How AI, Buyer Intent, and Trust Are Reshaping Cyber Marketing With Melissa Goldberger
Learn how AI, buyer intent data, and honest messaging help cybersecurity marketers reach buyers, improve personalization, and build lasting trust.
Learn how AI, buyer intent data, and honest messaging help cybersecurity marketers reach buyers, improve personalization, and build lasting trust.
Chief Marketing Officer at Nagomi Security
Melissa Goldberger is the Chief Marketing Officer at Nagomi Security, an AI-powered exposure management company that helps security teams identify, prioritize, and eliminate real cyber risk. A five-time cybersecurity CMO with more than 20 years of marketing and management experience, she specializes in scaling startups, building go-to-market engines, repositioning brands, and guiding companies through turnarounds and acquisitions. Melissa has held executive roles at OX Security, SafeBreach, Capsule8, Argyle Group, and 451 Research.
Cybersecurity buyers increasingly research on their own, while AI reshapes how marketers reach and understand them. With tighter budgets and noisier markets, clear messaging and relevant outreach matter more than ever. How can teams adapt without losing the human insight that builds trust?
The answer, according to five-time cybersecurity CMO Melissa Goldberger, is to pair AI-enabled efficiency with a deep understanding of buyer problems, intent signals, and decision-making behavior. Rather than reuse a fixed playbook, teams should choose channels and messages based on the product, audience, and market conditions. Melissa recommends giving buyers useful information freely, building first-party intent systems, and using segmentation to create relevant experiences instead of automated spam. Strong alignment with sales, product, and security leaders keeps marketing grounded in a clear, honest, validated story. Sustainable growth comes from combining good marketing, a strong product, and genuine human expertise.
In this episode of Cyber Funnel, Thorn Compton talks with Melissa Goldberger, Chief Marketing Officer at Nagomi Security, about how AI, buyer intent, and trust are reshaping cyber marketing. Melissa explains why static playbooks fail, how intent data can sharpen personalization, and why clear, validated messaging wins. She also touches on CMO-CISO alignment and the enduring value of human expertise.
This episode is brought to you by Amplifyed.
Amplifyed is a specialized SEO agency, and we partner with in-house marketing teams to boost search visibility, drive qualified traffic, and turn organic search into real pipeline growth.
From technical SEO to content strategy, Amplifyed handles the heavy lifting so your team can stay focused on building and selling. If you want to show up when your buyers are searching, Amplifyed helps you get there.
To learn more, visit us at amplifyed.io.
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Intro: 00:02
Welcome to the Cyber Funnel podcast, brought to you by Amplifyed. Where we feature the top minds in cyber security.
Thorn Compton: 00:14
Welcome to the Cyber Funnel podcast, where we're lifting the brands and names across the cybersecurity industry. I'm your host, Thorn Compton, and some of my great past conversations include AI adoption extraordinaire Tom Baker and Amplifyed founder and president Scott Johnson. Today, I have the pleasure to welcome Melissa Goldberger into the cyber funnel. How are you today, Melissa?
Melissa Goldberger: 00:33
I'm great. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited for this.
Thorn Compton: 00:36
I'm very excited too. We're going to have an in depth conversation. I'm very excited about what we're going to be getting into today.
Melissa Goldberger: 00:43
Great. Yeah, I like it.
Thorn Compton: 00:46
Of course, this episode is brought to you by Amplifyed, the SEO and GEO agency for cybersecurity companies. Amplifyed serves cybersecurity marketing teams by driving more leads from Google and AI search. We handle all the heavy lifting and know the exact levers to pull to get you more cycles. Learn more at amplifyed.io. Oh, that's amplifyed.io.
All right. And like I said, I have Melissa Goldberger joining me in the cyber funnel today. Melissa has tons of experience as a five-time CMO from multiple cybersecurity companies, and has really seen the shift in marketing efforts firsthand over the last, you know, 6 or 7 years. Very excited to get into our discussion today.
Melissa Goldberger: 01:27
Melissa and Tim. Wow. It just feels old when we talk about all the shifts.
Thorn Compton: 01:31
But I had to resist saying, you know, over, you know, in the last decade. And I was like, you know, I'm not going to do that to her. We're going to say six years, six years. That's not so bad.
Melissa Goldberger: 01:40
It's great. Yeah, I've been doing this. I'm 24. I'm still 24. It's great.
Thorn Compton: 01:44
It's precisely we're all still 24. We're all still 29 and 29.
Melissa Goldberger: 01:48
Thorn Compton: 01:50
Okay. Hey, before we get started, actually, we're going to hit you with the lightning round. I always like to kind of get to know the guests a little bit. I have two great questions for you today. And the first one, I know you're actually about to head off a little bit, but what is as someone who lives in Aruba, your preferred vacation destination?
Melissa Goldberger: 02:08
Oh, gosh. I mean, our preference usually is somewhere in Europe. We're always kind of craving just the culture and kind of going around. And one thing that's interesting about Aruba being a small island, you don't get just like a lot of fresh food, right?
Thorn Compton: 02:21
It was.
Melissa Goldberger: 02:21
Interesting. But you don't have fresh vegetables, things like that. Everything has to be imported. So it's just something about being able to go and kind of eat more farm-to-table and be there. It's just a different pace than in the States because we're always there in the States for work or just quick family vacation and family trips.
So yeah. So yeah, we head out. We're going to head to Barcelona and Greece tomorrow. So super excited. And yeah, and then if we want quick jaunts, we go to South America, a lot of times we go to Colombia is really nice.
Panama, Panama City, it's really up and coming and you'll see a lot of tourism exploding there in the next few years.
Thorn Compton: 02:58
It's funny, you know, I live here in the middle of Missouri. My wife is the, you know, daughter of a farmer and, you know, great, great, great granddaughter of a farmer. So like, I'm so used to really good produce and like, but we're in the middle of Missouri. I don't get great fish. And I take that for granted.
And I'm like, oh, well, where's my good shrimp? You know, because I'm from the Houston area originally. And I guess you just always want what you don't have around.
Melissa Goldberger: 03:21
Right, right. Like I got a great piece of Wahoo. Like, when am I having wahoo in the States here? Like that's what I had for dinner the other day. And my shrimp literally, like this, with the heads on them.
So I, you know, make you a little jealous, but like a good tomato, like sometimes, like I would like a nice avocado at lunch. Right. So you definitely do a lot of that, but it's okay. You become friends with the freezer and the air fryer and a lot of frozen vegetables in this house.
Thorn Compton: 03:45
Those are old friends of mine. I absolutely get you. Okay? I'm gonna hit you with one more. What was the last book you read?
Melissa Goldberger: 03:51
Oh, God. Hunting Wives.
Thorn Compton: 03:53
If there are, there are so. My wife. My wife. Two years ago, she. Well, she.
She watched it, but then she also. She was just super into, like all that romance novel. She read like 300 books over an entire year just because they're just easy-to-read things, so I. No judgment here. That sounds fun.
