Marketing Cybersecurity In 2023

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Written by Karina Kokina

Whilst many marketing campaigns and strategies will follow the same principles, it definitely varies between industries. In the mega-2021 resource, we share our experience in marketing Cybersecurity services.

Who Would Benefit From Our 2022 Cybersecurity Marketing Guide?

We’ve written this guide to help the following professionals:

  • Marketers selling Cybersecurity Services
  • Those selling to CISO’s, CTO’s or CSO’s

Imagination vs Reality

We all think that our product or service will be the next best thing since grilled cheese, but reality vs imagination are two very different things.

The Perception: Finding Customers Will Be Fairly Easy

If it were easy we’d all be lounging on our Sunseekers and competing against Elon Musk and Richard Branson with our even faster Space Rocket.

But – hopefully – we can remedy some of your anxiety and suggest ways to better sell your Cybersecurity services.

If you’re finding it stressful and not reaching your targets then it doesn’t necessarily mean that there is anything wrong with your product or service, it is likely – and this is very often the case – more a question of simply re-aligning and/or introducing different marketing strategies specifically designed for the Cybersecurity industry.

The Reality: It’s Never “Easy”!

Before we dive into our suggestions, I want to remind us all that if you struggling then take a step back and appreciate the following data: in literally every Cybersecurity niche there is growth.

My point is: that you’re almost certainly not in a sunset industry, it’s most likely a question that your marketing approach and the tactics you’re deploying need refinement.

Cybersecurity Continues To Boom

OK, before we dig into our 9 Cybersecurity Marketing Ideas, let’s remind ourselves of the good news: our industry continues to boom!

Just look at the data we compiled below that takes a look at the main Cybersecurity categories -they are all basically going gangbusters.

So – to take advantage of these growth patterns – we just need to hone our marketing efforts!

Figures are approximations, based on our research. See our Sources

Cybersecurity NichePredicted Growth To 2025 – 30 (USD Billions)CAGR
Artificial IntelligenceUSD$ 62.35 [1]40.2%
BlockchainUSD$ 39.70 [2]67.3%
Cloud SecurityUSD$ 150.00 [3]27.2%
Cryptography[same as “Blockchain”] [2]N/A
Cybercrime (Inc all spending)USD$ 1 Trillion [4]63 – 70%
CyberwarUSD$ 123.00 [5]21.3%
FinSec (FinTech)USD$ 305.70 [6]22.17%
Digital ForensicsUSD$ 9.68 [7]15.9%
Cybersecurity HealthcareUSD$ 26.10 [8]19.8%
IoTUSD$ 1.6 Trillion [9]28%
Cybersecurity LegalUSD$ 170.40 [10]14.2%
Machine LearningUSD$ 8.81 [11]44.1%
Mobile SecurityUSD$ 7.20 [12]19.4%
SCADA/ICS (Inc Transportation)USD$ 2.50 [13]17.1%
Risk/InsuranceUSD$ 20.0 [14]9%
Social EngineeringUSD$ 17.01 [15]11%

9 Ways To Do Cybersecurity Marketing

Marketing Cybersecurity services typically need more touch-points than almost all consumable (B2C) industries, however, I’d identify 8 ways to market better to our InfoSec industry and appeal to our audiences.

These are:

  1. Speaking At Events & Cybersecurity Conferences
  2. Using (Relevant) Social Media
  3. Creating Online Slideshows, Podcasts, And Webinars
  4. Have A Kick-Ass Website
  5. Dominating Your Keywords (& Content Marketing)
  6. Email Marketing (Inbox like a champion)
  7. Paid Campaigns
  8. Create A Tool
  9. Use Press Releases – Often!

Let’s take each in Turn:

#1 Speaking At Events & Cybersecurity Conferences

We’d all agreed that for the most part Cybersecurity can be a very technical subject matter.

What better way to affirm your organization’s (i.e. “brands”) authority within a niche than speaking about it?

There are multiple Cybersecurity niches, all of which have dozens of events and conferences every year that need speakers.

We specialize in finding Cybersecurity Speaking opportunities so get in contact with us and we’ll find you events to enhance your personal and business profiles!

Every niche tends to favor certain social media channels.

I’d say the best channels for Cybersecurity to exert influence should be on

#2 Using (Relevant) Social Media

  • Reddit,
  • LinkedIn,
  • Twitter,
  • Soundcloud,
  • Apple/Google Podcasts;
  • (Possibly) YouTube

Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok don’t quite cut it in my opinion.

Aside from promoting your own content and subject-matter opinions within your niche, I’d also suggest introducing automation into your Cybersecurity marketing efforts.

Here’s an example of what I mean by “Marketing Automation”: every time you post content on your blog (for your content marketing – see #5 in our list) you also immediately syndicate that to your social media channels.

Aside from the benefit of gaining additional exposure to your services you’ll also be indexing your content to search engines. The reason for that is that search engines constantly crawl social media channels for content – especially Twitter. Twitter does especially well within the marketing Cybersecurity space.

#3 Creating Online Slideshows, Podcasts, And Webinars

Creating media for your social presence can only be positive.

Syndicating your content using as many engaging methods as you can imagine will help with your marketing.

I’d suggest always recycling and syndicating the same content to multiple channels.

For example, you can create a YouTube channel and push out videos that are then shared on Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc, – and – the audio can then be used for Podcasts.

