Picture this: You’re a cybersecurity expert with a next-generation product or service, and you’re looking for a way to get your message into the market uniquely. The industry landscape is crowded with companies with similar offerings and limited ways to stand out. You’ve been researching for hours and finally come across the perfect blog post – one about why brand storytelling is critical in cybersecurity (hint: you’re reading it). Now that you’ve found a blog post that answers your branding questions, you’re wondering where to find a cybersecurity marketing agency; in that case, I have some good news for you.
Sit back, enjoy a warm cup of coffee, and keep reading to learn more about the importance of brand storytelling through some of our favorite examples in cybersecurity.
Why Is Brand Storytelling in Cybersecurity Important?
The cybersecurity market is growing by approximately 10% every year. As a cybersecurity marketing firm, Bluetext has witnessed this growth and know it’s becoming harder to stand out in the cyber arena. These days, saying you solve your customers’ problems, and that your solutions are the best, simply isn’t enough. B2B buyers are tired of the same experience and are looking for authenticity and some sort of a connection. Even in a highly technical industry, it’s important to recognize your customers are still human! This is where brand storytelling comes in to help. Stories are an incredibly powerful tool in human connection and research shows the human brain positively responds to the impact of stories. Reading, seeing, and hearing a story is a way for users to enter the experience and connect with the subject of the story. By connecting with a story, user’s will pay attention longer, will want to learn more, and will be more trusting of your brand.
By instilling trust with storytelling, over 50% of B2B buyers are more likely to consider making a purchase, over 40% are more likely to share that story, and over 15% are more likely to buy a product/service immediately.
So now that we know why brand storytelling is important, let’s take a look at some of our favorite examples of brand storytelling in cybersecurity.
SonicWall
When SonicWall was looking for a cybersecurity marketing firm, they approached Bluetext to help them communicate their unparalleled business values across a variety of industries. Knowing the importance of standing out, Bluetext and SonicWall worked together to create the boundless campaign. The campaign was focused on floating imagery, which served to visualize the liberating feeling of breaking free from cyber threats. The campaign ads depict a series of end users, set in their specific industry. This creates a connection and familiarity with someone within that industry. Imagine seeing someone just like you, in the same industry and roles, facing the same challenges and use cases. This person was liberated from traditional cyber restraints by SonicWall, just as you could be.
To further bring the boundless story to life, Bluetext and SonicWall worked together to promote SonicWall’s Boundless 2020 Virtual event. In the end, this event ended up as the largest virtual event in SonicWall history and drove a 135% increase in attendance over their previous events.
HP
Hewlett Packard’s “The Wolf” campaign is one we often refer to as a masterful example of a company turning a mundane topic into a captivating story. Over the course of this series, Christian Slater infiltrates a company from the mailroom to the boardroom and exposes poorly secured devices on the company’s network. By creating this series with all of the components of a Hollywood box office hit, HP was able to effectively educate users on the importance of device security.
Norton
Another great example of brand storytelling is Norton’s The Most Dangerous Town on the Internet. In short, to quote the film, they visited “some of the most dangerous places on the internet to find out where cybercrime goes to hide.” In the film, the documentarians are able to interview small-time scammers and well-known cybercriminals who’ve infiltrated Google, the US Army, NASA, and more. By creating this documentary, Norton wanted to share an honest look at data havens and the secrets they hide. The authenticity shines through as a refreshing take on cybercrime that not many competitors are willing to share. With over 6 million views on YouTube and awards from Cannes, it’s safe to say this story got the brand’s message across. The story is dark, ghastly, brutally candid, and impossible to forget.
To help create a strong connection with users, as a top brand development agency, we’ve worked with many cybersecurity firms to help them tell their stories in a unique and captivating way. These stories have helped demonstrate that their businesses aren’t just faceless entities; they’re real people working to solve real problems.
Are you interested in working with a top cybersecurity marketing agency to help tell your story? Contact Us!
