Who we are:

Influence Marketing Podcast, a podcast brought to you by the Influence Marketing Council, an industry council for B2B or tech brands that drive innovation, and influencer, advocacy, and community marketing. We are your hosts, John Mark Troyer and Kathleen Nelson Troyer. Together, we are looking forward to working closely with a select number of startups and enterprise tech companies to develop their best practices, discovering what their marketing programs have in common and working with the council members how they drive innovation between these programs and the rest of their business. It’s part of our research program, and also just our curiosity to have a conversation around influence marketing in the B2B space. We will be surveying and gathering our research from people who run advocacy and influencer programs, to find out what makes them tick.

Key Takeaways:

[2:50 ] Rick’s nickname, is the Rickatron!

[5:32 ] Rick and his team administer the Veeam Vanguard Program. This is the third Veeam Vanguard class. There are currently 61 members. Rick was a longtime employee at Veeam before he started this program. Before that he worked at a bank.

[6:24 ] Some of Rick’s advice for getting a program off the ground: start small. Less is more — start with a manageable scope where you know you can be successful. When they launched the Vanguard program they kept it low key and small, and are growing it at a manageable pace over the past three years.

[8:03 ] Their selection mechanism profiles people on different factors such as: internal advocacy, initiation of user groups, social sharing, running community events, and suggestions from other Vanguards and program leaders. Candidates are also welcome and encouraged to reapply.

[12:30 ] Rick shares how the Veeam event, VeeamOn, started and grew into a great community event, and how getting into other cloud native communities helps him bring fresh and new ideas to the Veeam community. He does not feel groups should compete with one another, but instead should strive to be their own best and learn from each other.

[14:46 ] Rick’s main goal to address is geo-distribution. He takes great responsibility in making sure the program is diverse in all ways with gender, location, etc. He would liketo expand and cover more in several countries, such as Japan and Africa.

[18:47 ] The Vanguard is explained as the persona who is an advocate on the company’s behalf, is an evangelist, and is trusted to be neutral out in the community, with an emphasis on creativeness, trust and support.

[26:00 ] His front and center goal is to give his Vanguards an outstanding experience.

[30:28 ] One Vanguard, Kerstin, helps immensely with providing a catalog of cool and unique swag members can choose from.

[34:17 ] Veeam Champions and Veeam Expert Clubs are separate groups, and the Vanguard program encompasses all of those groups, and houses them under its umbrella.

[36:17 ] Rick feels Delta is an example of a company that gives good engagement with customer service questions and responses on Twitter.

[38:51 ] Some of the benefits Vanguards get include access to information early in press releases, webinars, announcements, and top secret product launches! He trusts them to not reveal any information before it is appropriate to do so.

[40:41 ] Continuing to innovate and expand the program is of the utmost importance. New ways to embellish the program include working with partners to keep the program fresh, and providing opportunities for Vanguard members to speak at community events.

[42:00 ] Rick doesn’t think there is competition for influence marketing programs. Every program can share, and benefit from each other, but he strives to make the program as good as possible, through the people on his team and the Vanguards himself. He was surprised how willing people are to say yes to attending VeeamOn events and webinars. When programs are bigger people may engage less.

[44:31 ] They don’t have a community manager, so now everyone is on triage working all angles, like Slack, Twitter, writing, presenting, and working in the labs. Ideally there would be one community manager, but for now this system works!

Mentioned In This Episode:

• John’s Twitter: @jtroyer
• Kathleen’s Twitter: @dailykat
• Rick Vanover’s Twitter: @rickvanover
• Veeam: veeam.com
• Veeam Vanguards: veeam.com/vanguard.html
• VeeamOn: veeam.com/veeamon
• Spiceworks: spiceworks.com

Photo credit: Clint Wyckoff