Nate Freedman Helps MSPs Build Websites that WIN more clients!

Nate Freedman Helps MSP Clients WIN more Clients

Join Carrie Richardson, host of WIN as she chats with Nate Freedman, the CEO of Tech Pro Marketing.

Unlock the secrets of transforming casual website browsers into committed clients with live chat. 

That's just a slice of what we're serving up as we sit down with the CEO of TechPro Marketing, who explains how you can optimize your MSP's digital doorstep. 

He shares an in-depth analysis of over 100 MSP websites crafted strategies for success, and discusses how a perfectly placed chat can work wonders for your lead generation. 

Be prepared to take notes as we unravel the art of engaging visitors with personalized messaging that guides them smoothly from a curious click to a scheduled meeting.

We also delve into the magic behind immediate callback features and why chat support systems aren't just a 'nice-to-have' but a 'must-have' for MSPs aiming to skyrocket conversion rates. 

But wait, there's more! 

We'll take a creative detour and chat about a unique weekend project – using AI to create comic strips – and the quirky challenges of character consistency. 

Whether you're an MSP looking to beef up your online presence or just intrigued by the blend of marketing and tech, this conversation is jam-packed with anecdotes, advice, and a touch of comic relief.

Carrie Richardson and Ian Richardson host the WIN Podcast - What's Important Now?

Serial entrepreneurs, life partners and business partners, they have successfully exited from multiple businesses (IT, call center, real estate, marketing) and they help other business owners create their own versions of success.

Ian is certified in Eagle Center For Leadership Making A Difference, Paterson StratOp, and LifePlan.

Carrie has helped create and execute successful outbound sales strategies for over 1200 technology-focused businesses including MSPs, manufacturers, distributors and SaaS firms.

Learn more at www.foxcrowgroup.com

Book time with either of them here: https://randr.consulting/connect

Be a guest on WIN! We host successful entrepreneurs who share advice with other entrepreneurs on how to build, grow or sell a business using examples from their own experience.

Chapters

• 0:00 Generating Leads With Live Chat
• 7:41 Improving MSP Website Conversion Rates
• 18:19 Creating Comic Strips With AI

Transcript

[00:00:00] Carrie Richardson: Hey, Nate. How are you doing? 

[00:00:01] Nate Freedman: Great. Carrie, how are you doing? 

[00:00:03] Carrie Richardson: I'm doing well. Thank you. 

[00:00:04] Carrie Richardson: He is the CEO of tech pro marketing.

[00:00:07] Carrie Richardson: So tell us a little bit about that . 

[00:00:09] Nate Freedman: Sure. Yeah. 

[00:00:10] Nate Freedman: For us on our website, we've got a form while you're reaching out. We've got a strategy call form, what they're interested in. They talk to our chat agent as well. 

[00:00:18] Nate Freedman: And what we've seen is just most of the market right now with MSPs.

[00:00:22] Nate Freedman: They are concerned about their website. So even though I've been working with MSPs for the last seven years doing their marketing, and there's so many things we do, seven years later, website is a really hot topic for MSPs. I don't know if it's because, there's just so much in the digital marketing zeitgeist about websites and it like, it's still such a popular topic.

[00:00:43] Nate Freedman: But they are important. Over the past six months or so, we did a deep dive into all the Google Analytics. 

[00:00:49] Nate Freedman: We're managing over 112 MSP websites right now, all across North America and every major city you can think of in rural areas.

[00:00:59] Nate Freedman: [00:01:00] And we wanted to figure out like, we know best practices. Okay. We know what we've read in terms of what works. We know anecdotally. Like inside our company. Hey, these guys are doing good. This must be working with the website, but we had never done like an in depth study So for the last half of this year, we did a study these 112 websites.

[00:01:19] Nate Freedman: We looked at things like conversion We looked at things like website traffic who's getting leads where the lead's coming from. What pages are they visiting? That's one of the things we're going to do if you don't have a website yet. We've got amazing website templates that we've built based off of these best practices that we figured out in our study.

