How Cybersecurity Buyers Are Influenced by Marketing: The Surprising Truth About CISO Buying Decisions and Where Your Cybersecurity GTM Spend is Wasted - Emily Matthews Principal NOLA Marketing

Emily Matthews:
You should be paying them, not them paying you for this.

Andrew Monaghan:
That's Emily Matthews, the founder and principal of NOLA Marketing, on what most cybersecurity companies get backwards about hands on workshops. Because hands on workshops are such a powerful marketing initiative, Emily partnered with the Ponymona Institute to ask sisters directly what they really think of cybersecurity marketing and what helps them or influences them in making buying decisions. The report that came from the research has findings that should influence your go to market going forward, including things such as why she calls hands on workshops investments in peer influence and why that's important to buyers. The event format. Almost half of CISO is ranked highest. And just to let you know, it's not the state dinner that we think it might be. And what she now wakes up thinking about feeding and why it might be the biggest factor in cyber marketing in the next few years. And also a whole load more.

Andrew Monaghan:
I'm Andrew Monaghan and this is the Cyber Go to Market Talk podcast where we tackle the question, how can cybersecurity companies grow sales faster? Well, Emily, welcome to the podcast.

Emily Matthews:
Thank you.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, this is going to be an interesting one. I'm really fascinated by what our topic is today. You know, often we have people on who give us their, you know, their opinions and their experience and things like that. What we're doing today is actually looking at the cold, hard facts. You know, Emily, with her company NOLA Marketing and with Ponemon Institute, did some research, actually some real hard first person research into what do buyers actually do when they're evaluating vendors. So the official title is the State of Cybersecurity Marketing influence report from 2026. From awareness to selection, how buyers evaluate vendors. So a lot of good stuff in here, Emily.

Andrew Monaghan:
We're going to get the hard facts and then get your commentary and opinions on top of that and try and draw out some real lessons. I'll tell you, the one thing as I started to go through it stood out for me right from the start was that you were asking security buyers, senior security people, what were the primary problems that they had with the information from cyber marketers. And the top two answers tied jointly. The top two answers, the biggest problems were marketing differs from product reality. And the second one was too much high level messaging and not enough technical and operational detail. So why do you think we're missing the mark so much on this?

Emily Matthews:
You know, I think marketers, we tend to stay in our comfort zone and we're not the developers or the engineers. And a lot of times, you know, so we Just we tend to up level things and get it to the really top of the funnel level where people, you know, just giving a broad, a broad overview. And, and I think we're also, we don't engage enough with the engineers and developers to hear directly from them, you know, let them tell their stories and we can translate it into marketing speak and, or you know, more detailed things. But it's spending time with those people. I mean, a lot of times they're very busy, but you know, I always try to grab them like, hey, if you have a few minutes when you're walking to get a coffee or in the car and they'll talk, you know, you can ask them, you can ask them, you know, just have them just say, hey, you know, I got this brief about these four features. Why did you do them? Or you know, what, what makes them so different than the other ones? And while, you know, a lot of the marketing briefs that, that I get will cover that to some degree, hearing it directly from them and using their words, because it's, it's, they are the same as the people that are using the products in essence, right? They're, they're, they're operating at the same level. And so you're, you're bringing more, more of a actual voice of the user to a user which is, you know, gives, makes the content a little better.

Andrew Monaghan:
But so marketers are much more comfortable talking amongst themselves than actually going to the, the coal face and, and really understanding what's happening. Is that what you're saying?

Emily Matthews:
I think, I think to some extent, yes, I do. And that, and that's really what led to this, this research project. I, I had worked with the Ponen Institute for years on their cost of a data breach report when it first started with pgp. And you know, we've stayed friends and I started thinking like with, with this move towards AI and content development and all, really all aspects of marketing, you know, people have just embraced it. And I kept wondering like, what are our, what are the recipients of this content? Think about that. And you know, I was going to do a small survey of just some people I knew, but then I went to the Ponemans and I said, hey, you know, let's talk to your, you're talking to CISOs every day. And that's what we did. I asked them the questions that I was curious about and other, that, you know, other cybersecurity marketers were curious about.

