CyberMarketingCon 2025 Recap: What Matters Most in Security Marketing Today
Lessons from the GTM teams behind Wiz, Upwind, Palo Alto Networks, Armis and more
Welcome to The Cybersecurity Pulse (TCP)! I'm Darwin Salazar, Head of Growth at Monad and former detection engineer in big tech. Each week, I bring you the latest security innovation and industry news. Subscribe to receive weekly updates! 📧
Recap
The dust has settled from CyberMarketingCon. This post covers what stuck with me the most.
As a former security practitioner now in my first GTM role, events like this are a cheat code. Learning directly from GTM folks at Wiz, Armis, Varonis, Upwind, Cyera, Palo Alto Networks, Torq. Market leaders who’ve defied the odds over and over… it’s arguably the best way to compress time and perform at a high level in this space.
I also got to present on technical writing as a lead gen tool (more on that below). First time on stage since 2022 and my first as a GTM person. Got some great feedback and made new marketing friends so I’d say things went well.
The Quick Hits
If I had to boil down everything I heard into a few truths:
AI-EO (AI Engine Optimization) is powerful and here to stay.
In the age of AI, building genuine connection with buyers matters more than ever. Empathy and trust win.
AI means most messaging sounds the same now. You have to be bold and have high risk tolerance in order to break through.
Security buyers don’t care about your copy or your latest whitepaper. They care about trust signals: case studies, word of mouth, and whether your product will actually solve their problems.
Marketing is about making creative, educated bets. Campaigns flop. You dust yourself off and keep launching. High risk appetite + leadership buy-in = standing out and building brand that buyers gravitate towards.
My Talk: Using Technical Writing to Generate High-Intent Pipeline
I shared a story from Monad. A blog post on data transformation approaches for security telemetry led to a LinkedIn DM from an SVP of Engineering. That DM turned into a 3-year, $800K+ deal 11 months later. (Shoutout to our eng and sales team for the heavy lifting.)
TLDR: Want to resonate with your buyer and gain their trust? Give them value for free. Show that you truly understand their day-to-day challenges. Dive into the hard engineering problems your company solves. Write technical content that helps your buyer, whether they buy from you or not. Include technical visuals like architecture diagrams, code snippets etc. and only focus like < 20% of the content on your product. Hit me up if you’d like the slides from the presentation. Happy to share.
Tom Orbach: What 3 Years at Wiz Taught Me About Marketing💡
Optimize for comments over reshares on LinkedIn (the algorithm rewards it).
Play games where your audience wins easily.
Make your customers the heroes.
Think like B2C.
Have fun. Seriously.
Activate employees. Make it dead simple and automated for them to post on milestones, launches, etc.
Tom writes an awesome Substack called Marketing Ideas. Highly recommend subscribing!
Favorite Session: Building a Signal-Led GTM Playbook with an AI Stack 📡
Chas Larios and Jeanette from Upwind talked about building a GTM engine that operates like a SOC. Hunting for lead intent signals the same way you’d hunt for threats. Proper instrumentation is everything. You need the right tooling, just like in SecOps. AI has opened up a lot of possibilities here.
This one hit different for me given my background. Brilliant framing.
Don Jeter: Stop Marketing. Start World-Building 🌍
Aside from having the funniest talk at the con, Don also dropped some heat:
“RSAC is the suburbs of cybersecurity.” (Most booths look identical.)
Safe is boring. Boring is invisible.
Doesn’t matter how great your marketing is, you still need a great product.
Be different at every turn.
Design for internet culture.
Marketing shouldn’t feel like marketing. It should feel like a movement.
CISOs don’t need more happy hours.
Community happens naturally when you have great brand + great product. People feel connected
When people have heard of your brand, it makes your salespeople’s lives way easier.
Find large reference customers early.
Final Thoughts
GTM in cybersecurity is hard. You could have a world-class product, but if your marketing is stuck, it’ll be hard to hit PMF and scale past the early milestones. Invest heavily into marketing and brand. Spend lots of time thinking about it + experimenting. It pays dividends in the long run.
CyberMarketingCon is truly a must-attend for anyone involved with GTM. The next one is Nov. 15-18, 2026, right here in Austin, TX.
Lastly, huge kudos to the Gianna, Maria and the rest of the CMC planning + volunteering crew. Bravo👏
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Bye for now 👋🏽
That’s all for this week… ¡Nos vemos la próxima semana!
Disclaimer
The insights, opinions, and analyses shared in The Cybersecurity Pulse are my own and do not represent the views or positions of my employer or any affiliated organizations. This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal, security, or investment advice.
Glad you enjoyed the conference. I wish I attended your session in person. I was volunteering at the time. I will watch the recording. Bummer I was there and we didn't meet.
The signal-led GTM playbook framing really clicked. Treating lead intent like threat hunting makes total sense, especailly for folks transitioning from practitioner to GTM roles. I've seen companies ignore instrumentation on the marketing side while obsessing over it in SecOps. Don's point about safe being invisible is spot-on, most booths at RSAC blend together because nobody wants to take creative risks.