Always Have A Backup: Why B2B Marketers Must Be Prepared

Hard drive platter in clean room in engineer's hand image.

Are you ready for World Backup Day?

For World Backup Day we want to explore the importance of backing up not only your business’ data, but why B2B marketers should always have a backup plan B — and preferably also a plan C and D — at the ready.

“Don’t be an April Fool. Be prepared. Back up your files on March 31st,” the World Backup Day website admonishes for the annual day celebrating the importance of backups, which falls just ahead of April Fool’s Day.

I remember the first backup I made 37 years ago, when I decided that my heavily-modified BASIC code for the 300-baud computer bulletin board system (BBS) I operated needed to be safely duplicated, in case anything ever happened to the single copy in existence. On that day in 1984 I had to borrow a second Commodore 1541 5.25″ floppy disk drive to backup my BBS program and the data my callers left in the form of public and private text messages — the precursor to modern email.

I still vividly recall the sense of reassurance I felt having completed that first backup — my data safeguarded at least to the extent that I was able to achieve at the time. I still have those two floppies, and about a decade ago I successfully used a piece of hardware to hook up my old disk drive to my modern computer, while a utility copied the disks into a format that present day Commodore 64 emulator programs can read. Those old files then became a part of my regular backup scheme.

Let’s take a look at both smart data backup strategies and why, as B2B marketers, we should always be prepared for the unexpected — and not just when it comes to potential data loss.

Successful B2B Marketers Use Sound Backup Practices

A sound backup practice is fundamental to the success of any business, especially to today’s technology firms that operate almost entirely in the digital realm, creating mountains of potentially irreplaceable data.

Relying solely on the type of cloud-based syncing provided by Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox or countless others is scarcely better than having no backup plan whatsoever in place, as these services typically only offer file synchronization meant for convenience when hopping from one computer or device to another, while a dedicated stand-alone backup program exists solely to protect your data and provide a perfectly restored copy in the event of any number of unforeseen data emergencies.

Similarly, relying too heavily on hard drives using Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) technology can also offer a false sense of protection, as the system is not meant to be a data backup measure, but simply a data redundancy solution.

What are some of the elements of a robust data backup strategy?

Let’s examine some of the options.