Emily Matthews:
And so we heard directly from them what they think of us and, and the content we're developing And I mean the good news is they do, our marketing does support, 58% of them say it supports their decision making, which is good. And the things that they want are totally achievable, which is also I think very good to know. Right. But the report really does give, it's, it's a, it makes, it gives a little more data driven approach to, to how we think about marketing and where we're focusing our, our resources.

Andrew Monaghan:
So I said something that stood out for me. What was a big surprise for you in, in the outcomes?

Emily Matthews:
They like websites and they like webinars. Really I, the, I don't have the number right in front of me, but, but yeah, like the majority like the two things they liked the most, it was, it was, they really liked webinars. Like almost half of them said that was the thing they liked the most. And they do, they really like websites. They go to websites looking for content, which is, it's nice to know but I think we spend a lot of time on, you know, different things and, and the mix is still there. They do still read ebooks and such as that. But, but they, they, you know, our content matters and I think they, they did really reflect the fact that the quality of the content matters and that we take the time to get rid of the fluff and just speak to them clearly and more importantly, substantiate our claims.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, the research you did said that, you know, events, security leaders find valuable webinars was 44% the highest.

Emily Matthews:
I was floored by that. Yeah, I really was, I was really surprised. And I think the, but the good news for, for, for marketers is great because webinars are such content rich resources. So you know, the effort it takes to make a webinar is, is, is more substantial than other, other formats. But when you, once you create it, it can get split up into many, many derivative pieces. You know, the transcript can be used for blogs, for you know, full quotes and articles, all sorts of things. So it becomes, you know. Right.

Emily Matthews:
I always say in any kind of marketing in general, I always think write once, publish many. So that's one example of that that really does put that point across is that you can, you invest in this big meaty asset but then you can use it to create a number of derivative pieces.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, let's contrast that. So when I think of a webinar, yeah, it's a bit of work. Right. But it's cheap to do. Right. It's not an expensive thing to do. Buyers found that was a top answer. The lowest Answer on the list you have here is peer roundtables and CISO dinners.

Andrew Monaghan:
So there's something that is expensive to do relatively. Right. I mean, I don't know, steak dinner, a place you're probably talking about, I don't know, 5 to 15k depending on numbers and things like that. And it's really hard to put on. It's a grind. The sales team loves to do them but until they actually have to get people there. And it's a real stretch to get people there. So I was kind of interested that, you know, the cheaper, easier option was a lot more effective than the one that we think is maybe the more effective, which is the dinners.

Emily Matthews:
Yeah, yeah. And they're so valuable. I mean, you know all, like I said, all the content stuff and especially with the webinars, there was other data in there that talked about they really, really like hands on workshop things. So webinars that have that either are focused in that direction or have elements of that included are incredibly effective. And that also then gets you more back to the engineers and the developer centric content. You get them engaged to participate in these things and now you have another brick of content that's technical, it's substantiated, it's, it has authority. So as we move into answer engines and AI driven search that is gold for all content. So even if you write a blog post that the marketer wrote it, you can pull bits of that from these hands on workshops that add authority and credibility which improves the ranking or being selected for AI search.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah. And yeah, looking at the list here. So two of the, one of the, two of the topper, the higher topper, the higher answers trading workshops and hands on workshops are tabletop exercises scored high and this was event security teams find valuable. So they're getting hands on with stuff that's the mode that they like. They're using things, learning things, get involved. Interesting. Can you think of companies or situations you know that do that pretty well?

Emily Matthews:
Yeah, Palo Alto Networks does a ton of them. They have, they do, they do a lot, a lot of those things where you know, they bring in, they bring in a technical person to run these workshops and they're super, they're super well attended and very, very effective people. They get, you know, well, well rated by the participants and they keep coming back to them which is, you know, that's the sign of success. Right. They, they want to keep, they want to keep participating.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, I've done two or three companies where we've done that. They, the temptation always seems to be. Well, we got to charge for them. Right? This is training. We charge for training. Right. I think, God, that's just not thinking about it in the right way.

Emily Matthews:
Yeah, but it's not exactly training, right. Like it's a, they're shorter format. You know, they're, you know, depending on the thing you can, they don't have to be these hours long presentations or even you know, workshops. They can be 45 minutes, they can be 30 minutes, they could even be 15. Like how do you, you know, find some little widget in the thing and just do that and have it be just a short little snippet that then gets posted on your, you know, it's back to get the search. I mean search is changing. You know, the blue links from, from SEO are, are rapidly. I mean the statistics of how fast those things are going by the wayside is stunning.

