Before committing to a vertical market strategy, test whether the industry’s clients fit your services, margins, and support capacity. A limited trial gives you evidence to review before committing the wider business.
You can test it with a few clients first. Run a 90-day pilot with three to five practices in one industry, learn their software and rules, measure a handful of simple indicators, and only then decide whether to rework your marketing and packaging. If it fails, you stop and lose almost nothing.
The Temptation to Specialize and the Better First Step
Picture this: you run a 15-person MSP and three of your clients are dental practices. They call more than anyone else, they ask about the same practice management software, and one of them just asked if you could help with a state privacy audit. You start wondering whether going dental-only is the smart move.
That thought is worth taking seriously. It's also worth not acting on this quarter. Re-architecting your website, your service packages and your pricing around one industry is a bet on a guess. The cheaper move is to test the vertical with the clients you already have, learn what it actually takes to serve them well, and let the evidence decide.
What a Vertical Test Really Means (and How Long It Takes)
The test is a 90-day pilot with three to five clients in one vertical. You commit to learning their world on purpose, not by accident: the software they run, the language they use, the rules they have to follow. You gather feedback from them. And you measure specific outcomes so the decision at the end is based on numbers, not a hunch.
Take the dental example. For 90 days, the owner spends time learning how practice management software actually works, reading a trade publication, attending one industry webinar, and asking each client what they wish IT understood about their daily work. One staff member owns this, and it takes two to four hours a week on top of normal duties. That's the condition for the plan working: if nobody can spare those hours, the test becomes an afterthought and you learn nothing.
A caution before you start: some verticals carry heavy compliance. Healthcare, for example, may require formal certification, training or insurance changes that a 90-day window cannot cover. Think of HIPAA: if your target vertical is healthcare, the test tells you about the software and the workflows, but not about the full regulatory burden. Plan for that separately.
The Metrics That Tell You It's Working
You don't need a dashboard for this. Three simple indicators, each compared against your own baseline across your other clients:
- Referral rate: how many new leads come from these clients compared with your average.
- First-call resolution: how many of their tickets get solved without research or escalation, compared with your average.
- Satisfaction score: ask these clients to rate you 1 to 10, and compare it with how your other clients score you.
In the dental example, if two of three dental clients refer you to another practice in 90 days, that's a stronger signal than your gut telling you the vertical feels right. If their tickets resolve on the first call more often than your generalist average, you're learning something real. If satisfaction climbs, you're delivering something they notice.
The comparison to your own baseline is what makes this honest. Absolute numbers lie: a 9 out of 10 satisfaction score means nothing if your whole book scores 9.5. You're looking for a gap that opens in the vertical's favor.
When the Test Proves Out: Rethinking Marketing and Packaging
If the metrics improve, you have evidence, not a guess. Now you change how you present yourself.
- Website: lead with the vertical instead of a generic line. Instead of "IT support for small businesses," say "IT for dental practices."
- Packaging: build a service package that includes vertical-specific tools or compliance checklists. For dental, that might be a privacy readiness review.
- Pricing: charge for the deeper expertise. You're no longer a generalist who happens to serve dentists; you're the specialist who knows their software and their rules.
The shift is deliberate and it's still reversible. You've spent 90 days learning, and the marketing changes reflect what you actually know how to do well. That's the point of testing first: the packaging follows the evidence.
What If the Test Fails? The Fallback That Costs Little
The test is designed to fail cheaply. If the metrics don't improve, you stop. You return to generalist marketing, you keep serving those clients as you always have, and you're out a few hours of staff time a week for three months. Maybe a small marketing experiment. No one outside your office notices.
In the dental example, the owner reverts to the original website, and the three dental clients keep getting the same service they got before. The only real cost is the time spent learning, and that time isn't wasted: you understand those clients better even if you never specialize.
The test also has a cheaper sibling: shadow a vertical-focused MSP or consultant for a day, or run a lunch-and-learn for a handful of vertical businesses to gauge interest before you invest your own time. If you're still unsure after the 90 days, those are the fallbacks that cost even less.
On Monday, pick the vertical you're most curious about and answer three questions about your current clients: how many do you already serve in it, which one staff member can own the learning, and which three to five are most likely to give you honest feedback. That's the whole first step. The rest is 90 days of paying attention.
mspoutpost.com/articles/vertical-market-strategy-test-an-industry-focus-first
Written by Owen Gallagher
MSP Outpost publishes information, not legal, financial, insurance, tax or compliance advice, and reading it creates no professional relationship. For decisions about your business, talk to a qualified professional.
