Marketing Online Backup for MSPs: How To Get Started!

Since online backup Software for MSPs is our forte, we often are asked for marketing tips for online backup managed service providers. Most MSPs who are looking at purchasing an online backup platform already have some lines of business and are looking at expanding but one tried-and-true way to add a new online backup business line to an existing business offering.

If an MSP wants to gain new profits and revenues from an online backup business line, that means asking existing customers to sign up for online backup. There are several ways of reaching out to those customers:

• phone
• email
• regular mail
• online ads
• in-context ads (offered at opportune times when you are interacting with your customers)
• webinars/seminars
• promotional campaign

For most MSPs adding online backup to their offerings, a “launch party” email and webinar, coupled with a promotional, is a great first step. Since the offering is new, it’s appropriate to reach out to all customers and inform them, most typically with an email inviting them to a webinar. The webinar can be short, say 30 minutes, and talk about the basics. For example, view one of these online backup webinars. We suggest the following topics for the webinar:

1. What causes data loss and why do online backups?
2. Understanding online backup vs local backup
3. How online backup works
4. A demonstration of the online backup solution
5. How to get signed up for a free trial

The call to action (topic 5) can include some kind of initial promotion, like getting one free month of online backup, or a reduced rate for the first three months.

Since the online backup market includes many commodity online backup providers like Mozy and Carbonite, topics 2 and 3 should include unique offerings that an MSP can provide that those commodity online backup providers can not. For instance:

• Tech support that is local and knowledgeable about the customer’s situation
  • “Out support reps have worked with you over the years, and already have remote access to your machines, so they can easily assist you with selecting the right data”
• Integration and/or knowledge of the other deployed solutions
  • “We maintain your email, so we know exactly what to backup from your machine to ensure that your email is fully protected”
  • “Since we deployed and manage your billing systems, we know exactly how to configure database backup for that system”
• Better performance via business-class technology and hardware
  • “We now provide business-class backup and restore to ensure that your data can be restored in minutes rather than days so you can minimize business interruptions”
• existing relationships and trust (and this is usually the biggest driver!)
  • “You trusted us to provide you with your billing solution, trust us now to safeguard your data”

Our experience has shown that the more specific the offering is to the target group, the more they respond to the emails, and the more they respond during the webinar. Close rates can be as high as 15% in these scenarios, so this is a very cheap way to get started.