Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing

Corporate Social Responsibility & Fiberglass Alligator Bites with Peter Wheeler

We’re joined this week by Peter Wheeler, Senior Manager PLG - Partnerships, Startups, Nonprofits at Auth0, to find out just what makes him…the most interesting man in the world! After years as a serial entrepreneur, Peter joined Auth0, powered by Okta, to positively impact nonprofits, charities, and for-profits working to benefit social issues. Peter talks with us about product-led growth, giving back even when you don’t have the budget, and caring about customer advocacy before it was cool.
 
Timecoded Guide:
[00:00] Founding businesses & joining the Auth0 team during COVID
[07:01] Making a conscious effort with cyber to give back to the greater good
[12:18] Diving into cybersecurity special audiences & product-led growth
[19:42] Understanding customer advocacy & reducing verification friction
[27:40] Collecting anecdotal and case studies from self-service customers
[33:11] Being bitten by a fiberglass alligator & biting down on some brisket
 
What advice do you have for cybersecurity companies that would want to have a corporate social responsibility, but are either too small or don’t have the funding? 
Instead of hiding behind the excuses of not being big enough or wealthy enough, Peter believes that cybersecurity companies all have the potential to give back to nonprofits and startups. Peter says when in doubt of what to do, think simply. If your company is interested in equitable product access for companies with limited budgets, consider offering mentorship or training opportunities, or engaging your staff by offering time off for volunteering. 
“You can never be too small. We can all volunteer independently, we can all sit on a board, we can all show up. That's it, just show up. You can mentor. Yeah, you might not have enough money. You can avoid that, you can skip that. Just simple things, it doesn't have to be a lot.”
 
What are your “strong opinions” on special audiences, now that you work with them? 
Many of the audiences Peter works with have not made a budgetary allocation mentally, or financially, towards things like cybersecurity. Part of his work with Auth0, because of this unaware audience, has involved implementing training and educational processes for these businesses. Showing them why cybersecurity is so important and teaching them to implement good first steps like stronger passwords is vital for marketing efforts and product-led growth. 
“In nonprofits, in startups, there's a big shareholder footprint, stakeholder footprint, people that are affected by what the organization does. Educating that audience is good. Making them understand what cybersecurity truly is is good, so they implement at least the simple things.” 
 
How does Auth0 implement product-led growth? 
Auth0’s freemium, the self-service product can satisfy just about everyone. The secret sauce of their success? Increasing customer advocacy and refusing friction. Good documentation, strong outside-of-network customer support, being active with customers and having your staff invigorated about your product all contribute to a more satisfying and therefore more trustworthy environment, which keeps companies coming back for more.
“If you're building community, you're working with developers, you're working with individuals, you're working with smaller organizations, and you're putting a free or cheap product in front of them, whether it be discounted enterprise or freemium model, you're developing that trust.”
 
What are you doing for this user so they feel like they're being treated like an enterprise, even though they may be a team of one? 20:13
Self-service customers are rarely given the same treatment as enterprise customers in most companies, Peter explains, but Auth0 works hard to provide the documentation and ease of access needed to make things as frictionless as possible for those users. Additionally, validating an organization’s startup or nonprofit status can take time and create friction, too. Auth0 works with third-party organizations to quicken and simplify this process as well. 
“Reducing customer friction to come on is key. If somebody signs up, don't make them verify their email, skip that step. Let them play with the dashboard. Let them build something because guess what? They're going to verify their email at some point.”
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Links:
Get tickets for our upcoming CyberMarketingCon 2022. 
Spend some time with our guest Peter Wheeler on LinkedIn and his personal website
Lend your ear to Peter’s podcast, Hey, Good Chat!
And of course, who could forget Peter’s theme song? It’s My Life by Bon Jovi
Check out Auth0 on LinkedIn and the Auth0 website. 
Learn more about Okta on LinkedIn and the Okta website.
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.

