New General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) data rules come into force in May 2018, meaning bigger fines for companies who fail to defend against cybercrime.
Curiously, though, if you’re a B2B tech brand, this actually presents a ripe opportunity, as we’ll start to see more and more big tech contracts won and lost on cybersecurity.
It’s not a minor issue. In 2015, TalkTalk was hacked by a spotty teenager. It was fined £400,000 for failing to adequately secure customer data, and subsequently haemorrhaged 101,000 customers and £60 million in sales.
To counter this threat, businesses are increasingly involving their senior tech experts (CIO/CSO/CISO/CTO) in their buying decisions. That leads to one conclusion for B2B tech marketers: play up the fear factor, and put the ‘cybersecurity sell’ front and centre in your campaigns.
Take Facebook, for example, which continues to nurture its developer community with the launch of Threatexchange. Nominally for IT security professionals, this social network is marketed as a B2B product to the businesses that employ them.
But cybersecurity sell doesn’t just apply to specialist tech businesses. Brands that traditionally resided outside the tech space, like PwC and KPMG, are moving to provide tailored cybercrime defences for their existing clients’ industries.
Scale this approach for your own B2B brand: whether it’s a product division, a product, or a product feature, ensure you’ve got something to offer for today’s cybercrime-savvy tech buyers.
After all, awareness is growing everywhere. Just under three-quarters (73%) of major global businesses report that cybersecurity features in board meetings at least quarterly. Plus senior decision-makers have both a personal and professional stake in defending against cybercrime: Target’s CEO Gregg Steinhafel was fired in 2014 following a data breach that affected 40 million customers and the company’s CIO Bob DeRodes was replaced by an executive with a very strong background in information security.
How do you manage the cybersecurity sell?
The CSO/CISO/CIO is more interested in cybersecurity than in your core product proposition, so be sure to prepare marketing and sales collateral that answers this buyer’s specific needs. You see B2B brands now talking cybersecurity through forbidding colours and imagery. One great example is HP’s ‘The Wolf’ campaign – putting the cybercrime sell on a range of office printers.
But it doesn’t all hinge on flashy events or big-budget influencers. Thought leadership via PR, content and social media is an excellent way to position your business as a cybercrime-conscious brand.
Remember that playing off fear in advertising is a delicate art. It can certainly be done badly; but if the fear is of a genuine and present threat, and if your product solves that problem, it would be imprudent not to flag it to the relevant buyer.
So by building your campaign around your buyer’s interests, positioning your brand and your product accordingly, and reflecting this understanding in your creative, you’ll stand a good chance of winning contracts based on the cybersecurity sell.
