Client Spotlight: SecureCyber

Growing Company with Significant Opportunities Ahead

Secure Cyber Defense was founded 10 years ago by Shawn Waldman. The company was focused on building preemptive and coordinated cyber security strategies for mid-market companies, schools, and municipalities that don’t have internal cyber security teams. Their philosophy is simple: being cyber aware means you must be cyber prepared.  

Their approach goes beyond cyber response and includes proactive training, education, risk assessments, and cyber monitoring. They hire and train the best – certified cybersecurity and incident response analysts from the Secret Service, local law enforcement, and various military branches to educate and safeguard their clients. Unlike many cyber security firms who duck in and duck out, Secure Cyber Defense’s goal was to be a daily partner in their clients’ organizations, keeping them informed, safeguarding their data and networks, and confidently leading their clients through any cyber threats. 

While the company was making big inroads and growing, 10 years in, they were not well known and relied only on word-of-mouth to build their reputation. Judy Brinegar, CFO of Secure Cyber, reached out to CMO-OnLoan for help.  

Amy Connor, Founder and CEO of CMO-OnLoan shares, “This is such an amazing company. They are small, but rapidly growing. They have proven they can help their clients. They literally show up and hand-in-hand help their clients. They are making a big difference and have vast upside, but they are not well known, partly because they had no one doing marketing.”

Revamping the Brand for Growth

The first steps included interviewing internal stakeholders and clients, and conducting an audit of their current marketing efforts and messaging. Says Judy, “We got so much good insight. It was clear that our biggest problems were with the foundational elements. Our name (Secure Cyber Defense) was making people think we were focused on the defense sector only (which we were not). Plus, our branding and messaging were very generic and not working hard for us.” 

Step 1 of the marketing work was clear – a complete rebrand and messaging reset. Judy shares, “We worked together to rename the company from Secure Cyber Defense to SecureCyber, designed a new logo, and defined a distinctive brand promise, secret sauce, and messaging that would clearly communicate our difference to the market. Then we quickly shifted to all the things that come with that – rolling it out internally, creating new collateral, building a new website, creating new messaging. CMO-OnLoan also worked with our sales team to improve the integrated sales and marketing process.  

Connor adds, “At the same time that we were implementing the new branding, Judy was implementing HubSpot CRM and marketing automation. So, we worked with them to make sure it was set up and they had all the content, tools, and templates they needed. It was so impressive to work with this scrappy team and build a powerful new brand and marketing system – from nothing to a very solid foundation that can be built on for years to come.” 

Developing Marketing Confidence & Capability

Judy adds, “This work has changed the mindset of our internal stakeholders. It has given our team a sense of pride. The brand is so clear now, and the new messaging is resonating with everyone, so more people are embracing it. It is exciting seeing it all come to life and running smoothly; we are starting to get a bigger pipeline, and it is all automated. We are such a long way from where we were just 9 months ago. CMO-OnLoan was so easy to work with. They understood the challenges we faced. It felt like they went beyond their scope to do whatever was needed to ensure we succeeded. They were collaborative. They worked well with everyone. And they were kind when we had bad ideas (lol).” 

Connor closes saying, “Together, this team did a tremendous amount of work in a short amount time. I will never forget our last meeting when Judy said, ‘Thank you so much, I think we’ve got it from here.’ That is the best thing we could ever hope to hear from a client. Our entire goal is to help our clients build their confidence and capability. That is everything we strive for.”