B2B Cybersecurity Marketing Tactics with Travis Hawley

How do you make B2B cybersecurity marketing interesting? This episode brings Travis Hawley, the Director of Media at BlueVoyant, to the Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing podcast to find out. He talks about the background that led him to cybersecurity marketing, his current role at BlueVoyant, how companies can use emerging media to promote products or services, and indeed how to make B2B cybersecurity marketing more interesting. Plus, Travis shares the Facebook groups he created and introverts in cybersecurity.
Timecoded Guide: [05:20] What BlueVoyant does and the stage of the company
[08:40] How companies with limited resources can use emerging media
[11:17] How to make B2B marketing engaging, educational, and sticky
[23:14] How to get your employees engaging and sharing content
[27:26] How to get founders or CEOs engaged and what to do if you can’t
[42:21] Travis’ Facebook groups and meme culture 
What is emerging media and how can companies with limited resources use it?
Traditional media is your white papers, blogs, reports, email marketing, etc. Those have their place and are useful but emerging media is two-fold. But Travis believes it’s video but it’s also what new platforms arise (like TikTok). In terms of limited resources, work with what you do have. For example, if you have a two-hour long webinar already recorded, you can take that and break it up into shorter 30-second video clips. Now you have content already done you can simply post in your marketing campaign.
“If you have limited resources, you have to be creative. And you may not be able to do it at the scale you want. But you can still get video out there, even if it isn't the most ideal video experience that you want. Start small, start with what you have, and just start creating that account of the data of any kind of video and you'll most likely start seeing the results of that.”
 
How do you make B2B marketing engaging?
Travis says you need two big things: faces and voices. People want to engage with content featuring someone who looks like them and talks like them. Graphics and the like aren’t engaging enough. You need to feature the faces and voices of your target audience and/or your employees because people don’t buy from companies; they buy from people. You can even do an animated video of the text of someone's quote and their headshot.
“So to me, in most cases, all content will fall under two buckets: it's either educational, or I would say utilitarian, useful. Or it's entertaining. And then hopefully, the best of both worlds is if you can have overlap there. And if they are educational and entertaining, and there's overlap to some degree, then the content is sticky, you're gonna have retention.How do you get employees engaged with marketing?
Again, faces and voices. In Travis’ experience, employees generally like to celebrate their co-worker's achievements. So if you post a video of someone in one department and tell the rest of the company, it’s much more impactful than a paid actor. Because the employees know this person, they work with this person, they want to support this person. Employees don’t necessarily have a relationship with other employees, but they have a relationship with their co-workers.
“Employee advocacy starts from the ground up, any employee needs to be empowered to create content, to co-develop content, to ideate content, and to star in the content. And that's how you get people to want to engage more to support their own colleagues.
 
What about founders, how do you get founders or CEOs engaged with marketing strategy?
Founders and C-suite executives are very busy people. So start with trying to figure out the value that marketing is adding to your company, and go to the data. Show the founder the value and see if you can get buy-in from them but if you can’t, that’s okay. You can find other influencers and subject matter experts in the company who want to advocate for the services and the company itself. Employees are just as effective evangelizers.
“They're the leaders of the company. And they have the most knowledge and on the vision and on the services and things like that. But you don't need them, let's just be honest, you don't.”
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Links: 
Get tickets for our upcoming CyberMarketingCon2022 
Spend some time with our guest Travis Hawley on his LinkedIn or on his Twitter.Follow Gianna on LinkedInCatch up with Maria on LinkedInJoin the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on TwitterKeep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter

Hitting the Refresh Button on Your Brand Marketing with Kayla Rice

“Brand marketing” may sound like just another branding buzzword, but this episode tackles this concept as a real strategy with data behind it. Kayla Rice, Senior Manager of Brand and Creative Studio at SpyCloud, joins the pod to discuss brand awareness, brand marketing strategy, refresh vs. rebrand, and so much more about all things branding. Learn how to make brand marketing a part of your marketing growth team, how to handle a big or small brand refresh, and how to balance your messaging across platforms.
Timecoded Guide: [03:20] Deciphering Kayla’s title: Senior Manager of Brand and Creative Studio
[07:48] Focusing marketing team members on seeing brand as influencing the pipeline
[15:39] Comparing and contrasting brand refresh and rebrand
[23:59] Understanding the phenomenon of debranding
[34:28] Balancing your brand messaging across social media platforms 
[40:58] Looking at metrics from a brand-growing perspective 
How do you get non-brand-focused marketers to see brand as influencing a sales pipeline?
Focusing your marketing team on branding can depend on the size of the organization, according to Kayla. In smaller organizations, there are pieces to branding that every member of the marketing team can appreciate. Smaller teams also encourage members to work together to create the best experience for audience members and product launches, whereas teams at larger organizations can have less interconnectedness and less role appreciation.
“Whether it be launching a sponsored report, whether that be podcast ads, organic, social, there's so many levers your company can pull to really make people understand who you are, what you stand for, what you're trying to solve, and the people who are backing all of that.”
 