Did you enjoy it?
Melissa Goldberger: 04:13
I did, I did well, I watched the series, and then I was like, I wanted to see how the book was different. So I usually kind of balance that with the business book. And the business book was Let Them. I fell into that. I'm like, Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, but I tried to try and balance that.
But yeah, but it was, it was good. It was definitely fun. I'm actually for the plane. I think I just got the oh God, the one on Epstein that was written by Virginia. Yeah.
So that's my next one.
Thorn Compton: 04:44
That's just a little light reading.
Melissa Goldberger: 04:46
So a little light reading. Yeah. Awesome.
Thorn Compton: 04:50
You know, it's funny. I actually do the exact same too. Like I have, I have a whole library. I kind of came up here and I've got, you know, some Atomic Habits and I've got Unreasonable, you know, Hospitality. But then right next to it, I've got Lord of the Rings and, and Brandon Sanderson.
Melissa Goldberger: 05:04
So we got about it. There will be a business book coming in. I think I'm going to do Crossing the Chasm next. How do I say that next? I did it years ago.
I want to bring that back in, you know, so there's always something coming back in.
Thorn Compton: 05:17
Always got to be something coming. I love that. Hey, speaking of always something coming. So, you know, nothing has changed in the cybersecurity market or cybersecurity as a whole in the last six years since, you know, Covid and all that, right? There's nothing, there's nothing, always something coming, right?
Melissa Goldberger: 05:34
Yeah. No, nothing's changed at all. Right. Let's say, you know, pre Covid, I'll, I'll never forget, you know, we were events. Well now it's back.
What's old is new again. It's full circle, right. It was pre Covid. It was events, events, events. And that's actually how I landed in cyber marketing.
Ironically, I was working at 451 Research. I ran an events business line and did all that went to another company, Argyle, running $100 million in business on events a year. But then also they were married with the digital side. And how do you put that into motion? And when Covid hit, my former CEO at Argyle was at Capsule, which is a cyber company, and their CMO had just moved on.
And he's like, we need someone who's going to take us. They didn't know how to handle the COVID pivot, like, how are we going to build demand? Right? And that's why he called me. He's like, he's like, I got, I have a role for you.
I need your help. I need you to come in like I know nothing about. Like I knew how to sell to the CISO. We were doing that. We had CISO events and everything in Argyle.
He's like, you know, you work for 4 or 5 one research, you know, you work for you've done all this. I said, it's different. Like I have to get into technology. I said, come try it, you know, come meet us if you like us. And somehow the board, everybody kind of thought I was a spit, but it really worked out.
We built an entire digital motion, obviously, investments in SEO at the time, the three key things you were doing were webinars, SDR investment and SEO, and obviously surrounded by PPC and paid and all that. Now today, I would probably say it is not the SEO side, but some of the PPC. And so I just think it was such a rapid change that we had to make. And then coming back out of it was so interesting because then we sold on and moved on from Capsule. We sold it to Sophos.
And then like when I entered SafeBreach, it was just coming back out. So it was straddling that. How do we safely enter the event space again, and what do we do? But you still needed that digital surround sound. So it was almost like all this activity was coming at you.
And by then everybody was getting sick of the SDR motions, all the outreach. Nobody was reading your emails anymore. So definitely interesting phases of what we've seen and then trying to sell it. The ICP just kept shifting because, you know, I was selling into cloud workload protection program platforms. It was different or snap now, I think is where not I think, you know, Cnap.
And it was just, what is that? Why do we need that? Like security lag known to lag so behind the tech. And now today I feel like security is definitely on par with tech. But I will definitely say it was definitely an interesting transition to see that.
And because everything was so much harder to deploy, you didn't have as much agentless new products and things like that. So it's definitely the roles that have gotten harder and easier in different ways.
Thorn Compton: 08:31
Yeah, it's, it's actually a really good way to put it because if you really look at, you know, I guess the, the big major developments in specifically cyber security over the last six years, cloud and then AI agent or agents and all that fun stuff. It really is an interesting update. It's almost like modernization. But like you said, it's. It's the modernization of stuff that has always been best practices.
It's just kind of changing the way people are doing it. Right?
Melissa Goldberger: 08:58
Yeah. But definitely for the security buyer, it was definitely different because they had to know how they had to modernize, what they had to do, which teams they had to rely on. I mean, at that time, now I'm even, you know, when I was at my 4 or 5 one day, the clouds were new. We had research categories that we built the surveys and the events around. And at the time they were storage, networking, digital desktop virtualization.
Cloud was our newest section. Yeah, I was there for five years, and that section came out in like year four. I remember when we brought on that analyst, it was such a big security was actually always there, which was great, but they weren't talking about that. They were talking much more around storage and different areas. So it is definitely interesting to see the evolution.
And then even when trying. When I got to Capsule8, who was my buyer? You didn't have product security teams, even though you didn't have one. You either went to like DevOps or the CISO for us. And there were companies having Cloud Center of Excellence and things like that.
So it was definitely unique in figuring out where we were going to be. And I think a lot of companies still struggle with that. Now. It's who owns the kind of the AI mandates, what's the business and all that. So we're seeing kind of that same thing happen again.
But at the end of the day, I think AI in cyber, it's just going to be table stakes. I've been saying this for a year when, you know, even at certain companies I've been talking to, we said it's not a separate standalone product. It just is part of your product. And that's going to be the expectation, right? Like today, I logged into LinkedIn and even they have now a whole beta on.
It was just crazy to see that like of just how to look for something. and it was just a completely different view because it's now all underpinned. And I think that's going to be the expectation in security as well.
Thorn Compton: 10:53
Well, it's kind of like what happened with clouds because it felt like there was a good year and a half. The only thing anybody wanted to talk about was the clouds. And then everybody went, wait, we still have all this on prem stuff too. So then that's where hybrids came from. And nobody was talking about hybrids.
You know, I feel like a similar thing is going to happen with AI. What are your thoughts on that?
Melissa Goldberger: 11:10
I think it is. I think there's definitely going to be a similar thing. I think, with clouds. The unique thing that happened too was Covid, right? Everybody had to move so fast.
You weren't still on prem, right? Some companies had hybrid, you know, clouds. And even that was a big selling proposition when we were at Capsule8, was that we were able to help you modernize over to cloud without impacting your on prem capabilities. But yeah, I think that's going to be the same thing with AI is that now we're going to have to figure out how to kind of mesh this all in and go back. I think everything rotates.
Like even today, I was joking last week. You see everybody like we've been accepted to Anthropic Claude, blah blah, blah. Every company is putting this out. Does anybody remember what happened two years ago with CISA and Secure by Design? Everybody signed up. What happened to that pledge?
Thorn Compton: 11:59
Right.
Melissa Goldberger: 12:00
Where is that? Like nobody. Nobody's talking about these things. And granted, Anthropic is a little bit different because of the political ramifications. But still, there is this.