Emily Matthews:
I mean, you know what Gartner said, there's a Gartner number here that was just crazy. It's like you know, by 2028, like 80%. Oh, that was Bain. Bain said 80% rely on zero click. I mean that means everything is getting surfaced through, through the AI engines. And that's so you know, having this, this what they're looking for, these machines, these little creatures out there. You know, people say, I had someone complaining that their website, you know, they feel like their, their website is only feeding, feeding the machines. I mean it, the machine may be the first one to get to and eventually the content surfaces up to people.

Emily Matthews:
But you know, it's like ultimately the LLMs, your website is becoming a, you know, a buffet for LLMs. And I think we really have to increasingly start looking at that, looking at our content and how it is viewed not just by people, but as the first visitor, let's consider maybe the first visitor is going to be a machine that then surfaces it up to other people. And these, what gets rewarded is unique, high quality, you know, meaty, like technically deep content. And these workshops can be mined for that.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, I've like many diving headlong into the world of AI and I use a couple of tools and they do a really good job of the half hour training workshop thing for non customers and also for customers. Right. And they'll take one use case or one specific thing and you get the CTO or someone seeing the company just jump on and say look, build with me kind of thing and you go along and you learn something new every single time about how different things work. Really, really good way to do it. Right. And if you like the founder or the person on it, you kind of get drawn into the expertise and the capabilities that the tools have. So it's a really interesting area. I think that people think a lot about AI's effect on marketing in terms of the content side, which we can't ignore.

Andrew Monaghan:
But from what you're saying, it might be a bigger impact. Just thinking about the LLM's impact on search and how people discover us, I'm wondering what are people talking about right now about how to change your website so that it is much More attractive for LLMs to pick up on?

Emily Matthews:
Yeah, there are a number of best practices I've written. I started asking questions myself and then taking notes and I ended up putting my notes into. I wrote a bunch of articles about this, how does it work and how to do it. But you know, at the highest level it's your answering, you're presenting and answering questions. So instead of your headers being a statement, you present them and you put them in the form of a question. You. They like structured data. They like.

Emily Matthews:
So it's bullets, it's charts and data. Right. They want the, whatever you're saying to be substantiated with, you know, a reputable data source. So that could be back to your engineers or developers and other third parties, but it could be an expert in house. You know the authors, you know your art, your, Your page is attributing, especially on the, well, on the blog and article side of things, attributing them to SMEs and having their bio there that the machine now says, okay, this person that wrote the article has these credentials and that's why we trust this and give it a higher authority. But even like I said earlier, like a marketing article can gain authority by having a snippet from the developers, the engineers or user case studies. And case studies, well, they've always been and they remain, I think one of the most valuable marketing assets we have. They're hard to get, especially in cybersecurity, they're near impossible.

Emily Matthews:
But, but that was, I mean there workarounds with that. You know, if you're, if you can't get customers to speak on the record, you could. I always ask. I've always said, they say, well, customers won't be around. Let us use their names, say, well then that's fine, but let me interview them anyway. Because if you make up a case study, it sounds made up. Interview someone. It has, it has it.

Emily Matthews:
Because it's real. It feels, I mean it comes across. The reality of it does Come through the, through, through the content and so you can get them to tell their stories and you don't use their name but you know, it's still the, their stories make it, make it much more impactful and relevant to the, to the readers.

Andrew Monaghan:
So the story is a big element in a case study. What else makes a great case study? It seems like there's all different levels of case study. What else would you add in there?

Emily Matthews:
Well, you know, from, from the businesses side, I think sometimes I read a lot of them and I think a lot of them, A lot of times people do the interview and just follow what the interview says. I do it the other way. I start by interviewing the SMEs. I get my, my story is my, what I want to say is in place. And I think, I think the role of a case study is to almost be your data sheet or your solution brief. Like what all the selling points of your product except through, from the voice of a customer. So I go, I have all my points lined up and then I say to the customer like well you know, this feature over here does whatever it does, does that, does that work for you too? And they say yes, it does. And I'm like really? Why? Tell me about that.

