You’ve heard the phrase: The technology just sells itself.
With managed security services, however, it takes a lot more than that. It takes strategic marketing and branding. It takes time, effort and patience to ramp up offerings and acquire a customer base that will reduce total cost of ownership and generate a sustainable and profitable revenue stream. And it often takes a lot of creativity.
Let’s face it, most SMB solution providers don’t have the budget, time or likely the inclination to put a lot of energy into extensive and highly involved marketing campaigns in order to promote security services.
That’s why they have to rev creativity up a few notches – call it guerrilla marketing if you will.
One of the ways solution providers can put that into motion is by introducing security as an attached sale to other products and services that they’re already selling.
Fortunately, there are myriad opportunities for security to be applied to other solutions. Take, for example, backup and recovery. Most organizations have some kind of backup solution and disaster recovery strategy in place. A security service that incorporates anti-virus, content filtering and malware scanning could be an attractive add-on – and incremental upsell opportunity — that would easily fall under the umbrella of a more comprehensive data protection strategy.
Solution providers could then tout a medley of security services that not only secure data, but bolster other solutions, with critical offerings such as trouble-shooting, break-fix, threat scanning, reporting and Web filtering. That, in turn, creates greater value for the customer and higher ROI overall.
And to that end, security could also be a catalyst that compels customers to build out more holistic strategies around their data. Take, for example, a small government organization with limited budget. While the organization might not have deep pockets, it’s likely that it has sensitive data that needs protecting. And it also has to adhere to regulatory compliance standards. Solution providers can then leverage security as critical component of a greater compliance strategy, which paves the way for additional security, data protection and compliance sales down the road.
The upshot is that solution providers don’t have to go traditional routes when marketing managed services. And, in light of budget and time constraints, most often they can’t. But what’s more, marketing with “non-traditional” methods might require a bit more creativity on the front end, but could prove more successful – and profitable – later on.
For more on the subject, join Channelnomics and AVG on Tuesday, May 7 for a special webcast on capitalizing on security services opportunities. The online event will cover:
- Security services as an attached sale
- Using security data to reveal sales opportunities
- Enhancing non-security product sales with security services
- Amplifying profitability through bundling
>> Register for the webcast here <<
