The Templated MSP Problem

Why your marketing sounds like everyone else’s and what it’s costing you

I open my laptop most mornings and read MSP marketing. Newsletters, LinkedIn posts, lead magnets, websites. It’s my job, and I genuinely love it.

But here’s what I’ve noticed over the last couple of years, and it’s the reason I’m writing this:

You all sound the same.

Not in a vague, hand-wavy way. I mean actually the same. Same subject lines. Same lead magnets. Same carousels. Same ghost-written ebook sat behind a download form on hundreds of MSP websites across the UK.

Last week I counted four different MSPs offering “5 Signs You’ve Outgrown Your IT Support.” I’ve lost count of how many are giving away “The IT Services Buyer’s Guide” - a book that’s been ghost-written once and sold to so many MSPs that prospects are now downloading the identical PDF from three competing providers in the same town.

The carousels are templated. The newsletters are templated. The “Worried About Cybersecurity?” subject lines are templated. Even the tone is templated - that slightly stiff, slightly American, slightly-trying-too-hard voice that no actual MSP owner I’ve ever met talks in.

I’m not writing this to be cruel. I’m writing it because it’s quietly damaging your business, and most of you don’t realise it yet.

How we got here

Five years ago, this would have been a different article. Five years ago, most MSPs did no marketing at all. The templated programmes that flooded the market were a genuine, useful intervention - they got MSPs publishing, posting, sending newsletters, capturing leads.

They moved the industry forward.

But the inevitable has now happened.

When hundreds of MSPs subscribe to the same content programme, the market homogenises. Every MSP publishes a near-identical version of the same guide. Every MSP posts a slightly reworded version of the same LinkedIn carousel. Every MSP sends a newsletter with the same structure, the same topics, the same calls to action.

The thing that helped you start marketing is now the thing stopping your marketing from working.

What it actually costs you

Here’s the part most MSP owners haven’t worked through.

If a prospect is comparing three MSPs, and all three are putting out indistinguishable marketing - the same lead magnets, the same newsletters, the same posts - how does that prospect actually choose?

Simple. They choose on price.

Because price is the only variable left. You’ve removed every other reason for them to pick you. Your USP - the thing that genuinely makes you different from the MSP three towns over - is buried under content that could have been written by, and for, anyone.

That’s not a marketing problem. That’s a business growth problem. You become a commodity in a market full of commodities, and the only race left to run is the race to the bottom on price. Whoever’s cheapest wins. And in a service business, cheapest is rarely the same company as best.

I see this with new clients constantly. They come to me having done “all the right things” - the templated programme, the buyer’s guide, the regular newsletter - and they can’t understand why prospects keep grinding them on price or ghosting after the first call. The answer is in their inbox. They look like everyone else, so they get treated like everyone else.

And the agency answer hasn’t worked either

I want to be fair here, because templated programmes aren’t the only culprit. Plenty of MSPs have tried the other route - hiring a marketing agency - and been burned just as badly.

The promises are familiar. Lead after lead. Pipeline. Demos booked into your calendar.

What actually arrives is a misunderstanding of how MSPs get new clients. Most agencies don’t grasp that the MSP buying journey is awareness-led, trust-led, and long. They sell you bottom-of-funnel lead-gen on a market that buys top-of-funnel. They run paid ads against a service that gets chosen on referral and reputation. And then they bill you for it.

I had a client come to me last year who’d been paying their previous agency £300 to design a single educational guide. £300. For a guide. From a team of people they barely knew, with a different account manager every quarter, where messages got lost between the strategist, the designer, and the copywriter.

You’ve been failed twice. Once by templated programmes that made you invisible, and once by agencies that didn’t understand your market. No wonder so many MSP owners I speak to have quietly given up on marketing and gone back to relying on referrals.

People buy from people

Here’s what I actually believe, and it’s the thing that’s kept me doing this work the way I do it:

People buy from people.

In a market that’s gone templated, AI-generated, faceless, and increasingly automated, the MSPs who win in 2026 and beyond are the ones whose marketing sounds like the humans behind it.

Not generic. Not polished into oblivion. Not ghost-written by someone who’s never met you. Yours.

When a prospect lands on your website, your LinkedIn, your newsletter - they should be able to tell, within thirty seconds, that there’s a real team behind it. People they could pick up the phone and speak to. A friendly helpdesk that knows their name. A culture that has its own quirks and jokes and people.

That’s why I tell every MSP I work with that “Sarah’s had a baby” posts belong on your LinkedIn alongside the serious cybersecurity content. Not because team news drives leads. Because team news tells prospects these are real people, and you can call them. In a technical, AI-driven, increasingly impersonal industry, that’s the most valuable signal you can send.

You can’t template that. Nobody can template that. It has to be built around your actual team, your actual values, your actual voice.

What bespoke actually means

Bespoke marketing isn’t “better-looking templates.” It isn’t “personalised at the top with your logo.” It isn’t a content library you pick from.

It’s marketing built from scratch around what makes your MSP genuinely different. Your USP - the real one, not the one on your About page. Your team. Your values. The way you actually talk to clients. The kind of business owner you actually want to work with.

It means the lead magnets on your website don’t appear on anyone else’s website. The newsletter you send sounds like you wrote it (because you, or someone who knows you well, did). The case studies are your clients’ actual stories, told in their actual words. The carousels reflect your actual point of view on the industry, not a recycled industry talking point.

It’s slower to make. It’s more expensive than a templated subscription. And it’s the only thing that builds a recognisable business in a market where everyone else has gone invisible.

A line in the sand

I’ve spent years now refusing to template anything for the MSPs I work with. I do all the strategy myself. I write the content myself. I design every guide, every carousel, every newsletter myself. Every piece is built from scratch, around the MSP it’s for. I’m one woman, working from a home office, doing the actual work.

I won’t apologise for it being slower than the templated alternative. I won’t apologise for it costing more than a £49-a-month content subscription. And I won’t pretend the templated route is fine if you’re an MSP who actually wants to grow into something distinct, valuable, and unmistakably yours.

If this resonated.

If you’ve read this far and recognised your own marketing in any of it - the lead magnets, the newsletters, the slowly creeping suspicion that prospects can’t tell you apart from your competitors - I’d genuinely love to talk to you.

Not a sales call. A conversation. About what your MSP is actually for, who you most want to work with, and what your marketing should sound like if it sounded like you.

I work with a small number of MSPs at a time, and I do all the strategy, content and design myself. The first conversation is 30 minutes, free, and there’s no pitch - I’d rather understand your business properly before I ever talk about whether we’d work well together.

Get in touch: kristina@huntmarketing.co.uk Tel: 07519 573023