Emily Matthews:
So I, you know, and I feel them also, you know, so, so really at the end of it, it's not, it's, it's all the piece. You start off with what are you trying to sell? And then you use the customers to sell it for you because it's better that they say it than you say, right.

Andrew Monaghan:
You start off with the here's why I want them to say no.

Emily Matthews:
Well, exactly. And then, and, and also with the quotes like mine, my case studies are like so many quotes. Because if you write quotes that are, they're not going to say, they don't necessarily say exactly what quotes say obviously, but, but you know, you get the gist of what they're saying or you get what you want them to say, but it's, it's not like some insane over the top statement. It's like this feature helped me, you know, streamline my effort and not say it changed my life. Like sometimes they'll say crazy things like that and that's amazing. And I always try to get them see if they'll say it but, but even just them validating the, the proof point your benefits is, is tremendous. And by writing these things with a ton of quotes in them, it's back to write. Once published, many.

Emily Matthews:
Now I have quotes that I can sprinkle everywhere. I can put em in a solution brief, I can put em on the website in an article. And so you end up, you know, for the effort it take took to write one case study. You've got now assets that can be sprinkled across many more assets and going back to authority because now it's a customer repeated the benefit of your product versus you saying my product is great.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, that's fascinating actually. I feel like people who read case studies, like prospects who read case studies always start from the standpoint of this was made up and then you have to kind of credibility comes from what actually happens and what you say. And I always talk about credibility comes from specificity. Right. If you've got very specific things and you've got a whole ton of quotes, I love you got these quotes, right? It's, and it sounds like it's a person talking, not a brochure talking, right?

Emily Matthews:
100%. 100%. That is exactly right. And you know, the other thing with a case study is I also start with the assumption that if you're super lucky, they're going to read the headline, the sub, you know, the subheads and probably the pull quotes, maybe they'll read a couple of bullets. But I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't trust that people are going to read. So that's fine. So my story, also my, my case studies will stand alone as if you, if you read, you know, you go headline to subhead, subhead, subhead, I pull quote, a couple of bullets, you can, you can read those bits and then you've got the story. And if you want to really read the whole thing, excellent.

Emily Matthews:
But even if they don't, it looks good because it's filled with quotes. And now I can use my quotes like I said everywhere else.

Andrew Monaghan:
Now one thing lying to that, one thing that didn't surprise me about the research was that the, the number one credibility source for buyers was peer references and recommendations from their teams. I feel this is an interesting area because it's, you don't really have much control about the peer references, right?

Emily Matthews:
Oh yes you do. 100% you do.

Andrew Monaghan:
Okay, tell me more about that then.

Emily Matthews:
I completely believe you have control. Back to these, back to these, these workshops, right? So you go to one of my workshops, you're like, oh my God, this was really cool. The guy was honest. This is, this is slow here, it's fast here. This is the workaround. You know, you might have an issue, but this is how you can fix it. They're going to, they're going to walk away. You should be paying them, not them paying you for this.

Emily Matthews:
Right, like you were saying, charging for it. Hell no. Because they walk away with the best feeling. So I talked to someone, they were honest about my, you know, what was, what was a problem. Like, okay, maybe it's a little difficult to do this, but here's how, here's, here's the, this is the best way forward. They, you, they're going to trust you, they're going to respect you. They're going to, they're going to believe in the con, the material, the product because they saw it working. So when their friend says, hey, I just, I just heard about this thing, what do you think? What did you do? You just, you just influenced however many people in your workshop.

Emily Matthews:
Those are peers. So it's an investment that those kinds of things are investments in, in, in peer influence.

Andrew Monaghan:
So contrast that with the, I don't know, vanilla sales cycle. Right. Rep+se, you know, giving a presentation, giving a demo, asking questions. Right, right. It's kind of like, you know, like every other thing that they do. Whereas in that environment, you're letting them almost into the club. Right? Let's, let's come in and we're going to tell you what we're good at and probably what we're bad at. And under the hood you get to experience it and the whole thing, right?

Emily Matthews:
No, those under the hood things. People love going under the hood.

Andrew Monaghan:
Under the hood, love that.

Emily Matthews:
Right. And behind the scenes, you know, like behind the scenes with, you know, whatever, like people want to be inside. They really, it's. And I mean people in technology are here because we're curious. You know, I think most people in this industry are curious people. And so being able to see how and why is, is is exciting. And I think the more technical the product and the, and the user, the deeper you can go with it. And, and that really, I think we have to flip this from thinking we're doing that they're, you know, we're giving them something for free versus like, please, like we're, the benefits of it are just tremendous.