[00:01:36] Nate Freedman: If you do have a website, we can just optimize your existing website and integrate these things. And then we'll be doing continual website updates. We actually have our own Marketing automation system that we built out.

[00:01:48] Nate Freedman: So I think one of the most important things and it was really inspired by Ian with the MSP sales process. What we're trying to do with ours is a little bit before that. So if you get a lead in from the website, [00:02:00] how do you get them to go to that meeting? How do you have your calendar set up? How do you have your schedule instead of what emails are they going to receive?

[00:02:06] Nate Freedman: Are you going to send a text message?

[00:02:08] Nate Freedman: I know b2b's are like scared to send a text in marketing But this is a little tactic that we can try so all this type of stuff about going from lead to meeting going from website visitor to meeting. 

[00:02:19] Carrie Richardson: Great. So your topic today is how to generate leads from your website So I expect that there'll be Some of that advice shared right now. 

[00:02:27] Nate Freedman: Totally. I think for number one thing, and this surprised me as well. I don't know when website live chat started becoming popular. I can remember it about six or seven years ago.

[00:02:39] Nate Freedman: I had some clients coming up to me saying, Hey, can we install like a chat bot on our website and things like that? And. At first, I don't know, maybe I was dismissive of new technology, and I didn't embrace it on day one, and maybe like our first year doing it, we were trying it, but we weren't getting amazing results, and about a year into experimenting with different [00:03:00] chats, I can 100 percent tell you about 20 to 25 percent of our leads that come from our websites.

[00:03:08] Nate Freedman: That are MSPs, they're coming from the live chat agent. I don't know if that necessarily means they wouldn't have filled out a form, but I have a hunch, like my qualitative sense here is that, yeah, a lot of these people wouldn't have filled out a form if we didn't have a great live chat agent on that, on the website.

[00:03:26] Nate Freedman: So some of the features of a great live chat agent, and this is like why I just want to start with this. This is super easy. You guys, so if you're an MSP and you have a website, you can add a live chat feature pretty easily. There's a company called Talk. to, T A W K dot T O. It's a free live chat agent.

[00:03:44] Nate Freedman: You install the app on your phone and you're the agent but you can get this live chat. There's AI chat agents as well. I think that is a potential option. It's probably better than if you're not going to man the chat yourself, but what we've found [00:04:00] is we actually built out a system where for our clients, we've got a dedicated live chat agent that's there.

[00:04:05] Nate Freedman: And, we're doing 112 so we can have 1 dedicated person that just managed all that for an MSP on your own. Maybe you do have somebody who's always on that, but I think what we found is that having a live person On the other end of the chat that knows what they're talking about that can answer.

[00:04:20] Nate Freedman: Cause you know what, like the number one question we get is from these chat agents, are you a real person? And when we can respond back, yes, I'm a real person. Let me help you get scheduled with our CEO. Let me get you, help you get you on the calendar. That helps so much. I think the other thing about the live chat agent that you want to set up is I've seen a lot of prompts like, hi, I'm here.

[00:04:40] Nate Freedman: If you have a question, that's fine. But really I think the key, maybe the turning point for us to getting results from live chat is having a pointed question. So if you go onto one of our clients websites, you'll see a chat kind of pop up in the corner says, hi, my name is this person. I'm from this [00:05:00] company.

[00:05:01] Nate Freedman: Are you currently working with an it provider? Some of these basic questions. So I know Carrie in your days in managed sales pros, you weren't like calling them up and they, Hey, do you want to switch to our MSP? You would start with some of these identification questions. How many computer users do you have?

[00:05:19] Nate Freedman: Do you work with an MSP? Do you handle it in house? These types of questions are great to start a conversation, right? So that's I think just probably like easy step one. It doesn't even involve editing your website. It just involves like adding a code and then configuring it for your chat agent. I think this is like number one easiest thing you can do to generate more leads.

[00:05:37] Nate Freedman: And that's where I would start for any MSP. 

[00:05:41] Carrie Richardson: So chatbots. Don't text me by the way. Anybody ever. Please. I think it's a very polarizing like texting can be very like, some people love it. Some people don't, but do you have some questions for you. If you could make only 1 change to help an MSP generate more [00:06:00] leads from their website, what would it be?