And I think there are just these waves and everybody jumps on them and it's like, oh my God. And so I think that's where we are. But I think, you know, in the AI area, I think it's as long, you know, companies are going to be careful and they'll deploy. And the irony is these aren't new conversations. Like five years ago, I was having this at SafeBreach, but it was interesting.
I was with a large bank and they said, no way would they ever enable AI or automated remediation, right? That same bank I know is a prospect for my past company. And that's all the stuff there.
Thorn Compton: 12:49
Yeah, yeah. It's it's, it is very funny that because it's the slow adopters do eventually adopt. That's just kind of you, eventually you have to adapt or die. And like, I think at this point, we're, we are long enough into AI to know it's not a, it's not going to be a fad. It's going to be around.
But like, that's the thing is like LLMs, it's one of the dirty little secrets I like to talk about. It's like they are not three years old. LLMs have been around for years for at least a decade. It's just the, the, the use of them has really changed. And really like, you know, looking at the last decade, how have things changed for you as a cybersecurity marketer?
Melissa Goldberger: 13:27
Oh my God. I mean, gone are the days of playbooks. Like I go in and, you know, take the same playbook, apply it, and have the same success. Can't do that anymore. And I wouldn't even try to sell that.
And it's funny because when I was hired into my last role literally in the interview process. Can you just show me what was your playbook at X company? And you know, of course I showed it, but I said, you know, when I get here, it's going to be different. Like every company now it is so different and unique. And it's just that you can't do that.
And you have to understand where the buyers are, what motivates them, what's that problem that they have that hasn't changed, but which channels are going to work for those buyers and that tech that is going to change and it's going to consistently evolve. And gone are the days I've taught, and I don't know if you've seen this with the other clients, but like inbound, that's a big thing. Inbound is dropped for everybody, which is so bizarre to me because why would that change what you want to request? You still don't. You still want the demo at the end of the day, regardless if I have an ad, you met me in an event.
But no, because buyers are able to do so much more research before they even get to thinking, I want to deal with a salesperson. They don't want to deal with the sales rep anymore, and you have to find that, you know, way of talking to them and finding them earlier and getting them to consistently touch and feel your products. And it's a shame because, you know, I think all marketers are in the same pressure boat of where are my inbound numbers. And you can't explain that, you know, easily to a CEO and say everything's just changed by different people.
Thorn Compton: 15:00
I mean, five years ago, you put up a white paper. I would tell you, hey, get that, put it out. Yes. Don't just give it away for free. Make someone give you the thing.
Now, it doesn't matter if you get it. The bots are still going to crawl it. They're still going to get the information from you. So at this point give it away. Give as much value as you can.
Melissa Goldberger: 15:19
Exactly. And that's the hard part, and that's what I don't think anybody understands. And then, but what's even gotten harder, right, is capturing the intent data below it because.
Thorn Compton: 15:27
You.
Melissa Goldberger: 15:28
Can capture those signals. I think I read an article the other day about marketers not using $0.06 as much. Yeah, yeah. Or intent those like I build my own intent engines. I haven't really used a different one and then I always build on first party data, but getting all, you know, there are changes in the cookie settings.
People aren't accepting them like that. And we become I don't even accept them. We don't pick up phones anymore. So it's the same thing as getting to update. You have to just give it there.
And you have to understand that the process takes time. And I think the other thing is there's been this, and I think it's a great shift in that we're starting to apply more consumer-driven strategies. Yes, B2B marketing in how we approach people, but it still has to be honest. It still has to sell a validated story. I think it, you know, obviously storytelling is huge, right?
We talk a lot about that, but I think it still has to be humanized. You can't. And I see so many companies still doing this. Just because you have a great design doesn't mean your company is going to sell. It is still that story and that messaging.
Are you resonating? Are you touching my pain? Can you solve my problem? Yeah. So I know I've gone full circle into a lot of directions, but so much to cover.
Thorn Compton: 16:43
You're perfect. I'm still working on the kinks of how I want to do this, but I'm just going to just do it outright, like you said, the word intent. And that's our, that's our, that's our word of the day. So we're going to go full PB Herman's Playhouse just oh.
Melissa Goldberger: 16:57
I love it. Yeah. You start you. Yeah. I'm just kind of just riffing.
I don't know.
Thorn Compton: 17:01
Your intent is so important though, because like, if you're not speaking to somebody, then you're not speaking to anybody right now.
Melissa Goldberger: 17:10
Exactly. And what is now going back to where AI comes in, especially for a marketer now taking that intent data and using that in a meaningful way. And I think what's happening is you have two sets of playbooks. You do have the people who are using AI, and I'm like, I'm just going to spam everyone, and I'm going to build all these outreach methods and blah, blah, blah. I'm going to cringe because I'm like, also, you're going to hurt your infrastructure.
You're going to do all those things still happen, but those who use intent accurately and can build those signals get their reps. Giving the knowledge. Building the ad system that can then provide that quality segment. That's an old term. We used to use segmentation.
Segmentation right. Personalization and segmentation. Now we just use fancier terms. But now you can provide that. I think we called them that day.
Build those out. I was like fancy. But now you can build that kind of segmented experience, that unique, personalized experience as a marketer. But then the rep can have their cadence, they can work with their SDR, and you can even bring it down to gifting. There is so much that you can do with that intent and that intelligence layer.
And then even talking to the customer about their pain making and also not wasting your own time as a company. I've seen so many companies do bad POCs or POVs, and it's like, you just wasted, you know, how much money you wasted on that. Yeah. So I think that's where I am making us in that intent is so important and understanding the story and the key words to get them there.
Thorn Compton: 18:35
The key words to get them and reverse them.
Thorn Compton: 18:37
And reverse engineer your prompts. Find out what those people are talking about in AI. Serve them. But as I like to say all the time, if you want to get in front of somebody's eyes, put yourself in front of somebody's eyes. Don't expect them to try to find you.
You find them, you know.
Melissa Goldberger: 18:51
And that's what actually I'm loving right about like search and how it's changed and where we can go. And it's just having those shifts in understanding those terms of, I mean, to me, when you find that one term because.
Melissa Goldberger: 19:04
It's.
Melissa Goldberger: 19:05
Hard, you know, all these categories are crowded and what they talk about and it's like even that, you know, listen, I've been through Cnap as PM exposure, unified exposure, like every acronym on the block. People don't search for an acronym, they search for their problem. And so finding that, and when you nail that and you see that traffic coming in and that bringing that inbound in a marketer, that's, that's gold.
Thorn Compton: 19:32
And what's really interesting is to, to really accomplish that. As the marketer, you have to understand your product. And I feel like that comes down to that relationship you have with the security team, with the people that are doing that, even with the CISO. What is that relationship between a CMO and a CISO like, and how important is it for it to be kind of in lockstep?
Melissa Goldberger: 19:50
I think it's really important. I think it goes across the entire organization. Right. Like you said, it's funny, I just was in an interview the other day and it was with this CEO or CTO of the company. And he.
Melissa Goldberger: 20:01
Said.
