Law firms are a vertical that can be incredibly profitable for MSPs. If you want more lawyers as clients for your MSP, here’s everything you need to know. Also this week, why MSPs are working so hard, and how MSPs are losing revenue.

Welcome to Episode 323 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

How to market your MSP to lawyers

If you want more lawyers as clients for your MSP, here’s everything you need to know. Let’s talk about what lawyers look for in a new MSP, why they would switch, and what kind of marketing is going to grab their attention and convince them to talk to you.

So law firms are a vertical that can be incredibly profitable for MSPs. And I know that sometimes lawyers can be difficult people to deal with, but if you’re confident in your service and you know that you want more professional firms that put technology at the heart of everything they do, let’s get more lawyers. In fact, I believe they’re one of the easiest verticals to market to when you know what they care about. And spoiler alert, it’s not Windows 11 and Copilot.

Law firms buy IT differently from most other businesses. And the reason for this is simple. Everything they do revolves around risk.

Their risk, their client’s risk, the risk of regulators breathing down their necks, and the risk of missing a deadline because Outlook decided today was a fun day not to work properly. So if you want to win lawyers, you don’t sell IT support, you sell risk reduction and professional reputation protection.

Let’s talk about their biggest pain points. So first is compliance and confidentiality. Lawyers live in a world where one email sent to the wrong person can cause a catastrophe. So talk to them about secure communication systems, email encryption, MFA everywhere, data loss prevention, and of course audit trails. Second, billable time. Every minute a lawyer can’t work is literally money disappearing. So your message here is simple. We keep your fee earners earning. And then third, case management and workflow tools. Many firms still use clunky old systems or they haven’t fully adopted cloud tools yet. So show them how better tech can make caseloads smoother, faster, and more profitable.

If you want your MSP to stand out, you need to stop sounding like an IT company and start sounding like someone who understands legal practices. Use their terminology – fee earners, case files, discovery, retainers, compliance obligations, client confidentiality – all words like that. Because when they hear their own world reflected back at them by a potential IT partner, they immediately think, “Ah, yeah, this one understands us.”

You do need some specialised proof. Law firms don’t buy from generalists, they buy from specialists. So create a case study with a local legal firm, a landing page dedicated to IT for law firms with a short guide called something like, The seven biggest cyber risks facing law firms in 2026. And then just get a few testimonial quotes from partners or office managers. You don’t need dozens, one or two strong quotes will carry huge weight.

And here’s a little marketing trick. Law firms love audit. I mean audits is basically their favourite word. So offer them something like a free 20-minute legal IT risk assessment saying something like, Is your firm compliant with your regulators cyber guidance? Find out. And this positions you as a safety first expert rather than just another IT fixer.

Another smart tactic is to pick a sub niche. So don’t just market to all law firms, pick a slice. It could be family law or conveyancers or criminal defence or corporate commercial, maybe personal injury. Each of them has slightly different pressures and workflows, and the more specific you’re messagin...

Let’s explore whether giving away something for free is a good marketing tactic for your MSP. Also this week, why you must put your personality in your MSP’s marketing, and the MSP that grew from $0 to $36m in 12 years.

Welcome to Episode 322 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Is FREE a good marketing tactic for MSPs?

Free. It’s a big, shiny word that always draws the attention of MSPs. No matter how much cash you’ve got, free is always an appealing proposition because if something’s free, there’s zero risk, right? So here’s a question, can you use giving away something free as a marketing tactic for your MSP? And more to the point, if you can, should you? Or does it risk devaluing what you do for people?

Giving away something for free is one of the oldest playbooks in marketing. I mean, right back in the 19th century, Coca Cola was giving away free samples to promote itself. In fact, that was one of the ways that that brand became so dominant across the US. Free has always been a magic word, hasn’t it? It grabs attention, it lowers barriers, and it makes people feel like they’re getting something for nothing.

In the world of B2B, and especially for MSPs, is free still a smart tactic? Or does it actually make people value you less?

Before we decide, let’s be clear on something. Free doesn’t automatically mean bad. There are good kinds of free, and there are bad kinds as well. So let’s start with the good ones. When you offer free value, say a helpful guide, a webinar, a checklist, or even a 15 minute consultation, that’s a smart kind of free. It gives potential clients a taste of what you’re like to work with. They see your expertise, your communication style, and the way that you think, and that builds trust. People buy from people they trust, and small, risk-free experiences like that are a great way to earn it.

