2026 Edition · Free Download

The MSP Marketing Playbook

[2026 Edition]

The new rules of MSP marketing. Real strategies from 9 leaders who built, scaled, and sold MSPs.

Lead generation, sales, AI, client retention, and the services that win in 2026. Built from a year of EasyDMARC forums with the people doing the work.

9
Experts
5
Topics
17
Pages
Grab the Full Playbook for FREE!
01THE STATE OF PLAY

What's actually working in MSP marketing right now

MSP marketing is the set of practices managed service providers use to attract, qualify, and retain business clients. It looks different from B2B SaaS marketing because the buying cycle is longer, trust matters more than reach, and most MSP owners come from a technical background rather than a marketing one.

That last part is the problem. Most MSP marketing advice online is written by agencies trying to sell you their services. This playbook is the opposite: nine MSP operators, vendors, and channel veterans answering the questions MSPs actually ask, in their own words.


We pulled it from a year of live forums. The people you’ll hear from have run MSPs, built MSP marketing programs, and watched what works at the partner conferences and in the customer calls. No frameworks invented for the ebook. No fluff to hit a word count.

02THE VOICES INSIDE

Built with 9 people who've actually run MSPs

Nine operators, vendors, and channel veterans contributed to this playbook over a year of live forums. Combined, they’ve built, scaled, and exited MSPs across the US channel.

AF
Alex Farling
Co-Founder, Empath
Former MSP owner. Coaches MSP sales teams on pipeline discipline.
LB
Lindsey Badillo
VP Marketing, 7Figure MSP
Specialist in self-generating lead systems for
MSPs.
WS
Wes Spencer
Co-Founder, Empath
Channel veteran. Built and exited
MSPs.
ES
Erick Simpson
CEO, Channel Mastered
Wrote the original MSP playbook a decade ago. Still teaching the channel today.
CI
Charlene Ignacio
Founder, Fornix Marketing
Mentor to MSPs scaling past $1M in recurring
revenue.
CW
Chris Wiser
Founder & CEO, 7Figure MSP
Trainer to over 1,000 MSP owners on growth and
AI adoption.
MT
Matt Topper
Security Evangelist, ConnectWise
Spends his days inside the engine room of the
channel.
ML
Matt Lee
Sr. Director Security, Pax8
Pushes MSPs on what's coming next in security and compliance.
BR
Bryce Roberts
VP Marketing, LogicBroker
Bridges product and partner marketing. Formerly
Axcient.
03THE CONTENTS

What's inside the playbook

Five chapters drawn from the questions MSPs are actually asking right now. No invented frameworks. No padded word counts.

01
Current MSP sales strategies (and the one Alex Farling won't say out loud)
The breakdown of where MSP revenue is actually coming from in 2026. Word of mouth still leads at 30.7%. In-person meetups punch far above their weight. Vendor programs are the most underused channel in the entire stack.
02
The biggest barriers to MSP lead generation
Nine real obstacles MSP owners flagged in our forums, from "prospects not making decisions" to "no defined sales process." Erick Simpson's compliance angle for cutting through prospect hesitation is worth the download on its own.
03
MSP marketing meets AI: what's hype, what's hands-on
Where MSPs actually sit on AI adoption (62% see the potential, 25% have it embedded, 13% are skeptical). Wes Spencer on the hammer-vs-weapon framing. Chris Wiser on why staying quiet about AI as a tech provider is its own brand risk.
04
The 2026 MSP roadmap
The one-word answers MSPs gave when asked to describe the perfect 2026 MSP. "Profitable" won. "Cyber first" came second. The strategic implications, including the line between MSP and MSSP that's no longer worth defending.
05
Client profitability and the services that win
Which client types pay the most and frustrate the least. The shift from execution to advisory. Chris Wiser's "general contractor" mindset, and why it's the single biggest reframe an MSP can make this year.
04THE FRAMEWORK

Building your MSP marketing plan in 2026

Most MSPs don’t have a marketing plan. They have a list of activities. The difference matters because activities can keep you busy without ever compounding into pipeline.

A working MSP marketing plan answers four questions before it lists a single tactic.

Question 01
Who is the client you actually want more of?
Not "any business with 10 to 200 seats."
A real ICP looks like K-12 districts in your state, accounting firms with
compliance exposure, or manufacturing under 500 employees with operational technology.
The narrower it is, the easier every other decision becomes.
Question 02
What is the consequence you're protecting them from?
Buyers don't pay for stacks. They pay to avoid losing money, customers, or sleep. The strongest 2026 angles: downtime, ransomware, regulatory fines, cyber insurance lapses, and email spoofing damaging customer trust. Pick one or two and lead with them.
Question 03
Where do those buyers already gather?
Industry-specific Chambers, vertical trade associations, peer LinkedIn groups, vendor-hosted webinars. Generic "small business" networking is the slowest path to your ICP. Charlene Ignacio's rule: go to the groups that match your ICP, not the ones that are easiest to attend.
Question 04
What is your minimum viable activity rhythm?
Five outbound touches a day. One referral conversation per closed project.
One vendor co-marketing motion per quarter. One ICP-tagged piece of content per month.
This is the floor, not the ceiling.
A marketing plan you actually run beats a perfect plan you never start. The full playbook walks through each of these with the operators who've built MSP marketing programs around them.
05SAMPLE INSIGHTS

