Working with a cyber security marketing agency that understands cyber security, speaks your language, and communicates well with your target audience makes all the difference in the world.
Do you break out in a cold sweat every time you read about yet another cyber security company hitting a funding round?
Does the thought of differentiating yourself at <yet another> online event make you feel like cancelling?
Do MQL to SQL conversions keep you awake at night?
We feel your pain and we totally get it.
Whether you’re a new startup or an established cyber security company in the industry, that doesn’t have to be part of your company’s narrative. The majority of our cyber security clients turn to us for our B2B marketing services after they’ve tried to do it on their own, and realized that it’s just not happening the way they know it really can.
And this is where we enter the game as a team of cyber security marketing experts whose inbound, PPC and marketing operations strategies have proven to deliver growth through lead generation and brand awareness.
Marketing Envy specializes in B2B digital marketing solutions for cyber security companies that want to differentiate themselves, become the incumbent of their ecosystem in a language their customers understand and of course, grab those MQLs.
The cyber security market is crowded, making it difficult for your business to stand out from the crowd. Depending on which data you read, there are 2000-3000 active cyber security companies operating globally.
Cyber security professionals are extremely knowledgeable, usually with a technical background and tend to be suspicious of too much marketing-ese, so your marketing needs to tread that fine line between honesty and differentiation and speaking the correct language.
Marketing has to speak to multiple personas, including CISOs, security team leaders and analysts, CFOs, and end users, each with different pain points and knowledge levels. It’s tricky to educate non-IT personas about cyber threats, without turning off CISOs who are specifically looking for technical expertise.
With so many options available, customers are inundated with offers, nervous about choosing the wrong cyber security product and in the meantime, losing sleepless nights over chances of the next breach.
Most importantly, there is zero tolerance for FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) so educating leads about the risks without fear-mongering is imperative.
Messaging is crucial for every kind of marketing, but it’s a real challenge for cyber security marketers. With so many cyber security solutions and enterprises out there, it can be easy to end up with plain old vanilla marketing, and hard to produce something exciting and memorable.
Many cyber security marketing departments fall into the trap of cramming in every single feature and trying to address every single threat in every communication, but that never works.
Answer these questions:
These questions aren’t easy to answer, but the answers are vital and are the foundations of your messaging and strategy.
Inbound content plays a key role too. We’re talking about blogs, videos, ebooks, whitepapers, webinars, case studies, social media and more; anything that speaks to your audience. In order to deliver real value, you need educational content that is backed up by data, case studies, and independent industry reviews. A lot of cyber security content is generic and simple, overpromises, and is plain annoying.
B2B Inbound marketing content should follow two streams:
Make good use of the right organic promotion channels to drive targeted leads to your content. Facebook and Instagram should not be your main platforms; you’re a cyber security company, for crying out loud! By all means test your content on them, there are plenty of security folks active on those channels, but they will not be your staple. Cyber security marketing should focus on LinkedIn, Twitter, and one of our big favorites, Reddit.
LinkedIn is already well known to every B2B marketer as a professional community, where the leads you generate are more likely to be purchase-driven than those on other platforms. Savvy marketers make use of your employees’ personal branding, together with your business branding, to boost your reputation for thought leadership and increase your reputation among potential customers.
Reddit is a value-based community, so success takes time and patience, but we’ve found that it’s well worth it. Establishing a reputation on a cyber security subreddit can be the most valuable step you take. Some of Marketing Envy’s favorite subreddits are: r/serverless as a small and high-quality discussion forum about building serverless apps; r/darknet as a window into the deep web and stealth attacks; and r/cybersecurity for keeping on top of all the latest cyber security news.
When it comes to Twitter, make sure you’re following the right people. It’s a great way to access top thought leaders in your industry, like Mikko Hypponen (@mikko), a strategic thinker and “Supervillain,” and Katie Moussouris (@k8em0), creator of Microsoft’s Bug Bounty.
It’s alarming how many cyber security companies end up irritating the CISOs and security analysts they most want to impress. Here are some best practices to help you avoid joining the irritating cyber security club:
Keep up to date with industry happenings, news, and big developments. Choose a few of the best cyber security tradeshows and conferences to attend so that you can keep your finger on the pulse. Thanks to COVID-19, many of them are taking place online, making it much easier to join.
Do your homework about your target’s pain points and needs. CISOs don’t respond to cold pitches, so don’t send generic emails to 500 targets. Instead, deliver real value to specific leads, including people lower down the corporate ladder who may not make buying decisions but do have influence with the CISO.
Budget: every marketer’s favorite word…. Said no marketer, ever. So we’ve put together some words of advice on how to budget.
Finally, your cyber security marketing strategy needs to include benchmarks and standards that serve as milestones along the path. Without KPIs that set an actual price for each benchmark, you’ll risk paying over the odds for leads that don’t really drive sales. KPIs like CTR, CPC, conversion rates, and cost per lead and per MQL should be your bread and butter.
Bear in mind that you’ll need to adjust your benchmarks somewhat for different campaigns. An ABM campaign should have very different KPIs than a lead generation campaign, for example open rates, CTRs, web visits and interaction with content on web and social.
Marketing Envy has been working with cyber security companies since 2013. We’ve scaled growth for scores of established companies and taken many cyber security startups all the way from pre-launch to their IPO, exit, and/or acquisition. In short, we’ve worked on the entire process from end to end. If you need informed, experienced, and professional help planning your cyber security marketing, please feel free to reach out.