Cybersecurity is a branch of information security that covers data protection in networks of companies and organizations, as well as the protection of private individual information.
Generating leads is necessary to generate sales for any cybersecurity company. By demonstrating why cybersecurity is important for any business and why your product is the best you can find potential clients, making the sales process much simpler.
Establishing trust is the first big step. Companies tend to overlook cybersecurity because they do not believe it’s essential – until they fall victim to an attack. Therefore you often can’t just sell your product or service immediately but instead need to lay the groundwork to sell it at a later date.
This means both making sure you are top of mind when potential clients need cybersecurity products or services, and that you know who to talk to about your potential clients’ cybersecurity needs when the time arises.
In this post, we’ll find out how businesses can identify potential cybersecurity leads. Here are a few tips and strategies to consider as a business in the cybersecurity industry.
Lead Generation Tips for The Cybersecurity Industry
If you want to effectively promote cybersecurity or information protection for your potential customers, make sure to follow these tips.
Markets and Potential Leads to Look At
The growing base of potential clients in cybersecurity grows proportionally with the need for safer online environments and secure networks. This allows firms in the security business to encounter large opportunities to increase their clientele.
Where to start:
- Educational and research institutions
- Medical centres and hospitals
- Existing cybersecurity clients who now require better solutions
- Startups
- Private and individual clients who require good security
- Businesses going digital
There are other means of building a client base such as:
- Referrals from already existing customers
- Webinars, press releases and product launches
- Networking with local and international businesses
- Creating a buzz through partnerships and paid ad campaigns
Create Engaging Content
Cybersecurity related content can be highly technical and in general, people looking into solutions are the ones doing heavy research before making a final decision to buy a solution. This is why publishing case studies, infographics, white papers and explanatory blog posts can benefit lead generation campaigns significantly.
The backbone of a lead generation strategy in this field is education content marketing. Potential clients are searching for answers and solutions for their problems before they even think about considering firms that provide paid solutions, so there is a need to make both of these accessible to a potential client. This means the buyer has crossed most of the buyer’s journey before even reaching out to firms.
The undisputed champion of digital marketing channels is content. Define your path in the prospect’s mind and create content that your audience will love. Here are some tips for creating content that will serve as a lead magnet for your target audience:
- Use authoritative posts which will help you show off your knowledge.
- Videos are more interesting to the audience. You can introduce videos to your audience by integrating them with your storytelling technique.
- How-tos: Find out what issues the target audience is having and provide solutions.
- Opinions: Share your thoughts, and don’t forget to back them up with proof.
- Popular content: Discover what’s hot in your field and use it to keep your audience interested.
- Infographics – a picture is worth a thousand words, so why not use them to convey your message?
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Account-Based Marketing
There are specific departments and employees in an organization to whom cybersecurity appeals. This includes employees and managers in IT departments as well as high-level management.
In addition, each organization has varying levels of needs and knowledge on the subject. Some companies are not even aware of the threats they could potentially face and what solutions they need.
The strategy to target prospects in these departments is to narrow down and target the specific individuals in a company and this might take a bit of time.
This is where account-based marketing comes into play. Targeting decision-making units (aka DMUs) is the way to go. This means applying the following:
- Identifying target audience
- Segmenting into groups of similar demographics
- Writing Personalized messages to grab their attention
- Initiate conversations with DMUs
- Personalized lead nurturing
- A/B tests and adapting campaigns.
Add Calls To Action (CTAs) that Are Relevant to Your Audience
You can determine which content has a high level of engagement and optimize it by adding calls-to-action (CTAs) or simply updating an existing CTA. To help you contact people, ask them to sign up, share, or follow you.
Don’t add a CTA if you don’t want to overwhelm your audience. Be altruistic; take your time and provide customer-specific information.
Demonstrate Your abilities on Your Business
The best way to convince your potential clients that your product is worth having is to demonstrate its necessity and functions on yourself. How would it look if a Cybersecurity company wasn’t using secure emails and communication means?
Securing your emails is an important part of any business that brings in potential clients through email outreach and marketing.
DMARC, DKIM and SPF checkers are standards that help different aspects of authentication and ensure that your domain is safe and cannot be forged. These are protocols that prove to ISPs, mail providers and mail servers that the senders using the email domains are legally allowed to do so. All three show that the sender is genuine, that their privacy has not been compromised, and that they are not transmitting email on behalf of anyone else when properly configured.
Free Audits and Consultations Are The First Steps
Each person has registered to at least one free version of a tech solution once in their adult life.
