and Tactics Marketing says it works only with MSPs, MSSPs and their partners. TSL says it has served 350+ managed IT companies. That history counts in a crowded market.
• You want month-to-month terms. Tactics Marketing and Pronto run month to month or on a 30-day rolling contract. Ours has a minimum of three months.
• You want people setting appointments for you. Marketopia sells BDR appointment setting from just under $3,000 a month, with US-based setters at its higher levels. We send email and LinkedIn messages and do not make calls.
• You want your vendor funds claimed for you. Filament Digital lists MDF and co-op fund work among its services. Vendor fund claims are not on our price list.
• You have a marketer who has time. Then a few hours of strategy a month covers it. See our comparison of in-house marketing and an agency.

If you also sell managed security as an MSSP, our cybersecurity marketing page covers that buyer. If you run a smaller firm where the owner still does all the selling, see small business marketing. Growigami has worked with 40+ B2B companies.

NaviNurses and CapOut added new channels

NaviNurses grew on word of mouth, and CapOut had cycled through marketers in house. Neither is an MSP, and both are past results, so neither is a forecast for yours.

NaviNurses lets families hire a registered nurse for care at home. It had taken in everyone who called, mostly by word of mouth. We defined its ideal client, then ran webinars, content and outbound emails at that one buyer, and its new sales team reached full quota in 60 days (NaviNurses story).

CapOut sells software to roofing and restoration contractors, and its CEO had been through two and a half marketers in house. Weekly workshops pulled product knowledge out of him, so the pages said what only CapOut knows. Outbound ran beside them. Its estimated search visits grew more than 10x after the new pages went live (CapOut story).

Talk to sales. Give us read access to your CRM, and within a week we show you the first process we would build and what it would produce.