Search Equity Partners
Turning search traffic into clients for service businesses.
Search Equity Partners is the parent company of the Search Equity brands. Each one helps a service business become the provider buyers find, check and choose, on Google, in reviews and in the answers AI assistants give. The first is MSP Search Equity, for managed IT providers.
The framework
What I learned as an MSP marketer
I ran marketing for a founder-led managed IT provider in Utah, and then for the private-equity-backed group of fifteen MSP brands that acquired it. These 10 lessons held across every one of those brands, and Search Equity is built on them.
The buyer is already looking
Who the buyer is, what pushes them to look, and what stands in the way.
- Most new business comes in on its own. More than half of the traffic that turned into prospects was inbound: people who found us, rather than people we went out and found.¹
- Most buyers already have a provider. More than three quarters of them were already with someone else, and they were unhappy with them.¹
- A specific pain makes them look. They couldn't reach anyone, the ticket process was slow or a chore, an outage hit them, or a cyber incident did.
- Switching is the obstacle. Finding a new provider takes time, and while they look they want answers to three questions.
- What does your service cost?
- How long does onboarding take?
- Can I check your expertise and your results?
The demand is already there
You don't have to create it. You have to be found where it shows up.
- Search shows the demand. It's visible in search volumes, and in the size and growth of the market.
- Buyers search in a pattern. A kind of help (an IT expert, IT support, an IT company), plus a service (cybersecurity, managed services, cloud, AI readiness or automation), plus a place (a state, a county, a city).
Converting the hesitant buyer
Being found is half of it. The other half is giving a careful buyer enough reason to call.
- Show local, human expertise. Google calls it experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. You show it by being present everywhere the buyer looks, and through what other people say about you in reviews and testimonials.
- Use more than one asset to catch interest. Checklists, books, guides, infographics, events (online or in person) and reports each catch a prospect at a different moment, and carry them toward the sale. The same assets carry a client toward the next service.
- Keep giving value, and say so. Steady, useful value, and telling people about it, is what nurtures a prospect until they're ready to move.
Staying relevant
The service itself has to keep up with the client.
- Move into AI services. They let a provider scale and stay relevant, and they protect against churn as clients start using AI agents and lean less on their provider for support.
¹ From my own experience running marketing for managed IT providers, not from a survey.
Why a parent company
None of this is unique to managed IT
Any service business whose buyers search, compare and check before they call meets the same buyer, the same switch and the same three questions. The demand already exists, and it's won by the provider that shows its expertise where the buyer is looking.
That's why the method is called Search Equity, and why it sits under Search Equity Partners. Each brand applies the same framework to one industry, with that industry's searches, services and proof, and carries the industry in its name.
Our brands
One method, one industry at a time
MSP Search Equity
For managed IT providers. Every MSP is measured on a published 100-point scorecard, using public data only, and you can see your own results before we ever talk.
mspsearchequity.comMore industries
New brands open one industry at a time, each with its own name in the same family and its own scorecard. When one opens, you'll find it here. If you run a service business outside managed IT and this framework sounds like your market, I'd like to hear from you.
Tell me about your industryAbout
Danny de Vries
I've spent my career in marketing, most recently running it for managed IT providers: first a founder-led MSP in Utah, then the group of fifteen MSP brands that acquired it, across more than ten states. I built the search, review and AI-visibility work for all of them, and Search Equity Partners is where that work now lives.
I take every first call and do every audit myself. More about my background is on the MSP Search Equity site, and you can find me on LinkedIn.
Contact
Start with the brand for your industry
If you run a managed IT business, start at MSP Search Equity, where you can run a free search check on your own firm or pick a time to talk.
For anything else, write to support@dannydevries.com and I'll answer myself.