Reaching out to potential clients in the cybersecurity market can be difficult. In an environment that values privacy and anonymity for private users and large corporations, modern marketing practices are unacceptable. Client tracking and identification, data gathering, and brand communication cannot be used for advertising security tools and services, as they would make providers look like fraudulent hypocrites.
Respectable cybersecurity companies value privacy, data protection, and anonymity too much to succumb to invasive, personalized marketing approaches. In this article we will address ethical ways for marketers to reach a potential client base: client personas, audience targeting, PR, etc. Modern advertisers have to understand the varying relationships between companies and their customers. You will learn about effective cybersecurity marketing tactics that work without alarming or concerning interested clients. Some strategies may involve the usage of a proxy service – utilization of connections through intermediary servers to hide your IP address. Ironically, you may end up using a proxy service to advertise these utilities. Of course, using proxy servers is not all about secrecy, and our goals are not centered around hiding the invasion of privacy of internet users. Using a proxy service for marketing is mostly needed to access geoblocked parts of the internet, not hide unethical decisions of marketers.
Marketing through Education
The market is full of new cybersecurity companies aiming to solidify their position and build a respectable client base. However, utilized marketing resources do not bring many benefits, especially during the employment of common advertising techniques. Even if we avoid the ethical problem discussed in the introduction, marketing cybersecurity tools is different from advertising clothes, household appliances, and other products with simple use cases.
Even in 2022, the average internet user lacks education on common cybersecurity threats. While the web is much safer than it was at the beginning of the XXI century, subtle invasive techniques like redirect DDoS attacks or browser redirect malware can sabotage user experience. Without basic cybersecurity knowledge, an average web surfer may come up with incorrect conclusions that are logical but incorrect: issues caused by an internet service provider, an operating system needs an update, or used hardware has gotten slower with time, when in reality, the device is infected with harmful software planted by malicious third parties.
Advertisement agencies have a great opportunity to promote cybersecurity businesses by capturing the attention of potential clients with captivating educational content. Users that never used the advertised services or know nothing about the company can learn through credible information and choose it for a needed solution. With engaging articles, a lot of visual aid, and effective use case examples, experienced marketing agencies can transform a curious reader into a long-term client.
Choosing Presentation Formats
The blog article format is effective, as it shows the company’s devotion to educating new visitors and continuing outreach to recurrent customers. By finding the most common problems and frequently asked questions, marketing agencies can use blog articles to promote the product as the best solution.
The reliance on the internet and IT makes the average web surfer impatient. A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures, which makes YouTube and other video-sharing networks great platforms for advertising. Talented marketers manage to create short, easy-to-understand videos that utilize the advertised product as a solution to a common problem. Even if other fixes and solutions exist, a good and efficient presentation may be favored by the algorithm, putting these videos and the top of search lists and recommendations.
Building Client Personas
As we already established, abusing private user data and personalized advertisement is not an option for cybersecurity marketing. Instead, we must focus on building client personas – models of ideal customers that could be interested in your product or service. Understanding the positions of individuals and companies will help you create multiple strategies that convey and focus on the most important strengths based on the recipient.
Building client personas requires the marketer to understand the business model from every angle and highlight different aspects of a product. For example, communicating with a stakeholder may require you to use a high level of abstraction and keep technical details for department managers and specialized employees. Creating personas for clients forces the marketer to understand their potential client base and give a clear overview of each aspect of the business model, presenting the product as a solution to as many internet users as possible.
Audience Targeting
Making sure marketing efforts do not spill over to irrelevant audiences will help you save a lot of resources when focusing on other ethical,but more traditional forms of advertisement. By understanding your potential client base you will know their most frequently visited websites that can be publishers for your ads. The same strategy applies to social media marketing, where you would only seek partnerships with cybersecurity-oriented or tech-affiliated influencers and content creators to maximize the relevancy of presented ads.
Marketing agencies should have a tamer and more flexible approach when approaching CyberSec companies. Most internet privacy tools today focus on limiting online tracking and surveillance through social media networks, GPS, IP analysis, and third-party cookies. Using the same invasive tools for personalized ads may not be the best approach for marketing cybersecurity experts. Using more flexible strategies that respect user privacy and focus on respecting and educating the internet user will bring more positive publicity for the brand, especially if advertised goods and services offer great results.