Thank you for joining us for the Q1 2021 Bluetext Cybersecurity Summit. Exclusively open to CXO’s, our goal with this summit is to deliver a value-add platform to network in the C-Suite with businesses facing similar opportunities and challenges.
Topics:
We plan to discuss the following items:
- Technology Customer Investment Trends
- Technology Consolidation Trends
- 2021 Trends
Date/Time:
2:30pm-4:00pm EST
Thursday, January 28th, 2021
Where:
COMING SOON: A link will be distributed with a calendar invite to all invited.
Agenda:
- Welcome from Jason Siegel: 1 minute
- Welcome and Introduction from Moderator, Morgan Wright, SentinelOne: 3 minutes
- Introductions of each business by one of the representatives (2 minutes each): 15-20 minutes
- Five questions will be softballed out, each receiving 5-10 minutes of airtime.
Summit Specifics: Things to Know
- We will mute all microphones for audio clean-ness
- The raise hand functionality will be used to orderly unmute speakers
- A recording of this conversation will be archived so keep it clean, friends
Moderator
Morgan Wright
Chief Security Advisor, SentinelOne
Morgan is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity strategy and cyberterrorism. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow at The Center for Digital Government, Chief Security Advisor for SentinelOne, and is the chief technology analyst for Fox News and Fox Business on cybersecurity, cyberterrorism, national security, and intelligence.
Companies in Attendance:
AffirmLogic
About: AffirmLogic’s Hyperion platform applies advanced Mathematical Behavioral Computation that enables security teams to detect, analyze, and defend against even the most insidious malware—including advanced persistent threats (APTs) and other sophisticated, potentially devastating forms of attack.
Invited:
Larry Roshfeld, Chief Executive Officer
ArdentMC
About: ArdentMC is a trusted provider for geospatial information, cloud migration, and DevOps in the federal, state, and local business spheres, delivering quality products and outstanding performance initiative to every client.
Invited:
Michael Matechak, Chief Strategy Officer
CI Security
About: CI Security provides Managed Detection and Response and Cybersecurity Consulting services to help their customers to be secure, compliant, and resilient against threats to the life-safety, life-sustaining, and quality-of-life systems and services they provide to customers and communities.
Invited:
Jake Milstein, Chief Marketing Officer
EnHalo
About:
EnHalo is a group of global companies under one brand that is locally engaged, while globally operated. EnHalo focuses on three business pillars: Reducing Risk through its cybersecurity offerings, Reducing Cost through digital transformation, and Increasing Revenue through automation.
Invited:
Chris Beard, US President
Carol Watson, Director, Sales & Operations
Illusive Networks
About: Illusive Networks, the leader in deception-based cybersecurity solutions, empowers security teams to preemptively harden their networks against advanced attackers, stop targeted attacks through early detection of lateral movement, and resolve incidents quickly.
Invited:
Claire Trimble, Chief Marketing Officer
Infinite Group (IGI)
About: IGI works with organizations on all levels of IT security. Its areas of practice include managed security, incident response, social engineering, physical & perimeter security, administrative security, and internal security.
Invited:
Andrew Hoyen, President & COO
Kryptowire
About: Kryptowire provides software assurance tools for mobile application developers, analysts, enterprises, and telecommunication carriers.
Invited:
Alex Lisle, Chief Technical Officer
Obrela Security Industries
About: Obrela Security Industries (OSI) provides enterprise-class professional and managed IS services to assess and manage information risk in complex enterprise environments.
Invited:
George Patsis, Chief Executive Officer
Phosphorus Cybersecurity
About: With a 7 year half-life for vulnerability patching, and infrequent, if ever, credential rotation, IoT is the softest target on the network today. Phosphorus automates remediation of the biggest vulnerabilities in IoT.
