Copy is written material usually used in advertising, web marketing and other similar fields to encourage consumers to buy a product or service. Copy is the output of a copywriter, a professional writer that is responsible for the creation of copy used in marketing and promotional material. As cybersecurity has grown in the last decade there has been an increase in the amount of companies that sell cybersecurity products and services, this means there is a bigger demand for good copywriters that can market these services to potential customers. Here are some of the most important things you can do to create effective cybersecurity copy:

Highlight Multiple Pain Points

Cybersecurity is generally considered a cost center in most companies, therefore the idea of generating profit cannot be the main focus in your copywriting. Instead, you need to focus on eliminating or reducing one of the company’s pain points. A pain point is a specific problem that your prospective customers are experiencing. Simply put it’s anything that costs the company time or money. Therefore, you want to mention something along the lines of: how you can reduce the overall cost of IT operations, reduce the time it takes to perform a task or how you will make their current operations more effective. Here is a list of some of the common pain points that companies face in their cybersecurity operations:

– Integration with other tools

– Testing and proving compliance with industry regulations

– Reduction of false positives and false negatives

– Ability to detect new cyber threats (zero days)

– Employee training on new tools

– Good customer support

– Ability to quantify performance (performance metrics)

– Easy collaboration among multiple analysts

– Easy to learn interface

– Ability to document what was done and by whom (especially for incident response, computer forensics and audit)

Use Case Studies and Statistics

Unless you’re an established expert in a certain area you want to avoid leaning only on your authority. It’s good to use case studies and statistics from credible sources to back up your statements and show the value of your services. This is especially useful for quantifying the costs of the pain points you’re highlighting. An example of this would be the average cost of a data breach or the percentage of companies that suffer a data breach each year. One of the best resources for getting this type of information is the ponemon institute, a dedicated research facility for information and privacy management practices. But this is just one example, there are several websites you can find through search engines to use for backing up your claims and proving the value of your product.

Appeal to Emotion

Using sound logic is important for making a good business case, you need to explain why it makes sense for someone to invest in buying your product. However, studies show that emotion plays a big part in people’s purchasing decisions. According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman about 95% of our purchasing decisions are made in our subconscious mind, driven by emotion. You want to leverage this whenever you do any type of copywriting for your cybersecurity product. One simple way you can do this is to show readers that you emphasize with their pain. If you can show that you have experienced the same negative emotions that they have, such as stress, anger or annoyance and your solution helped you to overcome this then people are more likely to believe that your solution can help them get rid of their negative emotions.

Use Calls to Action

A great way to end a piece of copy is with a call to action. If you write a good piece of content explaining why something is so valuable and why it would benefit someone you don’t want to end there. Make sure you tell people what they can do next if they are interested in your product. This can be where to buy it, how to sign up, starting a free trial, requesting a demo, etc. You want to make it easy for someone to take the next step after you’ve demonstrated the value of your business. This would also be a good place to offer someone a discount code with a limited time usage so that they are more likely to take that next step quickly.

Outsource Copywriting

Cybersecurity copywriting is best done by people that have work experience and good writing skills. Readers that work in cybersecurity will usually be able to tell whether or not the writer has a sound understanding of the topic. This is the same in almost every profession, if you’re selling services to someone that works in this field every day they will be able to tell if your information is incorrect. Therefore it’s important that you have writers that understand your product and how it serves a problem within the industry. However, work experience alone is not enough, you need people that can articulate themselves well, explain the problem and the solution in a way that will make people likely to buy from you. If you don’t have that expertise in-house, it’s a good idea to consider hiring a professional writer that can help you.

Recap

Writing good copy is all about demonstrating your value to your prospective customers. For Cybersecurity, you want to focus on the pain points of your customers and highlight how your product or service will reduce or eliminate these pain points. You want to give quantifiable evidence from reliable sources so that people understand how much these issues can truly cost them and how much your product can save them. It’s important to balance these hard facts with relatable stories so that people feel that you understand their situation, this will make them more likely to buy your product. Lastly, if you lack the cybersecurity or writing expertise to write good copy you can always hire someone that specializes in cybersecurity copywriting to create marketing material for you.