Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing

ChatGPT vs storytelling with David Ebner

In this episode, David Ebner, Founder of Content Workshop, joins Maria and Gianna to discuss the future of writing.
 
To begin, David offers his own thoughts on ChatGPT. Like any new form of technology, it is understandable that the initial launch of ChatGPT was met with hesitation. Simply put, ChatGPT is a language processing tool that works on probability. Davis sees it more as a muse than a replacement for genuine writing. Content Workshop, he explains, is a storytelling agency helping brands tell their stories to drive new business and leverage their goals. It has not been possible for them to leverage AI to help with their writing simply because AI is not able to convey empathy. Next, hear what storytelling means to David. What really makes storytelling a work of art is its ability to inspire connection and bring an audience to a place they were not at prior to reading the content. Every piece of content should entertain, elevate, and engage their audience in this exact order.
 
Shifting gears, David explains how engaging people makes for a loyal audience, and loyal audiences will think about your brand and look towards you for answers in times of need. It is so crucial to make content entertaining so that it doesn’t feel like a chore for audiences to read. Content workshop takes a unique approach in which they aim to embody the life of the individual, rather than the brand. What problem led them to the brand initially? How is the person's life better now that they have discovered the brand? A brand is not a color or logo, but rather what lives in the hearts and minds of the viewer. From a tone point of view, it’s important to have a brand identity and voice first. Finally, our guest and hosts engage in a fun guessing game to reveal what career David would pursue outside of the cybersecurity marketing field.
 
Links:
 
Follow David on LinkedIn.
Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.
 

Conversion Rates at Checkpoint with Head of Digital Strategy and Operations at CheckPoint Technologies , Sean Mattson

In this episode, Sean Mattson, Head of Digital Strategy and Operations at Checkpoint Technologies, joins Maria and Gianna to discuss conversion rates and personalization.
 
To begin, Sean discusses his role at Checkpoint as the management of all digital channels including websites, outbound, marketing automation, digital intelligence, globalization, and SEOs. He has been doing marketing for 20+ years and has 15 people on his current team. Since the team is so small, they use tools like Marketo to help automate tasks. Sean built everything from the ground up in this company and Checkpoint was known as the firewall creator. They needed to work on SEOs and after two years of brand awareness, the traffic on their website went up by 700%. They cross linked all the pages on their own website. They also talk about how the quality over the quantity matters, and how to create leads that can be marketed. Checkpoint does progressive profiling and uses third party data services to do backend form enrichment. This created a 60% lift for Marketo landing page, but Sean asked, “why wait till I’m walking away before you show me any content?”
 
Then, Sean discusses how Checkpoint uses Hushly for self-nurturing landing pages that has been a game-changer for the company. Hushly sets a preview of the content as the landing page itself, so they are presented with content and value first. Then, the audience can decide whether you like it first. It is in a single field form, and you can set as many pages as you want. There is also a column on the side with alternate content if you don’t like the first page. Hushly provides the service, but Checkpoint also uses clear bit forms and zoom info forms. This is enriched in real time and there is a 25% conversion rate across the whole library. In addition, Checkpoint Technologies is rolling out resource hubs for geo sites in 11 languages and this will expand their reach. They are also using Smartling AI. Translating a website is easy, but the whole cycle is difficult to keep consistent and managed. Hushly will help translate all the PDFs and assets as well. There is a fine line between personalization and stock authorization; you need to personalize it without making it extremely obvious. Finally, our guest and hosts engage in a fun guessing game to reveal what career Sean would pursue outside of the cybersecurity marketing field.
 
Links:
Follow Sean on LinkedIn.
Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.

How to Have a Successful Funny Cybersecurity Campaign with Deidre Frith

In this episode, the hosts are joined by Deidre Frith, the Director of Marketing at Real Time IT. With over 15 years of experience in marketing, Deidre is a one-stop shop for all things creative, social media, graphic design, and PR. She is known for her innovative and humorous marketing campaigns that have garnered attention and success for her company.
 
