Every cybersecurity vendor today depends, to some extent, on content marketing to get leads across various channels.

“Content” refers to blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, case studies, explainer videos, LinkedIn posts, etc. Basically, any marketing asset that carries a brand’s product message to buyers in a way that they (should) find engaging.

Almost every B2B company uses content marketing, but cybersecurity companies spend considerable effort on content because:

1. Buying cycles are long, and numerous touchpoints are needed to engage decision-makers.
2. Buying teams are increasingly less interested in talking to salespeople. Gartner reports that 75% of B2B buyers want a sales rep-free experience.

Buying teams want to get almost all the information about your solution before approaching your team. This information is typically provided through content assets like the ones mentioned above.

But how do you develop the kinds of content assets that audiences want to see?

Our advice, as a cybersecurity marketing agency, is to hire a very good cybersecurity content writer for anything that touches on your product and to lean on AI only for repetitive work.

Use AI for Repetitive Content Only

Our take on using an LLM to generate words is to consider how content and AI work before using an LLM to fill your content funnel.

Effective marketing content is, and always has been, between 80% and 90% dependent on thinking/strategy/positioning/creativity.

It's not how many words you produce or minutes of video you film; it's how impactful they are.

Think of how short snippets of great copy like “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM” can encapsulate a brand.

The volume and speed of the actual production of content, be it written or visual, has little to no positive impact on the content’s value. Far more important is the research and planning behind it.

No one is going to win sales by using AI to produce more content than their competitors. With lead generation, only quality really matters.

In this respect, we say it is (sometimes) okay to outsource writing to an AI model but never okay to outsource thinking about how to position, structure, plan or even format content.

AI content workflows (where a human uses an AI solution to increase the content production rate) only work for formulaic top-of-the-funnel (TOF) content, e.g., glossaries.

Otherwise, you might use AI for B2C or high-level B2B content involving interlinked answers to superficially similar questions. For example, “how to configure software a in b, c, d, e….(etc.) environment” aimed at capturing top-of-the-funnel SEO keywords.

AI can speed up content production when there are relatively minor changes to the question being answered.

But as far as cybersecurity marketing goes, that’s where AI’s content usefulness ends.

Since everyone started generating lots of the same content, and Google switched its ranking system in response (and is trying to capture AI traffic directly through SGE), generic content, whether produced by AI or not, is useless. No one wants to read another blog post that starts with “In today’s digital world.”

Hire a Cybersecurity Content Writer to Engage Leads

Based on our experience as a cybersecurity marketing agency working with B2B and B2C marketing teams over the past 10 years, hiring (plus firing) content writers, and scaling AI-powered content programmes, we think there will always be a role for (good) human content writers.

Google isn't showing your top-of-the-funnel pages to searchers as much as they used to.

Unless you are IBM, Microsoft, or some other household name (or writing about bleeding-edge tech), producing top-of-the-funnel content is of relatively little business value.

However, one place that most brands can and do win with cybersecurity content is by zooming in on middle-of-the-funnel (MOF) and bottom-of-the-funnel (BOF) content. This kind of content talks to someone looking for a specific solution to a specific problem and positions your offering as all or part of that solution.

To create this kind of MOF and BOF content, you need a cybersecurity content writer.

Specifically, you need a person or cybersecurity content marketing agency that understands market trends, captures prospective buyers’ attention, and weaves your product into a solution-orientated content asset.

Building a Cybersecurity Content Marketing Workflow

To get the edge above your competitors with marketing content and engage leads, hire a cybersecurity content writer who knows how to set up a content creation process.

Then, arrange some time (ideally one to five hours per month) with an internal expert inside your organisation. This could be a developer, product manager, or even your CTO. Basically, someone who can give the writer some unique insights and possibly do QA on more technical aspects of content.

If you do not have a content marketing strategy, hiring a cybersecurity content marketing agency is probably a better idea. They can help you build out a full content marketing program, show you content gaps your competitors are leaving open, and create lead-acquisition campaigns based on unique product-led content.