Driving Demand Generation in Cybersecurity | Chris Singlemann from Prelude

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition. Online, Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos, and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Chris from Prelude. How are you doing today, Chris?

Chris Singlemann: I’m doing really well. How about yourself?

Ernesto: I’m doing great. Great. Interesting what you guys are doing. Detection and response testing at machine speed. That’s there at Prelude. So, let’s kick it off then. Chris, in your own words, can you tell us a little bit more?

Chris: Yeah, well, you’ve already hit on one of the biggest pieces of it. Prelude is a cybersecurity company. And really what we’re doing is starting to provide that next level of threat detection and response engineering. For a lot of organizations that are out in the world, security is a very reactive effort. You’re possibly on the defensive, your executives, your team. You’re wondering if you’re vulnerable to the latest threats, ransomware, threat actors, etc. And what we’re doing at Prelude is providing a lot of next level necessary automation to take your threat intelligence and surface detections and subsequent tests, to efficiently and very quickly test your production environment against those threats. I think one of the most important elements that Prelude is providing is we also integrate with a lot of existing defensive tools on the marketplace so we can easily deploy protections to your XDR tools, whether it be CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft. These are really robust features that are helping the detection and security teams really respond to threats in a very novel way.

Ernesto: All right, awesome. Great to hear that. And on that note, then, so that way our listeners could get a good understanding of Prelude. What would you say then is that key problem that you guys like to solve for clients?

Chris: I think the biggest piece is speed. The reality is detection and response teams, security teams in general, the process is very inefficient in a lot of places. In some places, it can really just be downright slow. They’re common targets for threat actors and ransomware, like we said, and that process doesn’t enable them to move at the speed of threat actors. So what we’re doing is providing that automation that dramatically reduces the work and time required to create and work on their day-to-day, which is going to enable them to shift from that reactive process that we talked about to a more proactive security approach. So that makes them more efficient. It puts more time back in their day and it just gives them assurance at the end of the day. And it’s doing it at a speed which to this point is not achievable.

Ernesto: Definitely. Okay, awesome. And so on that note, then, who would your clients be? Is there a vertical segment, is there an ideal ICP for Prelude?

Chris: The reality is, with today’s security space, there are a lot of organizations that can benefit from Prelude. But certainly people that are going to see the most value are enterprise security teams, especially those in more regulated or highly regulated spaces like financial services, healthcare, critical infrastructure. These are people that are under fire very frequently from malware threat actors, and obviously makes them very vulnerable to some of the latest threats.

Ernesto: Yeah, I would assume so. Say I was in financial services, how would I usually find out about Prelude? Is there a top client acquisition channel for you guys?

Chris: Yeah, it’s a good question. You know, the reality is, we were kind of talking beforehand, we’re still a very early-stage startup, so we get a lot of bounce from a couple of different channels. We’re leveraging referral channels, we’re leveraging our outbound, and we’re working on the foundations that are really, you know, what some would call a best-in-class inbound engine and moving towards that more traditional, quote-unquote funnel. I think what’s been really beneficial for us in the short term has been we want to get at-bats here and now, build pipeline here and now as we build out that inbound engine. And paid social has been a really valuable tool for us. That’s something that’s been a good driver for us in getting qualified meetings and using a full funnel approach in paid social, namely LinkedIn, helps us build awareness around the pain, build awareness around what Prelude is offering as a solution. One that’s been very beneficial for us is conversation ads. So we’re putting our product in front of individuals who are our target persona, our target buyer. And we’re leveraging that persona-based targeting to get really helpful at-bats with the right people. As a very novel product, we’re coming into the market with a lot of changes, a lot of new features that are being rolled out. We want to get in their presence as soon as possible. The reality is we’re challenging a lot of status quo options. People are very comfortable with the way that security can be done in some cases, and we want to challenge that notion. We’re doing that with the awareness ads, like I said. But while we wait for that problem awareness to build, we’re trying to get in front of the right buyers and paid social, the targeting afforded by it, the ability to have real conversations, make it feel more organic, has been a very valuable tool for us.

Ernesto: Definitely important. All right. So that way, our listeners who are tuned in could go ahead and visit you. You could always check them out at preludesecurity.com. What role, then, does the website play for client acquisition?