The episode opens with a discussion of the success of the funny commercial campaign that Deidre created for her company, as well as her approach to cybersecurity marketing.
Deidre also shares insights into the idea and execution behind the campaign, and the results it has achieved, and emphasizes why word-of-mouth marketing is still so important. She also talks about her team and the challenges of tracking ROI for traditional media. 
 
Lastly, Deidre dives into her cybersecurity awareness initiatives that include a quarterly poster campaign and a dedicated cybersecurity website. 
 
The hosts close this episode with our favorite game where Gianna and Maria guess what Deidre would be doing if she wasn't in marketing. Who wins this time? All bets are on the table!
Links:
Follow Deidre on LinkedIn
Check out Hey Y’all Wraps on LinkedIn
Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.

Effective Email Marketing with Josh Feigenbaum

Welcome to Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing, where we explore the hottest topics in cyber marketing, interview experts, and help you become a better cybersecurity marketer! In this episode, Josh Feigenbaum, Marketing Manager at Sentra, joins Maria and Gianna to discuss effective email marketing.
 
To begin, Josh starts off by sharing how almost everyone in the industry has made the mistake where you have sent an email to the wrong chain or group. He gets his creativity from what people have been complaining about, including marketing, campaigns, sales, or what they wish existed. Josh also says he likes to play against what people expect to see in their inboxes by making his emails not look like every other email. The most creative thing he’s done was sending out a Merry Christmas email with a surprise at the very end. The surprise was that if they responded back with a time, they would give a fake cyber security phone call to get you out of something with your family over the holidays. They actually had two people participate in it! He also says creativity is not just the email itself, but the offer as well. He also likes to include gifs of himself that are new and different with a caption underneath. Josh shares that he will put emojis into the subject line if it adds to the email, but he doesn’t like emojis if they are pointless.
 
Then, Josh shares how with email marketing, there really is no specific time or day that is best to send out an email. He does say the subject line and content of the email matter more than when you send it. The last time he tried content indication leads, it was not successful but he would try it again. He did warm the lists up with a couple of emails, but they had zero idea what they read. In addition, Josh states it is best to benchmark against yourself with emails. You need to keep improving and the trend lines need to keep going up. They also discuss how companies are not strict enough with emailing only the people affected by that email subject– they do not need to include employees in emails when they opt out of them. They also say not to include people in the email chain list if they haven’t opened an email in the last 90 days. This could affect the sending quality if you don’t have reasonable open rates. Josh also shares how the cybersecurity marketing society is a great tool to use to see what other people say about vendors. He checks the Slack group to check reviews. Finally, our guest and hosts engage in a fun guessing game to reveal what career Josh would pursue outside of the cybersecurity marketing field.
 
Links:
Follow Josh on LinkedIn.
Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.

How to Have a Successful Webinar with Brian Whipple

In this episode, Brian Whipple, a longtime member of the Cybersecurity Marketing Society, joins Maria and Gianna to share his impressive knowledge on how to create successful, record-breaking webinars in the cybersecurity industry.
 
Brian Whipple is a Marketing Manager at Conetrix and Tandem. He highlights how important it is to treat webinars as a valuable product that provides value to the audience - not as simply something you “do” because you have to do it as part of the marketing mix.
 
Brian talks about the key factors that contribute to the success of their webinars, including:
 
Carefully selecting topics 
Having knowledgeable and engaging speakers 
Practice, practice, practice! (Yes, even for webinars)
And to constantly refine the content
 
According to Whipple, it's important to focus on positive signals and feedback rather than hard KPIs, while also looking at how making small tweaks to webinar formats can help improve lead generation from these activities. Brian and his team’s approach to webinars has led to significant growth in attendance and positive feedback from their audience.
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The episode closes with the ladies going head to head on their favorite game of guessing what the guest might be if they didn't choose their current career path. Someone’s guilty conscience leads them to confess to cheating in the game. Brian also promises to write down what the hosts might say when they first meet him at the CyberMarketingCon2023 in Austin. Also to find Brian online, DO NOT google him as there’s another Brian who is more “Successful and slightly better looking,” Check out our guest Brian Whipple in our links below! 
 
Links:
Follow Brian Whipple on LinkedIn.Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.
 