Emily Matthews:
But, but, but you can't just leave it to chance that you take them to the under the hood party and they're going to walk away and be a good influencer. Right? Like, you got to think it's all this pre thinking and pre scripting, like making sure that the, the guy doing the demo in the, in the, in the workshop, he's got to have something that's like, okay, we're not perfect, but you know, like, so they feel like you're human, you're real. Nothing's perfect. It's, it's technology. There is no such thing as perfect technology. It's always getting iterated. And so acknowledging that or showing an example of like this feature here came about because one of our customers found this thing and we figured out, oh well, let's fix that for. And then it became, it turned into this feature.

Emily Matthews:
And some of that can be exactly a real situation, some of it could be a little, maybe kind of a storytelling or. But making it real for people, making it feel like they're getting inside scoop and it's not someone sitting there with like flipping through the PowerPoint, showing the feature, click, and then this turned blue and then oops, you can see this graph and back to the dashboard. Like, make it more, more real and more. And I think especially in complex technology, like in cyber, cyber security solutions too, that you're showing like where weaknesses are and how do you avoid them? You know, if you turn the dial too far, 11's cool in some instances, but not over here because you're going to give yourself a world of hurt. So let me explain why and treat, I think also treating these people with respect. I mean, I came to, I came to this very long time ago from a, not any kind of technical background. I was a, you know, as a history major in English and, but I started off in mainframe system software and, and started asking questions and I loved it. And that was, ended up being my career.

Emily Matthews:
But, but, but I remembered these, these marketers that I met in my early days and I was, I was so new, I didn't know anything. And so I'd always be like asking why? And, But I remember them all saying, oh, well, because they, I'm like, well, who are they? Oh well, you know, those developers, those, those, those mainframe people, they're something else. They. And I'm like, well, they are us. I mean we are all people here. And I go, that kind of sounds like BS to me. Which, I mean, I'm like, you know, in my early 20s saying this to someone who's like a senior marketer. They're looking at me like I'm the devil.

Emily Matthews:
But I was, they're like, oh, but they, they, they. You know, And I was like, no, I think if it sounds like BS to us, it's probably going to smell bad to them too. And it's true. And so I've, I, that's been my approach to Marketing forever is like speak to these people. Like I would like to be spoken to obviously at a much more technical level, depending on the solution, but still don't drown them in acronyms and fluffy just too much. It's like talk to them the way anyone would want to be spoken to or communicated with.

Andrew Monaghan:
So it feels like a couple of things. Whoever does that for your company, whoever leads the workshop or whatever it might be, the hands on exercise. Make sure they're personable and real and open and they don't feel like they've got to act like a certain type of person, which often happens. They got to be themselves and, and be engaging, interesting. And the second thing, you know, be very intentional about how you go through the process and not just hope that they, they kind of land on the things you want to land on.

Emily Matthews:
That is exactly. You have a script. I mean not necessarily, it doesn't have to exactly be a script, but a storyboard of sorts that you know, you've got the high notes that need to be hit and, and you walk through. You know, you do the walkthrough of the thing and make sure that you're these and the marketer won't. I mean like, I don't necessarily know. I, I walk into things like this and I don't know what I'm going to get but I keep asking the questions or I'm like can you show me something that explain that present, you know, gives an example of this like something that you fixed or something that, that's a, like a bit of a troublesome area that you know, we can, this is the workaround. I'll ask the questions and, and, and the, the smarter people in the room, you know, they know the, they know the answers and they'll, and it gets them thinking like they wouldn't, they may not naturally think that way and, and they're used to just doing the demo. But if you, if you start asking the questions, they get excited and they want to share and, and it, it, it does, it's that.

Emily Matthews:
But it, it takes a lot of prep work and you can't just, you know, I think a lot of this is. Oh well, they've been doing this, the SE has been doing the demo for, you know, a year and a half every day that he knows it cold.

Andrew Monaghan:
Well. Yeah, but, but this is not demo, right. This, this should be hands on. It should be a right, you know,

Emily Matthews:
it's like make it fun and interesting.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah.