Consistency is key.

Using employees, virtual assistants, or similar is highly recommended when it comes to syndicating your marketing efforts.

Another tip is to use syndicating software, for example, Buffer or Canva.

#4 Have A Kick-Ass Website

This one is kinda obvious but it’s important.

Having an easy-to-use website that loads fast is critical. It’s obvious why that is important, but let me also state two other vital requirements that your site needs to have:

  • Clear Call-To-Actions (CTA’s);
  • An Easy To Understand Demo

In eCommerce, you can expect to convert between 1-2% of your traffic.

In your instance, it is unlikely that you are selling impulsive affordable items, rather, your services might be considered expensive or products that need further investigation on the behalf of the consumer.

The “workaround” here is that instead of simply leaving an “impression” of your brand and services – try and capture an email address or a phone number.

Incentivize your audience to give their email address in exchange for something of significant value.

Try not to simply offer a “White-Paper” but rather, something of genuine value.

For that, I’d suggest offering a free tool or similar that solves a problem known to your audience.

For example, if you are seeing a Firewall Solution of a SOC Platform, then perhaps a free scan of the visitor’s website or similar.

Think out of the box and offer something that is genuinely perceived as having value and you’ll be able to capture leads.

#5 Dominating Your Keywords (& Content Marketing)

Try and dominate your niche in organic search as much as you can.

For example, we are in the Cybersecurity Conference space, and we rank for pretty much any combination of keywords associated with Events and Conferences.

How did we do that? By applying the fundamental tenets of Search Engine Optimization within our site.

Key components of SEO “hygiene” include:

  • Structuring your content in a logical way for the GoogleBot to crawl and understand;
  • Create content (keywords) clusters that allow you to index your content for longtail keywords associated with your products or services;
  • Have a link-building campaign that helps Google (and all search engines) find your content

You’re in the tech space so your Cybersecurity SEO ought to also be on-point.

What about the actual domain TLD?

I’d advise on always using a .com or if you want to be more techie, then go with a .io

If your service is within Artificial Intelligence then I’d always recommend .ai

#6 Email Marketing (Inbox like a champion)

Email often.

I’d suggest sending out emails at least twice a month.

Also! Consider sending out an email to your inbox at 11 am on a Tuesday.

From our experience, 11 am (local time) tends to get the highest open rate, most likely because the recipient has updated their inbox and still have the energy to read pertinent email.

We’ve sent out, literally, millions of emails since 2012 when we first started marketing Cybersecurity. Here are some key tips and advice we’d suggest:

  • Consider using an email delivery service that takes advantage of Google IPs;
  • Never send images, rather keep it to text;
  • Never capitalize every work in the subject field (it makes subject fields look too “Salesy”);
  • Have one line per paragraph and keep your messaging really simple;
  • Never send email from “info@”, instead keep it personal;
  • Include a photo of yourself (which Gmail allows)

Always track your open rates and make an effort to always try to improve your open rates.

#7 Paid Campaigns

Our experience with Paid Campaigns (PPC for example) is that you’ve got to spend to learn behaviors.

However, what I do suggest is that you use tools such as SpyFu to understand how much your competitors are paying for keywords.

Also, I’d also advise you to use the free Facebook Advertising Library.

Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has had to be more transparent to show who is advertising what, and where. Here’s the URL.

The interesting and obvious point to note here is. that if your competitors are advertising on Facebook you’ll be able to see their ads. And, if you notice that the same ads have been used for more than two weeks then you can be confident in the assumption that those ads are working – otherwise, why else would an advertiser waste money on messaging that wasn’t converting?

Using SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) for your Cybersecurity Marketing are great ideas.

#8 Create A Tool

Whatever niche you’re in, you will be solving a problem.

Whilst the problem you are likely solving is likely complex, an aspect of it could be stripped down and bundled into a free tool.

Don’t offer the tired “Whitepaper” download; instead, I’d propose that you do something more unique because you’ll position yourself as:

  • Offering something of real value to your community;
  • Offering something which will likely be shared;

Examples of this marketing strategy within the Cybersecurity space could include:

Furthermore, the database you’ll build from exchanging your free tool for an “email capture” will be worth it.

In case you’re concerned about the cost of developing a tool, or perhaps the complexity of it, then do not worry about that! Head over to places like Code Caynon to purchase a tool and have it tweaked – or built from scratch – from places like UpWork, PeoplePerHour, or other programming outsourced sites where you’ll find plenty of talented Python Programmers (for example).

#9 Use Press Releases…Often!

Many Cybersecurity marketers ignore this tactic, but it worked for us, and therefore I’ve included it in our resource.

OK! So, what you do is, push out monthly Press Releases that are syndicated to the usual roster of PR Agencies such as Bloomberg, Reuters, APP, Yahoo!, et al.

Why does this help?

It helps for two main reasons:

  1. You’ll create what’s called “PR-Stacking” which is when you link to other Press-Releases that further power up links to your site;
  2. You’ll increase the chance of being picked up by journalists, especially if you can weave a good story into your Press Release

In Summary

When it comes to Cybersecurity Marketing ideas you’ve got to think out of the box whilst being consistent with whatever your message is.

Be clear, offer value to your community and you’ll reap the benefits over time.

We wish you every success in your endeavors and remember that we can help you push your agenda within your nice by speaking at InfoSec events and conferences.

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