What’s the difference between a brand refresh and a rebrand?
Some marketing teams think they’ve changed the color palette or logo and they’ve rebranded. Unfortunately, Kayla explains that this is not the case. A rebrand happens in situations when you experience an acquisition or you’re truly renaming your company. In contrast, a brand refresh is more of an evolution of your brand. It’s taking from what you’ve learned in your brand marketing campaigns and growing upon those lessons with your team.
“It really is so much more than just updating a logo or color palette, it's really digging into: What is your messaging framework? Who are you going after? It’s being able to speak to them where they are, meet them where they are, and then, dangling that carrot in front of them of what could be.”
 
How do you balance your messaging across social media platforms?
Kayla believes that balance across social media platforms requires staying flexible and adaptable. Marketing teams can and should adjust their tone depending on the channel and messaging. Social media should be more of a place to experiment and see what works with your brand and audience, as well as what doesn’t. Do your market research, adjust your content across popular social media platforms, and see where each step takes you.
“It's been really exciting to see and it's ever-growing, and always new ideas and new things that we're going to do.”
 
What metrics should you look at from the perspective of growing your brand?
While metrics should be measured in different ways depending on the source, Kayla explains that website metrics should involve visits, time on the page, and click-through rates. From a social media perspective, follower count matters, even if it feels like a vanity check. More followers and visitors equals more eyeballs on your content and a larger potential user base. Kayla also advises not to forget about reposts, reshares, and interactions with your paid ads.
“If we're opting to do paid ads or podcast sponsorships, for example. Okay, what is their viewer or their listenership? What does their audience look like? How many times are we a participant in that? How many downloads were there?”
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Links: 
Get tickets for our upcoming CyberMarketingCon2022 
Spend some time with our guest Kayla Rice on her LinkedIn or email her at kayla.rice@SpyCloud.comFollow Gianna on LinkedInCatch up with Maria on LinkedInJoin the Cybersecurity Marketing Society on our website, and keep up with us on TwitterKeep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter

The Scariest Cybersecurity Event Red Flags with Jason Cenamor

We’re joined this week by Jason Cenamor, Founder of the CISO Society, to talk about the community he’s focused on building for fellow CISOs, as well as his extensive background in cybersecurity events. Events aren’t always an easy topic for cybersecurity marketers looking to make the most of their marketing budgets, but Jason has the dirt on all things events; the good, the bad, and the downright scary. Looking to spot an event red flag before it wastes your time and money? Jason is your guy!
 
Timecoded Guide:
[00:00] Introducing Jason Cenamor & the CISO Society
[05:50] Transitioning from cyber event management into community building
[15:59] Noticing best event strategies & prioritizing transparent event vendors
[24:16] Understanding the value of custom curated events and targeted invite lists
[32:27] Building events better to provide value and community in cybersecurity
[41:59] Getting the best price from event vendors, no matter who you choose
 
Did you envision your career would shift towards community building, content creation, and networking?
Until recently, Jason didn’t consider his career path would’ve evolved and shifted into a focus on the CISO Society. Originally started as a side project, the CISO Society was born from Jason’s passion for building community and putting on hybrid in-person and virtual events. When the Society took off and continued to grow larger under Jason’s care, he realized more and more of his passion and energy belonged with the CISOs he was working with everyday. 
“I started the CISO Society as a side project, because obviously, what's better than to start developing a network of CISOs that I could get access to for real market intelligence when I'm working with these advisory boards.” 
 
What are some noticeable green lights of a good event vendor for cyber marketers to look out for? 
While Jason dives deep into the red flags of bad cybersecurity event vendors, he also reassures us that there are incredible events out there. Jason recommends his favorite companies, including the always consistent Evanta, but more than that, he gives us advice on what makes a good cybersecurity event. Unsurprisingly for cybersecurity practitioners, transparency in invitees and agendas signify an event vendor is much more trustworthy. 
“I think the key is how transparent the event company is going to be with the information they give you. A typical tactic of some event companies is to password protect their attendee list. In my personal opinion, all that does is show that you have something to hide.”
 
