How we turned untapped cybersecurity expertise into The Times & City AM coverage
PR approaches: REACTIVE PR ◠ thought leadership
This cybersecurity client had never invested in PR before, but inside the business was a team of specialists with exactly the kind of expertise journalists needed when major cyber stories broke.
Over a one-off maternity-cover project, we built their PR presence from scratch, turning technical knowledge into timely, accessible stories for both national and specialist media.
The goal? To make sure that when cybersecurity hit the headlines, journalists had a new expert voice worth turning to.
The Belta approach
Reactive PR is only useful if you can react quickly enough.
Cyber stories can break without warning, and waiting for expert commentary to be written, reviewed and approved after the news lands can mean the opportunity has already gone.
So, we worked with the client’s cybersecurity specialists to prepare and approve expert commentary around the stories we knew were likely to emerge, giving us a bank of insight we could quickly adapt when the news broke.
National coverage in The Times ◠ Express ◠ Mirror ◠ City AM ◠ MSN
30+ pieces of highly relevant coverage
Trade coverage in IT Brief ◠ Security Brief ◠ International Security Journal ◠ `Start Ups
DR 80 - average Domain Rating of backlinks secured
From no previous PR to
a brand-new media presence.
Our starting point was an interesting one: the client had never invested in PR before.
What they did have was a team of in-house cybersecurity specialists with a huge amount of knowledge journalists could use. So, rather than manufacturing stories for the sake of having something to pitch, we built the strategy around what was already there.
That meant turning highly technical knowledge into commentary journalists could quickly understand and use, reacting to the cyber stories already dominating the news and finding unexpected opportunities to take that expertise beyond the cybersecurity press.
Preparing for cyber attacks before they made the headlines.
Cybersecurity stories move quickly. Waiting for an attack to happen before starting the commentary and approval process would have meant losing valuable time.
Instead, we worked with the client's specialists to anticipate the types of stories likely to break and prepare expert commentary in advance.
Once everything was approved, we monitored the news ourselves and could quickly adapt that insight as relevant stories emerged.
So, when major cyber attacks affected some of the UK's biggest businesses, we weren't starting from scratch. We could get relevant expert commentary in front of journalists while they were actively covering the story, without sending the client into a last-minute approval scramble.
It made reactive PR quicker for journalists, easier for the client and gave us a much better chance of being part of the story while it still mattered.
Finding the cybersecurity stories hiding in everyday life.
Not every cyber story needed a major attack behind it.
Some of the best opportunities came from looking at the everyday situations where people could unknowingly be exposing themselves to cyber risks.
We developed consumer-led stories around everything from remote working and travel to the online habits that could leave personal information exposed, using the client's specialists to turn technical cybersecurity advice into something genuinely useful for a much wider audience.
That opened the door to national, business, workplace and consumer media, while still giving the client a credible reason to be the expert behind the story.
Closing the backlink gaps competitors had built over years.
Starting without any previous PR activity also meant there were some pretty obvious gaps in the client's backlink profile.
Competitors had already earned links from relevant technology, cybersecurity and business publications where our client had little or no presence.
That gave us a ready-made hit list.
Alongside national coverage, we deliberately targeted the specialist publications that mattered within the client's industry, using competitor backlink gaps to identify where PR could strengthen their authority as well as their media visibility.
Because a feature in The Times was a brilliant result. But so was a backlink from a highly relevant cybersecurity publication that their competitors didn’t have…
30+ pieces of highly relevant coverage from a standing start.
From a business that had never invested in PR before, our one-off project secured more than 30 pieces of highly relevant coverage and backlinks, with an average Domain Rating of 80.
See for yourself:
