2024-01-02
We've worked with dozens of cybersecurity organisation's marketing teams to grow their online audience. Here are our top 10 ways that you can grow yours in 2024!
hakluke
Author
Over the last 12 months we've partnered with dozens of different organisations to take their marketing efforts to the next level. We've tried a bunch of different tactics, and we've uncovered what works (and what doesn't). Based on this experience, here are our top 10 ways to make your cybersecurity business stand out from the crowd in 2024.
Tried and true. Posting high quality technical blogs to your website has many advantages including:
Social media is an absolute necessity nowadays, but most organisations are using it wrong. Many brands push out too much promotional content, which a discerning technical audience will hate. This slows your growth on social media, and ultimately tarnishes brand image. Rather, social media should be viewed as a way to connect with your audience. One of the most effective ways to use social media for a brand is to give your brand a personality. Post company updates, photos from the office, exciting business milestones, etc. Spend some time working out your brand's persona - are they playful or serious? Young or mature? Conventional or rebellious? Friendly or authoritative?
If you're a smaller business, one effective way to do this is to primarily focus on the founder's personal brand. The founder can use their personal accounts to post their stories and lessons as the business grows. People prefer to follow people than brands. If you're a larger organisation it's better to focus on dedicated brand accounts.
In cybersecurity, technical content also does very well on socials. Things like recorded tool demos, command-line screenshots, hacking tips and tricks, etc. Think about what technical content you could post that is relevant to your offering/niche.
I could write a book about social media tactics, so if you'd like to know more, get in touch!
Short video (TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, etc.) are now being used very heavily as a marketing tool throughout other industries, but cybersecurity seems to be trailing behind. I have a theory that this is due to the privacy concerns surrounding TikTok.
Inevitably, short video will be used more prominently in cybersecurity marketing as time goes on. Many influencers are already leading the way.
I'd recommend jumping on this trend early!
Newsletters are a great way to remind previous customers that you exist. My best advice is to come up with a concept for the newsletter that genuinely adds value to the reader without being too promotional. Remember - if they've signed up to your newsletter, they probably already know what you do.
Some ideas:
Even if you don't want to start a newsletter now - it won't hurt to start collecting emails on your website in case you change your mind later.
Influencer marketing comes in many forms. Try approaching influencers directly to put ads into their industry podcasts, newsletters, videos, social accounts, etc.
Here are some ideas for how you can sponsor the community:
There are so many different ways to boost your SEO, and we'll save those for another blog. For now - just know that good SEO can mean the difference between a business failing and crushing it! Just some quick tips for now:
NOTE: When you create content for your site, the most important thing is that it's good content that people actually want to read. This is far more important than SEO. I have watched many organisations pumping out high quantities of garbage SEO-optimised content, it doesn't work. You may gain a slight boost in SEO rankings but ultimately you dilute trust in your brand. I've also watched organisations post high quality technical content without any attempt at SEO, and the article ranks highly on Google searches, simply because it's a high quality article that people share.
A popular method among tech startups today is to add little helpful utilities or fun (and relevant) games to their website. For example, if you are marketing a tool that helps developers, you could add a base64 encoder/decoder utility to your website, and a CSV<->JSON converter, and a curl command > Python requests code converter.
Little utilities like this are often stumbled across through Google search results, and your target audience may become aware of your offerings through this method. It can also be great for SEO. The trick is coming up with ideas for utilities that are useful for your ideal audience, and cost-effective to create/maintain.
Games in a relevant niche can also be a great way to go viral, and can be excellent for demonstrating concepts and garnering positive PR. For an example of this in action, check out DoubleSpeak, a LLM security bypass game that was developed by one of our clients, Forces Unseen.
Adding free, useful references and guides to your website can be a great way to get more traffic flowing to your site. Here are some ideas:
This one is a lot of work, but it's highly effective. Create a training platform within your niche. For example, if you're a penetration testing firm, create a platform that teaches people how to perform security assessments.
Some outcomes:
The key is to blend these strategies to suit your brand's personality and goals. Remember, the essence of effective cybersecurity marketing lies not just in promoting your services, but in genuinely contributing to and engaging with the broader community. By doing so, you establish your business as a trustworthy, authoritative, and approachable entity in the cybersecurity field.
We work with cybersecurity companies to implement all of the strategies above. If that sounds good to you, get in touch.
Drop us your email, we'll be in touch!
