Marketers in the cybersecurity industry don't build products. We must work with what has been given to us by a higher power. This higher power is not some deity or magical force; rather, it's the voice and vision coming from the very top of the organization. How does this all begin? For starters, the executive team will collaborate to determine the company's direction, with an end goal in mind and an ideal state they wish to achieve. However, executing this strategy is far from easy. The road to success is often fraught with doubt and debate, as well as the frequent clash of various egos and insecurities among the organization’s top decision-makers. As marketers, we often wait on the sidelines and are either blessed with clear direction or become cursed to navigate a maze filled with obstacles often compounded by a thick fog of incompetence from above.
There are a lot of phonies out there who claim they have built cybersecurity products. You can spot them quickly by their indecisiveness to act and produce measurable results in a limited time frame. The executive team's product strategy should be one page long and take a few weeks to develop. Anyone who needs months to develop a product strategy should not be privileged to have an executive-level position. The devil may be in the details, but the devil is also a ticking time bomb. Choosing the right path to success is critical, and in the cybersecurity world, there are essentially two choices your leadership can make when building a product for the masses.
Path 1: Become generalists and serve multiple buyer groups.
Path 2: Be selective and carve out a niche
In Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken," the speaker faces a similar decision – two paths diverge, and he must choose one, accepting the inevitability of missing out on the other. Just like Frost, cybersecurity companies must choose a path and embrace it fully. Although seemingly attractive, the path of the generalist often leads to a lack of direction, a myriad of poorly developed features, and a diluted brand message. On the other hand, the path of the niche builder will lead to distinctiveness, competitive advantage, and customer loyalty. So there is one choice—to embrace the niche wholeheartedly.