A taste of what's inside

"
Vendor programs are criminally
underutilized.
Alex Farling Co-Founder, Empath
"
Review their cyber liability insurance. If they're not doing the five or six things their sector requires, they're not compliant.
Erick Simpson CEO, Channel Mastered
"
If you're avoiding talking about AI, what sort of tech
expert are you?
Chris Wiser Founder & CEO, 7Figure MSP
"
A General Contractor doesn't own nails. They run the strategy and ensure everyone is working together. That's what you should be.
Chris Wiser 7Figure MSP
"
You have to get to know their business to become a trusted advisor. Understand how they take data and turn it into money.
Bryce Roberts VP Marketing, LogicBroker
"
Do you ever have that client when you look at the phone and shudder when you see the caller ID? That's bad business.
Matt Topper Security Evangelist, ConnectWise
06WHO IT'S FOR

Who this playbook is for

MSP owners and founders trying to move past word-of-mouth without burning cash on agencies
Marketing leads inside MSPs who want to benchmark their plan against what other operators are running
vCIOs and account managers who want sharper conversations with prospects
MSSPs and security-focused MSPs working out where the line sits in 2026
Anyone selling into the MSP channel who needs to understand how partners actually buy
If you've ever stared at a generic "marketing for MSPs" blog post and felt nothing useful was said, this is the antidote.
07THE WHY

Why EasyDMARC made this MSP marketing playbook

EasyDMARC works with over 90,000 organizations on email security, and a large share of that is delivered through MSP partners who resell or co-manage our platform alongside their wider stack.

Spending a year inside MSP forums made one thing obvious: the operators winning in 2026 aren’t the ones with the deepest tooling. They’re the ones who can talk about consequences in the language a CFO understands.

This playbook captures what those operators are doing about it, in marketing terms. We’re sharing it free because the better the channel does, the better we do. That’s the whole pitch.

Want to add domain spoofing protection to the services you sell?
Partner Program →
90,000+
Organizations secured worldwide with EasyDMARC
08COMMON QUESTIONS

Frequently asked questions about MSP marketing

MSP marketing is the practice of generating, qualifying, and retaining business clients for managed service providers. It combines outbound sales activity, content and SEO, vendor co-marketing, in-person networking, and increasingly AI-assisted prospecting. The core difference from generic B2B marketing is that MSPs sell ongoing service contracts, so trust and proof of expertise carry more weight than reach or volume.

A working MSP marketing plan starts with four answers: who your ideal client profile is, what consequence you’re protecting them from, where those buyers already gather, and what your minimum viable activity rhythm looks like. Tactics come last. Most underperforming MSP marketing plans fail because they aren’t sustained long enough to compound.

Most MSPs generate leads through a mix of word of mouth (around 30% of new business), in-person networking (around 25%), social media and content (around 19%), and vendor partner programs (around 13%). The single most underused channel is vendor co-marketing.

Get clear on your ideal client profile, then go where they already gather. That means industry-specific Chambers of Commerce, peer events, and trade groups, not generic networking. Lead with a risk or compliance angle rather than a feature list.

Sell the outcome, not the stack. The MSPs winning in 2026 are positioned as strategic partners and “general contractors” rather than break-fix providers. Lead with business outcomes (uptime, compliance posture, insurability).

There isn’t one. The MSPs growing fastest run a portfolio: a daily outbound rhythm, an active referral program for post-project clients, a content engine targeting their ICP, vendor co-marketing, and at least one experiment in AI-assisted prospecting.

Both, in stages. In the early years, the founder is the brand and needs to be visible in person and on LinkedIn. As you scale past 10 to 15 employees, hiring or contracting a part-time marketing lead usually outperforms an agency.

Three that show up repeatedly: a structured referral ask after every successful project, joint webinars with vendors who already serve your ICP, and account-based outreach to a tight list of named accounts where you map five or more stakeholders per company before reaching out.

AI is shifting MSP marketing from manual research to assisted prospecting and from one-to-many content to dynamic, account-specific copy. About a quarter of MSPs have AI embedded in their workflow, while the majority recognize the potential but haven’t operationalized it.

Email security for MSPs in 2026 needs to cover three things: protection against domain spoofing and impersonation, visibility into who is sending email on behalf of the client’s domain, and inbound filtering for phishing and malicious attachments.

09THE DOWNLOAD

Get the full playbook

FREE · PDF · 17 PAGES · 9 MSP LEADERS

  • Real strategies from the operators running them
  • No agency fluff, no recycled frameworks
  • Sent to your inbox in 60 seconds
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