[00:06:03] Nate Freedman: Yeah, so that's it. Install, install a live agent chat, have a good opening prompt, not just, hi, do you have any questions? Have a good prompt, can help you get a price quote started. Are you a current customer or not? And make sure that someone is actually monitoring it and that they can answer the question, not within Three minutes, but they can be there to answer within 15 seconds and really get a conversation, get them booked.

[00:06:27] Nate Freedman: So that's number one. 

[00:06:29] Carrie Richardson: So how do you structure that? Nate, just from a curiosity standpoint, if you're going to set up a B2B chat bot, let's assume that people DIY it. What happens if. Somebody puts a message in there that nobody responds to, like, how do you make sure that there's always someone available?

[00:06:47] Nate Freedman: Yeah, that was, I think that's where we went wrong with our first year of it, is we tried to do it in house and just keep it within the MSP, and it's hey, you're gonna, I think you've been working with a lot of MSPs, you're Married to a former [00:07:00] MSP owner. And sometimes they're not going to respond right away.

[00:07:03] Nate Freedman: And I tried coaching them. That was like my thing early on. I was like no, I'm going to get it set up. You got the app on your phone, you ready to respond. And then we'd get the leads and we'd see if they weren't responding. Oh my gosh. So I think having a dedicated agent. Pay a little more, sign up for 1 of these agents agent services.

[00:07:19] Nate Freedman: I think that's probably the biggest thing is don't try to do it on your own unless you really have the staff and the system set up correctly. Another thing is you can set up a little bit of a. A chat tree. So one thing that helps for us is we noticed that it's not every, it's not every MSP, but some MSPs, their current clients go to the website to get support.

[00:07:39] Nate Freedman: A lot of MSPs, they've got something set up. You like double click on an app in the corner, or they know to call or something, but some MSPs, they don't, they go to the website to get that support and they'll go to the chat asking for support. So you set up a little tree, your opening question might be, Hey, thanks for visiting.

[00:07:55] Nate Freedman: Are you a current client? Yes or no. If it says, yes, then it says, [00:08:00] great. Let me direct you to our support. Please call this number to submit a support ticket. If they say no, they say, great. Can I have the name of your company and just start collecting that information? So you create a decision tree at the beginning that can segment and deliver people to the right places.

[00:08:17] Nate Freedman: And a lot of these tools might have an instant callback feature, so it could be something like this where the, if you're using a bot, I recommend using an agent. I think it's like a little bit slight terminology. I just like to be clear, refer to it as an agent because I think it's best to have a real person there.

[00:08:35] Nate Freedman: But you can set it up where once they put in their phone number, it can call you. And you'll answer and they'll say, yeah, this is from the chat. It's a recording. This is from the chat system. You've got a new chatter. Would you like to be connected? Then it'll three way dial that person. So I think that's another great tool that you can do.

[00:08:53] Nate Freedman: As long as you set up your chat scripts correctly okay, great. I'm going to have someone reach out as soon as possible. And then you call back within [00:09:00] 10 seconds. That's super fast. And I think that's very impressive, especially if your prospect is working with an MSP that their big frustration is they haven't been responded to quickly.

[00:09:11] Nate Freedman: So I think like for every business, we want to be responding back quickly. I think for MSPs in particular, using a callback feature, a quick callback feature or making sure you have a real live agent there. Can be so impressive and can honestly win the deal for you because they'll be like, Hey, you know what you had me at as soon as I put my phone number, you called me because I haven't been getting that with my current guys.

[00:09:34] Carrie Richardson: So what else are you seeing in on websites right now that are helping or hurting managed service providers? 

[00:09:44] Nate Freedman: So there's like a concept of a horizontal sales letter or vertical sales letter. And this is basically where you put the content on your website. And if you've read a book called Story Brand, I think a lot of people have read that book with Donald Miller.

[00:09:57] Nate Freedman: He goes a lot into the different types of sections [00:10:00] that would go into this type of website sales letter. And horizontal means that you'll be putting it, you're putting the content on different pages. Homepage is going to have the core of your the meat of your, Offer of what you're trying to what you're trying to accomplish.

