How to Build a Cyber Security Content Marketing Plan

Creating a cyber security content plan might sound daunting if you don't come from a technical background. But even though technical buyers are important in the buyers committee, there are also non-technical buyers to consider too. Depending on the price point or specific nature of the solution, cyber security decision-makers can include the CEO, the board, the general counsel, the head of risk, in addition to more expected roles like the CTO, CISO, CIO, or security analysts. Considering how vast the industry is, your content marketing plan should be tailored to the specific buyers important for your solution, and on topics that demonstrate your specific specialty.

Marketing your own cyber security company requires a comprehensive approach to creating content for each of the buyers in the buying committee, for each stage of their journey: awareness, consideration, and decision.

If this is all new to you, take a look at this overview on how to approach content targeting, and how to keep it fresh throughout the year.

Discover Your Buyer Personas

One thing to note about cyber security content marketing today is it's in high demand, but incredibly competitive. Because of the high cost of data breaches, companies that help protect critical business functions are no longer a nice-to-have: it's a critical part of a growing business's "cost of doing business."

Much of your competition has likely already stepped up to the challenge of creating stellar marketing content. The best way to get a leg up on the competitors is to hone in on your most ideal customers.

This requires the use of buyer personas. Think of this like writing a novel where you create fictional customers who might exist in real life. In this case, you're creating personas of customers most likely to consume the content you create.

To start this, you'll need to look back at your prior customers and see what kind of content or products they once consumed or bought from you. Sometimes this involves a few other steps:

• Looking at other security categories like developers, security analysts, or middle management.
• Investigating what kind of content readers enjoy, whether it's technical how-to guides or something with a little humor.
• Deciding whether you'll go beyond targeting CEOs, CTOs, and CISOs.

Align Stages of the Buyer Journey with Each Persona

Doing keyword searches is another part of persona creation. Through this process, you'll match up the keywords your buyers normally search. Doing this will help you better understand the buyer journey and where the people you're targeting fall in the realms of interest.

Are they just searching for cyber security content right now, or are they truly serious about purchasing a product immediately for their company? Finding this out will help shape the content you create.

If they're only looking for information, you'll want to focus on providing as much educational content as possible without getting too technical. Content marketing experts often note that focusing on teaching (and not selling) is the better approach to a technical subject.

Cyber security, of course, deals with numerous technicalities, especially for developers. Many of them are open to learning and scour the internet to find solutions to new and emerging challenges.

Some other things to think about when it comes to progressing the buyer journey:

• Consider giving the buyer free value in the content you're offering.
• Provide actionable advice that proves you are a leader in cyber security knowledge.
• Make information accessible on your social media account. Even if you're offering free e-books, social media is a popular distribution channel.
• Create both technical and non-technical content that can provide value to the different personas.

Avoid Alarmist Approaches to Your Content

Cyber security often means talking about scary things like DoS attacks, ransomware, or other kinds of data breaches. Since all of this can become daunting to discuss (especially with hackers seemingly always ahead of the curve), it might provide a challenge in your content approach.

We have found that you're better off creating a sense of urgency rather than a sense of fear. If you want customers to trust you, creating panic isn't the best way forward.

A good way to accomplish this is to rely on data and statistics on how significant cyber threats are. Then, prove what your product or service can do to solve the issue. In other words, you can educate without causing anxiety in your potential customers.

Take time to do some competitor analysis to see how they're approaching their cyber security content marketing. Do they have a good balance of providing useful facts and figures along with proactive approaches on solutions? What can you do differently from what your competitors are doing? Be sure to read their blogs and other available marketing content carefully.

Establish Trust Within the Industry

Using testimonials in your content is another good approach to enhance your content marketing. Proving expertise goes a long way in whether your customer is going to keep reading your content or bail because you haven't established credibility.

Establishing a sense of trust is one of the most essential aspects to your cyber security marketing. This industry is all about demonstrating why your clients can trust you to keep their personal information safe. Living in a world with little trust in anything means more people are going to search out those who exhibit true, genuine knowledge in helping others.

Seek out your prior clients and let them speak openly and honestly about the cyber security products and services you offered to them. Create meaningful case studies that show the problem they had, what you did to solve it, and the ultimate outcome. Be sure they say exactly how your business helped solve their security issue. These testimonials and case studies are very effective in the form of videos, e-books, blogs, and case studies.

Develop a Content Roadmap

If you know what kind of content you're going to focus on, don't think this will stay uniform for years to come. Creating a content roadmap through a spreadsheet is the first thing you can do to get organized and methodical about your approach to content creation.

Your content needs may change quarterly based on your business objectives, and learning what works and what doesn't for your specific market. Creating a spreadsheet addresses gaps in your plan so that nothing goes overlooked.

Putting this together also allows you to closely track the buyer journey for each persona and what kind of searches they're doing.

If this still feels daunting, you may want to have an expert team by your side for a while! That's where we come in. Our B2B marketers are experts at understanding the nuances of various cyber security solutions and building online cyber security marketing plans. Reach out to us today if you'd like some support in building your first content roadmap and getting your cyber security content strategy in high gear.