Selling Security: Understanding Buyer Personas

There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about selling cybersecurity. The wrong way involves writing a bunch of emails, making several cold calls, and producing content that may or may not end with a customer. You’ll spend a lot of time and possibly money, and you likely won’t see any returns on your investment. The right way to sell cybersecurity is to create buyer personas – more specifically cybersecurity buyer personas, and then target your messaging to these individual “personalities.”

Buyer Personas Explained

Cybersecurity buyer personas is a fancy phrase for what is commonly referred to in marketing as an ideal customer avatar. Effectively, it is an ideal person or target you would like to sell to. The best way to create a buyer persona is to think of a single person you’re targeting. What are their biggest needs? What keeps them up at night? What is their age and occupation? The more details you can develop for your cybersecurity personas, the easier it will be to create content and sales pitches that speak directly to them. Doing so will result in more sales.

The Many Faces of Cybersecurity Buyer Personas

As you might expect, there are multiple buyer personas your marketing materials should speak to. Here are a few sample cybersecurity personas to get you started:

• Uninformed: These are the clients that should probably be thinking about cybersecurity, but don’t really know anything about how to get started. They understand cyber threats exist, but because they have no experience with being attacked or hacked, they are unsure of where to begin.
• Worrier: This person understands the very real threats related to cybersecurity, but they have done nothing to prevent a data breach or an attack. They are somewhat lost on what software to consider, and may have started shopping, but it’s not at the top of their to-do list.
• Skeptic: When it comes to buyer personas, these are perhaps the most difficult people to sell anything to. They are fully aware of the risks related to malware, hacking, and data breaches, but they don’t realize anyone can be a target. In other words, they think their business is too small to need cybersecurity products, and don’t believe anything you’re selling can help them.
• Vigilant: As you might expect, these are the buyers sales teams dream of. They know they need cybersecurity support, they’ve run the numbers and are just waiting for that perfect offer to come along.
• Battle-Scarred: These buyers have been attacked, but are still nervous about committing to cybersecurity products. They know having malware removal tools and firewalls is a good idea, but they’re nowhere near prepared if another attack were to occur.
• Expert: As the name suggests, these buyers have it covered. They have had personal experiences with cyberattacks and malware and have promised it won’t happen again. When it comes to cybersecurity protection, these buyers are all in.

Expanding Your Buyer Personas

The cybersecurity buyer personas examples above are just the beginning of what you should be considering when creating buyer personas for your company. Remember, the more clear you can get on who you are talking to, the easier it becomes to write the exact messages they want to hear.

Interested in working with SiteLock to flush out your buyer personas for your cybersecurity company? Consider joining our channel partners program. Click here to learn more.