Invited:
Chris Rouland, Chief Executive Officer
Rebecca Rouland, Chief Financial Officer
Sertainty
About: Sertainty technology implements a proprietary zero-trust architecture by embedding actionable intelligence into data-files. Sertainty makes it possible for data to be self-aware, self-protecting, self-acting. This gives software developers, systems integrators and their end-users a better way to monetize valuable information, lower the cost of compliance and mitigate risk in real time.
Invited:
Rivers Nesler, VP, Communications & Legal Affairs
Securonix
About: Securonix delivers a next generation security analytics and operations management platform for the modern era of big data and advanced cyber threats.
Invited:
German Fabella, Creative Director
SonicWall
About: SonicWall Boundless Cybersecurity safeguards organizations with seamless protection that stops the most evasive cyberattacks across boundless exposure points and increasingly remote, mobile and cloud-enabled workforces.
Invited:
Geoff Blaine, Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing
SpyCloud
About: SpyCloud is laser focused on preventing online fraud with our proactive solutions, which protect billions of employee and consumer accounts worldwide from account takeover.
Invited:
Company CXO’s
Stage2Security
About: Stage 2 Security is an Adversary Simulation, Protection, and Prevention company focused on building confidence in our clients’ IT systems.
Invited:
George McKenzie, Chief Executive Officer
Thank you for joining us for the Q4 2020 Bluetext Cybersecurity Summit. Exclusively open to CXO’s, our goal with this summit is to deliver a value-add platform to network in the C-Suite with businesses facing similar opportunities and challenges.
Topics:
We plan to discuss the following items:
- Technology Customer Investment Trends
- Technology Consolidation Trends
- MUCH MORE ….FILL IN SURVEY LINK BELOW
Date/Time:
COMING SOON: PLEASE FILL IN THIS SURVEY
Where:
COMING SOON: A link will be distributed with a calendar invite to all invited once the survey is done below.
Agenda:
- Welcome from Jason Siegel: 1 minute
- Introductions of each business by one of the representatives (2 minutes each): 15-20 minutes
- Five questions will be softballed out, each receiving 5-10 minutes of airtime.
Summit Specifics: Things to Know
- Jason will mute all microphones for audio clean-ness (something our 1st Presidential debate should have done)
- The raise hand functionality will be used to orderly unmute speakers
- A recording of this conversation will be archived so keep it clean, friends
Companies in Attendance:
AffirmLogic
About: AffirmLogic’s Hyperion platform applies advanced Mathematical Behavioral Computation that enables security teams to detect, analyze, and defend against even the most insidious malware—including advanced persistent threats (APTs) and other sophisticated, potentially devastating forms of attack.
Attending:
Larry Roshfeld, Chief Executive Officer
Bill Yarnoff, Chief Growth Officer
Infinite Group (IGI)
About: IGI works with organizations on all levels of IT security. Its areas of practice include managed security, incident response, social engineering, physical & perimeter security, administrative security, and internal security.
Attending:
Andrew Hoyen, President & COO
Phosphorus Cybersecurity
About: With a 7 year half-life for vulnerability patching, and infrequent, if ever, credential rotation, IoT is the softest target on the network today. Phosphorus automates remediation of the biggest vulnerabilities in IoT.
Attending:
Chris Rouland, Chief Executive Officer
Rebecca Rouland, Chief Financial Officer
Sertainty
About: Sertainty technology implements a proprietary zero-trust architecture by embedding actionable intelligence into data-files. Sertainty makes it possible for data to be self-aware, self-protecting, self-acting. This gives software developers, systems integrators and their end-users a better way to monetize valuable information, lower the cost of compliance and mitigate risk in real time.
Attending:
TBD
Trusona
About: Trusona is the pioneer and leader in password authentication. Stolen or weak passwords are responsible for over 80% of breaches, and Trusona’s mission is to thwart cybercrime by eliminating them from the user experience.
Attending:
Ori Eisen, Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Kevin Goldman, Chief Experience Officer
T2
About: T2™ manages large-scale technology projects for some of the most respected health systems and businesses in the United States.
