Leveraging LinkedIn for cybersecurity marketing is an untapped opportunity

Even if you know your target audience well and your product is technically robust, customers won’t just come knocking on your door. By sharing your valuable cybersecurity expertise, they get to know your organization, build trust in you as a specialist, and the sales will naturally follow. Knowledge sharing is, therefore, a strong starting point for the sales process, but which channels should you use for this? Is LinkedIn—with all the ‘LinkedIn Lunatics’ and ‘Look at me’ posts—an interesting platform for cybersecurity companies?

Knowledge Sharing as the Starting Point of Your Marketing Strategy

What we often see in technical companies is the belief that their product doesn’t need marketing. As technical specialists speaking the same language, they instinctively recognize quality work. While we completely understand this perspective, there’s still a crucial step before that. Your target audience can’t simply sense how good your product is. Therefore, sales are not guaranteed, even with a top-notch product. Without visibility and a strong positioning, your sales efforts rely heavily on your existing network. But your ambitions are bigger than that!

It usually doesn’t work well to promote your product directly to ‘cold contacts.’ They don’t yet know who you are, why they should do business with you, or what your product can offer them. That’s why you start with knowledge sharing. Educational content that showcases your expertise, vision, and approach. This makes you visible, helps you build relationships with prospects, and strengthens trust in your cybersecurity knowledge and solutions—without immediately pushing for a sale. The sales will follow naturally!

Why LinkedIn is a Good Marketing Channel for Cybersecurity Companies

There’s been a lot of negativity about LinkedIn lately. The platform is often criticized for being dominated by narcissistic individuals, and the boastful posts can come across as insincere. No one wants to see yet another “How I Built a 6-Figure Business in 6 Months” post. Not sure what we’re talking about? Check out the LinkedIn Lunatics subreddit. It’s quite entertaining to read and can be reassuring when you realize your own posts aren’t so outlandish after all!

This post by Bryan Shankman is another great example of LinkedIn madness. Although his post went viral and he now has 10,000 followers, it also received a lot of negative feedback. It’s questionable whether, despite the visibility, he actually benefited from it business-wise.

At the same time, LinkedIn remains the largest professional social media platform, and your target audience is active on it. Globally, the IT & Services sector is the most represented on LinkedIn, with an impressive 27 million people in this industry having a LinkedIn profile. In the Netherlands alone, cybersecurity specialists are well-represented on LinkedIn. A quick search among Dutch profiles yields over 2,000 CISOs, many of whom are active LinkedIn users—more than a quarter have posted in the last 90 days. Considering that most people on LinkedIn are “lurkers” (they read but don’t comment, like, or post), this is an exceptionally high percentage. The mere presence of your target audience on LinkedIn makes it worthwhile to look past the negativity and engage in knowledge sharing on the platform.

Moreover, knowledge sharing on LinkedIn can truly benefit you. According to research by Sprout Social, 89% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to generate leads. They leverage LinkedIn to boost conversion rates, seeing an average 33% increase in purchase intent. Additionally, 40% of B2B marketers consider LinkedIn the best channel for generating high-quality leads, partly due to its low costs. For example, the cost per lead is on average 28% lower than through Google AdWords.

To test this, we at Beyond Products took on our own LinkedIn challenge. The goal? To post once a week for six weeks. The impact was immediate—we became more visible, grew our followers (Michelle went from 1,396 to 1,563 in six weeks), and gained clearer insights into our own story. A win-win!

A small caveat: LinkedIn isn’t the perfect channel for everyone. It needs to suit you, and you must be willing to invest time in it. If the thought of posting on LinkedIn stresses you out or simply doesn’t align with your personality, it might be better to explore other knowledge-sharing avenues, such as speaking at events or offering advice in one-on-one conversations. Successful marketing requires a method that fits both you and your organization.

Also, keep in mind that knowledge sharing on LinkedIn won’t instantly flood your inbox with leads. It takes time to find your style, craft your posts, and establish yourself as an expert. So, determine your goal in advance and decide if the effort is worth the potential reward.

Tips to Get Started

If you want to increase your visibility on LinkedIn, here are some tips to help you get started:

1. Engage with Others’ Posts: LinkedIn is a social platform, and you won’t achieve much by just broadcasting your own content. It’s about seeking interaction, and a thoughtful comment on someone else’s post can have just as much impact as creating your own post. Ultimately, engaging with others also boosts the performance of your own posts.
2. Consistency is Key: Posting once on LinkedIn and then disappearing for a long time isn’t harmful, but it also won’t bring you much success. To build an engaged audience, it’s crucial to post and engage regularly. You’ll see your follower count and reach grow significantly over time.
3. Be Genuine: People can instantly tell if you’re just trying to sell something. Make sure you’re genuinely sharing value, showing real interest in your connections, and helping others. Your primary goal on LinkedIn should be sharing your knowledge—the rest will follow.
4. Avoid Automation Tools: There are plenty of tools that can take work off your hands, such as automatically sending connection requests or messages. At Beyond Products, we’ve found that people are not receptive to this and that it yields very little. Likely for the same reason we just discussed—it’s not genuine. A personal approach is far more effective. Yes, it takes time, but marketing always requires time. However, you’ll earn that time back many times over!
5. Set Realistic Goals: You don’t need to post every day or spend more than a day a week on LinkedIn. Determine what’s realistic for you. Posting once a week or every two weeks is also fine, as long as you’re consistent.
6. Develop Your Own Writing Style: There’s no maximum or minimum post length, and you don’t have to start a new line after every sentence. There’s no single “right” way to post on LinkedIn, and don’t let anyone tell you how to package your message. Ultimately, it’s your story and your communication style that makes your posts recognizable and unique. Of course, it’s still important to keep your audience in mind and what resonates with them.
7. Your Opinion is Always Interesting Content: No inspiration for content? Think about tools you’ve recently used, interesting news articles relevant to your audience, or developments in your field, and share your opinion on them. What do you think about this development, tool, or change? Has it benefited you or not? You can also draw inspiration from others’ content that you find interesting and share your own perspective in a new post.
8. Don’t Stress Too Much About Hashtags: LinkedIn isn’t Twitter (or should we say X now), and you don’t need 20 hashtags in your LinkedIn posts. Hashtags do help with reach, so ask ChatGPT or another tool for help, and you’ll quickly find the right hashtags for your post.

LinkedIn as a Marketing Channel for Cybersecurity Companies

So yes, we believe LinkedIn is a powerful marketing channel, even for cybersecurity companies. Overlook the negativity (you don’t have to join the LinkedIn Lunatics—you can chart your own course on the platform), share your expertise with your target audience, and connect with interesting prospects that way.

Is LinkedIn not your channel after all? No worries. It’s certainly not the only way to grow your business. Follow Beyond Products for more ideas. Struggling to get started? We’re here to help! Contact us, and we’ll work together to get you on the right track.