What are the event vendor red flags we should worry about?
We want the dirt on what makes an event vendor a waste of time or resources, and Jason delivers with a list of red flags. From password protected invite lists to calendars full of unpromising events to not giving money back, Jason has seen the worst of the worst in events. Despite the scary practices in place, Jason is happy to report that many of these elements are on the outs in the cyber world as we continue to call companies out and hold them accountable in groups like the Cyber Marketing Society.
“That is such an important question for any vendor to ask: How are you forming the agenda? Because that shows how much they care about the CISO experience or not. If they don't care about the CISO experience, they're not going to have a good audience.”
 
What sort of content makes a good event for CISOs? 
Many of the event vendors Jason discusses with us have been approved not only by his own experience running events, but by his fellow CISOs in the CISO Society. But what really makes an event worth it for a CISO? Why are they showing up, and how can we help them show up more? Jason explains that CISOs thrive in a collaborative environment and don’t just want pitch after pitch of standalone presentations. 
“CISOs actually provide more value in collaborative roundtable discussions, right? That will always be my recommendation. It's great to stand up and to do your thing, but it's better to be part of a conversation and then say, ‘Can I come to your office and do my thing?’”
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Links:
Get tickets for our upcoming Cyber Marketing Con 2022. 
Spend some time with our guest Jason Cenamor on the CISO Society website, or send him an email at Jason@LoremAdvisory.com.
Check out some of the events Jason mentioned on the show: Evanta, HMG Strategy, C-Vision International, CXOSync, Security Current, CISOs Connect, PSI Alliance
Learn more about the CISO Society on their website.
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.
Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.

299 Minutes of Content with Serena Raymond

Serena Raymond, Marketing Director at DNS Filter, walks us through her career journey from social media content creation to Marketing Director at DNS Filter. Serena explains the recipe for virtual event strategy, including how to leverage social media and email marketing to gain speakers and attendees, as well as how your virtual event can translate directly to your sales pipeline. Serena also discusses her opinion on agency marketing company vs internal teams, and reveals her secrets for optimizing impact.Timecoded Guide: [01:53] Moving from social media content creation to Marketing Director
[05:12] Getting started with virtual event marketing strategy
[12:52] Understanding what makes your virtual event worthwhile for sales
[20:25] Taking advantage of being on the internal side of marketing
[25:23] Comparing and contrasting agency and internal marketing
 
How should you host a successful virtual event?
A strong, successful virtual event should include both your company’s internal SMEs, or subject matter experts, and industry experts from outside of your organization. Serena recommends deciding first on the top tracks you want to pursue, before tackling speaker research. Once relevant, experienced speakers have been found, Serena explains that choosing an event platform that meets both your and your audience’s needs is essential.
“Our platform was a huge obstacle for doing a virtual event. There's so much vetting you have to do. I was kind of thinking, ‘Oh, we'll choose a platform and we’ll run.’ There's so much work that goes into that, and that was pretty eye opening.”
What is one key way to entice your desired audience to your virtual event?
Enticing your desired audience should start with LinkedIn and Google ads, which are consistently effective. However, Serena believes the key to your target audience resides with your speakers. Find speakers who appeal directly to your target audience and give them a high quality social media kit. Make it very easy for your speakers to share to followers and potential customers about your event with personalized images, text, and messaging.
“What I think was most key, above all else, was we had a lot of speakers who appeal to that audience. We gave them a really cool social kit, with the links and custom images with their faces, and they were able to share it with their audience on social media.”
 