Melissa Goldberger: 20:03
God, you're asking a lot of questions that a VP of product would ask me, why are you asking me those? And I said, because if I'm not in lockstep and understand, how am I going to market your product? And the same comes with the CISO. Like I start my day listening to 3 to 5 Gong calls that happen to my buyers that are CISOs. But then also when I have an internal CISO, I take that data and talk to them and ask them, is this this?
Is this what you feel and see in the market and nine out of ten times it does, I don't. In my last job I didn't have a CISO internally, but I had one in my previous role where I'd still call him and also on top of that, you leverage him as a marketer, for content, for keywords and to just get into the mind. I mean, I'm really blessed because we built solid vendors on communities and you build your advocates through your customers. And I've had really great sets of customers over the years that, you know, I could call on and say, what do you think of this? Like even as I look for jobs, I ask them to evaluate products with me and tell me, do you think this is a winning product?
And that's really lucky. And I think it's having those relationships. And it's just speaking the language. Like it is really funny though how and I'm struggling with this myself as a marketer of I love big brands and stories. I want to do all the fun things.
And I asked Recently, I reached out to ten different CISOs in my network and I said, what makes you want to buy? And they just told a clean, honest, validated story. I don't need the bells and whistles. If you can show me a white web page.
Thorn Compton: 21:45
Right.
Melissa Goldberger: 21:45
But your message is what's going to matter to me. And I was like, wow, that that was and it was. They all said it. I said, design doesn't make a difference. No.
Thorn Compton: 21:53
No, no. It's. What are you saying? How are you telling me? Yeah, I, I completely agree.
You brought up a lot. I'm curious. I always love to especially people in your realm, who are some people that you look back on and you're like, those were great mentors for me or those are people that helped me kind of get to the space that I am and help me learn and become who I am today.
Melissa Goldberger: 22:13
Oh my God. The first one's going to sound so cliche, but as a cyber marketer, it's Steve Katz. He is the original CISO. He was on my board at Capsule8, and he literally was one of my sales reps who was like, listen, you do not know how to sell to a CISO. Like I knew all the channels I came in, I knew the channel, but the messaging, I know I'm great with CISOs and Suzanne, I'll never forget her.
She was in sales. Suzanne Desmond is amazing. And she introduces me to Steve, who was later again, one of our advisors. He's like, so what? Melissa?
So what? And we met every single week until we got acquired for me to test messaging him. And another woman was in my company. She was VP of product. Kelly Shortridge was I haven't talked to her in years.
I should probably reach out to her. Kelly, if you see this, she is just absolutely amazing because she wanted to make sure I kept it grounded. Like she was that person who was like, she used to actually publish a blog of marketing buzzword bingo. So that every time I write something, will I get an email from Kelly? Like when I was a kid, I was like, oh no.
So really her. And then I would say, even from just a business perspective, my CEO from Argyle who brought me into cyber Scot, truly CEO of encapsulated, was just like the dream experience with that team and then the team at SafeBreach as well. The head of research, like again, taught me so much about the intricacies of cyber, but when I walked into it, it's like, it's great if you're writing this, but people need to see it. So my favorite email was ever over Thanksgiving. We got him placed and it was the first time.
And before you can buy placements, we were not buying them as a BleepingComputer. We had his research. He's like, oh. Like that's what I, you know, and then they became little rock stars. I called them my monsters, but just truly all, all of those.
And then yeah, and of course, my, my first boss, she wasn't in cyber, but she taught me to be tough and not take anyone's crap. So I have to say I'm very blessed. And I believe in passing that forward to. I think one of the things I'm the most proud of is the teams that have reported to me. And even if I've had to make hard decisions, mentoring and guiding them through those decisions that we've had to make as a company and just being there for them.
People remember how you leave a company. And so for me, that was really important. Always.
Thorn Compton: 24:43
Always go off on a good note. I was taught that a long time ago. It's like even if you're leaving, even if you're not happy with it, I've left places that I was I, I'm a burnt out former journalist that left, left, left newspapers. I still left, you know, you leave in a good way and you build again. Build that relationship.
Melissa Goldberger: 24:58
Exactly. And even when you're parting ways with the employee to make sure that employee has a good experience on their way out like that, they feel that they were heard and respected the whole way through. So I just, and that's just again, I'm blessed though, just and thanks for that question because it really does make me think how lucky I really am.
Thorn Compton: 25:17
I, the, the amount of times that I get that from people that are just like, wow, I hadn't thought about this person in years. And I'm happy that you asked that this is what this is why we do what we do here. Melissa.
Melissa Goldberger: 25:26
I love it, no. And actually, so I'm also in this little shameless plug, like I'm blessed. You know, we talk about mentors, but I just had the privilege of working with an amazing group of CISOs as we were building our docu series, Holding the Line. And I had the privilege . Three weeks ago. I was in New York and we hosted a dinner and just kind of like being with them and talking to them and just listening and being vulnerable. And I was being vulnerable as a CMO, you know, not even talking about security, but it just I don't want to be cliche, but it just I've learned so much and I learned so much from them and their pressure and what they have to deal with and to go through it just, I don't know.
I'm again, that's where the best marketing happens too.
Thorn Compton: 26:10
I, I.
Melissa Goldberger: 26:11
I know AI is going to replace that.
Thorn Compton: 26:14
No, never. No, the human touch is always going to be a big thing. Hey, Melissa, this has been great. I've got one more question for you. But before I get to it, I want to give you space real quick.
Tell the listeners where to find you.
Melissa Goldberger: 26:25
Oh, where can you find me? You can find me on LinkedIn. It is under Melissa. And actually it's Yari Goldberger. So YAHREGOLDBERGER.
It's the best way to find me.
Thorn Compton: 26:38
Absolutely. Look her up. She's fantastic. You'll find a lot of great things there. The final question I have for you, Melissa, what is the biggest challenge facing CMOs and cybersecurity marketing teams right now?
Melissa Goldberger: 26:52
Oh my gosh, I think I don't want to say AI as it's not the AI, it's all the effects of it. Effects of it, the reduced budget, the cut back staff, the CEOs who think they can build things without a person, or you don't need that agency or whatever anymore because AI can do it and it can't. And they are the principles that are still needed there. Can we be more efficient, more effective? Can.
Yes, I run a team maybe on one or you have bloated head count, but nothing's going to replace good design. Nothing's going to replace human interaction and or that quality. And I think that's what we're up against. And we're up against decisions being made for us by people who don't live it daily. And I think we'll go full circle.
Like we've seen, how many layoffs were there last week of companies. Ridiculous amounts. And I've seen some really good marketing talent in the market the last two weeks. It boggles my mind. But I think it'll go full circle.
We were here about three, four years ago. I remember everybody was going for efficiency. Everyone was hired again. And I think that's the same thing we're going to see in the next year. I think we're all going to cut back and everyone's going to realize they need those roles.