Chris: Yeah, it’s interesting. A lot of my background is in web strategy and conversion. And one of the things that was always helpful for me as a marketer was learning that my website, you know, learning it inside and out and really understanding, you know, the content of the messaging that’s going up there. But also, like, how can we make unique pages, unique landing pages, bespoke experiences depending on where someone falls in the buyer’s journey? So the thing that I was most frustrated with as I was coming up as a marketer was just like cookie-cutter templates, things always looking the same. You land on a form, it’s the exact same page. You could have gone anywhere else on the website. And so we really try to create a differentiated experience. You know, the site is small. We have bespoke pages, depending on who you are as a buyer, the value add that Prelude can provide for you. And what we’re working on behind the scenes is trying to build out those conversion pathways and those journeys that really align to where they might fall on the buyer journey or how Prelude is going to solve for them in their role. So given the fact that we are a smaller organization, smaller team, and we want to appeal to the right people, investing time in creating those pathways is really valuable. And that could take a lot of time. But one thing that’s been really helpful for me as I’ve been doing this, and I’ve worked with a couple of different CMS tools, HubSpot and WordPress, something that’s been really great for me, and wasn’t really expecting it to be, has been Webflow. Really helpful tool to be fast and dangerous as a marketer, especially if you’re comfortable with design tools. It just helps you spin up content in a more effective and timely manner without necessarily having required developer tools. That’s been super helpful as we’re just trying to move very quickly, get stuff into market and experiment with design, experiment with aesthetic, experiment with content. Very useful tool for doing all of those things.

Ernesto: Definitely important. All right, great, great to hear that. And, well, then, I mean, you did mention, you know, a couple of things there on the website. Would there be a tool or tip or method that you would recommend to our listeners as far as some website lead generation?

Chris: Good question. I think at the end of the day, it comes down to, are you being thoughtful about the content that you’re putting into the website? And so I talked a little bit about those conversion pathways, those user journeys, asking yourself, when you’re creating new content on the website, does this webpage have a next step? Is it consistent with our narrative? Is it consistent with the base messaging that we’re trying to put out into the market? Because if the answer to those questions is no, then your users are going to face different and detached experiences that can really quickly break up the conversion funnel. So when we’re adding new content to the website, we’re thinking, can we optimize this for a next step? Is there a custom landing page, bespoke messaging that aligns more closely with how this page fits into the journey? Right now, as we’ve built out our persona pages, we’re also building out next step thought leadership content. Next step demo content so that it’s a more bespoke experience that if they are a CISO or they’re a security engineer, they’re experiencing the website, they’re experiencing the messaging in a way that’s deeply personalized to them. That’s difficult to do at scale. We’re trying to build a proper foundation at the scale that we’re at right now, that we’re making it part of our habit that as we’re building out content for the website and putting things out to the marketplace, it’s aligned with the journey that we would expect our users to be taking and aligns with where they’re coming from in their buying process.

Ernesto: Great to hear that from you guys there, Chris, and thanks for those tips and methods. Well, let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about you as a leader, Chris. You being the senior manager at demand generation and digital marketing there for Prelude, what are some key tasks you like to focus on in your day-to-day work?

Chris: Sure. The reality is we work with a really tight-knit team here, so we cover a lot of different areas and that means the day-to-day can look pretty different. That’s something that I really appreciate as a marketer, something that I’ve always been fond of, being able to wear many hats, being able to tinker with a lot of things. There’s the high-level strategic things, campaign ideation, and how are you deploying these things into the market from a demand gen perspective, it’s building and iterating on ads, creating landing pages pretty frequently, and the ad hoc social and email that kind of creates the comprehensive campaign narrative. One thing that I think is always really important to call out, that I particularly love to focus on is the operations of it all. So how do we make ourselves more efficient, to be sure, but also how are we getting the best data and the most data in a reasonable way? So we’re younger in our GTM motion. So there’s an extent to which you want to move quickly and not over-engineer things, but at the same time investing time and energy into the here and now with how are we going to report on this in the future? How does this scale? There is a lot of messy data out there. So to lay the right groundwork and the foundation for how you attribute leads, how you attribute campaigns, how you’re sourcing your data, how you’re tracking things, is really valuable to me and to us as a team. Yeah, I think that kind of answers your question.

Ernesto: Yeah, definitely. All right, awesome. Thanks for sharing that with us. And so throughout your day then, how do you stay up to date with marketing news, trends, strategies? Is there a preferred channel that you like to stay up to date with the marketing world?