How do you know if your online event is justifiable in terms of sales pipelines?The
justifiability of your virtual event extends beyond the pipeline and merges into retention. Your goal is to host an event that provides value to both your attendees and speakers. Serena recommends having sales touchpoints at your event, like a happy hour, where folks can gather and connect. Then, once you build that relationship, your sales and marketing teams can remind the potential client about the happy hour and follow up with them.
“We had a little happy hour after the event, and we had some customers come and we actually got great feedback from that. Our sales team was there and we chatted with that customer and took it offline, and we wouldn’t have had that conversation without that event.”What’s the difference in effectiveness between internal marketing and agencies
With experience in both internal and agency marketing, Serena explains that a key difference between the two is that being at a marketing agency puts you on the “outside.” You’re not in the company’s Slack channels or taking part in staff meetings, and you don't have their customer service records. Marketers at agencies don’t have real buy-in or “skin in the game” when it comes to a specific company. The internal marketing teams, on the other hand, have crucial inside information that can help them perform better and boost employee engagement.
“One of the things I loved about being a marketer for a dedicated company, was I got to get really good at it. I got to go deep on the product and understand our audience. I got to listen in on demos, talk to customers, talk to people who aren't in marketing.”
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Links: 
Get tickets for our upcoming CyberMarketingCon2022. 
Spend some time with our guest Serena Raymond 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.
Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. 

Content Marketing Strategy with Chris Cochran & Ron Eddings

Chris Cochran and Ron Eddings are two very special guests on this episode of Breaking Through in Cybersecurity Marketing. Chris and Ron are from Hacker Valley Media, the producers and sponsors of this podcast. Gianna and Maria chat with them about successful content strategy and marketing in cybersecurity, digital marketing successes and failures, and they drop hints about what to expect in their workshop at Cyber Marketing Con 2022.Timecoded Guide:[01:51] Successful content marketing strategy in cybersecurity
[05:32] Successes and failures in cybersecurity marketing strategy
[15:01] Cyber Marketing Con workshop hints and teasers 
What does a successful content marketing strategy look like in cybersecurity?Putting out content, including audio files, is just the beginning. You have to put out valuable content that’s not always looking to make the sale or fill the sales funnel. It’s also important to know that content strategy and successful marketing campaigns will change over time. You might be completely sold on your cybersecurity marketing strategy only to realize a few months later that you need to pivot. So putting out valuable content but staying flexible is key.
“Everyone should have a content strategy. If you're in business, you have to do content. That's just the name of the game these days.” –Chris Cochran
What are some successes and failures in cybersecurity marketing strategy?One of the biggest failures in content marketing strategy is when you’re trying to entice someone to come to an event but don’t give them any more information. The company tells the audience when and where but leaves out exactly what the event is about. That’s not enticing, that feels like the company is simply trying to fill out their sales funnel. They're not addressing pain points.
One of the biggest content marketing strategy successes is giving value to your community. Yes, you need to think about business objectives. But if all you’re doing is selling, it’s not a two-way conversation with your audience. It’s an inauthentic ad campaign when it's not offering value.
“So you have, whether it's a lead, whether it's me signing up for a demo, but I don't necessarily feel invited to this event, I feel invited to your funnel.” –Ron Eddings
“We can also serve people instead of sell to them in order to really build that community, build that engagement with everyone that you're trying to speak to.” –Chris Cochran
 
What kinds of things can Cyber Marketing Con attendees expect from Chris and Ron’s workshop?
Everyone wants to start a podcast, but not everyone will be successful at it. There are so many details to figure out, from platform to people to solutions to problems. Chris and Ron are going to help people learn how to start and submit your podcast effectively. And even more importantly, how to record and edit a popular podcast that actually has meaning and value to podcast listeners. You’ll learn the tips and tricks Chris and Ron didn’t know when they launched their first podcast.
“I would say the thing that we're going to talk about the most, some might say that it's harder than it looks: making a podcast that has impact. I would say podcasting is more nuanced than it looks.” –Chris Cochran
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Links: 
Get tickets for our upcoming Cyber Marketing Con 2022. 
Spend some time with our guests Chris and Ron on their website.
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.
Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. 

