Practical Market Research Trick for Managed Service Providers

The primary struggle for smaller MSPs is acquiring new customers. Sales and marketing activities are outside the “technology” scope, and hiring an agency or dedicated salespeople is expensive. Therefore, the owners of MSPs serve as sales and marketing leaders for their firms.

MSPs are facing the question of what to offer to whom and how, which requires researching the local market where they offer their services. It can be time-consuming and complicated to understand the local needs and who the buyers of managed services in the area are. Common issues with market research are related to various cognitive biases and the desire to see things that may not be like they seem. Coming to the market with the idea that types of businesses should have a higher demand for managed services — for example, healthcare — may lead to focusing on the healthcare professionals in the area who are not even looking for managed services.

There is one nasty trick that can be done for the market research that many software startups employ. Instead of researching the market, research the successful competitors in the market. What do they sell? To whom? How?

Analyzing websites and advertisements of successful local MSPs, attending the same events, and joining the same business associations could help understand the offerings already working in the market. And then offer a better service, extended service, or recruit those customers who are not yet using those services.

Step-by-Step Competitor Analysis

You do not need an MBA or a marketing budget. You need a browser, a spreadsheet, and a few hours of honest work.

Step 1: Build Your Competitor List

Start by identifying every MSP operating in your geographic market. This is easier than it sounds:

• Google it. Search for "managed service provider [your city]," "IT support [your city]," "cybersecurity services [your city]," and similar variations. Go at least five pages deep --- most people stop at the first page, which means they only see the competitors who are already winning at SEO.
• Check Google Maps. The local pack results often surface smaller players that do not rank organically.
• Search industry directories. Look at listings on sites like Clutch, UpCity, and the Better Business Bureau. Channel partner directories from vendors like Microsoft, Datto, or ConnectWise often list local partners.
• Ask around. Talk to vendors, distributors, and colleagues at peer groups. They know who is operating in your area, including the ones with no web presence at all.

Aim for at least 10 to 15 competitors. If you are in a smaller market, you may find fewer. If you are in a major metro, you could easily find 50 or more - in that case, focus on the ones targeting a similar customer size and vertical to your own.

Step 2: Analyze Their Websites Systematically

This is where the real intelligence comes from. For each competitor, work through the following checklist:

• Services offered. What is on their services page? Do they lead with cybersecurity, cloud migration, co-managed IT, or traditional break-fix? The services they promote most prominently are likely their best sellers. Pay attention to what is conspicuously absent, too - gaps in their offerings are your opportunities.
• Target customer. Who are they talking to? Look at their case studies, testimonials, and industry-specific landing pages. If three of your competitors have dedicated pages for dental offices, that tells you something about local demand. If none of them mention manufacturing, that might be an underserved niche or a dead end - you will need to investigate further.
• Pricing signals. Most MSPs do not publish pricing, but many give clues. "Starting at $X per user per month," package tier names, or even the absence of pricing (which often signals enterprise-level or premium positioning) all tell you something. Look at whether they sell per-device, per-user, or all-inclusive bundles.
• Social proof. Read their testimonials and case studies carefully. What types of businesses are quoted? What problems did those businesses have before switching? What outcomes do they highlight? This is market research handed to you on a silver platter - these are real customers describing real needs in their own words.
• Team size and capabilities. Their "About Us" and "Team" pages reveal headcount, certifications, and partnerships. A competitor with 50 employees and a SOC is playing a different game than a three-person shop.
• Content and thought leadership. What do they blog about? What webinars do they run? The topics they invest content in are the topics generating leads for them. If every competitor is producing content about compliance, your market cares about compliance.

Step 3: Use Digital Intelligence Tools

You do not have to stop at what is visible on their website. Several tools, many with free tiers, let you peek behind the curtain:

• SpyFu (from $39/month) is built specifically for competitor analysis. Enter a competitor's domain and you can see which keywords they are bidding on in Google Ads, which organic keywords they rank for, and how their strategy has evolved over time. SpyFu maintains over 15 years of historical keyword data, so you can spot trends. If a competitor recently started bidding on "HIPAA compliance managed services," they are probably seeing demand there.
• SEMrush (from $139.95/month) is the broader platform. Beyond keyword data, it provides backlink analysis, traffic estimates, and AI-powered competitive gap analysis that highlights opportunities your competitors are missing. The free tier gives you limited but still useful access.
• SimilarWeb (free tier available) estimates total website visits, traffic sources, and audience demographics. Useful for quickly sizing up which competitors are actually generating web traffic versus those with nice-looking sites that nobody visits.
• Google Alerts (free) lets you set up email notifications whenever a competitor is mentioned online. Set alerts for each competitor's company name, their key employees, and relevant industry terms. This runs on autopilot and surfaces news, press releases, and blog mentions you would otherwise miss.
• Ubersuggest (free tier available) offers site audits and keyword tracking that can help you understand what content strategies are working for your competitors.
• Step 4: Go Beyond the Website

