- Why Seeing Real Marketing in Action Matters
- Put Your Face on the Page
- AI Video Done Right
- SEO Wins: Niche Pages That Actually Generated Leads
- Lumpy Mail, Dice, and Direct Mail That Closes
- Consistency and Authenticity Are the Long Game
- Listen to the Full Episode
Why Seeing Real Marketing in Action Matters
Most marketing advice you read is theoretical. Someone telling you what should work based on frameworks they read somewhere. This episode of the MSP Camp No Fluff Marketing Podcast is different. Steven Badorf and I broke down marketing that impressed us recently — real campaigns, real MSPs, real results. Some are MSP Camp members. Some are agency clients. Some aren’t MSPs at all. All of them gave us something worth talking about.
If you’re looking for inspiration heading into 2026, this is the episode. Let’s get into it.
Put Your Face on the Page
Bobby from Lime Tree Lab didn’t tell us he was doing this. I just landed on his homepage one day while catching up with what members were working on. Right there on the page was a short video of Bobby — his humor, his professionalism, his knowledge — speaking directly to the person visiting the site in a completely human, relationship-building way.
I always tell people: if you walk into a store and there’s no clerk in sight, just products and pricing floating around, buying feels harder. People need a face. Bobby figured that out without anyone telling him to.
There’s also a smart SEO play baked into this. The video is hosted on YouTube, so it doesn’t slow the site down. And every time someone watches it, they get pulled into Bobby’s YouTube presence. Your target market is on YouTube. They may not talk about it, but 3 billion people use the platform. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
“Having that face is such an important factor for marketing.” — Taher
AI Video Done Right
This is where marketing that impressed us recently gets genuinely fun. Two examples stood out.
Tony from Simple Support launched his MSP only a couple of years ago and has been growing consistently because he started with a marketing mindset from day one. He’s been making AI-generated videos featuring a gorilla as the “lazy IT guy” — breaking computers instead of fixing them, falling from ceilings. The content is specific, funny, and on-brand. The AI was the tool. The idea was his.
Then there’s a heating and cooling company I stumbled across on Instagram. A guy riding a horse with a lasso. Next to him, a fully realistic AI-generated monkey on a horse with a lasso. They’re chasing down rogue air conditioning units. Forty seconds long. SORA watermark still visible. My first instinct as a marketer was to cringe. Then I opened the comments.
Overwhelmingly positive. His wife commented. Her friend replied to that comment. The engagement was through the roof. That silly video he probably could have ideated in ten minutes is almost certainly generating leads.
“If you were like, create this whole thing for me and you don’t give the correct details, it’s going to make something that’s just going to be forgettable. But there’s a through line of what he’s trying to create with it and there’s a theme.” — Steven
The lesson isn’t “use AI for video.” The lesson is have a real idea first, then use the tool to make it happen faster. AI slop comes from skipping the idea and going straight to the output. Don’t do that.
SEO Wins: Niche Pages That Actually Generated Leads
Two SEO examples stood out as marketing that impressed us recently from the agency side.
First, our team noticed a spike in search volume for “IT support dental” in a specific city. Our client had zero dental content on their site. We asked if they’d take a dental client — yes, absolutely — and we built a well-optimized dental-specific page. Two to three months later, that client messaged us to say they got a dental lead that found them through ChatGPT. That page is now ranking number one organically, which is how it surfaced in AI search results.
Second example: a healthcare-focused MSP client had solid general healthcare content but nothing broken down by specialty. They serve a long list of healthcare verticals. We built out a full set of specialty pages — and here’s the thing most people get wrong:
- Not every page needs to be in your navigation bar
- Location pages don’t need nav placement once your domain authority builds
- Cramming your nav with 15+ pages overwhelms visitors and dilutes the user experience
One of our other clients, my brother’s company the Chill Duck, has a six-page site we built about two months ago. We’re not even running SEO for them. They just received their first legitimate inbound lead in 12 years of business — after hiring multiple marketing companies before us. Sometimes less is more. What matters is whether the right pages exist and whether they’re built properly.
Lumpy Mail, Dice, and Direct Mail That Closes
Physical marketing is not dead. Not even close.
Tony (a different Tony — an MSP Camp member from our Fireside Chats) has been running a direct mail campaign for 12 months. He sends out branded toolkits: hammers, tools, all tied to the IT support theme. He’s now closing deals from it. Twelve months in. If he had quit at month nine, he would have walked away thinking direct mail doesn’t work. Marketing is not a two or three month initiative.
Then there’s Kirk from Renaissance IT. He created something called the IT-O-Matic — a branded metal die that you roll when you’re having IT issues. The sides say things like “reboot your computer,” “reset router,” “call Renaissance IT.” It comes in a velvet bag. It’s heavy. It feels like something you’d find at a casino. There’s also a digital version on their site where visitors can roll a virtual die. A landing page lets people request their own physical IT-O-Matic by submitting a contact form.
We even featured the IT-O-Matic in their Christmas direct mail campaign this year. That is the kind of creative idea that makes someone stop, react, and remember you. It doesn’t take much to be more than most — but it does take actual creative thought.
Consistency and Authenticity Are the Long Game
A few more wins worth calling out from the MSP Camp community heading into 2026. 🎯
One of our clients ran a Google review raffle through their newsletter and a separate client email. Multiple prizes, not just one grand prize. The psychology here matters — when there’s one prize, the odds feel low and adoption drops. Spread the prizes out and participation goes up. They got 10 Google reviews in two days. Don’t talk yourself out of collecting reviews because you heard some blog post say Google might filter them. Just get real reviews from real clients.
Alltek Services picked back up a branded mug initiative that had lapsed for a year. Clients were actually upset about the gap year. Alltek also created a branded mouse pad tied to their Alltek University, complete with tech tips and a QR code. Designed well enough that it doesn’t look like an ad — it looks like something worth keeping on a desk.
And across the board, we’ve seen more MSP Camp members putting their actual headshots and team photos on holiday cards rather than sending the generic version. That one extra step of showing your face changes everything about how a piece of mail lands.
The common thread in all of this: consistency compounds. The mugs, the direct mail, the reviews, the content — none of it works in a single month. All of it works when you stick with it long enough for it to matter.
Listen to the Full Episode
Hear all the examples and the full breakdown of marketing that impressed us recently, directly from Steven and me:
If you want more campaigns, templates, and peer support to help you actually execute on ideas like these, MSP Camp membership is the place to start — free trial available, no pressure.