Thorn Compton: 28:05
It is so funny that in that time period we're seeing, as you kind of said, old is new. Again, people are going to events again, but it's not. RSA is great, but they're going to the smaller events. They're going to the events that are more niche, that are going to be more useful to them because they have a smaller budget. So they realize, hey, go where you're actually going to be in front of people.
Melissa Goldberger: 28:22
Exactly. Like I don't even invest in the big ones anymore. And then those who are investing are doing these outside events. And it's brand, it's not, they're not investing for ROI. They're pure brand plays, pure brand.
I still think you need the, you know, the good marketing, great product, strong value. And when you have all of that together, that's where the growth is. It can't be the other.
Thorn Compton: 28:43
That is. Those are words to live by right there. Hey, congratulations, Melissa, you have successfully navigated the cyber tunnel. You feel like you're in a tornado all over the place.
Melissa Goldberger: 28:53
I love it. Listen, this is kind of like, come on. This is like our calls when we're going through our, our, our keywords and stuff. So I love this, I love it.
Thorn Compton: 29:02
I think it was fantastic. I appreciate you coming on, and we'll talk to you later.
Melissa Goldberger: 29:05
I love it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Outro: 29:09
Thank you for listening to the Cyber Funnel podcast. Tune in next time for more tips and insights, and be sure to click subscribe for future episode updates.
Intro: 00:02
Welcome to the Cyber Funnel podcast, brought to you by Amplifyed. Where we feature the top minds in cyber security.
Thorn Compton: 00:14
Welcome to the Cyber Funnel podcast, where we're lifting the brands and names across the cybersecurity industry. I'm your host, Thorn Compton, and some of my great past conversations include AI adoption extraordinaire Tom Baker and Amplifyed founder and president Scott Johnson. Today, I have the pleasure to welcome Melissa Goldberger into the cyber funnel. How are you today, Melissa?
Melissa Goldberger: 00:33
I'm great. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited for this.
Thorn Compton: 00:36
I'm very excited too. We're going to have an in depth conversation. I'm very excited about what we're going to be getting into today.
Melissa Goldberger: 00:43
Great. Yeah, I like it.
Thorn Compton: 00:46
Of course, this episode is brought to you by Amplifyed, the SEO and GEO agency for cybersecurity companies. Amplifyed serves cybersecurity marketing teams by driving more leads from Google and AI search. We handle all the heavy lifting and know the exact levers to pull to get you more cycles. Learn more at amplifyed.io. Oh, that's amplifyed.io.
All right. And like I said, I have Melissa Goldberger joining me in the cyber funnel today. Melissa has tons of experience as a five-time CMO from multiple cybersecurity companies, and has really seen the shift in marketing efforts firsthand over the last, you know, 6 or 7 years. Very excited to get into our discussion today.
Melissa Goldberger: 01:27
Melissa and Tim. Wow. It just feels old when we talk about all the shifts.
Thorn Compton: 01:31
But I had to resist saying, you know, over, you know, in the last decade. And I was like, you know, I'm not going to do that to her. We're going to say six years, six years. That's not so bad.
Melissa Goldberger: 01:40
It's great. Yeah, I've been doing this. I'm 24. I'm still 24. It's great.
Thorn Compton: 01:44
It's precisely we're all still 24. We're all still 29 and 29.
Melissa Goldberger: 01:48
Thorn Compton: 01:50
Okay. Hey, before we get started, actually, we're going to hit you with the lightning round. I always like to kind of get to know the guests a little bit. I have two great questions for you today. And the first one, I know you're actually about to head off a little bit, but what is as someone who lives in Aruba, your preferred vacation destination?
Melissa Goldberger: 02:08
Oh, gosh. I mean, our preference usually is somewhere in Europe. We're always kind of craving just the culture and kind of going around. And one thing that's interesting about Aruba being a small island, you don't get just like a lot of fresh food, right?
Thorn Compton: 02:21
It was.
Melissa Goldberger: 02:21
Interesting. But you don't have fresh vegetables, things like that. Everything has to be imported. So it's just something about being able to go and kind of eat more farm-to-table and be there. It's just a different pace than in the States because we're always there in the States for work or just quick family vacation and family trips.
So yeah. So yeah, we head out. We're going to head to Barcelona and Greece tomorrow. So super excited. And yeah, and then if we want quick jaunts, we go to South America, a lot of times we go to Colombia is really nice.
Panama, Panama City, it's really up and coming and you'll see a lot of tourism exploding there in the next few years.
Thorn Compton: 02:58
It's funny, you know, I live here in the middle of Missouri. My wife is the, you know, daughter of a farmer and, you know, great, great, great granddaughter of a farmer. So like, I'm so used to really good produce and like, but we're in the middle of Missouri. I don't get great fish. And I take that for granted.
And I'm like, oh, well, where's my good shrimp? You know, because I'm from the Houston area originally. And I guess you just always want what you don't have around.
Melissa Goldberger: 03:21
Right, right. Like I got a great piece of Wahoo. Like, when am I having wahoo in the States here? Like that's what I had for dinner the other day. And my shrimp literally, like this, with the heads on them.
So I, you know, make you a little jealous, but like a good tomato, like sometimes, like I would like a nice avocado at lunch. Right. So you definitely do a lot of that, but it's okay. You become friends with the freezer and the air fryer and a lot of frozen vegetables in this house.
Thorn Compton: 03:45
Those are old friends of mine. I absolutely get you. Okay? I'm gonna hit you with one more. What was the last book you read?
Melissa Goldberger: 03:51
Oh, God. Hunting Wives.
Thorn Compton: 03:53
If there are, there are so. My wife. My wife. Two years ago, she. Well, she.
She watched it, but then she also. She was just super into, like all that romance novel. She read like 300 books over an entire year just because they're just easy-to-read things, so I. No judgment here. That sounds fun.
Did you enjoy it?
Melissa Goldberger: 04:13
I did, I did well, I watched the series, and then I was like, I wanted to see how the book was different. So I usually kind of balance that with the business book. And the business book was Let Them. I fell into that. I'm like, Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, but I tried to try and balance that.
But yeah, but it was, it was good. It was definitely fun. I'm actually for the plane. I think I just got the oh God, the one on Epstein that was written by Virginia. Yeah.
So that's my next one.
Thorn Compton: 04:44
That's just a little light reading.
Melissa Goldberger: 04:46
So a little light reading. Yeah. Awesome.
Thorn Compton: 04:50
You know, it's funny. I actually do the exact same too. Like I have, I have a whole library. I kind of came up here and I've got, you know, some Atomic Habits and I've got Unreasonable, you know, Hospitality. But then right next to it, I've got Lord of the Rings and, and Brandon Sanderson.
Melissa Goldberger: 05:04
So we got about it. There will be a business book coming in. I think I'm going to do Crossing the Chasm next. How do I say that next? I did it years ago.
I want to bring that back in, you know, so there's always something coming back in.
