The Scary Secrets of Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Free Energy

It’s October, and if you’re a cybersecurity marketing pro, you’ve been thinking about how to leverage “Cybersecurity Awareness Month” for some time.

And, if you haven’t jumped on this industry event, you should be spooked.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a perfect example of “free energy” for marketing. Free energy is great! Free energy is around us all the time – you just need to tap into it, especially when your marketing and demand generation efforts are cursed with a dry spell.

Why do we need free energy?

A common problem that most of us in product marketing, demand generation and even PR struggle with is, “how to create buzz when you don’t have anything exciting or newsworthy?” Well, here’s the trick and treat, that gives you an easy solution to this problem.

Back in the day, trade media would publish editorial calendars (mostly for advertising purposes). However, savvy PR people would get a hold of these editorial calendars to see when their target publications were going to feature particular topics. Armed with this knowledge, a scary-smart PR person would craft their pitches to align with ed-cal topics, conjuring coverage for their clients.

Those days are gone, but the ghost of that process still remains.

Today, we have a myriad of free energy opportunities to tap into. Although the devil is in the details, all you need to do is plan in advance, sprinkle in some creative juices, and brew up programs that magically align with key industry and social events.

Free energy campaigns are simple. They’re clever and memorable. They’re fun, but should be informative, too. All you need is an asset that connects you to the free energy event.

Here are a few free energy examples of what any cybersecurity marketing pro could leverage, immediately:

1. October – Cybersecurity Awareness Month (you still have the rest of the month to come up with scary statistics, monstrous mistakes, frightening threats and zombie attacks that just won’t die).

2. November – It’s all about “thanks”… thanking your CISO, partner, customer, security tool, etc. It’s a good time to slow down and recognize how cybersecurity people, processes and technologies make a positive difference.

3. December & January – What’s better than a year in review, or make your next-year’s predictions? Got a CISO/SOC/Hacker Christmas List? There’s lots of free energy here!

4. February – Who remembers Heartbleed or the ILoveYou virus? Get clever and pull on those cyber heart strings.

5. March & April – You’ve got several free energy options to take advantage of, such as Cybersecurity Spring Cleaning, Luck of the Irish (or the latest leprechaun hack), or simply jump on the RSA bandwagon, which generally falls around here.

You get the idea. You don’t have to be a wizard to master free energy for product marketing, social media or demand generation. No hocus-pocus is needed. Best of all, it’s free! So, take a que from Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and conjure up some electrifying campaigns that you can take to the grave after other marketing campaigns have died.