Over the nearly seven years we’ve been producing podcasts for CISO Series, I’ve learned one critical lesson for launching a successful professional podcast:
Ride the line between what the audience wants to hear and what sponsors are willing to pay for.
It’s easy to fall to one side or the other by being too focused on the audience that you don’t make space for the sponsor to shine, or if it is a vendor podcast, you struggle to not be seen as a sales and marketing tool.
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Podcast listeners are selfish
Rightfully so.
They want to be entertained, intrigued, delighted, and/or learn. If it’s a business podcast, listeners tune in to learn how to be better at their job. For example, here’s what CISO Series fans tell us:
- I listen to learn how to be a CISO.
- I’m in a bubble at my job. I don’t know what it’s like to be a CISO anywhere else. I listen because I want to hear the struggles other CISOs are facing.
- (And from salespeople) I listen because I want to learn how to talk to CISOs.
Understanding this from our community, with each show we launch we have to ask ourselves:
- What do our listeners want that’s missing?
- What do vendors want that’s missing?
- How can we deliver a show that better serves the overall needs of the community?
- What can a podcast or live video show do that hasn’t been possible in other media?
Why we launched our first four shows
Here is how we considered all those issues to launch our first four shows.
CISO Series Podcast: In late 2017 and early 2018, the relationship between CISOs and security vendors was highly caustic. The cyber community clearly demanded a friendly space for both security practitioners and vendors to engage.
Defense in Depth: Divided into five-minute segments, CISO Series Podcast had the self-imposed limitation of never being able to go in-depth on any topic. This new show allowed us to discuss issues the cybersecurity audience was publicly passionate about while allowing our sponsors to ride alongside that passion.
Super Cyber Friday: Launched during the COVID lockdown, this virtual live streaming show allowed our community and sponsors to connect, learn from each other, and have a little fun.
Cyber Security Headlines: The combination of tons of cyber news coming out every day and the lack of a short-form security news podcast drove the launch of this show. While COVID caused most podcasts to suffer because of the severe drop in commutes (a popular time to listen to podcasts), this show’s 7-minute format was immune to needing a commute to listen. This show grew to be our most popular show consistently landing on the top ten list for “Tech News (US)” on Apple Podcasts. Cyber Security Headlines and its even more popular companion newsletter provided an excellent platform for new unknown vendors looking to quickly be seen by a large cyber audience.
The demand for Security You Should Know
When we talk to vendors about sponsorship with CISO Series, we hear one common story:
We have this awesome product that nobody knows about. How do we get our product in front of CISOs?
The most common way CISOs learn about cybersecurity products is from other CISOs. It’s simply word of mouth through a trusted network. But as Allan Alford, field CISO at NTT Data points out, if you go that route, you’re always in an echo chamber of the same solutions being recommended. If you rely only on the “ask your CISO friends” method, there’s no mechanism for a new solution to enter the discussion.
For new solutions to be introduced, someone must go outside the network and investigate. Alford has been proactive about finding new solutions. He has an annual post on LinkedIn where he outlines the rules of engagement for vendors to send him a pitch.
Other CISOs, such as Kurt Sauer, CISO from DocuSign, understand you can learn something by talking to vendors. They’re security professionals too.
Security professionals want the education but do not want to be stuck in a sales and marketing funnel. CISOs have often told us that they will actively ignore a vendor’s solution if the only way to learn about their product is to “book a demo.”
CISO Series tried to solve this problem through our previous show, Capture the CISO, which required each sponsor to upload a 6-minute product demo to YouTube. While we did introduce CISOs to new security products, we added an unnecessary competitive angle that made it confusing and rather difficult to book.
After many iterations of looking to replace Capture the CISO, we settled on a very direct approach. Let CISO Series be matchmakers. Security vendors want to be in front of interested security leaders. Security leaders want to understand how new products could work in their environment without, as they see it, all that unnecessary sales and marketing baggage.
While developing our Security You Should Know, we asked CISOs, “What are your top questions for vendors that you struggle to get answered?” Here are the top three we heard again and again:
How do I explain your product to my CEO? If the CISO has any chance to acquire the budget to purchase the vendor’s product, they will need to know how this product will ultimately help the business. Steve Zalewski, former CISO for Levi Strauss and co-host of Defense in Depth, is often quoted saying, “How does this help me sell jeans?”
What does your product do and what does it not do? CISOs are frustrated with vendors claiming they can do it all. No security professional believes in the silver bullet security product approach. If a vendor acts like they can plug all the holes in a CISO’s security program, it leads to distrust.
What is your sales model? CISOs need to understand how a product is sold and if it’s within their ability to purchase the product. They don’t need an exact price upfront, but they need to know whether there’s even a potential for them to be a customer on the other side of the pitch.
Get the answers you want right away, and then let’s have a discussion
We modeled our show around the needs and desires of both security vendors and practitioners. Each 15-minute episode follows this pattern:
- Our two CISO guests acknowledge that the issue the vendor is tackling is still a problem.
- The vendor rep answers the three questions mentioned above.
- From there, host Rich Stroffolino leads a discussion with the two security experts eager to learn more about the vendor’s solution.
Our first episodes have already dropped. Go to our landing page to explore. We’ll keep publishing episodes as quickly as we can make them and we’ll also categorize them in a database for later discovery.
Let us know what you think.