Putting trust into your thought leadership content
By Robin Campbell-Burt, CEO, Code Red
I recently finished hosting our latest webinar on cybersecurity in the national media (you can check a recording here) and had some interesting feedback from one of the attendees. It got me thinking about how so much marketing is breaking trust with audiences – the very currency that cybersecurity decision makers elevate above everything else.
Here’s the feedback:
“Sometimes I am a bit sceptical about these webinars, because more than once I ended up in those promoting their own services, but this one was different. I found some insights highly beneficial.”
Much of what you see in cybersecurity marketing can feel like a thin veneer of ‘thought leadership’. But the moment it hooks, it just catapults the audience into a set of sales messages.
People feel cheated. They are searching for advice or the latest thinking on something pressing in their professional lives. So, when they find what they think may be useful – a webinar, a piece of content, etc. – only to be duped, they are repelled.
A big reason for this is that cybersecurity vendors are in an intense race that is fueled by venture capital. Marketing leaders feel this pressure. One way they respond is to show quantifiable metrics and the immediate contribution to the sales and marketing pipeline.
It means that being useful through thought leadership is rushed. It is not given the space and air that it needs to take effect – to build brand credibility and trust. The temptation is too great to force every interaction into a sales funnel as soon as possible.
People only buy from people they know, like and trust. In cybersecurity this is double the case. Security decision makers can never fully test your product. They must trust that your security tool will continue to work in the future as the threat landscape changes if they are to buy you.
If you want to be trusted by security decision-makers, your marketing needs to build this trust into everything you do.
Think about that the next time you put together thought leadership content.