The internet only tells part of the story. The rest comes from showing up:

• Attend the same events. If your competitors are sponsoring the local chamber of commerce luncheon or presenting at a business association meeting, show up. You will learn who they are targeting, what message resonates, and who their prospects are. More importantly, you will meet the same prospects.
• Join the same associations. Professional and industry groups --- local chapters of CompTIA, ISACA, or your state's technology council --- put you in the same rooms. But also look at where your competitors show up outside the IT world: construction industry associations, medical practice management groups, financial advisor networks. That reveals their vertical focus.
• Monitor their hiring. Job postings reveal strategy. If a competitor is hiring a vCISO, they are building out security services. If they are hiring salespeople focused on a specific vertical, they are expanding into that market. LinkedIn and Indeed make this easy to track.
• Talk to their former customers. This requires tact, but prospects who switched away from a competitor will often tell you exactly what went wrong --- if you ask the right way. Frame it as understanding their needs, not as trashing the competition.

Research Techniques Beyond Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is your fastest path to actionable intelligence, but it should not be your only path. Here are additional sources that fill in the gaps:

Industry Reports and Market Data

The managed services market is projected to grow from roughly $424 billion in 2026 to over $1.27 trillion by 2035, with a compound annual growth rate above 12%. More usefully for a local MSP, you can find vertical-specific data showing where spending is concentrated.

Reports from sources like Kaseya's MSP Benchmark Survey, Datto's State of the MSP Report, and ConnectWise's IT Nation research provide data on average revenue per endpoint, common service bundles, and pricing benchmarks. Many of these are free in exchange for an email address.

Census Data for Market Sizing

Here is a trick most MSPs have never heard of: the U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns dataset provides establishment counts, employment figures, and payroll data broken down by county and 6-digit NAICS code.

Want to know how many businesses with 10 to 49 employees exist in your county? How many medical offices, law firms, or manufacturing plants? The data is there, it is free, and it is updated annually. Look for NAICS codes like:

• 5415 Computer Systems Design and Related Services (your competitors)
• 6211 Offices of Physicians (a common MSP vertical)
• 5411 Legal Services (another common vertical)
• 2382 Building Equipment Contractors (if you target trades)

Pair this with your competitor analysis and you start to see the real picture: how many potential customers exist in your market versus how many competitors are serving them.

Local Business Associations

Your local chamber of commerce, economic development authority, and small business development center are gold mines of market intelligence. They publish reports on local business growth, new business registrations, and industry composition. Many offer free counseling for small businesses, and the counselors often have deep knowledge of the local business landscape.

Your Own Customer Base

Do not overlook the research asset you already have. Interview your current customers:

• Why did they choose you?
• What other providers did they evaluate?
• What services do they wish you offered?
• What business challenges keep them up at night?

Five honest conversations with existing customers will teach you more about your market than a week of Googling.

Competitive Intelligence Worksheet

To make this practical, here is a template you can adapt into a spreadsheet. Create one row per competitor and fill in these columns:

After filling this in for 10 to 15 competitors, patterns will jump out. You will see which verticals are crowded, which are underserved, what the standard service bundle looks like, and where pricing is anchored.

A Warning About Survivorship Bias

Here is the most important caveat in this entire article, and the one most people skip: you are only studying the survivors.

When you analyze your competitors, you are looking at the MSPs that are still in business. You are not seeing the ones that tried the same services, targeted the same verticals, and failed. This is survivorship bias, and it can lead you badly astray.

If five of your competitors focus on healthcare IT and all five appear to be thriving, you might conclude that healthcare is a great market. But what if ten other MSPs tried healthcare in your area over the past five years and went under? You would never know from competitor analysis alone.

To guard against this:

• Look for the "dead". Search for MSPs in your area that have closed, been acquired, or pivoted. The Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) lets you see defunct competitor websites. Old business registrations and dissolved LLC filings are public record in most states.
• Talk to vendors and distributors. They know which MSPs churned out of their programs and often know why.
• Weight your conclusions by base rates. If you find that 8 out of 10 surviving competitors target healthcare, but your census data shows only 30 medical offices in your county, the math may not work for another entrant.
• Consider the failures you cannot see. For every successful service offering you observe, ask yourself: is this working because it is a great market, or because that particular competitor executes well? A service that works for a mature MSP with 20 technicians and deep vendor relationships may not work for you at your current size.

Survivorship bias does not mean competitor analysis is useless. It means competitor analysis is the starting point, not the final answer. Combine it with census data, industry reports, customer interviews, and your own judgment before making big bets.