Build Brand Awareness via Demand Gen with Elliot Volkman

Elliot Volkman, Director of Brand, Content, and Community at Drata, joins us in this episode to talk about demand generation strategies, also known more casually as demand gen. Demand gen consists of targeted marketing programs to drive brand awareness and build interest for qualified leads in products, services, and more. Tune in to our discussion with Elliot to learn how demand gen intersects with sales enablement, brand, content, and even community. 
Timecoded Guide:[03:52] Demand gen vs. brand message
[07:40] The goal of demand gen in an organization
[14:48] How demand gen ties into content and community members
[22:45] Key metrics and KPIs to track brand awareness
[31:04] Experimentation and demand gen 
How does demand gen differ from and bring focus to brand awareness?
Elliot believes that a lot of C-level executives mistake brand awareness for traditional marketing or product marketing. Brand awareness is more about what customers see when they encounter your company via search engine. Product marketing is instead about targeting specific personas. Demand generation fits into brand awareness because it’s designed to drive customer’s awareness of your company and build interest in your products, rather than directly marketing those products to them through product marketing strategies.
“The most important and critical aspect that organizations fail to pay attention to is building your brand, especially building voice and messaging around it that resonates.”
What is the goal of demand generation if not to drive sales?
A lot of organizations have an executioner and a product marketing lead, with various jobs for each role. Demand gen’s job is to take the webinars the executioner makes and the messaging the product marketer makes, and then guide those towards business alignment and increased brand awareness. Elliot emphasizes that demand generation drives sales, but does not drive lead generation. Demand gen is not supposed to chase leads the way a product marketing manager might, it’s instead supposed to build awareness.
“I think there's two aspects of demand gen, depending on the organizational size and what they do, but at the end of the day, the demand generation strategy does have to drive pipeline.”How does demand gen tie into content and community?
Oftentimes, in Elliot’s opinion, marketing can rely too much on technology. While technology is critical, you don’t have to educate anyone on why it’s important. Demand gen focuses more on humanizing the brand and building something fully centered around the customer. You rely on internal experts to build a community that ties everything together from marketing to security to visuals, and beyond. And in the end, the customer should be the hero and should feel like one in your demand generation strategy.
“It’s about focusing on people, focusing on processes, and embracing technology, of course. At the end of the day, having our customers be a voice is absolutely critical to the success of our future.”What are the KPIs to track brand awareness?
There may be numerous ways to track brand awareness, but Elliot explains that the main KPI is organic traffic to the website. The byproducts of increased organic website traffic include organic increases in demo requests, nurturing people through the buying process, and acting as fuel for the engine of marketing campaigns. There’s no direct selling in a demand generation strategy. You can avoid those most-hated marketing tactics, like when you cold call or appear in their already crowded email inboxes. Demand gen is all organic and based on nurturing the customer.
“We're not trying to brainwash people by any means, we're actually able to help educate them along the way. We build a relationship through that education and through those materials, and then, maybe they'll check out what our product does, or they've decided to download something, and we can continue to nurture them.” 
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Links: 
Get tickets for our upcoming Cyber Marketing Con 2022. 
Spend some time with our guest Elliot Volkman on LinkedIn, Twitter, and his podcast, Adopting Zero Trust.
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.
Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.

Sales Enablement to Gain Qualified Leads with Matthew Delman

Matthew Delman, Director of Product Marketing at LookingGlass Cyber, joins the show this week to discuss all things related to sales enablement strategy. Sales enablement helps businesses provide consistent messaging throughout all their content. This enables (Get it?) potential customers to have a seamless journey from discovery of a company to purchase of products or services. In this episode, Matt teaches us how to boost a sales cycle, streamline communication, and improve internal organization, all through the magic of sales enablement.Timecoded Guide:[02:48] Explaining sales enablement and how it fits into marketing strategy
[06:31] Transforming sales enablement into a faster sales cycle
[14:00] Integrating sales enablement into company culture
[20:20] Essential tools to include in your future sales enablement kit 
What is sales enablement and why is it important?
The core of sales enablement is ensuring your message gets out to your marketplace with consistency. During this process, Matt explains that your team is supporting the buyer journey with one-to-many messaging. This ensures a consistent flow in each stage of the sales journey and enables each department to touch on the same concepts. Essentially, sales enablement helps your customer avoid confusion and pain points so that they can go from first contact to purchase seamlessly.
“When your buyers read your content, or they download a white paper, or they go to an event, and then, they're contacted by your salesperson, they should get an extension of that same message.” –Matthew Delman
How does sales enablement convert into a faster sales cycle?
Sales teams are usually hyper focused on making sales. While this fits their goals and metrics, this one-track mindset breeds confusion if they can’t find exactly the materials they need when they need them. In order to save the sale with potential clients, your sales team might create one-off materials that are a good fit in that moment, but do not match what the marketing team is saying. Successful sales enablement streamlines internal processes so that sales teams have exactly what they need, when they need it.
“Sales enablement is about training your sales team to make sure they're confident in talking about your solution, but it's also making sure that they can find the collateral that they need when a prospect asks for it.” How do you get sales teams to buy into sales enablement and use the organizational tools you create?
Sales enablement starts with sales leadership, according to Matt. If you tell the sales manager that your sales enablement strategy will help them close deals faster, essentially every single decision maker will sign on. Once you have the leadership on board, the sales team will follow their guidance. You might have to do some negotiation in terms of support and positioning for the team, but once the sales enablement leaders understand it will increase business, it usually becomes an easy sell.
“With sales enablement, your whole goal is to make the deals move faster, to make them smoother, to essentially smooth out the lumps in the sales cycle because you are responding to your prospects' questions in a timely manner with consistent information.” –Matthew DelmanWhat are the key tools to include in a sales enablement kit?
Matt explains that a few tools need to be included in your sales enablement kit to ensure success. His list includes a unified pitch deck, educational videos or an educational call recording, high-level product trainings, and a few plug-and-play email templates. The pitch deck shouldn’t have the exact same slides for everything, but rather allow for customization within limits, a sample call can provide a real-time example of the sale, and trainings and templates make sure your sales team are knowledgeable and have structured responses ready at all times. 
“You want to have your main points for each slide in the deck, and basically say, ‘Here's the main points that you should hit on this slide. How you say it, I don't care. But here's the main points.’” 
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Links: 
Get tickets for our upcoming CyberMarketingCon 2022. 
Spend some time with our guest Matthew Delman on Twitter and 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.Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. 

