It’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the on month a year where people other than us are paying attention to the details in cybersecurity. Joking aside, public and executive awareness isn’t where it should be, but I like to believe it’s getting better.
In this post, I’m not going to address tactical actions but rather give you some tips for marketing using your own content. While you’re at it, check out the awareness month collection over at Purple Team Apparel!
For Your Clients
Yes, we need to be marketing to our clients. Your competitors’ market to your clients all the time, and you want them to pay attention to your content, not theirs. With that in mind, set an agenda for the month and stick to it. Here are some ideas to get you going:
- Cover your own house. Securing your own house is step 1, tactically. But we don’t do enough talking about it. Use this month to do some light showing off of what you’re doing in this arena:
- Share the one key item you’re tacking this month (without too much detail). This could be a post-action report of your incident tabletop for example.
- Be open and transparent about a threat actor you’re seeing. For example, talk about that recent time where someone texted a member of your team pretending to be the CEO. Whatever it is, our industry needs to be transparent of the fact that we’re just as much under attack.
- Divy out personal tips. We serve people, and we can’t forget that. We do a lot for our clients’ businesses. but cyber incidents disrupt personal lives all the same. Shoot a quick video on enabling MFA on popular personal accounts such as Facebook and Google. Talk about your favorite password manager for personal use, or remind folks that the prince of some obscure country doesn’t have any money for them.
These ideas will get you started, but let your creativity shine here.
For Your Prospects
Obviously, the core of marketing should be for our prospects. We only have so much time in our day, so my first tip is to repeat the above. Cover your own house, be humble and transparent, and share personal wins that people can latch onto and use. This will help position you as a practitioner, a professional in your field. At the same time, the transparency about attacks against your MSP show that you are indeed another human. So, not to be overly repetitive, use the same exact content we covered above.
To add to it, get some social proof. Go to your favorite customer (or maybe top 3) and get them on record about what you’re doing for their cybersecurity. Try to get a case study or quote that demonstrates customer value. Maybe it’s piece of mind, or how you leveraged Microsoft identity to make authenticate secure and easy. Whatever it is, social proof is incredibly valuable (and video is a force multiplication tool here).
Here’s to a great cybersecurity awareness month. Combined with a little tactical action, it represents a powerful opportunity for us to get in front of a higher than average number of open ears!
