Three Real-World Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Examples
Table of Contents
- What Does “Good” Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Performance Look Like?
- Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Example #1: The Niche-First Approach
- Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Example #2: Demand Generation
- Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Example #3: Organic SEO lead generation
- 5 Success Factors for Any Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign
- What to Avoid in Your Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign
- How to Measure Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Success
- Getting Started with Your Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign
- Build Better Cybersecurity Campaigns With Content Visit
Cybersecurity marketing campaigns are tough.
Decision makers in cybersecurity roles, especially those “in market” for a solution or service, have some of the highest CPLs of any lead in any industry.
As a proxy, try bidding for clicks from a BOF cybersecurity solution keyword.
Why is it so hard to get attention from B2B cybersecurity buyers?
Because there are around 3,500 vendors currently on the market and only… around 35,000 CISOs in the entire world!
Obviously, the cybersecurity market is much more than just selling tools to CISOs. But that balance (just 10 CISOs for every vendor) gives a sense of how skewed the market is. Buyers have the power.
It doesn't help that cybersecurity professionals are notoriously wary of vendor sales pitches, proclaim themselves immune to marketing, and are extremely quick to discount vendors that can’t rapidly demonstrate impact. Yet cybersecurity marketing campaigns still succeed.
We know this because we’ve helped companies, ranging from seed-funded vendors to enterprises, run successful cybersecurity lead generation and SEO campaigns with GTM content strategy, positioning, and content development.
Based on that experience, we've identified effective cybersecurity marketing campaign strategies that deliver real results.
In this blog post, we give you some examples. Showing you three kinds of cybersecurity marketing campaigns, with examples of click-through rates, CPLs, CPCs, and more. We also give you a step-by-step program for running your own campaign.
What Does “Good” Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Performance Look Like?
Here, we break down three typical cybersecurity campaigns in terms of what kinds of conversion rates and lead quality to expect:
For LinkedIn Campaigns:
Click-through rates are typically around 0.5%.
Cost-per-click varies from $5 to $35.
Higher-CPC campaigns often deliver better quality clicks, but not consistently enough to justify the spend.
Strong for brand awareness and retargeting, weak for direct conversion.
Google Ads Campaigns:
Performance varies dramatically by search intent.
Best-performing campaigns achieved several hundred clicks at a CPC of $2 or more.
Brand and high-intent solution keywords consistently outperform display and generic terms.
Bottom-of-funnel campaigns show the strongest ROI.
SEO/GEO Campaigns:
Focus on low-volume, high-CPC keywords. We explain this in our cybersecurity SEO guide.
A CTR of 1% from engaged sessions is (very) good.
Can replace $12,000 of annual PPC spend with $3000 in content and backlinks - our PPC vs organic content guide explain's more.
Bottom-of-funnel content has the strongest ROI, but it needs to be supported by other assets to establish topical authority.
Looking for cybersecurity content ideas? - here's 30 examples of cybersecurity content assets.
These are successful campaign metrics that would provide a cybersecurity company with a steady stream of SQLs if implemented consistently. Ultimately, anything that results in a CPL of <$150 is good.
Next, we will sho
w you some specific (anonymised) examples of cybersecurity campaigns we’ve run or have been involved with in the past 12 months including our take on which channels work best for cybersecurity demand gen.
Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Example #1: The Niche-First Approach
Target Market
: Boutique law firms with 1-2 IT staff.
Service: Managed Detection and Response (MDR).
Channel: LinkedIn paid ads with an initial budget of $1,000.
This approach focuses on the most well-defined niche pain point with the lowest competition. The key is specificity over breadth.
Message Framework: "We help lean IT teams protect law firms from ransomware for <$100 per asset covered."
Content Offer: "Get our MDR pricing guide. "
Why This Works
Addresses a specific persona (IT guy who doesn't understand MDR).
Solves a clear pain point (ransomware protection).
Provides immediate value (pricing transparency).
Includes a specific price anchor for decision-making.
Expected Results:
A good target cost per lead for this type of campaign is approximately $130 per download/signup, with the bonus of capturing emails for ongoing nurturing.
The big benefit, though, is scalability. Once you’ve proven the model, you can seamlessly expand into related legal specialties.
Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Example #2: Demand Generation
Target Market: Mid-market companies across industries.
Service: Dark web monitoring.
Channel: Content marketing + LinkedIn outreach.
This broader approach focuses on generating demand for a solution that has wide appeal but low awareness.
Content Framework:
Monthly newsletter featuring anonymized dark web findings.
Industry-specific threat intelligence reports.
Case studies of credential breaches affecting similar companies.
Distribution Strategy:
Target IT, Security, and HR professionals on LinkedIn.
Promote free trial offers directly to newsletter subscribers.
Create downloadable threat reports as lead magnets.
Why This Works:
Educates the market about a lesser-known service for that audience and ultimately builds trust through valuable, non-promotional content, resulting in an owned audience for direct marketing. Newsletter audiences are fantastic channels for re-targeting and direct outreach.
Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Example #3: Organic SEO lead generation
Target Market: Lean IT teams without security personnel in the SMB/mid-market segment.
Service: MDR.
Channel: Content marketing + LinkedIn outreach.
The focus is on capturing BOF keywords for solutions related to managed security services.
Content Framework:
Buyer’s guides for managed security options.
Cost calculator for potential managed options.
Downloadable visual guide to aid purchase decision
Keyword Strategy
Exact-match SMB cybersecurity terms: Highest lead quality from Google Search.
Solution-specific keywords: Consistently outperform generic security terms.
Local modifiers: "cybersecurity services in [city]" for location-based targeting.
Why This Works
Targets niche keywords with highly targeted cybersecurity content (learn how to do this in our guide to cybersecurity content marketing). People will share their email with you in return for genuinely useful content, such as pricing guides, threat landscape reports, ROI calculators, and comparison guides.
5 Success Factors for Any Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign
Below, we break down our experience in cybersecurity marketing campaigns into five key pieces of advice.
1. Use Pain-Focused Messaging
The tighter your message matches the user's actual search intent, the better your results.
As a rule, keep your messaging free of buzzwords (such as “AI-powered”) and instead, focus on:
What specific threat/risk your solution stops.
How quickly your solution can be deployed.
What systems your solution integrates with.
Concrete business outcome
s from using your solution.
2. Create Landing Page Message Match
Your landing page must deliver exactly what your ad promised. Mismatched expectations kill conversion rates faster than anything else.
Learn more: Our guide to B2B copywriting
3. Select Channels Based on Intent
Intent is the single most important factor to consider when selecting a channel. What are the people who are coming through that channel thinking about doing next?
Here's our general cheatsheet:
Google Search (non-brand): Best for bottom-of-funnel, high-intent searches.
LinkedIn: Effective for brand awareness and retargeting, weaker for direct conversion.
Display ads: Generally poor performance - avoid unless you have specific retargeting data.
4. Budget Allocation Strategy
This applies primarily to paid search-led campaigns, but can also be adapted for SEO purposes. Ask us for advice if you’re interested in learning more.
Start with $1,000 test budgets on single channels.
Kill poor-fit campaigns early (watch for CPCs of $50+ with minimal clicks).
Double down on campaigns with low CPC and high click volume.
Monitor session duration and bounce rates as leading indicators.
5. Scale slowly (led by positioning)
As a rule, test a single service/pain point on one channel before you move on to others.
Aim to achieve a reasonable cost per lead (~$100 for B2B cybersecurity), then try to reduce that cost per lead by building organic presence around winning keywords.
Only then, expand to adjacent pain points and services. Do not stretch your resources too thin.
What to Avoid in Your Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign
The inverse of the above is the things that cybersecurity marketing campaigns do wrong.
Common cybersecurity marketing mistakes include:
Targeting too broadly initially: Pick one ICP pain point and go deep.
Generic messaging: "Enterprise security solutions" converts poorly. “In today's threat landscape” sinks your campaign like a stone.
Multiple channel launches: You won't have the capacity to optimize effectively.
Ignoring search volume: Validate demand before building campaigns.
Poor campaign hygiene: Don’t let bad campaigns run for too long.
And totally avoid these budget killers:
Display campaigns without retargeting data.
Broad match keywords in competitive spaces.
Campaigns with $50+ CPC and minimal click volume.
How to Measure Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign Success
To measure the success of your cybersecurity marketing campaign, we would score campaigns and content assets within them by creating a Looker Studio dashboard view linked to your GA4 and Google Ad data.
But at a higher level, you want to track and attribute success to metrics such as:
Cost per qualified lead: Target under $150 for B2B cybersecurity, but anything up to $500 can be great if the leads are good.
Lead-to-opportunity conversion rate: Track beyond initial download.
Customer acquisition cost: Include full sales cycle costs.
Pipeline velocity: How quickly leads move through your funnel.
At the content level, the metrics that matter are:
Session duration: Indicates message-market fit.
Bounce rate: Shows landing page relevance.
Email engagement: For nurture campaign effectiveness.
Brand search volume: Measure awareness building over time.
Getting Started with Your Cybersecurity Marketing Campaign
If we had to TL;DR this article and our whole cybersecurity marketing campaign process, we would say this:
Choose one specific pain point that you:
Know better than your competitors.
Can validate has search demand.
Have clear differentiation in solving, e.g., your product is good for [x] use case.
Then, create a message centred on this pain point that makes it easy for someone to recognise you as a good fit for their problem. Tell the buyer everything they need to know.
Create one high-value piece of content (pricing guide, threat report, ROI calculator) that prospects will exchange their email for to access.
Then test and iterate
Start with a $1,000 test budget on your highest-confidence channel. Optimize for cost per lead before scaling.
You might find our guide to the best cybersecurity marketing agencies interesting .
Build Better Cybersecurity Campaigns With Content Visit
We help companies launch successful cybersecurity marketing campaigns based on content that delivers better business value.
Get in touch with us to learn more.
Written by Laura Martisiute