A lot of businesses use this method and combine it with free consultation because it allows them to offer their service and demo their product without additional cost or commitment from potential clients. It helps build a relationship and allows firms to personalize each prospect’s needs and approach them in a friendly manner.
There is a high likelihood that if the customer likes the free version and consultation with a firm, they will become long term clients. This strongly depends on the firms themselves and how they treat the client after they become a paying customer as well.
Free consultation sessions allow the marketing and/or support team of the cybersecurity company to discuss and point out issues, build a friendly relationship and qualify the client.
A company that can offer free audits and consultations should increase the visibility of these offers. These methods are great for attracting new clients and show the industry that the company’s brand is willing to give out value for free.
Having a Social Selling Program
Cybersecurity businesses should care about social selling for multiple reasons, to state a few:
Social Selling Allows Sales Teams to Build Strong Relationships
Sales representatives can use social tools to follow up on relevant conversations in the industry. This is known as social listening. The team can identify new leads that are already involved in the niche of your product and can reach out to them slowly with useful information at the correct time.
Marketers and sales executives can benefit a lot from social selling tools. 39% of B2B professionals said that social selling helped reduce the amount spent on researching potential prospects. In addition, social selling increased the number of leads they work with.
Social Selling Helps Identify Client’s Pain Points and Buying Prospects
Imagine venting on a social media platform about a problem you are having with a certain tool or process and some time later getting a short message from someone telling you they have just the solution to your frustration. We are living in a time where tools should help make our workflow and life easier not complicated. The approach will be appreciated and well-received.
How does one start with social selling practices without bothering potential clients?
- Establishing a social media presence
- Researching and planning your social selling activities
- Prospecting and engaging on social channels
- Providing valuable and insightful help and information to those who seek it
Closed Marketing Is A Reality
Closed-loop marketing is a relatively recent concept. Closed-loop marketing is when Sales and Marketing teams collaborate to analyze data and insights about what happened to the leads they had. This is a continuous process to deliver omnichannel tailored experiences to engage clients and drive leads into conversions.
Closed-loop analytics can be used in conjunction with website traffic. Marketing automation tools could be used to collect all of the required data. By “closing the loop“, campaigns are measured in accordance to impact on revenue and Sales and Marketing teams come together around the end-to-end lifecycle of customers.
Before converting, find out where your users are coming from, what part of your website they are drawn to, and what their next steps are. Collect as much data as you can from as many sources as possible, then profile and segment them. Once that phase is done, you can launch engaging campaigns and lead those potential prospects into revenue-generating customers.
This technique has many benefits. It allows teams to collaborate over customer lifecycle data and understand what users want and have valuable insight on opportunities to improve the customer experience in all different parts of the company. Not to mention the increase in conversion rates and decrease in cost per acquisition by carefully detecting which assets are moving your users down the funnels and which are not.
Content Repurposing
Bring new life to your existing content by combining some of your most popular posts into a “Best Of” list or bundling them together for customers to download. Learn how to repurpose content for different platforms. On LinkedIn, you can look up the best-performing blog post as a conversion subject to see what the target audience is looking for.
To widen your audience and attract new audiences to your popular content, use key statistics from a study or whitepaper to create an infographic for Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, or SlideShare.
Using Social Media to Your Advantage
Social networking is another great way to find leads as a cybersecurity company because it helps you to show off even more of your personality. Of course, planning your next steps and figuring out how to develop a consistent voice and brand takes time and effort, but it makes you stand out and builds confidence with potential leads.
When it comes to successful strategies for increasing social media lead generation, you should think about the following:
- Ask Powerful Questions – By asking the right questions, you can entice people to engage in a conversation with you and your followers.
- Be Social – That means responding to likes and comments, answering questions, and showing attention.
- Direct People to Your Website – For your on-page lead capture campaign, social media can be very adaptable. Build content that your followers want to see more of, then develop an on-page strategy to drive them down the funnel.
When used correctly, social media will give your cybersecurity business a distinct character, as well as it can be a very effective tool for identifying and catching potential leads.
Conclusion
Finally, cybersecurity companies should listen to their customers and reinvent themselves with fresh and engaging messages. Their lead generation tactics should remain relevant to attract important clients.
As we move toward a more digitized future, cybersecurity will continue to be a top priority for many businesses. This is why it is critical for cybersecurity businesses to begin acquiring customers as early as possible. So start getting appointments right away by setting off your lead generation plan.