What the hell is this guy talking about? Just think about it.....Let's start with how managed IT services came about. Fifteen or so years ago managed IT services really started to happen. Why?

1. Industry shift - The cost of computing started to drop like a rock but the complexity of computing increased - think mobile, cloud, all those apps, security etc.
2. Financial challenge- So the need for smart people to provide their services to address issues as they occur increased. But the costs of having those smart people at the customer site didn't make sense. The company would need multiple people with their own expertise to solve all the problems.

So, it all started with an industry shift creating a financial problem.

Solution - Along came the Managed Services Provider aka MSP. The MSP solved both problems. With Remote Mgt. and Monitoring aka RMM platforms the MSP could remotely provide the brains (services) of smart people at a flat and predictable monthly fee to solve those increasingly complex problems and do it cheaper - the MSP had economies of scale! Win-win don't you think?

Now on to the inbound marketing analogy,

1. Industry shift (actually every consumer/customer in the world shift) - People buy the way "they" want to buy today - end of story. I could go on and on about the buyers journey (awareness - consideration - decision), and how people buy TV's or cloud etc. As long as you haven't been under a rock for the past few years - you know what I'm talking about. If you have been under a rock for a while then read some of my other blogs. Outbound is dead and inbound is here.
2. Financial challenge - We are living in an "as-a-service" world today and I'm not just talking about recurring revenue managed services and cloud - everything is becoming as-a-service. But I will talk about recurring revenue managed services and cloud. If you agree with the industry/world shift (if you don't then go back under that rock of yours) then how are you, a small business owner, going to do this inbound thing? You'll need 2 things,
a. The equivalent of the RMM platform. Remember, the RMM platform is an automation platform providing the brains/enabler of smart services needed to fix those complex problems. Same thing with inbound - you need an automation platform to be the brains/enabler of marketing services to drive traffic to your website and convert to leads. Brilliant!
b. Now you'll need those smart people to provide those marketing services on a daily, weekly, monthly etc basis - think creating remarkable content, SEO gurus, social media advocates, blog writers, inbound metrics expertise etc. Brilliant! But what small business owner can afford those experts?

Hmmmmmm...............Managed Inbound Marketing.............brilliant!

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