Recently, I’ve been writing about a comparison of seven data protection companies I did for a client. I uncovered a ton of insight and am still working on the full report.
I spent between eight and ten hours reviewing each company, scouring the Web — social media, customer forums, job boards, employee complaint sites, earnings call transcripts, analyst reviews, the works.
And after all that work, I recognized, no surprise, that CommVault was the best comprehensive data protection vendor out there. On measures like corporate stability, financials, global reach, marketing buzz, customer commentary, and services portfolio, they won out. Here’s what I wrote about them if you’re interested.
I’m delighted because I’ve always admired the company.
But a niche vendor caught my eye as well — Veeam. Here’s what I had to say about them.
- Business Stable? Yes.
- Growing? Yes, rapidly.
- Reach? Global.
- Investment? Continuing to hire and invest in R&D.
- Customer Satisfaction? Very positive.
- Services? Few complaints.
- Marketing Buzz? Exceptional.
It’s the last one I want to talk about. It’s rare, in my experience, for technology companies to market themselves well. Having worked with Microsoft, Dell, VMware, and many others, I know that efforts are usually solid, reliable, good but rarely outstanding.
But more importantly, many technology companies look at marketing as a loose collection of tools and approaches rather than as a concerted effort to drive awareness and consideration. Many technology companies have “scattered” marketing — some resources are easy to find, some are hard. Some are relevant, others aren’t. Some are new, others are dated.
Veeam is driving exceptional buzz because their approach to marketing is exceptional. Here’s what I said in my report.
They are working intently to position themselves as a market leader, focusing on share growth. This strategy appears to be working, and it’s gaining a huge increase in buzz, according to Google Trends, over the past two years. Compared with CommVault and Dell, Veeam is doing a much better job at driving market awareness and consideration.
Veeam has a robust social media strategy, with data protection specific presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other platforms, with high numbers of followers and extensive re-tweet activity. Unlike many companies, they have country specific social media activity. They encourage both product specialists and executives to participate in social media. They have strategic and product specific blogs that are very active. Compared with the competition, they are doing a very good job with social media.
Their content marketing strategy is unusual. Most traditional vendors prioritize white papers, sell sheets, brochures, and other resources that derive from legacy print models. Veeam seems to prioritize resources like webinars, demos, and forums. Having said that, they have published over forty white papers since 2009 and have dozens of case studies in all the major languages. Veeam also provides free training on both backup in general, and Veeam in particular.
Veeam is actively leveraging this collateral for third party demand generation campaigns.
Veeam does a good job of event promotion, with a dedicated event page, social media efforts, and PR campaigns for major events.
It is hard to fault Veeam’s marketing strategy, tactics, or results. They are going from strength to strength. If you look at Veeam’s growth, it’s exceptional too. There’s an obvious correlation… and how does it shed light on your efforts? How can you make your marketing better — today?