Attending:
Kevin Torf, Managing Partner
Jim Rockenbach, Chief Strategy Officer
Verve Industrial Protection
About: Verve Industrial Protection’s mission is to protect the world’s critical infrastructure. For twenty-five years, Verve has helped its clients simplify and reduce the cost of building and maintaining secure, reliable, and compliant industrial control systems – DCS, PLC and SCADA.
Attending:
John Livingston, Chief Executive Officer
Cybersecurity has been a hot topic in recent news, and the threat of hackers and cyber-attacks has every industry on edge. The cybersecurity industry is booming in B2B and B2C markets, but so much media attention can be a double-edged sword. Consumers and businesses are tuning in for the latest updates, but the industry is crowded with voices. Cybersecurity firms must now pivot their attention toward marketing efforts to further differentiate their products and services from competitors. A fierce marketing strategy is a relatively new requisite in the cyber arena, leaving many experts turning to a top cybersecurity marketing agency for advice.
Bluetext’s Tactics to Tackle the Competitive Cybersecurity Landscape
Proper PR Prep
They’re called cyber specialists for a reason. Their expertise is in security and data protection, not press relations. While your firm may be at the top of their game in industry knowledge, nothing tanks credibility like a fumbled interview. Employing a marketing agency will ensure your firm is properly prepared to speak to the press by….
- Briefing Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) before interviews
- Planning an editorial calendar far in advance
- Putting a creative spin on trending news topics, even the negative ones
- Developing unique pitch angles
- Maintaining positive long-term relationships with reporters
To learn more about mastering the art of media relations, read Bluetext’s “4 Public Relations Tips and learn how Bluetext can help your brand’s media relations program.
Controlled Communication
Cybercrime can spark panic within a business of any size. Especially within retail, healthcare or financial industries protecting consumer’s sensitive data has become a top priority. Media attention can be both helpful and harmful, raising red flags but also spurring paranoia. This requires a communication strategy designed to simultaneously calm nerves and warn against potential threats. A third-party agency perspective will provide balance to ensure messaging sounds both competent and comprehensible to customers with minimal subject knowledge. A skilled cybersecurity marketing agency with PR services will craft the right messaging that walks the line between reassurance and realism.
As FireEye’s cybersecurity marketing agency, Bluetext developed a series of branded marketing materials to explain a complex suite of products. The new tagline “We Don’t Blink” helped communicate their brand promise in a nonthreatening manner.
Credibility Through Content Marketing
Trust is a key component of any company’s success. Positioning the firm as a reliable source of thought leadership will lead to more long term business growth. Gain credibility in the industry by establishing subject matter expertise.
Prove expertise to clients by regularly publishing case studies, white papers, and blog insights. To stand out against the noise in a crowded industry, velocity is critical. Plan ahead and develop a schedule with content variety. Consistently publish insights in an attractive and readable format to boost your SEO rank and put you miles ahead of competitors.
Regardless of industry focus, content is key. Any cybersecurity marketing agency will tell you having valuable and relevant content is necessary to establish digital authority and elevating a site’s SERP ranking. Housing content on your site may seem like a simple fix-all solution, however, it requires a plan and a bit of legwork to get off the ground. Read Bluetext’s advice for building the Foundation for an Effective Content Strategy that will maximize the cybersecurity marketing agency relationship so that content receives the active attention it needs.
Audience & Placement
Cybersecurity firms have a wide range of buyer personas, and it is important to recognize the unique needs of each. A common flaw of marketing strategies is putting all your eggs in one basket. Don’t let your marketing strategy fall flat with a two-dimensional approach. A marketing agency will ensure your efforts reach all intended audiences at every stage of the funnel.
Any agency will conduct thorough industry research and competitive analysis. Staying up to date and identifying the right trade shows and channels will put you ahead of competitors.
Every audience will have distinct needs and pressure points, a cybersecurity marketing agency will conduct market research and recommend tailored messaging. Bluetext was hired as Varonis’ cybersecurity marketing agency and developed a multi-faceted campaign, using performance and audience targeting to generate both brand awareness and leads. Read more on this cheeky cyber campaign.
