The demand for cloud backup grows steadily but still, there are many companies relying on tape. Sure, this is better than nothing. But in fact, keeping backups on tape is no more secure than keeping it on a local server in your own office.
The managed service providers can enhance their positions and grow their business significantly with the help of remote backup service. Online storage has its pros and cons compared to the tape-based backup, but in the end, the benefits outnumber the flaws.
However, if you already offer remote backup services to your clients, think of the following aspects that may help you increase your services’ value and thus your revenue.
Six Key Points to Add to Remote Backup Service Offer
1. Test Recovery Options
As MSP you should, on a regular basis, make sure that the systems are well protected. Document the recovery process and timestamp it. Convey this to your customers to gain trust and ensure a smooth recovery when needed
Provide your clients with regular recovery testing of all their critical systems to make sure that all the restore processes are reliable. You can do it monthly, quarterly or yearly, depending on the risk level and data typeretention.
2. Find Alternative Locations for Recovery
Your clients may grow and need the copy of their data to be immediately available on the new machines. Or they may simply have no time to waste while waiting till the machines from the old office will be delivered to the new one.
Another situation when remote restore option can be useful is the case of natural disasters. If your clients operate in the regions with high risk of floods and hurricanes, they may want to have a disaster recovery plan in case their primary location is no longer available.
3. Enhanced Support
You may currently offer your clients immediate support 5 days a week from 9am till 6pm. If you hire more people to work at night and on weekends, you can increase the availability time up to 24x7 and offer it as an additional option.
4. Physical to Virtual Recovery
Together with the off-site recovery, you may offer your clients physical-to-virtual restoration option which will let your clients get back to work after a disaster so much quicker.
5. Bare Metal and Image-Based Recovery
If you still don’t offer server backup service to your clients, you should start doing it by all means. File-level recovery may be good in case of minor data losses. But if a whole server is lost, it will take you hours of work and much more efforts to rebuild it from scratch.
6. Vendor-Neutral Managed Backup
A managed service provider can increase brand awareness by offering a rebranded version of the backup service to the clients. Pay specific attention to this feature when you select which backup service to use.
Marketing Tips
Now that you offer real value to your clients think of how you position your business in the market.
1. Create a unique selling proposition to stand out from the competitors
Note that offering a 10% discount doesn’t make your proposal unique. Making a discount is as easy as 1-2-3, and this is exactly the first thing that any business owner thinks of when he tries to get more clients.
Guaranteed time of response (no more than 10 minutes, for example) or 24/7 support sounds much better and makes your proposition stronger.
2. Bring personal approach to your clients and ask them such questions that will reveal their key pain points in terms of data safety.
Don’t ask your clients if they need remote backup service or not. Instead, ask them how much one hour of downtime will cost them. Such questions will forward their thoughts to the right direction. To be more precise, help your clients to organize theirRPO/RTOif they don’t have them in place.
3. Thoroughly research your client’s niche.
To make your managed backup services stand out, even more, make an offer that will address the problems and the questions of your client’s specific niche.
For example, if it’s a medical company, for sure they need HIPAA compliant backup. Add this option to your proposition.
4. The best option would be to concentrate your efforts on the clients from one specific niche.
The more you work with, let’s say, construction companies, the better you know this market and you can offer them something specific that nobody else does.
Alexander Negrash is director of marketing at CloudBerry Lab. Read more CloudBerryLab blogs here.
