Have you heard the phrase, “flipping the funnel?”

It’s a strategy that we talk about a lot with our MSP clients, because we’ve seen how it helps them maximize what they’re doing in the marketing space. Instead of casting a wide net, flipping the funnel allows you to hone in on specific, ideal clients with a tailor-made marketing strategy.

Fishing with Nets: Traditional Marketing

When we think about traditional digital marketing, it tends to be a “fishing with nets” strategy.  

This is how most MSPs are still marketing their business today, because it used to work 10-15 years ago — but things have changed. 

Traditional digital marketing starts with prospects finding you. You put out content in the form of blog posts, advertisements or social media blasts, and people looking for your services stumble upon your content. 

After that, some of those people might start to show interest. Maybe they download a piece of content from your website, fill out a contact form, or engage with a social media post. 

From there, the pool starts to get smaller and smaller. You engage, nurture and chase leads to try to land a conversation, with the hopes that a few of them will convert into an opportunity for you. 

This approach is great on the surface, but the problem is that people aren’t searching for your specific services like they used to. Search engines and social media sites are controlled by the algorithm, and AI is causing some challenges in search results. This means that it’s harder than ever for people to find your site, or come across your business on their own. 

If you’ve been running into these same struggles, it’s time to try something new in your marketing.

Fishing with Spears: Flipping the Funnel 

The new approach we’ve been using is what we call “flipping the funnel,” or “account based marketing.” This strategy is more like fishing with spears. Instead of putting out content and hoping that it attracts the right people into your website, you become very intentional with what you’re creating. 

The first step is to choose the target accounts you want to be doing business with. That is going to look a little bit different for every MSP.  Maybe it’s a set of 250-500 right fit businesses across the region you’re in, or even a smaller list of 100-200 right fit companies.

The goal is to narrow your focus into the industry you want to be working in or the type of business you want to be doing business with, and then identifying who those companies are. Think about those accounts that you know you could be servicing and providing great value for as an MSP, and then determine how to land conversations with them.

How to Engage Your Key Leads

Once you know who you want to talk to, it’s time to begin fostering those relationships.

After you identify your top accounts, look into the people who work there, and determine who you should reach out to. Maybe that’s an IT director, a CTO, or – if it’s a smaller business – maybe a business owner or a CFO. 

Having that information makes it much easier to nurture and engage, because you know exactly who you’re going to be speaking to with your marketing. You can be very intentional with what you’re saying to them, how you’re saying it and which problems in their business that you can fix. It becomes this hyper-focused, personalized marketing touchpoint that starts to actually produce many more opportunities. 

When you flip the funnel, you’re investing your marketing dollars in targeting those specific individuals, which means the pool of people who come in and convert are going to be right-fit every time. This approach helps you make meaningful progress in the organization by starting with the end in mind.