Security Marketing Should Not Scare Your Customers
While information security is about protecting your customers from a wide range of threats, the chief marketing officer of Palo Alto Networks is cautioning his channel partners against marketing based on fear.
The comments by CMO Rene Bonvanie were delivered to the company's second annual Marketing Advisory Council, held at the vendor's Santa Clara, Calif.-based headquarters. About 30 key channel partners from throughout North America are gathered for the two-day event where the group is discussing strategies for successful security marketing, as well as providing feedback to Palo Alto Networks' partners on how to better help them influence customers.
"Most security branding stories are based on fear," Bonvanie told the gathering. "The world is going to hell, and you're going first. But, we've never told our story that way. Successful marketing is all about being believable, consistent, interesting and unique. It's all about what we do, how it matters and how what we do is different. It's also about the art of making it simple. Define your value proposition based not on the negative, but on the positive, enabling aspects of what you do."