When Cybersecurity Marketing Kills Real Technical Content

The Golden Age: Technical Content That Matters

You’ve probably seen this story play out: a small cybersecurity team starts out strong, publishing real content – technical write-ups, creative deep-dives, and actual lessons learned. Stuff written by people who clearly know what they’re talking about. The kind of blog posts or Twitter threads that end up on your reading list, because you know you’ll get something out of them.

Enter the Marketers: The Great Dilution

But then, the company grows. Marketing shows up. Suddenly the technical blog turns into a dumping ground for “how to protect your organization in today’s evolving cyber-threat landscape” articles. You know the type – five generic bullet points about patching, strong passwords, and “staying vigilant.” If you’re really unlucky, they’ll throw in some AI buzzwords and top-10 threats copied straight from the latest headline.

And when technical people point out that this is, frankly, useless, the answer is always the same: “But it’s for managers, for the C-level, for people who don’t want details.” Right. Because C-levels are just dying to read yet another blog post about password complexity.

“But It’s for Management” — The Old Excuse

When I say “management” here, I mean anyone on the non-technical side: mid-level managers, directors, upper management, even the C-suite. Basically, the folks who don’t actually write code, analyze logs, or respond to incidents — but who are supposed to be making big decisions.

So, what happens? The real, valuable content – the stuff that built the company’s reputation in the first place – gets drowned out. The same Twitter, LinkedIn, or blog feed now serves up a steady mix of actual research and recycled, content-farm nonsense. Before long, anyone technical either unfollows, unsubscribes, or just mentally checks out. The company’s signal-to-noise ratio drops through the floor, and the original credibility is gone.

The Real Audience: Who Actually Decides?

Here’s the part that marketing never seems to get:

No one with any actual decision-making power is buying your product because of a “Five Ways to Defend Against Ransomware” post. The people who decide what gets bought – and, more importantly, what gets recommended to management – are technical. They can spot dogshit marketing a mile away. They’re the ones who quietly tell their boss which tools are actually useful and which companies are all talk.

Management might sign the contract, but it’s almost never without consulting their technical team. And that team will sniff out the fluff before the first paragraph is over. Overestimating the power of “executive-focused” blog posts is a mistake companies keep repeating. In reality, you lose your real audience – the technical people who matter – while chasing an audience that was never going to convert in the first place.

Does Anyone Read the Dogshit?

Does anyone actually read the generic marketing content? Honestly, I doubt it. Is there a single manager out there who made a buying decision because of a 101-level blog post about two-factor authentication? I’d love to see the data. My guess: real decisions are based on evidence of actual expertise, delivered by real people, not a rehash of best practices everyone’s read a hundred times.

What Actually Works: Keep It Separate

So, is there a solution? Actually, yes – and it’s not even complicated.

The smart players already separate their marketing content from their technical content. Some spin up a “Labs” account, or call it “Team” or whatever, and keep the technical reports, deep-dives, and real research there. The main account can keep churning out the password-complexity dogshit for the handful of people who genuinely want it (if they even exist). This way, the people who care about the real stuff know where to find it, and the brand doesn’t lose credibility with its core audience.

The Bottom Line: Respect Your Audience

Here’s the bottom line:

If you want to be taken seriously in cybersecurity, don’t poison your content with dogshit marketing. Keep the technical work front and center – and if you have to post the generic stuff, at least keep it out of the way. Real influence, and real buying decisions, come from trust and technical credibility. If you lose that, all you have left is noise.