Content Visit is a cybersecurity content marketing agency I founded back in 2020.We\u2014two full-timers with support from freelancers\u2014help cybersecurity vendors engage leads at different stages of the buying funnel with best-in-class blogs, whitepapers, solution briefs, social posts, infographics, and other content assets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our focus is facilitating content marketing for cyber and information security companies. Content enables B2B sales cycles, yet marketing content is often the last thing marketing teams think about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019ve worked in marketing for any length of time, you will have encountered situations where marketing leaders and their CEOs are often happy to spend money on buying ads, new websites, attending conferences, and other \u201chard\u201d marketing activities. The same people typically consider content a byproduct and wonder why, x weeks\/months into a lead generation campaign, their leads are either not engaging or have sky-high acquisition costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water (for example, pay for ad placement), but making it drink (having a conversation with your sales team) needs a push. Our experience is that high-quality content is what pushes prospects over this line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is especially true in the cybersecurity market. Solution refresh cycles can span years, and there are countless content touchpoints across a company\u2019s website, socials, sales outreach emails, and more. Complex security deals also involve buying teams with varying levels of technical knowledge, including CISOs, CFOs, and security architects. All of them need content that explains why your solution solves their problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a market crowded with superficially similar solutions, buyers require education to grasp the actual use cases for each vendor. This is what cybersecurity marketing content does. We help vendors by working with their internal teams, building content strategies, and producing content assets<\/a>. I\u2019ve spent the last four years building a cybersecurity content agency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s what I\u2019ve learned along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the expense of my entire business model, I have to be honest. In an ideal world, no business should work with a marketing agency. Internal experts would write and distribute all of their marketing content directly. The CEO would write all the blogs, script webinars, and provide content to the social media manager<\/a>; the CTO would craft every white paper from scratch; the CMO would plan the content strategy, run UGC campaigns, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In reality, most security vendors do not have nearly enough time to do a fraction of this work. Even if technical founders understand the value of content marketing and are keen to engage with it, they almost always lack expertise in content marketing processes and skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Skills like:<\/p>\n\n\n The list goes on. Specialized agencies like Content Visit<\/a> play a role here. We multiply content marketing capabilities by interviewing SMEs and combining original research with years of content marketing experience. We help vendors and service providers understand the content their audience needs, and then we create it with their input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve been working in content marketing for over a decade. Before focusing solely on security brands in 2020, I spent five years as a generalist freelance writer and worked in an in-house marketing role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Content Visit came about when I partnered with another writer I met during a previous job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We understood that there was a need to expand from just writing to a wider offering, including content strategy. Words on their own only have a certain value (especially true now with the rise of AI), but content combined with strategy is worth far more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a few false starts, we formed an agency and registered a limited company. Then, we spent time developing, through trial and error, a cybersecurity-focused content marketing process based on our experiences working with security vendors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After initially cold-emailing hundreds of smaller vendors, a few clients stuck and some turned into long-term work (we\u2019ve worked with some clients for over three years straight) and provided referrals to others. We also developed our own SEO strategy<\/a>, which generates leads every month, and started marketing ourselves through other channels, including paid ads and social media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bonus: Why Visual Content Is The Future Of Marketing?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are three ingredients that, in my experience, can boost a cybersecurity company\u2019s chances of content marketing success when working with an agency:<\/p>\n\n\n\n When work is assured, agencies can invest effort in growing the client’s business, and clients get protection from upselling and unnecessary work. One-off jobs can work, too, but long-term engagements are best for everyone. Ideally, content marketing should be linked to other deliverables like social media content management<\/a> to ensure consistency between social media messaging<\/a>, SEO content, and sales enablement content. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Great agencies invest in long-term relationships with a small number of clients. I believe you cannot scale quality content by outsourcing to an army of freelancers. You need one or two people committed to an account for its duration. We use freelancers for specific tasks (for example, producing a certain volume of SEO content for lower-value keywords). Focused tasks, like lead generation copywriting, we always do in-house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Companies need internal experts willing to engage with marketing in a QA and ideation role. This can be an hour or two a month, but some level of SME involvement is fundamental. Access to internal SMEs in a client\u2019s business is always better than having a general cybersecurity \u201cSME\u201d on an agency’s staff. Security is so broad and siloed that you need someone with a deep understanding of whatever solution is being marketed to give feedback versus someone with broad cybersecurity knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the inverse, I would not recommend the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It sounds obvious, but buying or selling a number of blogs or whitepapers (because you \u201cshould\u201d) without a distribution or funnel strategy is often a waste of time. It does not matter which type of content you are producing, whether it’s a blog or a whitepaper template<\/a> a) it should have some kind of outcome in mind and b) have a distribution channel to achieve that outcome, e.g., SEO, paid search, social media, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Agencies need to develop long-term talent in-house. We once tried to onboard a large number of freelancers but found that it was not possible to scale with any kind of quality. Finding talented freelancers is extremely hard, and the very good ones will charge almost as much as any client is willing to pay an agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In my opinion, it takes years and thousands of hours to get to grips with a technical vertical like cybersecurity. A general marketing agency (an agency that works across multiple verticals) is highly unlikely to have anyone on staff or a roster with enough continuous experience to deliver content for a cybersecurity agency. As companies pump out more content with AI and tools that enable free AI image-to-video conversion<\/a>, there is no point in marketing with \u201cgood enough\u201d content. To win attention and leads, you need a focused creative team that understands your market and customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/span>Why Security Vendors Work with Content Agencies<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/span>Focusing on tech content<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>What I\u2019ve Seen Work Well (For Agencies and Clients)<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>1. Retainer-based pricing. <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>2. Agencies that do not outsource critical work<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>3. Buy-in from internal SMEs. <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>What Does Not Work<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>1. Creating content without a distribution strategy. <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>2. Outsource everything. <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/span>3. General agencies that also \u201cdo\u201d cybersecurity content. <\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n