Emily Matthews:
Like you said, they want to be inside, so let them in.

Andrew Monaghan:
I like that A lot Now. One thing that I was not surprised about looking at the research was it said that systems are less reliant on analysts than they ever used to be. That seems to be a big shift going on. What does it mean for how companies engage with analysts? Or do they.

Emily Matthews:
I was really surprised by that, actually. That was that, I think. Well, I mean, I just grew up the analysts were it. Right? Like, that was our, you know, that was our go to. Whereas, you know, like now I wake up in the morning and think, how am I going to feed those little monstrous machines? You know, you used to wake up every day and think, how are you going to get the analysts on board? What are you going to say to get their attention and, and get them, you know, to get into their recommendation list? So, I mean, they are, they will never. They're not going to go away. I think their role is changing. I think they're.

Emily Matthews:
There's more, there's more. I mean, information access has just continued to grow and grow and grow. So they're, they're now part of. They're not exclusive anymore. I think there's so much information available that people can find on their own. It's, it's like customers going and selling themselves. It's why they like websites because then they can go get all the information they want without having to talk to, you know, the likes of me or, you know, the stuff that I'm going to give to a salesperson to have them trot out and buy, you know, make them sit through a demo. So I think, probably, I don't think.

Emily Matthews:
I think they're, they remain important. They look at things differently. They also see a breadth of content and customers that, I mean, vendors that no one, we just don't. That's, that's why, that's why they're paid to do it is they go out and deep dive into Endpoint Security and they look at all of them and they evaluate them and look at them from different perspectives. You know, it's not just like, okay, that's cool technology, but it's like, well, but it doesn't integrate or, you know, they have the. We pay them because we want them to go and do these deep dives and look at things at a level that, you know, we can't.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I think for many companies they still had that culture of, you know, what did analysts say? And let's make sure that we're in line. And you know, I often hear what they really can do. Is get a cya, you know, and make sure that, you know, their decisions are backed by the analysts. But it presents an interesting challenge for a startup, right? Because if you think about in the cybersecurity world, there's 3,900 vendors now, roughly just under 4,000. And yet I believe there's what, eight or nine magic quadrants from Gartner and there's only, I don't know, 8 to 10 companies represented on each. So you're talking about maybe, I don't know, 100 to 200 companies out of 3,900 that are in some way being represented to, you know, Gartner clients about, you know, whether they should go with them or not or what their strengths or weaknesses are. It seems like a big gap there.

Emily Matthews:
Well, that's always, I mean, that's, that's, that's always been the problem, right? And it's, it's because it's, and I think that's where the peer reviews are coming in, right? Because the analysts are going to surface the vendors that are big enough to engage with it, with the analyst and actually, you know, get it, differentiate themselves enough and, and have enough of an offering that they can get into the quadrant. And you know, those, a lot of those, A lot of the analyst ratings are also about like, you know, viability and scalability and you know, not necessarily tiny point solutions, but, but some of those things are really interesting. And I think that's, that's where the peer reviews come in. So what are you using? You know, like, okay, we all have to have, you know, firewall number 12. Okay, check. Got that. But what else? Like what, you know, and then, and, but your friend over there, you know, some other CSO found this really interesting little startup. And so I think that's the.

Emily Matthews:
So will be part of the mix always. I mean, you do need to, I think it's important to know if you're a big company while it's, it's, it's lofty and great to say, yeah, these small vendors have better, faster, cheaper solutions and that very well may be the case. But like a huge company just can't afford to manage that stuff. Just not tenable. You know, they need, they need the platform solutions and, and that's just because of sheer size and scale. But I mean, those mark, the small markets are here. I mean there's a lot of, there's a lot of money in these small, small, strange markets, you know, that are, that are the under, you know, just don't get a lot of marketing Attention.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah. Yeah. It's not like the. The other, you know, 3600 are. Are not relevant. Right. You know, thinking about how you become relevant in your small little space becomes the important thing to think about. Let me.

Andrew Monaghan:
Let me ask you something else that I've been thinking about recently is again, 3,900 vendors. It feels like sometimes that everyone's using the same buzzwords, just in a slightly different order.

Emily Matthews:
Yeah, there is something. They did mention that.

Andrew Monaghan:
Is that in there as well? I missed that.

