The Security Buyer Test: Would You Forward This Content?

There’s a growing belief in cybersecurity marketing that content just doesn’t land like it used to. Buyers are too busy, distracted, or skeptical to engage with anything beyond a subject line.

But that doesn’t quite explain what’s happening.

The shift feels similar to what cultural critics have observed in pop culture. Writers like Derek Thompson at The Ringer and editors at CBR have pointed to a growing fatigue with movies, music, and media that feel increasingly formulaic, not because the quality has collapsed, but because audiences are oversaturated. In Thompson’s words: “We’re living through a vibe collapse.” Even when good work exists, it gets buried under the noise.

The problem isn’t always quality. It’s saturation. And when there’s too much of something, the assumption becomes that none of it’s worth the time.

That’s the paradox now facing security content. The volume has exploded, with blog posts, gated guides, explainer videos, nurture streams, and brand campaigns all competing for a buyer’s limited attention. But most of it doesn’t make it through. Not because buyers aren’t looking, but because what reaches them rarely feels like it was built for them.

A team might invest weeks into building a long form asset: a polished, high concept eBook designed to anchor a campaign. It’s strategically sound, visually sharp, and fully approved. It launches. Campaigns go live. And then… it quickly fades. Sales doesn’t use it. Buyers don’t bring it up. Metrics trickle in, but nothing sticks.

At the same time, a basic one-pager created to help explain value in clear terms starts moving on its own. It gets forwarded in sales threads. It shows up in follow-ups and proposals, not because it’s beautiful or deeply branded, but because it works.

Useful content, speaks plainly, and doesn’t require translation, finds an audience.

That contrast says everything about what security buyers need from content right now. It has less to do with how it looks and more with how it communicates.

The One‑Pager That Quietly Converted

The content that moves deals is rarely the biggest, flashiest piece. More often, it’s the one that’s clear, straightforward, and useful without needing much context.

A good example is Whistic’s Security Profile One‑Pager, which focuses on a real problem: vendor security reviews slowing down sales and spells out how the product solves it. The benefits are listed plainly: faster cycles, fewer questionnaires, and easy sharing from Salesforce. It’s built to be passed around, not explained.

This isn’t high-concept content. It’s not meant to tell a full brand story or establish thought leadership. It’s a practical asset designed for someone who needs to understand value quickly and relay it to someone else.

And that’s exactly why it works.

When buyers are short on time and under pressure to justify decisions, the content that helps them communicate internally and quickly is the content that gets used. It doesn’t need to be beautiful. It needs to be usable.

Why Content Doesn’t Match How Buyers Work

Most security marketing isn’t ignored because it’s bad. It’s ignored because it doesn’t reflect how security teams operate or how buying decisions happen.

A CISO doesn’t sit down to read a whitepaper during lunch. They manage team capacity, track risk, update leadership, and review tech stacks under pressure. When they open content, they ask: Does this help me make a call, defend a decision, or explain it to someone else?

If the answer isn’t obvious, they move on.

What gets in the way isn’t usually the marketer’s instincts; it’s the internal process. Content gets shaped around messaging docs and stakeholder approvals. It’s written for alignment, not utility. Most teams know when it’s not quite buyer-ready, but it gets published anyway because it’s on-brand, on-time, and technically correct.

Terry Grogan, former CISO at Pixel Health, summed it up simply: “Security is so complex… You need a vendor who is an advisor.”

An advisory doesn’t start with a tagline. It starts with clarity, relevance, and the sense that the person behind the content understands what the buyer is up against.

Content becomes another thing to translate when that's missing, and most buyers don’t bother.

An Example of Content That Speaks to the Buyer

Some of the best performing content doesn’t look like marketing at all. Take Atlassian’s incident communication templates. These aren’t lead magnets or gated PDFs. They’re copy-paste-ready templates that security and engineering teams can use during a live incident.

Why they work:

• They solve a real, immediate problem — keeping stakeholders aligned under pressure
• They use the buyer’s language — not messaging, just plain operational terms
• They remove friction — no signup, just something ready to go

That’s what buyer-speak looks like. It doesn’t try to impress; it just makes the next step easier for the person reading it and the person they need to send it to. Because the best content doesn’t stop with one decision maker. It gets picked up, shared, and used.

The Forward Test

Most security buying decisions don’t happen in isolation. They get discussed, reviewed, and re-shared across teams. That means content has to do more than land with one person. It has to hold up when it gets passed along.

If a CISO can’t drop it into a thread with procurement or a head of IT can’t forward it to their CFO without rewriting it, it probably won’t go anywhere.

The content that does move tends to have a few things in common:

• It’s clear without needing extra context.
  
  
• It speaks to the blockers buyers face—budget, risk, and integration.
  
  
• It feels usable, not promotional.
  
  
• It reflects what the buyer needs to say next, not just what the vendor wants to say first.

That’s the bar. If your content can’t be forwarded, it won’t move. And if it can, it will.

Speak Buyer, Win Buyer!

Most security content doesn’t miss because it’s wrong. It misses because it’s misaligned with buyers' thinking, their responsibilities, and how decisions actually move forward.

The content that works isn’t always loud or impressive. But it’s clear. It’s useful. And it shows up when it matters on calls, in follow-ups, and forwarded emails that shape the final yes.

That’s the bar. When content speaks to the buyer, it doesn’t just get read; it gets used.

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