How Cybersecurity Buyers Are Influenced by Marketing: The Surprising Truth About CISO Buying Decisions and Where Your Cybersecurity GTM Spend is Wasted - Emily Matthews Principal NOLA Marketing

Emily Matthews, founder and principal of NOLA Marketing, partnered with the Ponemon Institute to ask CISOs directly how vendor marketing influences their buying decisions. The resulting State of Cybersecurity Marketing Influence Report 2026 holds some surprises: webinars beat CISO dinners, hands-on workshops build the peer references buyers trust most, and the first visitor to your website is increasingly a machine.In this episode:The top two CISO complaints about cyber marketing: it differs from product reality, and it's too high-level. Emily's fix starts with coffee-walk conversations with your engineers.Why 44% of security leaders ranked webinars the most valuable event format, while peer roundtables and CISO dinners came last.Why hands-on workshops should always be free: "You should be paying them, not them paying you."How workshops become "investments in peer influence," the #1 credibility source in the research.The shift to answer engines: Bain's 80% zero-click prediction and how to make your website a better "buffet for LLMs."Emily's case study method: start with your selling points, validate them in the customer's voice, and pack the piece with reusable quotes.Why buyers rely on analysts less than they used to, and what fills the gap for the ~3,700 vendors outside the magic quadrants.Her advice for marketers coming from outside tech: keep asking why. "Fast is not an answer."About the guest: Emily Matthews is the founder and principal of NOLA Marketing. A history and English major who started in mainframe system software, she has spent her career in technical product marketing and previously worked with the Ponemon Institute on the original Cost of a Data Breach report.Notable quotes:"You should be paying them, not them paying you.""If it sounds like BS to us, it's probably going to smell bad to them too.""If you make up a case study, it sounds made up. Interview someone. Because it's real, it comes across." Support the showThe Cyber Go-To-Market Talk is the show for cybersecurity sales leaders, founders, CROs, and go-to-market operators looking to improve cyber sales performance and build more predictable revenue growth. Hosted by Andrew Monaghan, founder of Unstoppable.do, covering cyber sales leadership, revenue leadership, sales onboarding, forecasting, pipeline generation, and cybersecurity go-to-market execution.Follow me on LinkedIn for regular posts about growing your cybersecurity startupWant to grow your revenue faster? Check out my cybersecurity sales consulting and trainingNeed ideas about how to grow your pipeline? Sign up for my newsletter.