Frequently Asked Questions
Strategy & Planning
What is a content audit and why do cybersecurity startups need one?
A content audit evaluates your existing marketing materials to identify gaps, redundancies, and strategic opportunities. Most cybersecurity startups have scattered content that doesn't work together strategically, leading to wasted budget and missed sales opportunities. Our Stealth Audit process organizes what you have, identifies what's missing, and creates a strategic roadmap for content that actually converts prospects into customers. Learn about our Stealth Audit process here.
What are the three foundational content pieces every tech startup needs?
Every startup needs a company 1-pager, technical credibility asset, and comparison guide. These form the foundation of your content library and support your entire sales process. The company 1-pager addresses core problems and solutions, technical credibility proves your solution works, and the comparison guide helps prospects evaluate you against alternatives objectively. Without these three pieces, your sales team lacks the essential tools to move prospects through the buying journey.
How do you eliminate "random acts of marketing”?
Random acts of marketing happen when companies create content without a strategic framework, leading to scattered efforts that don't drive results. We eliminate this by first conducting a comprehensive audit of your existing content library, then identifying strategic gaps that align with your buyer's journey. This approach ensures every piece of content serves a specific purpose and works together to move prospects toward a purchase decision.
What's the "content silo trap" and how do you avoid it?
The content silo trap happens when you create new content without considering your existing library, resulting in disconnected assets that don't reinforce each other. It's impossible to know where to go next with your content strategy if you don't understand where you are now. This is why a Stealth Audit is essential before making new content investments - it shows you how pieces work together and identifies the most impactful additions to your library.
How do you avoid "effing up" a new content investment?
The biggest mistakes are falling for overly ambitious sales pitches from vendors, creating content in isolation, and launching without a distribution plan. Start with a project brief that outlines goals and timelines, organize your existing content first to understand how new pieces fit, and build phased investments without big upfront commitments. Always validate content ideas with your sales team and existing customers before making major investments.
Services & Process
What's the difference between your Investigative, Foundational, and Accelerated packages?
Investigative (hourly with 20-hour commitment) is perfect for strategic assessment and planning without long-term commitment. Foundational engagements provide ongoing strategic guidance with sequential execution for growing teams. Accelerated commitments delivers comprehensive, parallel execution across multiple marketing initiatives for companies ready to scale rapidly. Each package builds on the previous one, allowing you to start where it makes sense for your business stage and budget and scale as your business priorities change.
How long does a Stealth Audit take?
Our Reconnaissance package takes up to 2 weeks, Tactical takes 3-4 weeks, and Strategic takes 4-5 weeks. The timeline starts when we receive your complete content inventory, brand assets, and competitive insights and it can absolutely go faster depending on how much content and competitive intel needs to be analyzed. Final delivery of the new brand assets (1-pager and comparison data) is driven by your team’s timely feedback and cooperation during the review process. We provide clear milestones throughout the project.
Do you work with companies outside cybersecurity?
We specialize exclusively in early stage B2B cybersecurity and technology (AI) startups. Our deep industry expertise allows us to provide strategic insights, competitive intelligence, and positioning advice that general marketing agencies simply can't match. This specialization means we understand your buyers, competitive landscape, and regulatory considerations from day one.
What's a project brief and why do cybersecurity startups need one?
A project brief ensures goals are established early and provides a central location for managing messaging and expectations throughout a campaign or initiative. Even solo marketers should use them for partnerships, go-to-market plans, and content campaigns because they prevent scope creep and keep everyone aligned. Project briefs evolve as campaigns develop, but they provide the essential foundation for successful execution and measurement.
How do you organize content campaigns to avoid "creative sprawl”?
We recommend creating a simple presentation deck that serves as a historical snapshot of everything created for each campaign - the main asset, email templates, social posts, graphics, landing pages, and distribution channels. This deck-based approach helps you track what worked, replicate successful elements across future campaigns, and avoid the chaos of scattered files across multiple platforms. It's simple but incredibly effective for maintaining campaign organization and learning from results.
Content Investment & Strategy
Should we invest in analyst reports or influencer content?
Third-party content can be incredible lead magnets that bring instant credibility to your brand through association with respected names and logos. Licensing content requires careful upfront planning and realistic resource assessment. Don't fall for multi-project discounts if you lack internal subject matter experts to support the creation process. Take investments one at a time, test the vendor relationship, and build phased investments into your budget so you can pause if cash flow becomes tight.
How do you validate content investments with your sales team?
Don't assume your sales team knows what customers actually want - ask your current customers directly if they would have been interested in specific content types when they were evaluating solutions. Have your sales team gather unfiltered feedback from your most loyal customers about content preferences, decision factors, and information gaps. This validation prevents expensive investments in content that sounds good internally but doesn't resonate with real buyers.
What should we include in a content distribution plan?
Your distribution plan should include pre-launch, launch day, and 30-day follow-up activities across all relevant channels. Every company will have a unique distribution plan. For maximum reach - engage your partner community with an outreach plan that details specific contacts who can distribute your content faster and wider than individual sales communications. Provide partners with clear guidance on how the content should be used, include ready-to-go promotional templates, and establish a timeline for coordinated launch activities.
How do you measure content marketing success for cybersecurity startups?
We focus on sales enablement metrics like content usage by sales teams, lead generation attribution, and competitive positioning improvements rather than vanity metrics. Our audits include detailed performance grading that assesses where each piece fits in the sales cycle and how effectively it moves prospects forward. We track content ROI through pipeline influence, sales cycle acceleration, and competitive win rates rather than just downloads or page views.
What makes Stealth Cartel different from other marketing agencies?
We're award-winning cybersecurity marketing specialists who combine tactical execution with strategic competitive intelligence. Our approach is tactical, strategic, and stealthy - we deliver hands-on execution while uncovering competitive insights that inform positioning and messaging. Unlike generalist agencies that work across multiple agencies, we understand cybersecurity and technology buyers, regulatory requirements, and technical complexity from day one, allowing us to create campaigns that actually resonate with your specific market.