Cyber security content marketing tactics

How do you market cybersecurity services? By building an effective cybersecurity content marketing strategy. Content marketing is essential to help you build credibility while addressing the major challenge of educating your prospects. On average, cyberattacks cost companies $200,000, enough to put some corporations out of business altogether. Companies are becoming more and more aware of cybersecurity as an integral part of their business strategy. But as many cyber security experts are aware, explaining the risks and rewards inherent to this aspect of an online presence, can be a daunting prospect. Enter content marketing. This approach to marketing can help inform, educate and convert business leaders. 

Writing content to showcase how good you are to impress other cybersecurity professionals will only get you so far. Vulgarizing cyber security products for your ideal potential customer is vital. If you want your content to generate awareness among your prospects, you need to gain a firm understanding of who your target audience is, what problems they are looking to solve and what content would help them at each stage of their customer journey. 

This is what we call building buyer personas. We won’t be going into the broad implications of this specific marketing tactic. In the cyber security space, here are the questions a potential prospect could have: 

• Who are your prospects? Developers, security analysts, or middle management?
• Does your cybersecurity company offer user level, company or enterprise level solutions?
• Are you targeting specific industries or business verticals?
• What kind of budget should your target customer have to be able to afford you?
• Do you integrate with their existing tech stack?
• Do they currently work with one of your competitors?

There are of course many more questions you could ask but these should help you get a clearer picture of where you should focus your content marketing efforts. 

Cyber security companies must find a way to state the urgency of the matter without being a fear-monger or a doomsday prophet. For years, cyberattacks have cost companies hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and put many companies out of business. Yet, things evolve slowly. Cybersecurity is of the utmost importance, yet, prioritizing security projects is not always high on the list of many companies.So you must make sure your content makes it clear to your target audience. 

Do not resort to a fear-based approach, it's a surefire way to lose your audience’s interest and trust. Those looking to capitalize on their vulnerability do not position themselves as great partners. Be honest about cybersecurity risks and position yourself as a helpful expert resource. Help them understand what they can do to protect themselves.

Creating one-off pieces of content and hoping they resonate will only get you so far. You should be thinking through a holistic content strategy in which all the individual pieces of content are working together toward a common goal. 

How to build a cyber security content marketing plan step-by-step

Creating content for cyber security experts can be daunting. You need to consider technical buyers such as CTO, CIO, security analysts and non-technical decision makers such as the CEO, the board, the general counsel, etc. Your content marketing plan should be tailored to the specific buyers important for your solution, and on topics that demonstrate your specific expertise. That's why step 1 is to define your target audience. 

Marketing cyber security services and solutions means having a comprehensive approach to your customer journey. This enables you to create content for each stage of their journey: awareness, consideration, and decision. The industry is incredibly competitive when it comes to SEO and Google Ads. 

Identify your primary goal, your why, behind content creation. Set some KPIs to track your progress and success. Each piece of content should address a specific point in the customer journey map.

Email is valuable when you have valuable content to share with leads to nurture them toward a sale. Content can explain your expertise and services in a way that simply can't be done in a run-of-the-mill email. It allows you to highlight what your company does in a more consumable way. For example, you can share case studies, blog posts, infographics, client testimonials, and mentions in the press with leads in order to engage them, build trust and hopefully make a sale. 

Don't miss the opportunity for your cybersecurity company to reach your target audience with engaging, helpful, persuasive content that makes them want to work with you.

You can promote your top of the funnel or middle of the funnel content through Google Ads. Very often, ads are expensive on bottom of the funnel keywords that entail a high conversion search intent. In that case, focus on content that generates downloads, newsletter signups or webinar signups. 

For example, here are some interesting types of content you could advertise: 

• nist incident response playbook
• incident response template nist
• incident response playbook example
• cybersecurity playbook template

Looking for more information on how you can use content marketing to reach your business goals? Get in touch with us. We are a duo of SEO experts specializing in technical marketing.