As a business owner, you always need to be well aware of your place in the market, as well as the direction in which your industry is heading. This could not be more important than it is today for your IT services marketing. The industry in which managed services providers operate is more crowded than ever before. It seems as though every single day a new competitor is popping up. As a business owner, what should you do to make sure that you are ahead of the curve and doing the very best that you can for all of your current clients, as well as your potential future customers?
It all starts with an assessment of the current industry in which you belong. What you want to do is to figure out who the leaders are in your market, make a list of the top five or ten companies that you are competing against. What are the strategies that they are putting into place and how well are they doing in executing those plans? Figuring all of this out should allow you to go in the complete opposite direction of your competition.
Never Follow the Leader
What you always want to avoid doing regarding providing IT services marketing is that you never want to follow the leader. Whatever the leader of your particular industry is doing, as a managed service provider, you want to try and do the opposite. Think about a unique differentiating factor that you can come up with, a different slant that you can take regarding what you can offer to clients, varying technologies and ideas, and try and utilize those to your advantage.
Never following the leader is all about being different. The reason that a client is going to want to sign on with you as a managed service provider versus the head in the industry is that you are going to be offering something and bringing something new to the table that they simply are not doing. Clients want the very best for their IT infrastructure and when they are able to find the latest and greatest thing, they want to take advantage of it because that means that they also are differentiating from their own competition.
Find Your Niche
The goal should always be to find your niche. When you are putting together your marketing strategy as a managed service provider, what can you do that is going to be completely outside of the box? Perhaps this means employing a level of customer service that has never been seen before in the industry or using cloud technology in a unique way that has yet to be done. You want to find the niche and bring into the forefront. Then, present it to any potential client that is out there so that they have to pay attention to your company and the services that you are offering.
The leader of your particular industry is there because they were, at one point, different. Once you become the leader it is very common to have a slew of companies following in your footsteps, trying to do exactly what you do. But unfortunately for them, you’re better and always a step ahead.
From an IT services marketing perspective, doing what bigger companies do is not exactly a bad idea. But you won’t be able to carve out your own little corner in the industry. Instead, you always want to strive to be unique, be different, and find a niche that you can exploit. Clients are looking for the very best, and that may not simply be the industry leader that currently exists. Dare to be different and think outside of the box and you may be surprised at the level of success that you will achieve.