Social Media Strategy to Meet Business Goals with Diane Shapiro

Diane Shapiro, Social Media Manager for cybersecurity companies, joins us to discuss all things social media. As a social media strategist for top B2B companies, PR agencies, and cybersecurity industries, Diane has over 10 years of experience helping companies broadcast their messages on social media to gain engagement and meet business goals. This week, Diane talks to us about employee engagement, post scheduling, metrics of measuring success, and how to speak to your target audience online.
Timecoded Guide:
[02:03] Engaging employees in your cybersecurity social media strategy
[07:20] Encouraging employees to create company content on social networks
[14:11] Gamifying content strategy to further encourage online engagement
[19:40] Measuring essential metrics when reaching social media goals
[24:40] Crafting a strong message to your target audience through effective customer service
 
How do you sell employees on the idea of social media strategy?
It’s one thing to have C-suite higher-ups pushing out posts on social media, but it’s another thing entirely to have everyday employees engaged and sharing as well. Employee education in the form of webinars allow the opportunity to explain how every member of your company can play a part online. After training team members about the importance of social media, consider incorporating weekly reminders on Slack, or setting aside specific office hours where employees can ask questions about types of content they could be posting.
“I'll do a couple webinars where I communicate the important point that social media really thrives when you have both the company and individuals posting. Employees then can choose the content they know is going to resonate with their social media audience.”
 
Is there a method to encourage people to write their own posts?
In theory, we think social media is easy. We’re not writing a novel or a thesis, it’s usually just a line or two with a simple photo or graphic. In reality, employees outside of your marketing or social media department are already working full-time jobs, making it especially difficult to get people writing and posting about your company online. Making social media posts as easy as possible is key. Pre-draft posts, edit for your employees, and make it a one-click deal. 
“What I've found in my 10+ years of marketing is that if you don't make posting easy for people, they don't do it.”
 
How do you motivate employees to post authentic content?
The employee engagement platforms can be a great asset when motivating employees to post authentically. For example, some platforms offer employers an opportunity to gamify the experience and turn it into a contest. The key is to make the reward something rare enough that employees feel motivated to participate in the content on their social media channels. However, Diane does warn to be aware: it’s not about the quantity of posts, it’s about quality and scheduling. 
“If you've got seven posts in one day on one person's account, and none for the rest of the week, you're only getting the benefit of one of those posts, not all seven.” 
 
What metrics do you measure to make sure your social media strategy is working?
There are two terms here that Diane wants us to remember: vanity metrics and non-vanity metrics. Vanity metrics on social media channels are things like follower count. Follower count can be useful, but followers can be bought to artificially inflate the count. Diane instead advises to look at non-vanity metrics, such as impressions, likes, comments, and clicks. Those metrics will reveal how much your posts are actually getting interacted with and can determine the reach of your account.
“All these platforms measure in analytics. Clicks from the social assets through to the company's website are things you really want to look at, because that tells us how much your posts are getting interacted with. That's really what matters.” 
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Links: 
Grab your ticket to the Cyber Marketing Con 2022.
Spend some time with our guest Diane Shapiro on LinkedIn 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.
Keep up with Hacker Valley on our website, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.

