If you are a cyber security provider or vendor and feeling that you aren’t getting enough leads from engaging marketing agencies or traditional telemarketing lead generation methods, there might be some key areas to consider in improving your performance and ROI for marketing campaigns.

Here are 6 reasons why you need a different approach to increase your security domain knowledge and effective strategy to deliver better leads, with being able to differentiate in marketing and selling cyber security solutions and services.

The way you manage your marketing and sales teams together with your inside sales team will significantly increase your lead generation campaign performance.

• Business knowledge of selling top down to business

Cyber security risk is more of a business concern than just an IT solution to a problem. Researching and knowing what the main considerations to the business is more important to the business managers and approaching the right influencer or decision maker in the business.

It is vital to have conceptual understanding and relevance of security to talk to your prospect.

• Identifying and engaging the stakeholders both in business and IT

A mid-tier accounting firm mentioned that the topic of cyber security was raised first from the board. Knowing which members of a board have the influence and expertise to properly shape decisions in the relevant area can be helpful in effectively targeting conversations. 

The skills to initially to research, navigate and uphold a relevant conversation with the right context is essential to immediate have a chance to open and build rapport with your prospect.

Typically the entry points of conversation need to span both the business stakeholder and/or the IT role responsible for security, so the ability to adjust your approach is important.

• Conceptual knowledge of how to have a conversation about cyber security challenges with the business or IT stakeholder

What are the business issues with Identity Management, Access Management, SSO, Blockchain encryption or causes of threats such as Ransomware or Wannacry etc? Often there is too much technical jargon used within IT that prevents the true value being communicated to many prospective organisations.

Fear-based scenarios have been flooding marketing channels from security vendors and the channel market which may raise the awareness of the issue, however it doesn't highlight the company differentiation of why a customer should deal with them over a competitor. The articulation of such value with examples of total cost of ownership, ROI or how you will mitigate business risk with your solutions will develop further interest and the opportunity to continue a conversation with purpose.

This poses the marketing and sales challenge of how do you position the value of a vendor SIEM solution or a managed security SIEM service consideration. If it’s translated in a simplied business problem we would talk about providing an effective real-time view to mitigate risk and also lower operational costs with the way we can deliver our solution.

Similarly rather than talking about the security testing algorithms like Blockchain and testing tools which are PCI Compliant, IRAAP certification or ISO27001 in marketing terms, why not consider a simplified message that reflects business understanding. 

For example:  if you successfully complete both internal and external penetration testing on your key client application environment, we will ensure you can increase your average customer revenue and brand awareness. In order to reduce business risk and exposure if you can help develop or approve the business case for investment in cybesecurity initiatives across the business, this will create a win/win scenario.

The truth is that the business stakeholders such as CIOs, Risk Managers or Boards of Directors (not just IT stakeholders) generally want to understand the business and risk impact and how to solve this problem without the details around the deeper level jargon that tends to be used in many of the technically-oriented marketing campaigns based on features and benefits approach and data sheets.

How does this impact my prospect's end customers whether it be B2B or B2C from the customer's perspective not the vendors or partners? The translation to the customer language is key for marketers to grasp and find someone in their team (internally or externally) who can perform the effective translation for both IT and Business stakeholders to differentiate. 

If a traditional telemarketing/marketing agency doesn’t have depth of experience in resources who are technically or commercially astute and mature, the lead generation methods are generally not as successful, hence ROI and conversion has been low. This is why guaranteeing volume of leads isn’t as effective these days.

• Awareness of the security competitive landscape and market 

It’s no longer a feature and benefits or “bake off” conversation from vendor or resellers to the market and customers. Your customers want you to be a trusted advisor, agnostic, and also knowledgable enough to offer insight-led value than just buying a security product to plug a gap.

Your lead generation marketing and ISR team should be appropriately sales enabled to have sufficient knowledge of the security landscape and the ability to have a meaningful discussion with your customer.

A point of differentiation in delivery is the financial and business risk impact of cyber security issues to be solved and how that will address the overall business problem.

• Delivery of context and content in a conversational form

Keep it simple and use analogies that may be more effectively conveyed to your prospective customer and demonstrate that you have listened and understood their business challenges within the security context. Know how to gain the attention of the CIO, CISO or Risk Manager and address their concerns.

Be aware and insightful around the business problem or risk challenges to solve with your security solutions or services.

A more effective method in marketing for cybersecurity is to create a lead nurturing process first using digital assets and a hybrid model of inbound marketing which is content driven and process driven with an inside sales capability.