Thorn Compton: 05:17
Always got to be something coming. I love that. Hey, speaking of always something coming. So, you know, nothing has changed in the cybersecurity market or cybersecurity as a whole in the last six years since, you know, Covid and all that, right? There's nothing, there's nothing, always something coming, right?
Melissa Goldberger: 05:34
Yeah. No, nothing's changed at all. Right. Let's say, you know, pre Covid, I'll, I'll never forget, you know, we were events. Well now it's back.
What's old is new again. It's full circle, right. It was pre Covid. It was events, events, events. And that's actually how I landed in cyber marketing.
Ironically, I was working at 451 Research. I ran an events business line and did all that went to another company, Argyle, running $100 million in business on events a year. But then also they were married with the digital side. And how do you put that into motion? And when Covid hit, my former CEO at Argyle was at Capsule, which is a cyber company, and their CMO had just moved on.
And he's like, we need someone who's going to take us. They didn't know how to handle the COVID pivot, like, how are we going to build demand? Right? And that's why he called me. He's like, he's like, I got, I have a role for you.
I need your help. I need you to come in like I know nothing about. Like I knew how to sell to the CISO. We were doing that. We had CISO events and everything in Argyle.
He's like, you know, you work for 4 or 5 one research, you know, you work for you've done all this. I said, it's different. Like I have to get into technology. I said, come try it, you know, come meet us if you like us. And somehow the board, everybody kind of thought I was a spit, but it really worked out.
We built an entire digital motion, obviously, investments in SEO at the time, the three key things you were doing were webinars, SDR investment and SEO, and obviously surrounded by PPC and paid and all that. Now today, I would probably say it is not the SEO side, but some of the PPC. And so I just think it was such a rapid change that we had to make. And then coming back out of it was so interesting because then we sold on and moved on from Capsule. We sold it to Sophos.
And then like when I entered SafeBreach, it was just coming back out. So it was straddling that. How do we safely enter the event space again, and what do we do? But you still needed that digital surround sound. So it was almost like all this activity was coming at you.
And by then everybody was getting sick of the SDR motions, all the outreach. Nobody was reading your emails anymore. So definitely interesting phases of what we've seen and then trying to sell it. The ICP just kept shifting because, you know, I was selling into cloud workload protection program platforms. It was different or snap now, I think is where not I think, you know, Cnap.
And it was just, what is that? Why do we need that? Like security lag known to lag so behind the tech. And now today I feel like security is definitely on par with tech. But I will definitely say it was definitely an interesting transition to see that.
And because everything was so much harder to deploy, you didn't have as much agentless new products and things like that. So it's definitely the roles that have gotten harder and easier in different ways.
Thorn Compton: 08:31
Yeah, it's, it's actually a really good way to put it because if you really look at, you know, I guess the, the big major developments in specifically cyber security over the last six years, cloud and then AI agent or agents and all that fun stuff. It really is an interesting update. It's almost like modernization. But like you said, it's. It's the modernization of stuff that has always been best practices.
It's just kind of changing the way people are doing it. Right?
Melissa Goldberger: 08:58
Yeah. But definitely for the security buyer, it was definitely different because they had to know how they had to modernize, what they had to do, which teams they had to rely on. I mean, at that time, now I'm even, you know, when I was at my 4 or 5 one day, the clouds were new. We had research categories that we built the surveys and the events around. And at the time they were storage, networking, digital desktop virtualization.
Cloud was our newest section. Yeah, I was there for five years, and that section came out in like year four. I remember when we brought on that analyst, it was such a big security was actually always there, which was great, but they weren't talking about that. They were talking much more around storage and different areas. So it is definitely interesting to see the evolution.
And then even when trying. When I got to Capsule8, who was my buyer? You didn't have product security teams, even though you didn't have one. You either went to like DevOps or the CISO for us. And there were companies having Cloud Center of Excellence and things like that.
So it was definitely unique in figuring out where we were going to be. And I think a lot of companies still struggle with that. Now. It's who owns the kind of the AI mandates, what's the business and all that. So we're seeing kind of that same thing happen again.
But at the end of the day, I think AI in cyber, it's just going to be table stakes. I've been saying this for a year when, you know, even at certain companies I've been talking to, we said it's not a separate standalone product. It just is part of your product. And that's going to be the expectation, right? Like today, I logged into LinkedIn and even they have now a whole beta on.
It was just crazy to see that like of just how to look for something. and it was just a completely different view because it's now all underpinned. And I think that's going to be the expectation in security as well.
Thorn Compton: 10:53
Well, it's kind of like what happened with clouds because it felt like there was a good year and a half. The only thing anybody wanted to talk about was the clouds. And then everybody went, wait, we still have all this on prem stuff too. So then that's where hybrids came from. And nobody was talking about hybrids.
You know, I feel like a similar thing is going to happen with AI. What are your thoughts on that?
Melissa Goldberger: 11:10
I think it is. I think there's definitely going to be a similar thing. I think, with clouds. The unique thing that happened too was Covid, right? Everybody had to move so fast.
You weren't still on prem, right? Some companies had hybrid, you know, clouds. And even that was a big selling proposition when we were at Capsule8, was that we were able to help you modernize over to cloud without impacting your on prem capabilities. But yeah, I think that's going to be the same thing with AI is that now we're going to have to figure out how to kind of mesh this all in and go back. I think everything rotates.
Like even today, I was joking last week. You see everybody like we've been accepted to Anthropic Claude, blah blah, blah. Every company is putting this out. Does anybody remember what happened two years ago with CISA and Secure by Design? Everybody signed up. What happened to that pledge?
Thorn Compton: 11:59
Right.
Melissa Goldberger: 12:00
Where is that? Like nobody. Nobody's talking about these things. And granted, Anthropic is a little bit different because of the political ramifications. But still, there is this.
And I think there are just these waves and everybody jumps on them and it's like, oh my God. And so I think that's where we are. But I think, you know, in the AI area, I think it's as long, you know, companies are going to be careful and they'll deploy. And the irony is these aren't new conversations. Like five years ago, I was having this at SafeBreach, but it was interesting.
I was with a large bank and they said, no way would they ever enable AI or automated remediation, right? That same bank I know is a prospect for my past company. And that's all the stuff there.
Thorn Compton: 12:49
Yeah, yeah. It's it's, it is very funny that because it's the slow adopters do eventually adopt. That's just kind of you, eventually you have to adapt or die. And like, I think at this point, we're, we are long enough into AI to know it's not a, it's not going to be a fad. It's going to be around.
But like, that's the thing is like LLMs, it's one of the dirty little secrets I like to talk about. It's like they are not three years old. LLMs have been around for years for at least a decade. It's just the, the, the use of them has really changed. And really like, you know, looking at the last decade, how have things changed for you as a cybersecurity marketer?
Melissa Goldberger: 13:27
Oh my God. I mean, gone are the days of playbooks. Like I go in and, you know, take the same playbook, apply it, and have the same success. Can't do that anymore. And I wouldn't even try to sell that.
