The cybersecurity products and services market is highly competitive. So you need an outstanding communications plan for cybersecurity to ensure your experience and strategies stand out from the crowd.
In the last few years, the technology world has changed. In 2019, the privacy of hundreds of millions of people was breached by a series of data leaks, bugs, and backdoor hacks.
Eye-Opening Recent Incidents
- Hackers broke WhatsApp’s defenses and installed surveillance technology on people’s phones.
- Travelers’ license plates and images were stolen from US Customs and Borders.
- 11.9 million patients medical and financial data was exposed due to a Quest Diagnostics Breach – just to name a few.
Because of these incidents, company leaders are beginning to wake up to the fact that their companies are at risk, and are searching for ways to help defend their IT infrastructures.
However, with increasing demand, the competition is growing rapidly for selling cybersecurity to SMBs and companies. Although it is hard for infosec firms to break into deals in these markets, a good business campaign for cybersecurity is the secret to generating more b2b leads and winning the field.
How to Build a Solid Cybersecurity Marketing Strategy
1. Don’t Target the Higher Management Upfront
Although some cybersecurity companies have adopted a “bottom-up” business model, targeting entrepreneurs, researchers, and other users of a product, many businesses are also grappling for executive interests.
When selling goods and services in general, it’s easy to believe that moving “to the top” will get you quicker results because the managers are the decision-makers, right?
However, when selling cybersecurity to SMBs and large enterprises, this is not always the case. Although executives may love your pitch and think highly of your products, they often pass the buying decision on to middle management or strategic and engineering teams.
For example, in government, it’s almost certainly guaranteed that the top leaders will hand over procurement decisions to their direct representatives.
It is important to remain open to targeting specific customers rather than the obvious ones, particularly in the early stages of an organization maturing its sales and marketing functions.
Actions to take:
- Avoid cold calling
- Identify the influencers from your potential accounts
SalesIntel allows you to access them and find the contact data details of the concerned person along with the company’s technographic data.
2. Take a Tailored Approach for Each Persona
Knowing the many individuals interested in both buying and implementing the product is important. From there, you can prepare the best campaigns to help them.
Most of the time, the main emphasis will be on the company’s DevOps and technical guys, because they are the ones who understand the technological requirements.
Therefore, when you take a bottom-up approach, you need to use more technical terms and create material to clarify principles in comprehensive technicalities.
Immerse yourself fully in the mentality of the people interested in buying and using your
Solution. In addition, you’ll most likely need to engage the CTO, as well as CISOs, crisis officers, and CFOs at larger organizations. All of these individuals will have different pain points that will need to be addressed in different ways.
Actions to take:
- Research your audience
- Create and use personas
3. Provide Education
Each company wants cybersecurity, but no one in the tech community learn more than the headlines they see. So awareness is important when it comes to a communication plan for cybersecurity.
Many business owners read in the news about cyber-attacks and ask:
- How does this affect my business?
- What are the hazards?
- How can I minimize the risks?
- Where do I start?
A cybersecurity marketing strategy needs to answer these questions.
Another problem for advertisers is that many businesses are complacent about the risks to their business from cybersecurity. Part of the job is to demonstrate why the threats are huge, and the dangers are inevitable.
In this way, content marketing is important. You should develop blogs and free content that aim to inform your target audience (eBooks, infographics, etc.)
Actions to take:
- Create informative digital content – blogs, downloadable content, webinars, video tutorials
- Use other types of content – flyers, and brochures to hand out to customers at events or adverts/advertorial in print publications
4. Show Expertise, Gain Trust
When businesses make decisions about cybersecurity solutions, there is a lot on the line – the average cost of a cyberattack is £20,000. The introduction into force of the latest European data privacy regulations (e.g. the GDPR) in 2019 adds another factor – hat non-compliance will be prosecuted by large penalties.
Aside from that, there is the possibility of reputational injury, which can be almost as complicated to recover from as any financial impact.
With too much at stake, company owners are trying to find strategies on which they can rely.
You need to gain trust and demonstrate your know-how. However, that doe no’t mean making jargon-filled text-heavy manuals and technical words. It does mean offering easy-to-digest details of how effective your solution is in defending consumers from cyberattacks.
The way to go is through testimonials from satisfied consumers and case studies that demonstrate success stories. Bring your blogs to life with real examples of your services, product or team in practice can work well.
Data-driven content is a perfect way to do that. You can express your experience easily with reliable numbers, facts, and figures.
For example, use attention-grabbing figures for news and posts on social media such as: “In 2019, we helped 200 organizations stay clear of cyberattacks.”
Actions to take:
- Use stats, facts, figures, case studies and interviews with experts
- Create authoritative white papers
- Ask satisfied customers for quotes you can use on your website
- Don’t use jargon
5. Create a Sense of Urgency
Unfortunately, many businesses do not consider cybersecurity to be a priority. One of the problems you face is telling them they will.
There may be several different reasons that companies are hesitant to make cybersecurity a focus.
- Complacency
- Failure to completely comprehend the threat
- Belief their core research is more important
- Desire to concentrate their efforts internally
- Cost
Your job is to use your staff to find out what content can persuade the target market that cybersecurity is important and create a sense of urgency.
Still, you have to get the word right, of course. This shouldn’t be a scare tactics exercise. You don’t want to create a collection of posts that wind up worrying prospective clients, instead of teaching them about the dangers.
Actions to take:
- Use your staff and choose the correct wording
- Stop scaremongering and stick to the truth
- Using figures to illustrate the hazard reality
Final Thoughts
The competition in selling cybersecurity is rising, so it is important to reach decision-makers and influencers.
SalesIntel helps you do that. With over millions of B2B data points and the highest number of direct dials, including mobile numbers, you can segment your audience and take a tailored approach accordingly.