Becoming a Community Marketing Expert with Derek Weeks

Welcome to Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing, where we explore the hottest topics in cyber marketing, interview experts, and help you become a better cybersecurity marketer! In this episode, Derek Weeks, author and CEO of Unfair Mindshare, joins Maria and Gianna to discuss community.
 
To begin, Derek shares that he has been working in community marketing for many years. He found that many people did not understand what community marketing is or how to succeed. Unfair Mindshare is all about showing CMOs and marketing leaders how to integrate community marketing as part of an overall integrated marketing program in order to elevate their brands and increase customer retention. This is what Derek unpacks in his book, Unfair Mindshare. He describes marketing in 3 orbits: product-led, brand-led, and community-led. While the first two orbits are transactional,  the latter is really about collaboration and working together. The biggest red flag that you might be doing the community orbit wrong is if you find yourself talking about yourself often. As a CMO, your primary goal is to promote your company and products, build pipelines and drive revenue. However, Derek explains how CMOs can attract an even larger audience by not talking about themselves but being helpful from the beginning.
 
Next, Derek outlines how to build the best team for a successful community-building operation. He sees community marketing as another functional area within marketing that is equipped with dedicated staff. This function can be 5-10% of the total marketing budget. However, it requires at least 1,000 hours of work per year in order to make a large enough impact. This means that one person on your team should spend at least 50% of their time focusing on this one area. Your team is responsible for creating either a new community or leading within an existing community. Before wrapping up, Derek offers his best advice to listeners.
Finally, our guest and hosts engage in a fun guessing game to reveal what career Derek would pursue outside of the cybersecurity marketing field.
 
Links:
Follow Derek on LinkedIn.
Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.
 

Creating and Being a Creator in Cybersecurity with Kenneth Ellington

In this episode, Kenneth Ellington, security consultant at Ernst & Young and the founder of Ellington Cyber Academy, joins our hosts to discuss how to foster positive engagement. 
 Kenneth Ellington is a security consultant at Ernst & Young and the founder of Ellington Cyber Academy and has been in the cybersecurity field for over four years. Ellington talks to Gianna and Maria about his journey into cybersecurity, from starting out as an intern at Publix to becoming a security consultant at Ernst & Young. In the age of social media, he emphasizes the importance of having your own voice and being unique to be able to stand out in the crowd when working on your personal brand. 
 
The years in the industry have taught him the power of networking and being able to build a community that you can always rely on:
 
"It's not what you know, it's who knows you." - Kenneth Ellington
 
He also highlights diversity and is especially passionate about advocating for more people of color to get into cybersecurity doing this through his Ellington Cyber Academy. He also offers tips for content creation and personal branding in the cybersecurity industry.
 
The episode closes with our usual favorite game where Gianna and Maria guess what Kenneth would be doing if he was not in cybersecurity. Who wins? Listen to the episode to find out!
 
The ladies can be quite competitive, it’s even hilarious as Maria tries and fails to convince Kenneth to join her on her quest to add him to her list of candidates to open a food truck with!
 
Links: 
Follow Kenneth on LinkedIn
Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.

Unconventionally Breaking Through into Marketing with Marc Blackmer

In this episode, Marc Blackmer, VP of Marketing at Corero Network Security, joins Maria and Gianna to discuss breaking through into marketing, green and red flags in companies and so much more.
 
Corero Network Security is a leader in real-time with high-performance DDoS defense solutions. Service providers, hosting providers, and digital enterprises rely on Corero’s award-winning technology to eliminate the DDoS threat to their environment through automatic attack detection and mitigation. This industry-leading technology delivers flexible protection that scales to tens of terabits, on-premises and in the cloud, with a dramatically lower cost of ownership than previously possible.
 
Marc takes us on his journey of how he moved to California after deciding to take a year off from college to pursue music. He was involved in marketing for 10-12 years,  Marc said getting the job was easy however, but the actual job wasn’t easy. He wanted to be perfect from the beginning, but you can’t be when you are starting out and still learning.
 
Marc also tells Maria and Gianna about some red and green flags to look out for when doing interviews with companies. He states that alignment between marketing, sales, and the product team is extremely important in a company.
 