And it's funny because when I was hired into my last role literally in the interview process. Can you just show me what was your playbook at X company? And you know, of course I showed it, but I said, you know, when I get here, it's going to be different. Like every company now it is so different and unique. And it's just that you can't do that.
And you have to understand where the buyers are, what motivates them, what's that problem that they have that hasn't changed, but which channels are going to work for those buyers and that tech that is going to change and it's going to consistently evolve. And gone are the days I've taught, and I don't know if you've seen this with the other clients, but like inbound, that's a big thing. Inbound is dropped for everybody, which is so bizarre to me because why would that change what you want to request? You still don't. You still want the demo at the end of the day, regardless if I have an ad, you met me in an event.
But no, because buyers are able to do so much more research before they even get to thinking, I want to deal with a salesperson. They don't want to deal with the sales rep anymore, and you have to find that, you know, way of talking to them and finding them earlier and getting them to consistently touch and feel your products. And it's a shame because, you know, I think all marketers are in the same pressure boat of where are my inbound numbers. And you can't explain that, you know, easily to a CEO and say everything's just changed by different people.
Thorn Compton: 15:00
I mean, five years ago, you put up a white paper. I would tell you, hey, get that, put it out. Yes. Don't just give it away for free. Make someone give you the thing.
Now, it doesn't matter if you get it. The bots are still going to crawl it. They're still going to get the information from you. So at this point give it away. Give as much value as you can.
Melissa Goldberger: 15:19
Exactly. And that's the hard part, and that's what I don't think anybody understands. And then, but what's even gotten harder, right, is capturing the intent data below it because.
Thorn Compton: 15:27
You.
Melissa Goldberger: 15:28
Can capture those signals. I think I read an article the other day about marketers not using $0.06 as much. Yeah, yeah. Or intent those like I build my own intent engines. I haven't really used a different one and then I always build on first party data, but getting all, you know, there are changes in the cookie settings.
People aren't accepting them like that. And we become I don't even accept them. We don't pick up phones anymore. So it's the same thing as getting to update. You have to just give it there.
And you have to understand that the process takes time. And I think the other thing is there's been this, and I think it's a great shift in that we're starting to apply more consumer-driven strategies. Yes, B2B marketing in how we approach people, but it still has to be honest. It still has to sell a validated story. I think it, you know, obviously storytelling is huge, right?
We talk a lot about that, but I think it still has to be humanized. You can't. And I see so many companies still doing this. Just because you have a great design doesn't mean your company is going to sell. It is still that story and that messaging.
Are you resonating? Are you touching my pain? Can you solve my problem? Yeah. So I know I've gone full circle into a lot of directions, but so much to cover.
Thorn Compton: 16:43
You're perfect. I'm still working on the kinks of how I want to do this, but I'm just going to just do it outright, like you said, the word intent. And that's our, that's our, that's our word of the day. So we're going to go full PB Herman's Playhouse just oh.
Melissa Goldberger: 16:57
I love it. Yeah. You start you. Yeah. I'm just kind of just riffing.
I don't know.
Thorn Compton: 17:01
Your intent is so important though, because like, if you're not speaking to somebody, then you're not speaking to anybody right now.
Melissa Goldberger: 17:10
Exactly. And what is now going back to where AI comes in, especially for a marketer now taking that intent data and using that in a meaningful way. And I think what's happening is you have two sets of playbooks. You do have the people who are using AI, and I'm like, I'm just going to spam everyone, and I'm going to build all these outreach methods and blah, blah, blah. I'm going to cringe because I'm like, also, you're going to hurt your infrastructure.
You're going to do all those things still happen, but those who use intent accurately and can build those signals get their reps. Giving the knowledge. Building the ad system that can then provide that quality segment. That's an old term. We used to use segmentation.
Segmentation right. Personalization and segmentation. Now we just use fancier terms. But now you can provide that. I think we called them that day.
Build those out. I was like fancy. But now you can build that kind of segmented experience, that unique, personalized experience as a marketer. But then the rep can have their cadence, they can work with their SDR, and you can even bring it down to gifting. There is so much that you can do with that intent and that intelligence layer.
And then even talking to the customer about their pain making and also not wasting your own time as a company. I've seen so many companies do bad POCs or POVs, and it's like, you just wasted, you know, how much money you wasted on that. Yeah. So I think that's where I am making us in that intent is so important and understanding the story and the key words to get them there.
Thorn Compton: 18:35
The key words to get them and reverse them.
Thorn Compton: 18:37
And reverse engineer your prompts. Find out what those people are talking about in AI. Serve them. But as I like to say all the time, if you want to get in front of somebody's eyes, put yourself in front of somebody's eyes. Don't expect them to try to find you.
You find them, you know.
Melissa Goldberger: 18:51
And that's what actually I'm loving right about like search and how it's changed and where we can go. And it's just having those shifts in understanding those terms of, I mean, to me, when you find that one term because.
Melissa Goldberger: 19:04
It's.
Melissa Goldberger: 19:05
Hard, you know, all these categories are crowded and what they talk about and it's like even that, you know, listen, I've been through Cnap as PM exposure, unified exposure, like every acronym on the block. People don't search for an acronym, they search for their problem. And so finding that, and when you nail that and you see that traffic coming in and that bringing that inbound in a marketer, that's, that's gold.
Thorn Compton: 19:32
And what's really interesting is to, to really accomplish that. As the marketer, you have to understand your product. And I feel like that comes down to that relationship you have with the security team, with the people that are doing that, even with the CISO. What is that relationship between a CMO and a CISO like, and how important is it for it to be kind of in lockstep?
Melissa Goldberger: 19:50
I think it's really important. I think it goes across the entire organization. Right. Like you said, it's funny, I just was in an interview the other day and it was with this CEO or CTO of the company. And he.
Melissa Goldberger: 20:01
Said.
Melissa Goldberger: 20:03
God, you're asking a lot of questions that a VP of product would ask me, why are you asking me those? And I said, because if I'm not in lockstep and understand, how am I going to market your product? And the same comes with the CISO. Like I start my day listening to 3 to 5 Gong calls that happen to my buyers that are CISOs. But then also when I have an internal CISO, I take that data and talk to them and ask them, is this this?
Is this what you feel and see in the market and nine out of ten times it does, I don't. In my last job I didn't have a CISO internally, but I had one in my previous role where I'd still call him and also on top of that, you leverage him as a marketer, for content, for keywords and to just get into the mind. I mean, I'm really blessed because we built solid vendors on communities and you build your advocates through your customers. And I've had really great sets of customers over the years that, you know, I could call on and say, what do you think of this? Like even as I look for jobs, I ask them to evaluate products with me and tell me, do you think this is a winning product?
And that's really lucky. And I think it's having those relationships. And it's just speaking the language. Like it is really funny though how and I'm struggling with this myself as a marketer of I love big brands and stories. I want to do all the fun things.
And I asked Recently, I reached out to ten different CISOs in my network and I said, what makes you want to buy? And they just told a clean, honest, validated story. I don't need the bells and whistles. If you can show me a white web page.
