It’s finally here, readers — MSP Expo 2025 is underway!
From today, February 11 through Thursday, February 13, thousands of attendees have joined us here at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. MSP Expo is part of the #TECHSUPERSHOW experience, which also features ITEXPO, Future of Work Expo, Enterprise Cybersecurity Expo and a whole lot more.
Earlier today, I had the opportunity to moderate a great session: “Building Your MSP Brand: Differentiate Your MSP in a Competitive Market.” It was super energetic in there, let me tell you.
Bringing the energy, naturally, were its three talented speakers: President of MSP Web Solutions David Coatney, Director of Wingman MSP Marketing Mark Copeman, and Start Grow Manage founder Joe Rojas.
After introducing the audience to the speakers, we got the ball rolling straightaway.
“Building your MSP brand means you’re selling trust,” Copeman began. “It’s about emanating a trustworthy personality. It’s about people sitting down and buying from people. Before anything else, that’s what I believe comes first. It’s about having an authentic conversation; telling the right story at the right time.”
“I like that,” Coatney replied. “You have to conversate and really find a way to stand out. But to differentiate, conversation is only one bridge you need to cross. You should also conduct a competitor audit; look at who else is in the space. Once you’ve figured that out, you have to determine if there’s an area of the market — a real opening — that you can jump in and corner. Why? To outflank your competitors. Taking advantage of that is key, and there’s a lot of different levers you can pull as you speak with more and more businesses.”
“Of course, there are other factors to consider,” Coatney continued. “Maybe it’s pricing. Are you premium, or are you value? Maybe it’s your service level. Are you personal, technical, or more incident-focused? In terms of your competitors, if they’re hellbent on being the biggest players in that space and are touting corporate clients, maybe your unique value proposition is saying ‘Hey, we’re a boutique provider. When you work with us, you work with the founders of the company.’ Then, there are other questions to consider; do you have a whole array of varied products, or are you more specialized? These are important things to consider, as is deciding whether or not you’re a one-stop-shop. So, are you? Or are you dialed in on addressing one specific and/or underserved business area and you’re the very best in that area? What is your true selling point?”
Then, Rojas chimed in.
“That is exactly it!” he said enthusiastically. “What is your selling point? What is your niche? Because as soon as you find your niche, you can more successfully grow. Especially when clients are being ‘tech-vomited on’ and are being bombarded left and right. So don’t focus on 25 verticals; that’s insane. You have to strike a clean balance between jack-of-all-trades and mastering hyperfocus.”
“I’ll give you an example,” Rojas went on. “I had a client that was very much the hyper-analytical type. So, I said ‘OK, let’s refine this. Here, draw a grid on a piece of paper.’ He drew. I said ‘OK, now fill each square with all the verticals you’re interested in. As many as you want and can fit on the page.’ He filled all the squares. Then, I said ‘OK, now drop a penny over the grid. Just drop it. Wherever it falls, that’s your primary focus.’”
“And when that penny fell on manufacturing, he almost instantly proclaimed to be more interested in legal, instead. So, I said ‘Good! Congrats, you found your focus. Now, you’ve got work to do.’ And sometimes, that reframing — that level of pure simplification — is genuinely what it takes to get started in the way that will be most valuable for you and however you carve out your niche.”
Copeman then piggybacked, describing how “People are often afraid to hyperfocus because waking up and knowing exactly what industry you have to serve may, perhaps, leave folks wondering if they’re losing extra business to ‘FOMO.’ But when you focus on a core market you confidently know you can serve, you inch closer to becoming the competition. So, as is apparently the theme, find your niche.”
From there, a handful of audience questions bled into the flow of the session; especially as we began wrapping things up.
At one point, Copeman explained how “Some of the most successful businesses that I’ve seen — with the strongest brand identities and revenue streams — have one target market and aren’t spread too thin. They have one regeneration strategy, and they have one conversion mechanism. And while that’s not to say you absolutely must turn down clients left and right outside the market you’re fully immersing yourself in, you do need one vertical that consistently pays off, that really works well for you. Establish yourself in that. Home in deeper. Immerse.”
Another audience member then posed the question of “Well, how do you go about identifying underserved markets in order to succeed in carving out your niche?”
“As we mentioned,” Coatney responded, “that primarily boils down to your competitive audit. Look at who’s positioning themselves prominently in the space. Do the research.”
“And how they’re positioning themselves based on relevant demand,” Rojas added. “Start with the problem within your respective wheelhouse that needs solving. Then, help businesses solve it.”
The speakers altogether reiterated how there are a lot of ways you can go about this, encouraging the audience “not to get so caught up in the nuts and bolts of what you do that you don’t end up telling people what you’re actually going to be doing, how you’ll be serving them. Like we said, the value should be at the forefront; top of mind, as it were.”
“It’s really about remembering that it is a conversation,” Rojas assured. “Then, show them you can do what you can say. Come ready to tell a story, then demonstrate how that story will go.”
It’s true. Storytelling — for MSPs and beyond — creates connection. As humans, we tend to gravitate towards it. So, strategically differentiate your services, and you may earn a leg up against the competition.
Learn more about what’s going on at MSP Expo 2025 here.
Edited by
Alex Passett