Emily Matthews:
Yes. Yeah, we do. And we can't help ourselves. Um, and. And, you know, sometimes that's the. Maybe it's the right word and the word makes sense. But. But I think just, you know, we need to be careful with our words.

Emily Matthews:
I mean, marketers, ultimately, most of what we do has to do with. With con. With words and how they're put together. And, you know, you should just check yourself and, you know, if you're using aligned. Is that the right word? Maybe it is. And if it is, good, keep going. If you're just using it, because it just is the word du jour, don't be careful. And it's back to respecting your audience.

Emily Matthews:
Like, is that a word that a normal person would use? No. Well, then don't talk to them that way. Come on. Like, you speak to them in real words.

Andrew Monaghan:
The other one that gets me is leverage. Right. No one ever sat there and said, I'm going to leverage my golf skills to play better golf. Yeah. We could use it all the time. Like, leverage this and leverage that and whatever's like, I don't know. You're going to use it?

Emily Matthews:
No. Yeah. No. Yes. It's a. I've used leverage.

Andrew Monaghan:
There's all these examples, though. It's like. It's like that. This is not how plain people, normal human beings, talk to each other. No.

Emily Matthews:
Well, I will say my children, one day, they said something like, well, mom, you're just not the target audience. And I was like, oh, dear, I must have been marketing. My husband's in marketing, too. So I think marketing crept into my house. So sometimes these things, when I hear them start saying it, I'm like, oh, God, I got to stop.

Andrew Monaghan:
Couple of questions to finish up on here. I don't know if you're going to have an opinion on this or not, but one of the things that I think has happened in the last three or four years, it really feels like the Israeli ecosystem of companies working with Cyber Starts or Wild Ventures, they're really good at taking very bold steps in Branding and, and messaging and things like that. And it feels like others are not. And I'm kind of wondering if you got any thoughts about why other people are just not ready to be quite as bold or be quite as different in what they do, and they end up being very bland because of it.

Emily Matthews:
My first, I went from working, I was cooking at, I was at the Four Seasons in Newport beach in a kitchen. And I went from there to my first, I guess, real job, and it was for an Israeli mainframe system software company. The two founders, the tech for the company came out of the Israeli army and they brought in, they, they brought in, you know, the marketers from all the big people at the time. You know, what would now be like the Palo Altos, you know, all those big companies they brought in that, those kinds of people into, into the company. And, and I'm there like the lowest on the totem pole. And these people kept apologizing to me because the Israelis were, they were a force. And I was just sitting there like, well, I mean, they don't have knives. Like, kitchens are a dangerous place.

Emily Matthews:
Like, these people are just, they're just, they're solid. Like, they, they just, I think because they're very confident. They, they, they, they're smart. They figure out what they want to do and then they go, they just go do it. And they don't, they don't. It's a cultural thing, I think. But I, I've, I've worked with a lot of, of Israeli companies over the years and I, they're my favorites. Just that they're.

Emily Matthews:
Because you said they're bold and, you know, go ahead and break some eggs and keep going and. But look, that's what we came. I mean, you know, go fast and break things. I mean, they were doing that when I first started a million years ago. You know, they, they just, they were yelling and flying around and, but man, they made incredible product and it was, it was good. I think it's, I think it's just be, do your homework, do your homework, figure out what it is you've got and if you believe in it and you've done your, your vetting with, with prospective customers and this is a real thing. Don't, don't be shy. Go.

Andrew Monaghan:
Yeah. One of the themes for this conversation for me has been around the very different perspective that you've brought. Right. You've got different background. You're not a dyed in the wool technical product marketing person. Right? Yet we have a lot of people like that. I'm wondering if you got someone coming in from outside the industry like you did, let's say they've got a history degree or an English degree, or they're from a journalism background, something like that, what advice would you give them about how to really be. Stick their guns or go with their gut on how to do this as opposed to be dragged into.

Andrew Monaghan:
Here's actually how we do technical marketing.

Emily Matthews:
Ask questions. I mean, I was like, I said I was, I was under. I said I was at the bottom of the totem pole. I was actually underneath the totem pole. Like, I was. So I was just nobody. But I, I learned, I wrote. I mean, I, I was a history major.

