Objective
I was managing partner marketing for Cisco, the world’s largest cyber security company, to develop a go-to-market plan for their suite of security solutions.
Targets were based on leads.
Concept / Solution
I conducted qualitative research by interviewing many different people at Cisco, including Systems Engineers – people with very deep technical knowledge. Thanks to these conversations, I uncovered a key insights:
- IT security is usually made up of multiple separate sub-solutions that aren’t centralized or integrated. But centralized and integrated is what IT departments dream of – and Cisco could offer it
Since centralized and integrated IT security is so uncommon, an actual demonstration of what it feels like in practice became a very appealing idea. I realized that the best way to showcase this, was through a series of webinars, giving “a peek into the dream scenario“. And just like that, the concept was born.
Since there are so many topics within IT security, we wanted to cover the most valuable ones. Further research revelead 3 key aspects, and they were split into three separate sessions – all unified by the theme and reinforcing the central message.
Communication strategy: Show that Cisco security can make IT departments dream come true: centralized and integrated security management.
Before launching, I added two tactical elements that contributed to over-achieving the target on leads:
- We offered free breakfast via Uber eats as an extra incentive for anyone who didn’t have time to join live (we wanted them live)
- Realizing the importance of Threat Detection & Response for the audience, I included a key statistic in the copy (a reduction in time of 72% with Cisco)
Work & results
- Over-achieved the target with close to 100 IT managers and security experts joining
- Almost 40% of participants joined all three webinars and even more requested a recording
I attribute the success of this concept entirely to a strong value proposition, thanks to the research. Without it, I couldn’t have written appealing copy. I was also responsible for the promotion of the event on social, ABM and display channels.