Seriously Smart Branding
For many potential customers, your cybersecurity products and services may be a little over their heads. Therefore, their decision may lean on the affective factors. How your brand presents itself becomes critical. Be smart with your branding, think carefully about what tone, colors, and styles will best communicate your brand value. Your brand aesthetics may seem trivial, but do make neglect this step. Going too bright and vibrant in color palette runs the risk of your company not being taken seriously, but too toned down and your company will never stand out in a sea of the greyscale.
For some rebrand inspiration, check out how Bluetext revamped a hot cybersecurity startup, Finite State’s, visual identity and website. Finite State was able to communicate its value and relevance with a smart, modernized style to communicate their mission of clarity.
Bluetext is a top cybersecurity marketing agency, and we can prove it. Check out more of our cybersecurity marketing solutions.
When Finite State, one of the hottest new start-ups in the cybersecurity market needed a strong visual identity and a website for its launch at Black Hat this year, it turned to Bluetext. Finite State has the first comprehensive and proactive cyber solution to the growth of IoT, which has quickly become a significant security challenge across enterprise networks. Bluetext developed a graphic approach that draws themes and connections across the business landscape, and a new website approach that educates the audience on the IoT threat while differentiating Finite State’s solution for the market.
In a recent post, we described the value of metrics-driven PR to ensure that revenue and lead-generation goals are a key focus of every public relations program. A metrics-driven PR program is even more valuable in the crowded marketplace of cybersecurity, where literally hundreds of start-ups and challenger brands are competing for the growing investments from government agencies, enterprise corporations, and businesses of every size struggling to figure out their cybersecurity defenses.
Dunbar Security is a company whose focus on metrics-driven PR was key to their marketing and sales strategy. Dunbar has been a leader in the security space for nearly a century. Its iconic red armored trucks are visible and instantly recognizable in cities around the country, still retaining a look of the 1930s in a modern wrapper. With a client base and brand that would be the envy of any services company, it decided to add a cybersecurity division to complement its physical security relationships and turned to Bluetext to design and execute its go-to-market strategy.
Bluetext helped launch its first product, the industry’s first open source active response platform. To achieve the goals Dunbar had set, Bluetext developed a program of announcements and nuts and bolts media outreach, combined with a thought leadership component to broaden its visibility into the cybersecurity marketplace.
After analyzing Dunbar’s initial brand footprint, it became clear that its name in physical security, while an important and key asset, would not in and of itself translate into a successful product launch. What was needed was to leverage that name as a way to separate itself from the pack of start-ups in the market – for potential customers, having a hundred-year history means not having to worry if the products and services would still be around in five years – as well as differentiating its open source platform from the proprietary offerings of competitors.
The Bluetext solution was to secure bylined articles in key vertical as well as business publications that primarily focus on the value of an open source solution for an active response while reinforcing the brand’s iconic history and longevity to subtly distance itself from other start-ups.
Bluetext, working with Dunbar’s executives and subject matter experts, crafted a series of bylined articles for vertical publications in the cyber arena as well as for other vertical markets that are regulated for which having a response platform like Dunbar’s can help them meet their legal and regulatory requirements, such as healthcare and financial services. Our team of public relations professionals used its expertise and relationships to place dozens of bylines and coverage articles to spread the Dunbar message far and wide.
Using cloud-based analytical tools to measure reach and scope as well as the share-of-voice of the program, Dunbar was able to achieve success in the market far more quickly than it had hoped for.
Learn how Bluetext can execute a metrics-driven PR program for your cybersecurity brand.
Budget deficits, sequestration, program cut-backs—these are scary times for technology companies that view government agencies as a key vertical market. With spending down at all levels of government, many IT decisions have been slowed down or put on hold, especially those lacking the urgency of mission-critical programs. In the first half of the Federal government’s 2013 fiscal year, the IT budget across all agencies was cut by nearly $300 million. Yet, at least one type of government spending, cybersecurity, is going in the opposite direction, increasing year-after-year as cyber threats increase exponentially.