Emily Matthews:
I was English major. And, you know, I learned how to write. And my history department was very, very, very focused on that. They're like, it was less about, you know, what war and this and date. They're like, how do you get the point across? What is the. What are you trying to say? What are you trying to prove? And how do you do it? And there's a process to do it. And, you know, it was beaten into me and it was for, for, for the. I love.

Emily Matthews:
It was a great gift. But. So I was at this company and they were hiring. They wanted to get some outside agency, a marketing agency to come in and write these data sheets. They didn't. They need data sheets. And, And I'm like, well, who are these people? And they're like, oh, they're. They're a marketing agency.

Emily Matthews:
Well, they didn't know anything about being frame system software. Like, they had no nothing. They were just like, they were basically ad. They were an advertising agency mostly. Like, they did ad copy. And I was like, well, okay. Well, I didn't know. I mean, what do I know? I knew nothing.

Emily Matthews:
I didn't know anything. But. But I knew how to ask questions. And I just kept asking questions. And so they brought over the Israeli product marketing guys for a couple of weeks. And I, I don't know how I talked myself into getting this gig. I'm like, how about you let me take a stab at these data sheets? And they're like, really? I said, yeah, I can do this. And so for whatever reason, they, they, I guess just to see what happened, get a good laugh, they turned me loose.

Emily Matthews:
And so these poor Israelis had to come sit in my office. And they'd sit on one side of the desk, I'd be on the other, and I'd start asking them questions. And they're like, well, because it's fast. Like, fast is not an answer, tell me what else, what else? And I just like beat on them and kept asking the questions and asking the questions and, and, and then they started realizing like, wait a minute, it is more because they just kept being told like make it fast. And so they did, but it's like there was so much more there. And like I literally didn't know anything, but I knew how to get information from these people's heads. Put it on paper, organize it and then get back with them and have them, you know, make sure it was technically accurate or make corrections. And then, I mean, that's when I knew nothing.

Emily Matthews:
And now, you know, I've been doing this for very long time and so I do have, I mean I am, you know, full blown, my real, real product marketing person now. I've worked with all kinds of technology and I do know. So it's easier and faster for me to get this out of the people. But, but ultimately it's just ask questions and ask why like we're going to do this, why are you doing that? Why are you having a steak dinner? Tell me why are you not having a, you know, under the hood workshop? And they'll be like, but maybe they have a good reason. Maybe the reason is, you know what, because we're in Texas and Texans like steaks and we're going to have a steak party. I'm like, good idea. But, but you know, you just constantly ask questions and, and, and keep learning. I mean I like, I just last, last year got dove into this answer engine optimization and to shift it from SEO and it's, it's fascinating and you just got to keep up to date with what's going on and, and find there's always someone super smart on the topic that'll be willing to talk to you about it and answer questions and, and go forth and try.

Emily Matthews:
I mean the stakes, I mean if you try something, with rare exception, the stakes aren't that high anymore. We're not dealing with, you know, offset printing. I mean it's digital. So you write a blog post. If it doesn't get a great performance, then scrap it and start again.

Andrew Monaghan:
Right. There's very few one way doors in this, right?

Emily Matthews:
Yeah, I mean the world used to be much more difficult. I mean there were, it was very hard to get things printed and produced. But the land we live in now, you can just keep iterating and iterating and go, just put it out there, test it, test, test, test and engage your audience as much as possible. I mean, do what we did, you know, Larry and I, he was, he was. When I went to them with this idea, I'm like, I know this is completely the opposite. Like, they're always asking the CISOs about, you know, what, what they're doing in their day to day life and how are they looking at cyber security generally and about specific products. And I'm like, how about we just ask him what to think about marketing? And he's like, why don't you come up with the questions and I'll. We'll do.

Emily Matthews:
We'll run the survey for you. And I was like, okay. Because I got a lot of questions and my friends have questions. And, you know, every time I do a case study, I always, I always sneak in a question. Like, I'm just curious. You know, this is totally not. Not speaking on behalf of my client. Just me, the wingy weeny person marketer over here, and I'll ask them whatever question I'm thinking about and, you know, they'll answer it.

Emily Matthews:
And it's surprising sometimes what you get.

Andrew Monaghan:
Well, Emily, it was a few surprises in the, in the report. I'm really glad that you did that. And thanks so much for joining us today.

Emily Matthews:
Thank you.