The leaders in each of these areas need to:
Communicate,
Agree on messaging and where the product is going.
While working together.
He also motivates people to listen to themselves more, when things don’t feel right, they likely aren’t. If companies ask people to do things that are not okay in interviews, then imagine what would it be like working for them.
When looking for green flags in leaders, he advises looking for leaders who are focused, friendly, energetic, and know what they want. Leaders who have a clear and realistic vision. While his advice to marketers is to get to know people, network, and be open to the idea that things that will change. There will be positives that come from change, and you will learn from it.
 
Links:
Follow Marc Blackmer on LinkedIn.
Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.

How to Foster Positive Engagement with Steve LaChance

Welcome to Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing, where we explore the hottest topics in cyber marketing, interview experts and help you become a better cybersecurity marketer! In this episode, Steve LaChance, Founder and CEO of discernr, joins Maria and Gianna to discuss how to foster positive engagement.
 
Discernr is a consultancy centered around product market fit for product led growth. They are currently building out some digital tools to make the process even more accessible. The company helps organizations at all stages of their PLG journey. Engagement, Steve explains, is a conversation that organizations of all sizes should be having. He also shares how he deals with burnout in the workplace. All leaders should be aware of the importance of maintaining a positive team dynamic in order to steer their staff away from burnout themselves. To do this, leaders and employees alike should each share their own expectations for their role and projected growth. While burnout typically means the employee is gone for good, disengagement is when an employee tends to stick with the bare minimum.
 
Then, Steve shares his best tactics to inspire change within his team. Step one is around daily communication of both expectations and outcomes. Listeners are reminded that when employees feel they are just doing tedious work, they tend to build up resentment for the work. Leaders should ensure their employees feel like they matter and that their work is appreciated and useful for someone. Sometimes, an employee’s lack of engagement can also be a result of a lack of career advancement opportunities. If a leader is not providing a path towards learning and knowing how to level up their skillset, the employee will end up providing those things for themselves and will ultimately leave your team. Steve explains that career advancement does not always mean a succession of higher job titles. Many people are much happier as senior analysts or marketers than they would be in a C-suite position. Before wrapping up, our hosts and guest reiterate the necessity of career advancement for employee retention. Finally, they engage in a fun guessing game to reveal what career Steve would pursue outside of the cybersecurity marketing field.
 
Links:
 
Follow Steve LaChance on LinkedIn.
Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.
 

Maximizing Your Branding Potential with Shlomi Ashkenazy

Welcome to Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing, where we explore the hottest topics in cyber marketing, interview experts and help you become a better cybersecurity marketer! In this episode, Shlomi Ashkenazy, Head of Brand at Cybellum, joins Maria and Gianna to discuss how to maximize your branding potential.
 
To begin, Shlomi defines branding as the core narrative and story your organization wants to tell. This narrative can be uncovered by asking customers key driving questions to determine how their perception grows over time. These questions may include things like How well do you know our company? Who do you see us as? and What do we do? Brand momentum is typically generated from a combination of what you do as a founder and the work of the sales team. Next, Shlomi shares his story of tying brand into a venture capital investment. It all comes down to convincing investors that something big is in store for your idea. Shlomi sees branding as an engineering discipline as if you are building out a product scientifically. It requires less intuition and more customer feedback.
 
Next, Shlomi speaks to how companies can stand out in such a crowded market like cybersecurity. The first thing to do is try to simplify things as much as possible to help people better understand what you do. Then, try to find a niche and really stick with it. He also shares about the efforts he has made which didn’t work out as planned. As long as you remain agile and can afford to make mistakes, there is always something to be learned when things don’t work out. He also shares his discovery that a CEO is not important for a brand, but rather the CEO is the brand. The best way to know when your company’s story is not working is when the sales team is unhappy. If, after trying it out and it still isn’t sticking, it’s time to change direction. In the first few years of operations, around 30-40% of a brand’s budget should go to marketing. Finally, they engage in a fun guessing game to reveal what career Shlomi would pursue outside of the cybersecurity marketing field.
 
Links:
 
Follow Shlomi Ashkenazy on LinkedIn.
Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
Follow Gianna on LinkedIn.
Catch up with Maria on LinkedIn.
Join the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on Twitter.