Marketing Mistakes That Every MSP Must Avoid

January 21, 2017 backuptech

As more and more businesses are embracing cloud technologies, the need for dependable Managed Service Providers (MSPs) is increasing. And while most service providers are doing a great job at marketing, some of them are lagging behind. In order to become a well-established MSP, it is imperative that you focus on your marketing strengths, but at the same time, avoid mistakes that could potentially bringing you down.

Here are some of the main marketing mistakes MSPs must avoid at all costs:

Using a Poor Website Design

A business website serves as the company’s storefront. Just like a business owner ensures that their brick and mortar store not only looks appealing, but also allows their customers to do business easily, you must build your website, keeping these things in mind. It is surprising how so many MSPs’ websites are so bland. Many providers don’t even bother displaying an image of an actual person, when the MSP business has a lot to do with building relationships alone.

Apart from ensuring that your website looks simple and appealing you must take some additional steps to improve the conversion rate. Important links of whitepapers, brochures, and forms, etc. should be easily available for the visitors. You can also add a live-chat feature if possible. Many are not quite comfortable calling businesses on phone, or writing emails. A chat feature is simple and provides quick answers the visitors may have.

Telling, Not Showing

Don’t tell your leads how your state of the art technology is based on such-and-such proprietary algorithms, or that your systems are backed by some of the best security mechanisms. For instance, if you are an MSP who provides cloud backup services, show them how your cloud backup facility can protect their business if data breaches occur, or how they can save more than 50% or more of their existing IT costs by using your services. Customers are rarely swayed by tech jargon or an MSPs personal accomplishments. Instead, show them how your service can actually benefit them through facts and numbers, and you have piqued their interest.

Using an Inefficient Lead Generation System

A business depends on its customers. However, you always have to start with a prospect, which is converted into a customer over time. To improve this conversion rate, it is important that you have an excellent lead generation system in place. It should cover everything, starting from lead identification, to lead nurturing, and then finally lead conversion. Here a few points to keep in mind:

Creating a profile for quality leads: How do you identify the quality leads? Not every person who shows interest in your service is likely to close a deal. Thus, you must maintain a standard profile that you can compare your leads against. If they meet the profile, you can add them to your database of high-quality leads.
Nurturing the Leads: Once you have filtered your leads, you can start working on getting them to close. Following up with them is extremely important here. This is how you keep tabs on the entire operation. Make sure you ask the right questions when you contact them. Some examples include: “What kind of features are you looking for in your managed services provider?”, “Is there something we can do to make this work?”

Marketing is extremely important for every MSP. By ensuring you don’t make the same mistakes that most new MSPs are making, you can improve your business considerably.

Using File Versioning to Recover Lost Files

January 20, 2017 Kris Price

When it comes to making sure that your company’s data remains safe and secure, there is no better solution than cloud data backup. Thanks to this increasingly popular and important IT service, businesses of all sizes can now enjoy the peace of mind of knowing that their data is constantly being backed up and preserved for later retrieval whenever the need should arise.

However, the simple backing up of saved files is just the beginning of the myriad advantages that cloud data storage has to offer, with many cloud backup service providers now granting enterprises the amazing ability to go virtually “back in time” in order to retrieve and recover previously saved versions of files that have long ago been deleted from their local systems! Indeed, through a process called “file versioning”, cloud storage providers are now commonly implementing yet another crucial layer of data security, protecting their clients from incorrectly saved files.

With our fast-paced work environments and present-day fondness for digital multi-tasking, accidentally “saving over” a previous version of a file that one may have needed is, unfortunately, is far from a completely rare occurrence. And, in the not-so-distant past, accidentally “saving over” a file meant that you were stuck with the newer version, no matter what. However, by taking advantage of cloud backup and storage services with file versioning feature capability, businesses can now retrieve these lost files from their service provider’s servers with ease!

Through the use of advanced versioning methods, massive amounts of previous file history information is compressed so that disk space on the cloud backup server can be conserved and backup and restore data transmission times minimised. Under this system, each file that is transferred to the cloud backup company’s servers is given a unique name and time stamp, with the first version of the file that is backed up being called (not surprisingly) the “primary file”. Then, the cloud backup company’s software automatically scans to see if this file exists in exactly the same state at any other location on your company’s backup cache and, if so, replaces these duplicate files with a “pointer” toward the original, effectively making it so that one file can virtually exist in two or more places at the same time.

In addition to this, every time a new version of a file with the same name is saved to the cloud backup cache, it is compared to the original, and if they differ in any way, the older one is retained and the newer one is also, of course, saved and given a version name and corresponding time stamp. However, using special algorithms, this newer version of the file only contains the information that has been changed in comparison to the older version, and embedded digital pointers reference the older version for all the information that has not been changed. Although versioned files like these are technically split up in order to save storage space and enable previously saved versions of files to be retrieved when being accessed remotely by the end user, the referenced sections of the files are automatically replaced by the actual information from the original so that all files are intact.

Sound complicated? Well, one of the biggest advantages of leaving your backup and IT concerns to an online cloud storage service provider is that they will keep track of all these details so that you don’t have to, and we here at Backup Technology Limited (BTL) take pride in lifting this burden from the shoulders of all the enterprises whose data we make it our duty to protect. We’ve integrated a robust file versioning system into all of our data storage and recovery solutions, and our powerful backup service, powered by Asigra, constantly monitors your company’s computers for changes made to files and automatically saves these changes for you! In addition to this, BTL uses its latest technology to backup incrementally all unsaved files that are left open for longer periods of time.

