Cybersecurity Content Age: How Fresh is Cybersecurity Marketing Content?

At Altitude, we’re interested in learning more about the state of cybersecurity marketing. Between July and October of 2022, we picked 13 leading cybersecurity companies and reviewed their marketing content. We reviewed all of their content available within the product and solutions sections of their websites and noted their type, age and readability.

Here’s the list of companies whose content we reviewed:

• Akamai Technologies

• AT&T Cybersecurity

• Broadcom Inc.

• Check Point Software Technologies

• CrowdStrike

• DXC Technology

• F5 Networks

• IBM

• Palo Alto Networks

• Secureworks

• Sentinel One

• Trend Micro\

• Zscaler

What did we discover?

“Nearly 1 in 5 (19%) pieces of cybersecurity content was over 2.5 years old, or in other words, pre-COVID. ”

There’s no specific age whereby content is automatically out-of-date but we think any content more than two years old is worth reviewing and potentially updating.

In an earlier post we discussed why the age of cybersecurity content matters, because the industry is evolving so quickly:

• The environment changes

• Your solutions are evolving

• New attack vectors appear constantly

• The language of cybersecurity changes

• Your branding changes

You’re probably wondering how each company compared with this average. It was quite revealing, actually.

Different Companies. Different Results

• For 6 companies, less than 10% of their content was created prior to 2020.

• For 4 companies, 10-30% of their content was that old

• And for 3 companies, 31-41% of their content was pre-COVID.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that these last three companies don’t have as much newer content as the others, as some companies simply have more content available on their sites. It does, however, mean that a prospect is more likely to download or view content that is potentially out-of-date. When we work so hard to get quality visitors to our sites, the cost of disappointing them with content that is no longer relevant is likely significant. A competitor’s site is always just a click away.

Video: The Senior Citizens of Cybersecurity Content

If we delve into the different types of content, we see that videos (28%) are most likely to be more than 2.5 years old. Given video tends to be a higher cost to produce, it’s understandable that a company may keep an older video on their site longer than other content. But…if prospects are more likely to engage in video content, perhaps investing in updating or replacing the video makes sense?

Neglected Product and Solution Portfolios

In our research, we also noticed that content age varied significantly across different product and solution portfolios for each company. Some portfolios had very recent content, while others had much higher percentages of older content. It made us wonder how much of that variation was strategic, based on which portfolio was of higher importance, and how much was simply due to new portfolios have newer content.

It Might Be Worth a Look

When you look at your website, how does the age of your cybersecurity content impact the user’s experience? Is it worth looking into this issue?

We’ve also heard from some cyber leaders than even more outdated content lives on internal sales enablement sites, which can make it hard for sellers to find the right piece of content to share with prospects.

At Altitude, we’re continuing to look at other cybersecurity leaders sites and their marketing content.

If you’re with one of the companies we’ve already looked into, please reach out to Jennifer Throop and we can share what we found. If you’re with another cybersecurity leader, do the same. You might be on our list of companies we’re currently reviewing.

At Altitude, we’re focused on creating content that delivers the ‘most relevant information’, in the shortest amount of time.