Chris: Absolutely. So I think LinkedIn, it can feel a little bit like an echo chamber from time to time, depending on who you follow. But there’s a lot of really great resources out there and people that I like to follow to get some of the latest ideas and insights. There are a couple of Slack communities that I’m a part of and I find really valuable. I noticed on our background here we’ve got HubSpot app partner, personally, very big HubSpot user, and there’s few places I’ve spent more time than HubSpot community message boards. There’s a great new community that I just joined, Slack for HubSpot users and power, super admins called Sprocketeers. It’s a really great resource to just continue to iterate and become a little bit more technical. And given that’s what I like to focus on in my day-to-day, they’ve been really valuable communities for me.

Ernesto: Awesome. All right, awesome. And well, let’s jump into our next section here, Chris, which is our rapid-fire question rounds. Are you ready for them?

Chris: Oh, let’s do it. All right.

Ernesto: First off then, Chris, what is the last book that you read?

Chris: Last book that I read was a wonderful cybersecurity book. This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends. So I’m fairly nascent in the cybersecurity space, very technical space, but it was a really great read. A lot of the content was framed really well for more layperson like myself, but also just very topical and timely, given the state of the world. So it was a very good read.

Ernesto: All right, great. Great read there for our listeners as well. Now, next up, what is one single thing that Prelude is focused on at the moment the most?

Chris: Sure. I honestly just echo what I said at the top of the hour. Or was this speed concept? Teams are inefficient, and they’re struggling to keep up with the speed of threat actors. And what we’re trying to do is find as many ways as possible, listening to customers, listening to users about how we can put more time back in their day to enable them to focus on the proactive side of security, more behavioral-based detections. And so when we’re looking at what are the hurdles that we can help accomplish for these folks, it’s one of the pieces that we’re focusing on right now is this concept of threat intelligence. It’s a very manual process. You’re reading through a lot of content. It can take a very long time to turn that content into something actionable. And so we’re trying to introduce automation into the platform. That solves a lot of that for our users, definitely.

Ernesto: All right, great to hear that. Next up then, if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

Chris: As a website person with my background in websites, I think that’s actually pretty easy. I would want to know where every single person that was labeled as direct traffic came from. I would just want a big box that pops up and says, where did you come from? But I also care a little bit too much about data privacy to think that should be a thing.

Ernesto: Okay. All right, great. I mean, with the new laws out there. It’s going to be a little bit trickier, but we’ll see. Next up, Chris, if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Chris: A good question. I feel like there are so many things, especially in marketing and sales, that still benefit so much from a human touch. But if I were thinking about a magic wand automation tool, it would probably be software or process adoption. There’s a tool that sits into your platform, we’ll say HubSpot, for instance. It scrapes it, it learns your unique way that you’ve deployed it, and automatically creates documentation, measures user adoption, and then deploys it to the people who are lagging behind in terms of leveraging it and just driving them to become regular users. I think from an operations perspective, that’s something that can really be a roadblock. So if there was a tool out there that exists, I’m sure I’m going to get tons of sales calls now that tell me they’ve built that. And if you do, just let me know. That’d be great.

Ernesto: All right, great, great. And, well, lastly, Chris, I mean, you have tons of experience already in the marketing world, but what is that one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Chris: Very good question. I think that normally I would have told myself that if you maybe asked me two years ago, I would have more normalized my marketing career, followed a traditional path to this particular role that I’m in, or whatever that may be. But the reality is, I feel like what I’ve learned over the past couple of years is there really is no normal career path in marketing. I think it’s very easy to go to a business or creative school and think that things are going to go in a particular direction. But there was a time when I was going to be a sports public address announcer, there was a time when I was making videos. And now I think it’s just I’m doing demand gen. So there’s no path that anyone has to follow. I’ve met a lot of people who were in completely different careers before they became a marketer, some of the best marketers I know. So, there’s no one path, there’s no straight line. You have to be curious. You want to do a lot of things, and I think ultimately that comes down to just never worry that you’re falling behind. I think everyone’s career is a moving target. And I would certainly emphasize to myself as a young kid coming out and doing marketing, definitely.

Ernesto: All right, great. Thanks. Great advice there, not just for yourself, but for our listeners as well. And, well, Chris, we are coming to the end of our episode today, but before we do end, I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about Prelude.

Chris: One thing that you should remember about Prelude is the speed piece. We are helping detection engineers, security engineers, security teams as a whole, move much faster, keep up with the rate of the latest threats, and giving you that assurance that your defenses are working as protected as expected, rather.

Ernesto: You guys heard it, you could always check them out at preludesecurity.com, detection and response testing at machine speed. You could check them out there. Chris, thank you so much for being on with us today and to our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot, Chris.

Chris: Ernesto, thank you.