Change, Growth, and Opportunity: 6 Takeaways from MSP Expo 2025
Magnetude Consulting attended last month’s MSP Expo East, a leading event designed to educate and empower IT services firms and managed service providers. Sessions at the event covered trends, challenges, and opportunities in the industry—and reinforced what we’ve seen in the IT services market.
From adapting to shifts in the industry to empowering the future of work, we’ve compiled the top insights and themes for MSPs here.
1. Keeping Clients & Growing Revenue
Customer retention and growth were hot topics throughout the event, which is mirroring what we’re seeing in the market. Sessions dove deep into the power of strong recurring revenue models, spotting authentic upsell opportunities, and proactive measures to minimize client churn.
The takeaway for MSPs? Success depends on deeply understanding your customers’ evolving needs, building and maintaining customer relationships, and strategically reinforcing your unique value. IT services is a relationships business, and MSPs are uniquely “sticky” when the relationship is strong—we hear from many of our MSP clients that they have customers who have been with them for 10 or 20 years. When customers do decide to leave, it’s important to understand why (and if there are any lessons learned for your business). According to a recent survey of IT companies, the top 3 factors that influence customers’ decision to leave are:
- Changed Their Business Needs (64%)
- Found a Cheaper Provider (50%)
- Poor Communication/Relationship (14%)
Our Tip: Apply some marketing magic to your ever-important customer relationships. Consider quarterly business reviews, stay top of mind with email, social media, and brand awareness initiatives, and proactively communicate with customers around new or expanded offerings, upgraded services, team changes, and all other relevant happenings. Effective marketing doesn’t end when you sign the deal—it plays a critical role in ensuring clients consistently recognize your unique benefits and ongoing commitment.
2. Navigating Industry Changes
Significant shifts in technology, such as the adoption of AI-powered tools, increasing cybersecurity threats, and evolving compliance requirements, are reshaping the IT services industry. Additionally, changing market expectations around customer experience and responsiveness, along with growing client demands for specialized services, are placing new pressures on MSPs.
Discussions at the event emphasized the need for MSPs to stay agile and proactively adjust their strategies to address these evolving dynamics.
Our Tip: Stay agile by continuously monitoring shifts in client needs and industry trends. Consider proactively adjusting your service portfolio by introducing specialized offerings around emerging technologies and industry demands—such as co-managed IT services, cloud migration support, advanced threat detection, or managed compliance services (for example, CMMC, HIPAA, and other industry-specific regulations depending on the needs of your customer base). Clearly communicating your forward-thinking approach and highlighting strategic investments in cybersecurity and compliance positions your MSP as an innovative partner ready to address the latest market challenges head-on.
3. Scaling Without the Headaches
Efficient growth requires the right mix of process, technology, and people. Expo sessions emphasized the importance of establishing clear, repeatable processes early, implementing the right technologies to streamline operations, and ensuring your team can scale alongside your business.
Our Tip: Scaling your marketing strategy as your business expands is equally critical—marketing and business growth go hand-in-hand. At Magnetude, we often highlight the importance of aligning three key pillars for successful marketing transformation:
- Market: Clearly defining your market helps identify who has the greatest need for your solution and where you stand relative to competitors.
- Message: Articulating the value you bring to the market and to your customers.
- Mechanism: Selecting the best marketing tactics to engage, attract, and retain customers efficiently as you scale.
By proactively scaling marketing alongside operations, your firm will be able to smoothly handle growth, avoid common headaches, and set yourself up as a well-positioned leader ready for the next stage of success.
4. Security & Compliance
Cybersecurity and compliance continue to be critical priorities for MSPs—for their customers as well as their own firms. Insurance and tax topics around supplier and vendor relationships add additional complexity for MSPs. Many sessions at MSP Expo talked in detail about the importance of proactively managing cybersecurity risks and keeping pace with constantly evolving compliance and regulatory requirements.
Our Tip: Stay well-informed about current cybersecurity threats, maintain rigorous security standards for yourself and your clients, and clearly understand compliance responsibilities—and then communicate these strengths clearly in your marketing and sales conversations. This positions your firm as a trusted advisor and all-in-one IT and cybersecurity partner to potential clients.
In practice, this looks like highlighting your certifications and partnerships clearly on your website and LinkedIn profile, sharing thought leadership on emerging threats via social media and email, and providing tangible value through ongoing security education. Demonstrate your proactive approach by regularly offering security training sessions or workshops—these not only serve as valuable client education, but can also be powerful lead generation opportunities, especially when you partner with a local business organization.
5. AI & Automation
AI-driven automation emerged as a key theme, with discussions exploring practical ways MSPs can leverage these technologies to enhance operational efficiency and service delivery. Sessions highlighted how automation can streamline repetitive tasks, improve customer support responsiveness, and augment team capabilities by freeing staff to focus on more strategic activities. MSPs who thoughtfully integrate AI tools into their workflows can achieve meaningful productivity gains and deliver greater value to clients, positioning themselves competitively in an increasingly tech-driven market.
Our Tip: From a marketing perspective, it has become increasingly important for your firm to establish a clear position and compelling message regarding your use of AI. Demonstrating thoughtful adoption of AI not only builds client confidence but also signals your organization’s innovative approach to industry advancements.
As small businesses increasingly look for direction on how AI and automation can practically benefit their businesses, your firm has an opportunity to step forward as a knowledgeable guide. Establish a clear position and compelling message around your internal use of AI as well as your AI implementation solutions. Determine your customers’ pain points, for example resource constraints, operational inefficiencies, or customer service limitations, and formalize your AI messaging to directly address these problems. From there, offer educational resources, case studies, or workshops that illustrate tangible benefits of AI-driven and automated solutions to help your customers confidently navigate their own adoption of these powerful technologies.
6. The Future of Work
Discussions about the changing workplace centered around shifts in employee expectations, remote and hybrid work environments, and evolving leadership practices. Historically, MSPs have often been locally focused businesses with tightly knit, on-site teams. However, as remote and hybrid work have become the norm, many MSPs are navigating how to effectively manage dispersed teams and client bases extending beyond local markets.
Our Tip: To effectively market your MSP in today’s hybrid and remote environment, it’s essential to find the right balance of local-focused marketing activities and broader (but still targeted) digitally driven strategies. Rather than seeing these approaches as mutually exclusive, a successful MSP marketing strategy integrates both local and digital tactics. For example, leveraging targeted digital advertising, social media outreach, and content marketing can significantly amplify your traditional local efforts, like geographically targeted events, community sponsorships, or localized SEO campaigns. Conversely, success in one local market can help you build credibility and a referral network to expand geographically. The goal is to achieve a marketing mix where your local visibility strengthens your broader credibility and vice versa, creating a cohesive presence that resonates clearly and consistently with your diverse customer base, wherever they do business.
Final Thoughts
MSP Expo East reinforced what we’ve long believed at Magnetude Consulting: the MSP industry is vibrant, evolving quickly, and full of potential. The key themes—client retention, industry agility, streamlined scalability, security rigor, AI adoption, and the future workplace—mark strategic shifts that MSPs must navigate to thrive.
Ready to elevate your MSP’s market presence and growth strategy? Learn more about our MSP marketing expertise or contact us for an initial consultation.