[00:10:15] Nate Freedman: So what we've found is that the websites that invest more into the homepage have a longer storytelling homepage, as opposed to using their homepage as like an entryway or gateway. They get better results. Another thing just got I got a report right here. Another thing is that yeah Actually stuffing the top of the home page with more content works better.

[00:10:38] Nate Freedman: I know a lot of us love Minimalist designs and we want it to be like cool and sleek and modern looking But what we've actually found is if you can get more Of your content that you know what we call proof points, right? Some credibility for your MSP, showing how many Google reviews you have, if you can have that all above the fold on your homepage, that [00:11:00] makes it so much easier for your visitor to decide whether they're going to stay on that page or not.

[00:11:05] Nate Freedman: So I recommend stuffing the top of the page with more content. What we found is the average visitor. And, this is not necessarily everybody is a prospect, everybody's a lead, but the average visitor stays on an MSP's website for only 40 seconds. Wow. You've got 40 seconds. To hook them, really get that top of the page done.

[00:11:24] Nate Freedman: So minimalist design looks cool, but I think especially if you have super cold traffic and people don't know who you are, they just did a search for MSP near me and they landed on your website. You want to be super clear and pack as much information into the top of your page as you can. And is anybody searching for MSP near me?

[00:11:44] Nate Freedman: Are they searching for other terms? Yeah, they are. So I think when you're, you've got. Maybe three major categories of search terms. You've got MSP. IT services, IT support, including in those managed services [00:12:00] provider, those are all searched for depending on different companies. They just have different terms for it.

[00:12:05] Nate Freedman: I think another one is help desk. Some of the businesses out there view it as a help desk. And but the thing is, then you've got, These different modifiers on top of it. So near me, that's something you would add at the end of it. I actually believe that is the highest buying intent based off my data.

[00:12:20] Nate Freedman: If someone types in near me, that's telling you that they're potentially a buyer. City name is another good one, but city name could be they're trying to sell you or they're trying to buy from you. Usually near me is like the most highest buying intent. So I do recommend if you're. Reverse engineering, your search engines, try to get into those near me based keywords works really well 

[00:12:42] Carrie Richardson: You mentioned above the fold? For those of us who may not be as familiar with terminology, explain what part of that site, what part of the website that is. And one other question is, how does that translate to viewing on mobile or viewing on different sized [00:13:00] screens? 

[00:13:00] Nate Freedman: So I worked at my college newspaper. I was in the graphic design department there, and we had to really focus on above the fold content in a newspaper. The newspapers get folded. You can see the top half of it. That's what the above the fold comes from. In websites, it really means you'd call it your hero area, but it's that first section that you see on the home page of the website.

[00:13:19] Nate Freedman: It can be called above the fold content. It could be called your website hero, just your main section top section of it. I think in general, this is something else we found through Google analytics is desktop is going to be your major device.

[00:13:33] Nate Freedman: So this is a B to B sale. People are doing it from their desktop computers. They're not necessarily doing it from their from their phone. However, I would say, if you have a more entrepreneurial niche within the MSP space, where there's more entrepreneurs, you're Mobile becomes more popular. For example, like MSPs, this is a B2B sale, but MSPs are super entrepreneurial.

[00:13:55] Nate Freedman: They search stuff on their phone. It's all owners running it. I think if you've got like a [00:14:00] B2B biotech, if you're trying to sell into that, It's a little bit more of a corporate setting, then you're going to be focusing more on that. And I just think in general, if you're doing the design of your website uh, you're taking it mobile.

[00:14:11] Nate Freedman: I think in general, you just want to focus on Hey, I've got this much information on the first screen on desktop. I want to somehow have that same information on the first screen and mobile. It's not always going to fit, but you want to try to get basically for each scroll that you do. You want to get the same information into that same area. 

[00:14:29] Carrie Richardson: Great. Nate, what are you seeing this year that you hope dies next year? As far as marketing trends? What are people going all in on that they could have gone in all in on three years ago and now it's just time for it to go?

