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By Florie Lhuillier, head of cybersecurity at CCGroup.
The cybersecurity industry has had a turbulent few years. Cybersecurity vendors today are selling solutions in a challenging market environment: geopolitical events are making attacks more likely, the talent shortage is worsening, and the global economic uncertainty continues.
This is making keeping up with a growing number of attacks extremely difficult, and profoundly altering requirements. Many enterprises are, understandably, scrutinising budgets closely, affecting how much they can spend with cybersecurity vendors.
However, despite these challenges, the outlook for cybersecurity vendors remains broadly positive.
The current state of security investments
According to our recent research, the market for cybersecurity products and services remains buoyant. 78% of enterprises in the US and 58% in the UK have increased their investments in the last year. 81% of enterprises overall are looking to work with new cybersecurity technology suppliers in the next 12 months.
It’s clear the future for cybersecurity vendors is looking brighter than we might expect. But this raises the question, what factors are currently driving these purchases?
The study reveals technology advances to be the main driver in both the US and the UK (42% and 41% respectively), followed by keeping up with increasingly sophisticated threats (36% and 39%). This is not surprising given attack surfaces are always growing. Demand from clients was also reported by 28% of US respondents, while keeping up with competitors is more of a driver in the UK (28%). Three years ago, technology advances and keeping up with threats were the top priorities in the UK, followed by regulatory demands, then response to an attack. The reduced focus on regulation suggests that enterprises feel they are compliant.
When it comes to the type of security solutions companies plan to buy in the next 12 months, endpoint security took the top spot among US and UK enterprises (51% and 56% respectively). Application security is also anticipated to be an important investment (43% and 53%), followed by fraud prevention (36% and 52%).
Generating awareness and driving selection
There remains a strong appetite for cybersecurity products and services which is great news for the industry. However, given the current market conditions, seizing this opportunity cannot be done using the same methods of even a year ago. The market environment has changed; therefore, the way cybersecurity vendors market their offerings must change too. As a cybersecurity vendor marketer, what’s the best way to grab attention? And how can you better communicate your ability to solve enterprises’ problems?
According to the cybersecurity technology buyers we surveyed, the most influential channel in terms of building their awareness of cybersecurity vendors are industry analysts, followed by broader business events, business technology media and trade media.
In the UK specifically, broader business events (70%) industry analysts (69%) and industry-specific events (67%) are considered the strongest in terms of generating awareness, closely followed by trade media (66%). Evidently, compared to a few years ago, in-person events have bounced back significantly following the pandemic. More than 41,000 people attended RSA this year whilst 20,000 participated in Infosecurity Europe.
When asked about the channels and content buyers find most influential when narrowing down lists of prospective vendors, business technology media (76%), web search (74%) and webinars (73%) were all cited as important. In the UK, this survey’s data also showed a surge in relevance of social media as a channel compared with a few years ago—from 38% to 62%.
Long-form content written either by vendors themselves or by industry analysts was cited as most influential in both the US and the UK. Buyers want content that demonstrates vendors can solve their problems, understand their business, prove the value of their solutions and act as a trusted source of industry knowledge. For this reason, blogs remain the most influential content in both markets (92% in the US and 93% in the UK) and case studies (87%) are also considered to be an extremely valuable source of trusted information at the selection stage.
Getting deals across the finish line
The market for cybersecurity solutions and services may be booming but grasping this opportunity requires a new approach.
Our research shows that every channel and every content type has a role to play in a cybersecurity vendor’s overall marketing and external communications strategy—and buyers’ needs should be at the core of this strategy.
To master all channels simultaneously, vendors need to design and implement a data-driven, precise, and highly dynamic marketing strategy that is in line with the new buying landscape. They also need to ensure that all the activities they do, from the top to the bottom of the funnel, highlight how they can solve buyers’ problems and meet their needs.