Product-Led Growth as Your Next Marketing Strategy with Ross Haleliuk

Ross Haleliuk, Head of Product at LimaCharlie, joins us to talk about product-led growth (PLG) and its role in cybersecurity and cloud security. Ross leads us through exactly what PLG is and how SAAS companies can implement it into their product or service processes for customer acquisition, revenue growth, retention, and engagement. Whether you’re a small business or a big company, PLG can ensure your customers are happy with your products and fully engaged with your services— without even going through the traditional sales funnel.Timecoded Guide:[02:01] Defining product-led growth and how businesses can use it to acquire customers
[08:33] How PLG is different in cybersecurity and customer data
[20:06] Balancing a security risk with ease of installation and integration
[28:21] Understanding metrics, conversions, and the customer retention journey
[35:36] Best hiring practices for PLG companies interested in implementing PLG 
What is PLG, and why is everyone talking about it?PLG stands for “product-led growth.” Product-led growth might just sound like another cybersecurity buzzword, but it’s actually a solid business strategy. PLG positions the product as the main drive for customer acquisition, revenue growth, and retainment. Instead of a sales person or team guiding the customer through their purchasing journey, the product itself is fostering engagement, building relationships with paying customers, and showing them its own value.“The part that is incredibly important is that a potential customer has the ability to try the product before they start paying for it, before they purchase.”
How does PLG play out in cybersecurity?Product-led growth can be tricky to implement in a cybersecurity space for a few reasons. The first is that product-led growth requires individual contributors to be empowered to make decisions, try different products, and make suggestions about solutions to problems. This can be difficult to implement in large companies without buy-in from leadership positions. Second, many products in cybersecurity fall under the umbrella of “keeping people safe.” This can be difficult to quantify the specific value of to customers, which is a vital aspect of successful PLG strategies.“The challenge with those kinds of products is: How do you say if it's working? How do you measure if it's working? If you haven't been breached, is it because nobody tried to do it, [or] is the product so good that it stopped it? Did you just get lucky? It's the value that becomes incredibly hard to measure.”How is PLG not just giving away a company’s products for free forever?Implementing a PLG strategy means giving customers a chance to discover the value of your product for themselves, without having to go through a paywall or talk to a sales rep. If customers can immediately see the value of your product, they’re likely to keep using it— and that’s when your sales and/or marketing teams can step in. At the end of the day, PLG doesn’t completely replace a sales team or funnel, but instead makes it easier for your sales team to focus on high-ticket items and customer success.“If a company has 500 people adopt the product, the freemium version in one of their departments, with only 5 people using it, it means that the sales team can now approach and have a conversation, potentially about expanding the 5 people deployment into the 500 people deployment. The sizing of the opportunities becomes easier.”How do you measure the value of a PLG strategy in a cyber company?It can be difficult to measure the value of PLG in a cybersecurity company, but it’s not impossible. What marketers and sales reps need to remember is that there has to be a key event that a customer experiences in order for them to realize the product does what it’s supposed to. For example, if you have an alert set up for someone clicking a link in an email that they’re not supposed to click, that’s a tangible event and alert you can see. That alert shows your customer that the product or software is doing what it’s supposed to do, and therefore illustrates the value of your PLG strategy.
“Building a PLG product requires an incredibly deep knowledge of the customer's needs, motivations, expectations, and everything else that drives the purchasing decisions.”
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Links: 
Grab your ticket to the Cyber Marketing Con 2022.
Spend some time with our guest Ross Haleliuk on LinkedIn or on his website.
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.Additional Resources:
https://ventureinsecurity.substack.com/p/product-led-growth-in-cybersecurity
https://ventureinsecurity.substack.com/p/h1-2022-cybersecurity-product-led
https://ventureinsecurity.substack.com/p/plg-is-an-oasis-not-a-mirage-making
https://ventureinsecurity.substack.com/p/to-bring-plg-to-cybersecurity-lets
https://ventureinsecurity.substack.com/p/first-principles-thinking-and-how