To drive up Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) to better Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) requires having a strong and established sales enablement process. This involves you accessing more highly skilled inside sales resources (with a level of cyber security knowledge) to be able to have a more meaningful initial discussion. Unlike traditional telemarketing, better conversion is achieved once you have researched the facts and data around the subject matter, to open a relevant conversation and also using a multi-channel approach for information sources, content and data.

Part 2 of Marketing for Cyber Security - 5 ways to deliver you more leads for cyber security companies. Why it’s so hard to actively market and generate leads in this competitive marketplace?

• Don’t underestimate the value of lead nurturing and knowing the right time to approach your prospective client with the right messaging

If you follow the buyer's journey, no one wants to be harassed with cold calls, but if you are aware of where they are in their decision making process, it makes it much easier to approach them when timing is right - seeing the indicators which demonstrate this from engagement actively via digital content or channels. We are finding it takes about 5 touchpoints to qualify a prospect. 

• Increasing MQL quality isn’t just a numbers game for the reasons of a finite audience with your customer segment and depth of credibility and positioning

What constitutes an acceptable MQL lead is not just a B-A-N-T approach to qualification. It requires some higher level information around the specific qualification of the security environment and any business needs that is more targeted through building sufficient credibility and point of difference during the lead nurturing and generation process. This is typically applying a level of sales acumen which is where a Sales Development Representative or Inside Sales Representative delivers more effective result and is a better investment to deliver SQLs.

• No consistent pattern of lead generation (for example in Tier 2 financial services)

It can typically take 2 to 3 months of organic lead generation for trends to settle, hence lead nurturing is very important to build up a customer lifecycle and where they positioned within the buyer's journey and the awareness, consideration and decision stages.

A one to one approach for lead generation is not possible to shorten the process, but planting many seeds will help to increase the qualification of the lead by the sales team.

• Relevant content is critical based on the buyer's journey NOT your own agenda

This means that related business content around risk, audit compliance and preferable written authentically from subject matter experts and influencers to provide topics of interest that demonstrate a closer relationship to your prospective clients and showing how you can address their business, financial or operation challenges.

What are alternative methods to try?

1. Lead nurturing through multichannel marketing with use of relevant content
2. Lead generation not through just warm calling
3. Content driven discussions are vital for engagement
4. Knowledge of your target prospective client and needs
5. The use of relevant industry based analogies and well crafted messaging and email to the prospect
6. RESEARCH, RESEARCH and RESEARCH before you connect
7. ...Organic leads can take time to generate so be patient!
   
   

• The effective use of inbound marketing and marketing automation

The use of inbound marketing and outbound approach to drive more qualified leads and sales opportunities can bring significant improvements to your pipeline - the key here is the process of qualification and lead scoring during a lead generation and lead nurturing stage.

Many US security vendors run a common combination of Salesforce SFDC and Marketo, Pardot or Eloqua marketing automation. Typically the gap between an MQL and SQL manifests between marketing and sales teams because of the complexity and level of marketing resource and knowledge required to utilise the functionality of the package.

Hence a sales 'lead' isn’t when one whitepaper or e-Book download is made by a prospective customer on your website which then gets passed on - it may be a MQL, but sales will clearly require many more sales-ready indicators before they can establish a successful engagement with the prospect.

Have a read of this independent US based blog/case study of how HubSpot and inbound marketing helped this security business grow their leads and business:

https://blog.marketingenvy.com/how-aqua-security-reached-24-conversion-to-mql 

• Consider a way to differentiate your content marketing strategy through Social Influencing and Social Selling.

If you recently reviewed any of the cyber security vendor company websites, there is a lot of technical content around security solutions and more generic messaging.

Marketing a specific niche area in cyber security requires being more a more targeted representation, messaging and PR. Some effective alternative channels such using social selling and influencer marketing utilise a figure head who is seen as the influencer for cyber security busines to grain traction in the market.

An influencer is someone who has 10,000+ social media followers. A micro influencer is someone who has around 4,500 social media followers. 

The impact of the social channels shouldn’t be underestimated in terms of PR and creating brand awareness for your cyber security marketing strategy and as way to drive better ROI than traditional channels.

Attracting your prospective clients generally requires more than technical data sheets, so consider how you run events or virtual awareness sessions or podcasts via the right social medium channels for to make a more effective impact.

A possible strategy to differentiate might be to consider accessing one of these influencers who has strong media following and from a younger, more digitally-inclined demographic to mix both targeted audience appeal and the necessary cyber security awareness and knowledge.