Most managed service providers (MSPs) are making the same big mistake with their marketing strategy: they’re building it in a vacuum. But they don’t operate that way. Each business, across every industry, exists as part of a wider ecosystem. Just like the food chain, there are competitors, predators, and the prize everyone is fighting over. To stand a chance, you need to understand what other MSPs are doing.
Unfortunately, that’s often easier said than done. Other businesses aren’t exactly volunteering their marketing strategies, and the methods you can use to obtain this information legally are limited. But what if we told you there’s a platform available on the market that allows you to do exactly this?
MSP Business Intelligence Matters More Than You Think
Why do you need to understand what competitors are doing? What’s wrong with just minding your own business (literally)? The answer is simple: your value proposition depends on this knowledge.
A value proposition is your unique selling point. It’s what you do that no one else can. It’s the reason clients should choose you over the competition. Already, from this description, the problem is likely becoming clear. To define why your MSP is different from the hundreds of others out there, you first need to understand what they’re telling prospects. You can’t set yourself apart from the competition if you don’t know who they are.
Without business intelligence, marketing is guesswork. You’re operating in a blank void, simply hoping that you throw out the right words. And that strategy won’t get you anywhere.
What’s a Semrush Competitive Analysis?
Semrush is a platform built on the idea that knowledge brings power. It provides you with a multitude of tools designed to take your marketing to the next level. Most crucially, when used right, it can help you figure out what your biggest competitors are doing. The rest of this article will teach you how.
Finding Your Competitors: The First Step
Before you analyze the competition, you need to know who they are. If you have access to the Traffic and Market Toolkit, then you can use Semrush to accomplish this. Just type your domain into the “Organic Search” box.
If you don’t have access to this tool, then things become slightly more complicated (but not impossible). You’ll need to identify competitors manually, by determining which businesses are targeting the same verticals and offering similar services. Once you’ve created a list, you can move on to the rest of the techniques listed below.
Keyword Gap Analysis: Identifying Missed Opportunities
Keywords are how search engines determine who your web content (such as blog posts and landing pages) should be shown to. If you focus primarily on cybersecurity services for law firms, for example, then your keywords should be clearly signalling this.
But did you know that they could be working twice as hard? Truly leveraging keywords isn’t just about choosing the most relevant, but about finding the ones your competitors are missing out on. This is precisely what Semrush’ keyword gap tool allows you to do.
How to Perform a Keyword Gap Analysis
Open Semrush and locate “Keyword gap” in the toolbar on the left. Then, just enter your domain and the domains of your competitors. Semrush will provide you with a complete analysis, including:
- Keywords both of you use
- Keywords they’re using and you’re not
- The metrics for each keyword shown (including volume and difficulty)
You can then use this information to identify opportunities that up until this point, you may have missed. For example, your closest competitor might be leveraging a high-performance keyword that you didn’t know about. Now you can take advantage of it, too.
Backlink Comparison: Understanding How Authority is Built
A backlink is any link from another website that points back to yours. For many years, they’ve been the bane of inexperienced marketers, both critically important and very difficult to influence. A backlink comparison reveals any weaknesses in your domain authority. And more importantly, it tells you where competitors are getting theirs from.
Turning Backlink Data Into Action
Use Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool to identify sites that link to other MSPs, but not to you. These are now your biggest outreach opportunities. After all, each of them has already demonstrated a willingness to link to MSP content. All you need to do is convince them yours is worth sharing.
Ad Copy Analysis: Learning From Paid Reach
With global ad spend growing rapidly, it’s crucial to ensure that your paid ads are delivering return on investment (ROI). But you can’t exactly call your competitors and ask about their campaigns, so what is an MSP to do? Semrush has an answer for this, too.
Using Semrush to Analyze Paid Ads
The “Advertising Research” tool requires the Advertising Toolkit, but is well worth the price if you’re focusing on paid ads. It allows you to identify:
- How much competitors are spending on ads
- Which copy is making the biggest impact
- Which relevant keywords they’re bidding the most on
Once you have this information, you can use it to build your own paid ads campaign.
Using Your Knowledge Wisely
Once you understand your competitor’s marketing content strategy, reverse engineering it becomes easy. But watch out for the trap most businesses fall into at this step: imitation rather than adaptation. You can’t just copy what everyone else is doing, for the same reason you needed this information in the first place. Your value proposition is worthless if it doesn’t clearly differentiate your business from others in the same niche.
Instead, focus on finding the gaps. Which opportunities are they missing? What do you specialize in that they don’t? An analysis gives you the information, but it’s your job to turn that into a competitive advantage.
Read more: MSP lead generation in 2026
Your MSP Marketing Journey Begins Here
MSP marketing is a constant challenge, but the right information makes it significantly easier. Competitor marketing strategies provide a veritable goldmine of data, and Semrush allows you to extract it without risking ethics or compliance in the process. That way, you can position yourself perfectly within the gaps they leave behind.
Are you just starting out in the MSP marketing world? We’ve put together a library of digital resources designed to teach you everything you need to know. These articles will start you off on the right foot.
