Cybersecurity Awareness Month

The problem

Every October, every security vendor talks about Cybersecurity Awareness Month. For TestOut, whose courses prepared students for security careers, it was a natural moment, but goodwill alone doesn’t build pipeline. The challenge: give instructors something they and their students would actually use, and turn that engagement into conversations with prospects.

What I did

I led the campaign each year and was hands-on wherever the team needed it. It was a whole-team effort, with several team members owning different pieces.

Gave schools something to do, not just read. Each year had a mix of activities instructors could use in class:

• A contest and lab challenge, with hidden codes in hands-on labs and prizes and grants for winners.
• Free online safety certificates students could earn.
• Classroom posters schools could order.
• A live webinar on teaching security.

Made original content. The team produced “Scary Stories”: short audio and video episodes about real data breaches and security failures, told as Halloween-style stories, with animated GIFs for social and email. The series had its own hub page on the website.

Reached prospects on several channels. A direct mailer went to non-customer instructors, alongside email, web pages, social and messages inside the product. Every activity led to a form, so engagement became a lead that sales could follow up on.

Learned from each year. After 2019 we wrote down what to change: a simpler landing page, a real person as the sender, and separate tracks for K-12 and Higher Ed. The next year’s campaign was built from that list.

Results

• Ran every October from 2019 to 2022 and became one of the year’s anchor campaigns.
• An original content series (“Scary Stories”) that kept getting views on the website.
• A repeatable playbook: activities, offers, channels and follow-up, improved year over year, starting from a written retro after 2019.
• 2019: a record 742 webinar registrants, about double our normal turnout, and 2,414 contest entries.
• 2019 mailer to 17,647 Higher Ed prospects at $0.72 each, about $6K under estimate.
• 2020: 3,445 submissions and 908 prospects asking for course access, on a budget under $8,000.

Why it matters

For demand gen: a strong campaign gives people something worth doing and then makes the follow-up easy. For EdTech: I designed for how teachers actually use materials in class. For fractional work: this is a self-contained program, with planning, creative, channels, follow-up and retro, that I can stand up for a client.