Marketing executives at enterprise companies who target government agencies need to increase their efforts with smart programs that break through the clutter in this increasingly crowded space. As companies recognize that their competitors are also ramping up efforts to go after these mission-critical opportunities, a business-as-usual approach to marketing could leave them behind the curve.
Scarcely a day goes by that doesn’t include news on new threats to government agencies from adversaries. According to US-CERT—the agency that tracks cyber attacks—cyber threats have increased 782 percent since 2006, from 5,500 to nearly 49,000 last year. Attacks jumped 13 percent last year alone. As a result, budgets are on the rise. A recent article in The Washington Post projects increases from $10 billion on cybersecurity contracts in 2012 to over $14 billion in 2017—a growth rate of 7.6 percent. A survey by Deltek of industry and government technology leaders finds that they expect cybersecurity spending to be the fastest growing area of Federal IT investment over the next few years.
IT company executives will find this new landscape a marketing challenge. As one Deltek official has stated, “it’s a chaotic, evolving field that isn’t easy to crack.” Federal buyers will look for industry partners who recognize the difficult budget environment and can offer technologies that combine hardware and software products into more efficient and effective security solutions.
Perhaps most important, companies need to be aware of their reputation within the government. As Deltek’s John Slye wrote in the Post, “Cybersecurity is a nerve-wracking subject for the federal agency leaders who will likely be held accountable for any highly public failures. Enabling the government to secure its technology resources on a tight budget is as much about trust and cultural acceptance as any new piece of hardware or software.”
That’s where effective marketing comes in. Marketing executives need to reinforce not only the technical capabilities of their products, but also the value that they can bring to the agencies. This requires multi-touch campaigns that alert government decision makers to their offerings, educate them on the benefits of their solutions, and that also bring a comfort level that communicates the reputation and trust that comes along with their brand.
This is what we call a smart campaign, and the messaging it contains must be as well thought out as the tactics used to deploy it. To be effective in this market, it must span direct outreach, have engaging and eye-catching digital assets, leverage social media channels, and employ both earned and paid media—all working together to reach decision-makers at each point in their journey from research to purchase.
It’s both an exciting time for companies with cybersecurity solutions and a challenging time for marketing executives. Learn more about cybersecurity marketing.
In the digital age, digital marketers, companies, and thought leaders are constantly introducing new ideas making it almost impossible to keep up. Lingo overload can leave you:
- Out of touch with the latest digital marketing jargon
- Feeling left out of the marketing conversation.
- Paranoid that your boss will catch on.
That’s why Bluetext has put together a complete guide to Digital Marketing Cybersecurity Lingo!
Bluetext, an award winning integrated digital marketing agency, has created a Digital Marketing Lingo e-Book to ensure you’re up to speed on digital marketing’s latest and greatest.
Click here to download our e-book and sharpen your cybersecurity lingo!
Are you feeling out of touch with the latest cybersecurity marketing jargon and worried that your boss might catch on? In the digital age, cybersecurity marketers, companies and thought leaders are constantly introducing new ideas, solutions and technologies that can be impossible to keep up with. From the top down, companies need to be familiar with critical concepts like Sandboxing, Phishing, Patching and Malware, not only so they can keep up with the evolving conversation, but so they can adapt to protect themselves and their customers from cyber threats and breaches. To ensure you’re up to speed with latest and greatest in the world of cybersecurity marketing, we’ve put together a comprehensive Cybersecurity Lingo glossary. Don’t get left out of the conversation.
In the crowded and highly-competitive cybersecurity market, how do you differentiate your brand from your competitors?
While you’re thinking about how to stand out from the crowd, download a poster from our Adult Coloring Book that you can bring to life, and let Bluetext solve your bigger marketing challenges.
Download our Adult Coloring book here!