[00:14:42] Nate Freedman: I don't know if I think the big thing I'm, I don't think it, I don't have anything it's time to go. I think the big thing that MSPs are jumping on the train on right now that I actually want to see them like, maybe use more, just do it better is AI. And I think like a lot of people, like I need to be incorporating AI into everything.

[00:14:58] Nate Freedman: And it's Oh, I'm trying to [00:15:00] get in with private equity. If I just had this AI element of it, I'm going to, double my valuation. And I do think adding AI is really smart. But I also think you just need to think of yourself as basically an AI operator. And it's not necessarily like you need to implement AI into every automation you have.

[00:15:17] Nate Freedman: I think it's more of you just need to maybe, if you wrote a letter to somebody, throw it into ChatGPT and get a little bit of feedback on it. If you need an idea for a re engagement campaign, ask ChatGPT to draft a couple ideas for you, but then actually go in and take the time to write it.

[00:15:32] Nate Freedman: And maybe I did make this mistake of, I, I don't know, it was about one week, I must have spent 35 hours to un chat GPT alone, produce 9, 000 pages of content. And I was like, I'm the man, this is the most amazing thing ever. And at the end, like I looked back at her a month later, I'm like, actually like all that content was weak and I'm going to have to redo it now.

[00:15:53] Nate Freedman: So I think maybe if you're going to leverage AI, become a great AI operator, but then also maybe our next big trend is like [00:16:00] reviewing our AI content and making sure that it's actually like getting a point across or accomplishing anything that we need. 

[00:16:08] Carrie Richardson: I actually tried the AI feature on LinkedIn for the first time today.

[00:16:12] Carrie Richardson: I wrote a post and I was like, ah, it's clunky. And I like hit the button. It actually did right. A better post in my original post, but it also had all of the bullet points that I wanted for the post in it. So I think you can't just take your hand off the wheel completely when it comes to and, hope that it works out.

[00:16:30] Carrie Richardson: You really do need to be present training that if you've got your private models, you've got to be training them. I want it to sound like I wrote it. And until I can do that, I will probably step back from using AI. 

[00:16:42] Nate Freedman: We did a big team meeting where it's like, guys, we are now all AI operators. And we've done a big thing internally.

[00:16:49] Nate Freedman: It's like, how are we integrating AI? We're not setting up some like AI web hook and all this type of stuff into our systems. What we're doing is we're training every single person. On how to use it, [00:17:00] how to write the prompts, how to get the feedback, how to do those things that you just described, because it's so powerful if you know how to do it.

[00:17:07] Nate Freedman: Let's do it and just keep it, kiss principle. I think we all do that here. Just, let's just keep it simple. Let's get good at operating AI. And when we get great at it, then maybe we can start integrating it into our, into our automations. But for now, I just think doing what you're doing of like, all right, let's get the bullet points out of this.

[00:17:23] Nate Freedman: Let's make my posts a little better. 

[00:17:25] Carrie Richardson: So important. I did the crucial website using a chat GPT. I asked it to write me a comic book based on a story that I imported into it. So it wrote me a comic book strip. Then I went to Leonardo AI and I had them pull, had it create. And that's the lion's share of the work.

[00:17:43] Carrie Richardson: Convincing it over and over again to try and get that same character, that same look and feel to each image. That was the bulk of that, but it was a fun project and it took me a weekend. 

[00:17:52] Nate Freedman: So I tried to get that. I was just trying to do a meme, like an elf on the shelf mean, and I was trying to get there, [00:18:00] macho man on a nacho chip.

[00:18:01] Nate Freedman: Doritos. And oh my gosh, how many times I had to ask. I was like, macho man's got a beard. They're like, they have a beard. It's like due to copyright infringement, we can do an 80s wrestler without a beard. I'm like, just put a beard on him. 

[00:18:16] Carrie Richardson: There's lots that you can DIY when it comes to websites, but most things are best left to professionals.

[00:18:21] Carrie Richardson: So I think if you've got some questions about how to make your website work better conversation with Nate at tech pro marketing. Thank you for joining us today. Nate.