How Cybersecurity Marketers Have Adjusted to COVID-19

Key Insights

Cybersecurity markets are growing fast in the pandemic.

The overall market is growing at a rate of 2.5% while IT spending is down 8.9% The early winners are vendors in the SD-WAN space who are up 57.5% YOY in Q1, SaaS Secured Gateway, up 14.6%, ATP up 12.6%, eMail Security up 8.4% and even Firewall spending was up 3%. Our findings suggest that to leverage this growth in the second half of 2020, marketers should:

1. Use data-driven content analytics methods to increase share of voice and to develop more effective new content
2. Ensure consistent messaging with a clear, differentiated value proposition and supporting evidence, avoiding ‘me too’ themes
3. Enhance pipeline velocity and yield with creative tactics that replace in-person events and face-to-face client meetings
4. Drive higher branding impact by optimizing advertising strategies toward retargeting and more personalized campaign journeys
5. Shift content toward platform-optimized video with direct, pointed messaging that delivers value quickly

Chapter Preview

• Survey Methodology –The results in this report are compiled from field interviews with over 150 cybersecurity Marketing Professionals representing a range of vendors from very mature through early stage.
• Pandemic Challenges – In most of the interviews and survey results showed content as being a large challenge during the pandemic.
• Lead Conversion Impact –As the Pandemic began to establish a foothold during February, 100% of the 150 marketers in initial field interviews cited lead quality or lead conversion rates as their top priorities.
• Content Efficacy – Most respondents (78%) claimed that they were experiencing less content engagement after COVID-19 than before.
• Data Strategies – The pandemic has had a measurable impact on data strategies. The new normal WFH environment combined with an onslaught of continuous information has elevated emotions and affected trust.
• Messaging and Content –With 2,000+ product and service vendors in the cybersecurity space competing for attention amid buyers working from home, authentic messaging is more important than ever.
• Advertising – Research shows that half the money brands spend with online publishers is lost in the programmatic advertising supply chain – and 15% is unattributed.
• Marketing Automation –Marketing automation integration is being embraced by an overwhelming majority of Cybersecurity marketers this year. 92% of those surveyed are investing more resources and budget into marketing automation integration.
• Pandemic Insights – COVID-19 has acted as a major catalyst for InfoSec teams to begin to rethink conventional static defense postures and initiate network transformations that better match today’s architecture where users and applications reside everywhere.