Thorn Compton: 21:45
Right.
Melissa Goldberger: 21:45
But your message is what's going to matter to me. And I was like, wow, that that was and it was. They all said it. I said, design doesn't make a difference. No.
Thorn Compton: 21:53
No, no. It's. What are you saying? How are you telling me? Yeah, I, I completely agree.
You brought up a lot. I'm curious. I always love to especially people in your realm, who are some people that you look back on and you're like, those were great mentors for me or those are people that helped me kind of get to the space that I am and help me learn and become who I am today.
Melissa Goldberger: 22:13
Oh my God. The first one's going to sound so cliche, but as a cyber marketer, it's Steve Katz. He is the original CISO. He was on my board at Capsule8, and he literally was one of my sales reps who was like, listen, you do not know how to sell to a CISO. Like I knew all the channels I came in, I knew the channel, but the messaging, I know I'm great with CISOs and Suzanne, I'll never forget her.
She was in sales. Suzanne Desmond is amazing. And she introduces me to Steve, who was later again, one of our advisors. He's like, so what? Melissa?
So what? And we met every single week until we got acquired for me to test messaging him. And another woman was in my company. She was VP of product. Kelly Shortridge was I haven't talked to her in years.
I should probably reach out to her. Kelly, if you see this, she is just absolutely amazing because she wanted to make sure I kept it grounded. Like she was that person who was like, she used to actually publish a blog of marketing buzzword bingo. So that every time I write something, will I get an email from Kelly? Like when I was a kid, I was like, oh no.
So really her. And then I would say, even from just a business perspective, my CEO from Argyle who brought me into cyber Scot, truly CEO of encapsulated, was just like the dream experience with that team and then the team at SafeBreach as well. The head of research, like again, taught me so much about the intricacies of cyber, but when I walked into it, it's like, it's great if you're writing this, but people need to see it. So my favorite email was ever over Thanksgiving. We got him placed and it was the first time.
And before you can buy placements, we were not buying them as a BleepingComputer. We had his research. He's like, oh. Like that's what I, you know, and then they became little rock stars. I called them my monsters, but just truly all, all of those.
And then yeah, and of course, my, my first boss, she wasn't in cyber, but she taught me to be tough and not take anyone's crap. So I have to say I'm very blessed. And I believe in passing that forward to. I think one of the things I'm the most proud of is the teams that have reported to me. And even if I've had to make hard decisions, mentoring and guiding them through those decisions that we've had to make as a company and just being there for them.
People remember how you leave a company. And so for me, that was really important. Always.
Thorn Compton: 24:43
Always go off on a good note. I was taught that a long time ago. It's like even if you're leaving, even if you're not happy with it, I've left places that I was I, I'm a burnt out former journalist that left, left, left newspapers. I still left, you know, you leave in a good way and you build again. Build that relationship.
Melissa Goldberger: 24:58
Exactly. And even when you're parting ways with the employee to make sure that employee has a good experience on their way out like that, they feel that they were heard and respected the whole way through. So I just, and that's just again, I'm blessed though, just and thanks for that question because it really does make me think how lucky I really am.
Thorn Compton: 25:17
I, the, the amount of times that I get that from people that are just like, wow, I hadn't thought about this person in years. And I'm happy that you asked that this is what this is why we do what we do here. Melissa.
Melissa Goldberger: 25:26
I love it, no. And actually, so I'm also in this little shameless plug, like I'm blessed. You know, we talk about mentors, but I just had the privilege of working with an amazing group of CISOs as we were building our docu series, Holding the Line. And I had the privilege . Three weeks ago. I was in New York and we hosted a dinner and just kind of like being with them and talking to them and just listening and being vulnerable. And I was being vulnerable as a CMO, you know, not even talking about security, but it just I don't want to be cliche, but it just I've learned so much and I learned so much from them and their pressure and what they have to deal with and to go through it just, I don't know.
I'm again, that's where the best marketing happens too.
Thorn Compton: 26:10
I, I.
Melissa Goldberger: 26:11
I know AI is going to replace that.
Thorn Compton: 26:14
No, never. No, the human touch is always going to be a big thing. Hey, Melissa, this has been great. I've got one more question for you. But before I get to it, I want to give you space real quick.
Tell the listeners where to find you.
Melissa Goldberger: 26:25
Oh, where can you find me? You can find me on LinkedIn. It is under Melissa. And actually it's Yari Goldberger. So YAHREGOLDBERGER.
It's the best way to find me.
Thorn Compton: 26:38
Absolutely. Look her up. She's fantastic. You'll find a lot of great things there. The final question I have for you, Melissa, what is the biggest challenge facing CMOs and cybersecurity marketing teams right now?
Melissa Goldberger: 26:52
Oh my gosh, I think I don't want to say AI as it's not the AI, it's all the effects of it. Effects of it, the reduced budget, the cut back staff, the CEOs who think they can build things without a person, or you don't need that agency or whatever anymore because AI can do it and it can't. And they are the principles that are still needed there. Can we be more efficient, more effective? Can.
Yes, I run a team maybe on one or you have bloated head count, but nothing's going to replace good design. Nothing's going to replace human interaction and or that quality. And I think that's what we're up against. And we're up against decisions being made for us by people who don't live it daily. And I think we'll go full circle.
Like we've seen, how many layoffs were there last week of companies. Ridiculous amounts. And I've seen some really good marketing talent in the market the last two weeks. It boggles my mind. But I think it'll go full circle.
We were here about three, four years ago. I remember everybody was going for efficiency. Everyone was hired again. And I think that's the same thing we're going to see in the next year. I think we're all going to cut back and everyone's going to realize they need those roles.
Thorn Compton: 28:05
It is so funny that in that time period we're seeing, as you kind of said, old is new. Again, people are going to events again, but it's not. RSA is great, but they're going to the smaller events. They're going to the events that are more niche, that are going to be more useful to them because they have a smaller budget. So they realize, hey, go where you're actually going to be in front of people.
Melissa Goldberger: 28:22
Exactly. Like I don't even invest in the big ones anymore. And then those who are investing are doing these outside events. And it's brand, it's not, they're not investing for ROI. They're pure brand plays, pure brand.
I still think you need the, you know, the good marketing, great product, strong value. And when you have all of that together, that's where the growth is. It can't be the other.
Thorn Compton: 28:43
That is. Those are words to live by right there. Hey, congratulations, Melissa, you have successfully navigated the cyber tunnel. You feel like you're in a tornado all over the place.
Melissa Goldberger: 28:53
I love it. Listen, this is kind of like, come on. This is like our calls when we're going through our, our, our keywords and stuff. So I love this, I love it.
Thorn Compton: 29:02
I think it was fantastic. I appreciate you coming on, and we'll talk to you later.
Melissa Goldberger: 29:05
I love it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Outro: 29:09
Thank you for listening to the Cyber Funnel podcast. Tune in next time for more tips and insights, and be sure to click subscribe for future episode updates.
