How Will Cloud Spending Impact Cybersecurity PR and Marketing Budgets in 2023?

As discussed in our previous entry, Venture Capital funding in cybersecurity will likely become restrained in 2023 due to the ongoing economic downturn. Consequently, cybersecurity PR and marketing budgets are likely to take a hit heading into the new financial year.   

However, vendors looking to axe their PR and security budgets might want to reconsider their budgeting strategies. This is because the avenue of cloud spending still remains high throughout this year. Gartner predicts that global cloud spending will increase by 20.7% in 2023. As always, more cloud initiatives mean more potential scope for cyber threats.  

So, for vendors focusing on cloud security, cybersecurity PR and marketing operations will be critical in surviving this economic downturn.  

Let’s discuss how the cloud’s growth has impacted cybersecurity marketing and public relations budgets. By understanding the impact of budgets on the cloud, we can understand how it affects the marketing and PR industry. 

Reimagining Cybersecurity PR in the time of recession 

In the last financial year, cloud revenue growth has been rather stale compared to the massive increase during Covid. The findings from Microsoft’s financial reports prove that their cloud services are operating at a loss towards the end of the 2022 fiscal year. According to several mainstream reports, Microsoft Azure consumption revenue in the last fiscal year was under $29 billion, less than Wall Street analysts predicted. 

Microsoft Cloud Revenue 2021-22

This underwhelming financial performance means that cloud service providers will expand more rigorously this year, and cloud security vendors will likely follow.  

So, as companies start to reinvent their cloud service offerings, security vendors will need to be on the front foot to promote their products as a solution to cloud security threats. This would be an uphill challenge if vendors were to limit their PR and marketing initiatives.  

It is understandable that cybersecurity PR and marketing budgets will need to be constrained to survive the ongoing economic turbulence. However, vendors must look for new ways to get better outputs from their ongoing PR practices, if they want to achieve wider benefits from the increasing cloud infrastructure development.   

One potential solution is to consolidate PR services and focus on key marketing avenues that provide more immediate results. For instance, rather than spending on enhancing your booth presentation at trade shows, focus on improving relations with channel-focused media outlets. Optimise your marketing priorities.  

Redirect your PR strategies to acquire new leads and build better relations with niche cloud service providers. Look for specific trends in cloud spending, and position your marketing campaigns accordingly to achieve the best results in the short term. These initiatives will go a long way in getting the best out of your limited cybersecurity PR and marketing budgets.  

In the next blog, we will explore how organisations can effectively pursue service consolidation to achieve better ROI. Join us next time as we discuss different factors before opting for consolidated services.  

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