But then there’s the other kind of free, the kind that feels desperate, like giving away months of support, doing unpaid audits, or fixing little things just to prove yourself. And that’s where free starts to devalue what you do. Because if you make it seem like your time, your skill, and your expertise aren’t worth paying for, why would anyone believe that they are? And here’s the tough truth. Once someone sees you as the free guy, it’s very hard to change that perception later. You’ve anchored your value at zero.

So how do you walk that line? How do you use free strategically without shooting yourself in the foot? Here’s the test that I like to use. If it gives value but doesn’t cost you much time or money, then it’s “good free”. But if it costs you significant effort or replaces something you should be charging for, it’s “bad free”. So a downloadable guide that explains how to protect a business from phishing attacks, great free. But a two-hour deep dive audit of someone’s network, that’s not free, that’s a service. No pay, no play.

Here’s one more thing to keep in mind. In 2026, attention is the new currency. So giving something away for free can be a brilliant marketing exchange as long as it earns you attention or trust. Thank you very much for those. But if it earns you nothing but extra work and frustration, it’s not marketing, it’s martyrdom. So is free still a good marketing tactic for an MSP? Yes, it is, but only when it’s intentional, limited, and built to lead somewhere valuable.

Don’t give your time away, give away your thinking. That’s what positions you as the local IT expert and gets local business owners saying, wow, if this is what this person gives away for free, imagine what I get if I paid for it.

Why you must put your personality in your MSP’s marketing

Have you ever wondered what it’s like being an ordinary business owner or man...

We are continuing a three part series based on the MSP Marketing Edge 3 step system, and in this special episode we focus on the third step: Convert relationships.

Welcome to Episode 321 of the MSP Marketing Podcast with me, Paul Green, powered by the MSP Marketing Edge.

Convert relationships

Hello and happy New Year, and welcome to our final special episode of this podcast. We’re finishing a three part series this week. Last year, I released my book, MSP marketing: Start Here, about a 3 step lead generation system, which is trusted by hundreds and hundreds of MSPs around the world.

In the first special, we looked at the first step – build audiences. Last week was the second step – grow relationships, and today, starting 2026, we’re going to do the final step – convert relationships.

Let me paint a picture. You’ve built your audience, you’ve nurtured your relationships, but now what? How do you turn all of that goodwill into actually clients without feeling pushy, desperate, or salesy? Because no MSP wants to be like that. Well, that is where step three comes in – convert relationships.

I like to think of this stage as harvesting, farming. You’ve spent months planting seeds – every post, every email, every conversation – and now it’s time to gently shake the tree and see what’s ready to fall out.

And I say gently because good sales isn’t about pressure, it’s all about timing. Remember, business owners only switch MSPs when they are ready, not when you are ready, or you need more MRR. So your job is to make sure that when that readiness appears, when they finally get fed up with their current incumbent MSP, you are the first person that they think of. And that’s why conversion is as much about staying in touch as it is about asking for the business. There are a few practical ways to do this.

The first is personal outreach, and by that I mean a phone call. But here’s the trick. It shouldn’t come from you. So I’m assuming that you are the business owner and you’ve already got a million other things to do, right? So hire someone, even if that person is part-time, to just make those calls for you. A back to work mom is great for this. Someone working two to three hours a day, two to three days a week, and you want someone warm, friendly, and curious. Their job is not to sell IT support, it’s just to have conversations on your behalf. Things like, Hey, we connected on LinkedIn a while ago, or you connected with my boss on LinkedIn a while ago. How’s business going? Something super simple like that, something human that starts and maintains and builds relationships that can turn into video calls. That’s the thing. Her job is to book a video call with you, a 10 to 15 minute video call, and then you do the hard work of turning the video call into a real sales meeting.

Now, the other way that you can do this is through marketing campaigns. And I’m not talking about the one-off hit and hope campaigns that we all get tempted by or that we get from vendors, and you think, oh, this is brilliant, and you do one piece of activity and then you’re kind of upset that nothing happens from that. I’m talking about systematic outreach marketing campaigns that build on the relationship that you’re building with your prospects. So things like sending a physical letter out to a batch of prospects and then following that up with an email the next day saying, Hey, did you get my letter? And then making a friendly follow-up call later in the week. Now, this stuff is old school, but I promise you it works because most MSPs don...