3 steps to drive revenue from Cybersecurity Awareness Month

With everything that goes into running a business, it’s rare that small and midsized businesses (SMBs) have the time to reevaluate their cybersecurity needs or consider how important it is to do so. October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, making it the perfect time to educate your clients and prospects on the subject and reiterate how crucial cybersecurity is to their success.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a collaborative effort between government and private industry across the globe to ensure everyone has the resources they need to stay safe and secure online while also increasing resilience against cyberthreats. This year, we’re celebrating the 20-year anniversary of Cybersecurity Awareness Month. To get in the spirit of things, we’ve compiled some tips for taking advantage of this educational opportunity and ensuring your marketing efforts are successful.

Why do SMBs need cybersecurity awareness?

Before we dive into the tips, it’s important to understand why Cybersecurity Awareness Month is necessary. For SMBs, cybersecurity isn’t always a priority, but when looking at the numbers, it’s clear that it should be. Check out the following statistics, and feel free to show them to your clients to help them understand why cybersecurity awareness and education is so crucial for SMBs.

• 43% of cyberattacks target SMBs
• 71% of organizations were compromised by ransomware in 2022
• 76% of SMBs in a 2022 study said they had been impacted by at least one cybersecurity attack, which was up from 55% in 2020
• 67% of respondents admitted that their organization doesn’t have the in-house skills to properly deal with cybersecurity issues

Knowing how essential cybersecurity is for SMBs is a great first step in getting the most out of this month-long campaign, but it’s still just the first step. The next step is making sure you get the word out to your clients and prospects, communicating to them the criticality of cybersecurity to their overall success. Dedicated marketing for Cybersecurity Awareness Month can help spread your message, but it can also be challenging to do. Luckily, we’re here to offer some guidance. Check out our three tips for capitalizing on Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

1. Prepare your teams

Getting the word out about Cybersecurity Awareness Month to customers is crucial, but it’s just as important to educate your internal teams. Prepare your team by being transparent about how your company plans to be involved. That way, if clients or prospects ask them about it, they’ll know what they’re talking about and can help spread the information. Consider hosting internal events before or during the month, such as a lunch and learn with a cybersecurity leader, to ensure your team truly grasps the importance of cybersecurity and this month dedicated to bringing awareness. Cybersecurity Awareness Month would also be a great time to have your employees take an updated cybersecurity training course—the more knowledge they have, the more knowledge they can share with prospects and clients.

2. Create your messaging and campaigns

The basis of leveraging any opportunity that the market is driving is to create a strong campaign that speaks to that topic. For Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a strong campaign should include aligning the messaging you want to take to market with a plan of how you will deliver that message using the marketing channels you have available to you.

Establishing your messaging is key, and luckily, the NCA and CISA can help with that. Each September, the NCA and CISA release an official theme for Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which you can use directly in your messaging or as inspiration for more tailored messaging unique to your business. This year, they’re suggesting the tone for Cybersecurity Awareness Month be more positive, approachable, and simple. The idea isn’t to intimidate or overwhelm your clients into caring about cybersecurity—it’s to educate them about the risks and encourage adopting small habits that can help bring peace of mind. This year, the key messages from the NCA and CISA include:

• Password hygiene
• Multi-factor authentication
• Phishing
• Updating your software

Once you've nailed down your spin on the messaging, determine what marketing channels you have available to you to push out that message. Do you have social media pages, a way to email, or a rep to call your clients that you can leverage? Plug your messaging into each channel you have available to create an omni-channel marketing campaign. We recommend breaking your campaign into actionable steps your clients can take to improve their cybersecurity posture this month. Make sure your campaigns also include a solid call to action (CTA), such as driving them to a cybersecurity assessment, so you can evaluate where your clients and prospects may be vulnerable.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is also the perfect time to plan a cybersecurity event for clients and prospects. You can take one of the key messages for the month listed above and do an educational event around that topic that helps support the messaging in your campaign. Pick a topic such as “How to prevent phishing attempts,” and speak on it, or partner with one of your vendors to bring in a subject matter expert to speak to your clients or team.   

3. Be prepared to follow up on leads

How you operate before and during Cybersecurity Awareness Month is crucial to successfully taking advantage of this month-long event, but having a follow-up plan is even more critical. All of your activities and marketing campaigns for the month could go to waste if you don’t have an effective strategy for following up with the leads that were brought in.

Create a plan beforehand for how you can warm these leads once they come in. Consider follow up strategies such as emails, phone calls, or even LinkedIn messages, and create templates for your sales reps to use when they are following up on the leads. This helps to create synergy between the messaging you are pushing in your campaign and what sales is saying.

However you choose to engage with these prospects following Cybersecurity Awareness Month is up to you, but it’s essential that you have a plan for doing so.

Let the Partner Program do the work for you

While this may seem like a lot to do for just one month, the ConnectWise Partner Program™ is here to help you take full advantage. This year for Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re releasing white-labeled campaigns and assets, as well as enablement materials to educate your teams, and opportunities to leverage Marketing Funds for our members.

Apply now to join the Partner Program and claim your resources to make Cybersecurity Awareness Month a success.