BTL believes that file versioning is here to stay for a long-term. Therefore, BTL has assembled the most cutting edge suite of cloud computing tools in its cloud services. With top of the line data protection practises like bank-grade encryption, FIPS, de-depulication, and advanced password security protocols, clients never have to worry about anyone accessing their data, except authorised users on the account.

By backing up your company’s data with BTL, you’ll never have to worry about incorrectly saving a file again. Please stop by our website today to download our free, no-obligation trial software, and see what the BTL advantage is all about! Remember that file versioning is just one of the myriads of advantages that BTL can bring to your SMB. So, speaking of not having to take any risks on the file versioning; why not visit BTL’s website and test-drive today? www.backup-technology.com/cloud-backup

Why Cloud Collaboration is Very Important – Part II

January 19, 2017 Sam Broadbent

In Part I, we discussed the definition of cloud collaboration; why some organisations are hesitant to adopt cloud collaboration, but rather opt in for emails, citing familiarity and simplicity; and how ill-informed security concerns keep some from adopting cloud collaboration despite the fact that security has been thoroughly addressed by cloud vendors.

Indeed, cloud backup and cloud computing companies are well aware of the potential for mobile data to be vulnerable to hackers, eavesdroppers and other malicious agents, so advanced security procedures like high-level data encryption and varying access privileges for all of the different collaborators make it so that files remain exclusively available only to those in the collaboration group.

Yet another unfortunate factor keeping some businesses from utilising cloud services for collaboration is that they fear that it would be cost prohibitive. After all, since using email is basically free, why pay to collaborate online? Well, it is important to keep in mind that cloud services are often now leveraged in a pay-as-you-go fashion, so businesses only have to pay for the services that they actually use. In addition to this, cloud computing services are now commonly bundled with online data backup packages and other utilities that businesses are already paying for in the first place! Also, cloud collaboration can be thought to wring more value out of hardware that businesses and employees have already invested in like smartphones, laptops and iPads. When you combine these factors with the collaboration-ready aspects of social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook, the potential result is a highly fluid and dynamic work environment in which employees can communicate and collaborate freely regardless of their physical locations, granting business owners and CEOs the peace of mind of knowing that they are getting the maximum return on their enterprise’s investment.

Of course, we here at Backup Technology Limited (BTL) don’t just see cloud collaboration as the way of the future; we think it should be the way of the present as well! For this reason, we have assembled the most cutting edge suite of cloud computing tools in our cloud services. And, with top of the line data protection practises like bank-grade encryption and advanced password security protocols, you’ll never have to worry about anyone except who you deem fit getting their hands on your precious data. So, speaking of not having to take any risks; why not visit our website and try our free trial today? We think that you’ll find that cloud collaboration is just one of the myriad advantages that BTL can bring to your SMB. Visit our website here: www.backup-technology.com/cloud-backup

Why Cloud Collaboration is Very Important – Part I

January 19, 2017 Sam Broadbent

Wikipedia defines “Cloud Collaboration” as “a way of sharing and co-authoring computer files through the use of cloud computing, whereby documents are uploaded to a central “cloud” for storage, where they can then be accessed by others. Cloud collaboration technologies allow users to upload, comment and collaborate on documents and even amend the document itself, evolving the document.”

The increased ease with which employees can now collaborate online is one of the most important and revolutionary of all of the advantages that the Internet itself has brought to the table for businesses of all sizes. However, although online collaboration (both over LANs and the cloud) has been readily available through a variety of different means to businesses for some time now, many enterprises are still somehow hesitant to take advantage of these valuable tools, often opting instead for basic email exchanges as their go-to collaboration method. With all the myriad advantages of utilising the cloud for collaboration, why are these enterprises still holding on to doing things the old fashioned way?

First off, some companies that have yet to harness the power of the cloud may try to point toward the relative familiarity and simplicity of using email for collaboration versus cutting edge cloud tools. However, this can be seen as somewhat ironic when one considers the fact that, when compared to the streamlined process of collaboration in the cloud, group projects through email can often become suddenly very complicated at a moment’s notice, with potential mis-saves to storage servers being a constant risk, not to mention the confusion that can result as to which collaborator has the most recent version of the collaborative project in question. In addition to this, the very simplicity of this one-way communication style often also serves to inhibit creativity by forcing the participants to create a rigid, preconceived hierarchical structure so as to avoid the above-mentioned confusions, delays and accidents that can be so common to collaborative email threads.

Another factor that often leaves businesses afraid to take advantage of the cloud for collaboration are ill-informed concerns over security. While being cautious about security is an understandable, nay, advisable stance for people to take (especially when beginning to use a new technology), it is important to keep in mind that, once again, cloud collaboration has been around for some time now, and thus potential security issues have been thoroughly addressed by cloud vendors. In fact, files being shared and accessed in the cloud oftentimes end up being more secure than ones passed around through email as simple unencrypted attachments!

In Part II, we will further discuss further the importance of cloud collaboration.