Case Studies
Black Swan Cyber Security Solutions
Black Swan Cyber Security Solutions help schools, multi-academy trusts (MATs) and businesses protect their organisation from the increasing threats to their IT systems.
With a focus on safeguarding everything from sensitive customer information to critical business operations, the team at Black Swan use their vast experience to advise and implement robust solutions so their customers can be proactive in the fight against cyber attacks and data breaches.
Black Swan Cyber Security Solutions were awarded a Growth Voucher from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and chose to use it towards our JourneyWeb® service so they could understand the different paths their customers take and build a marketing strategy for the business.
What was the challenge?
Black Swan is a new venture for the owners. Their previous experience in the IT sector drove them to seek help with becoming a known entity in a crowded space. Previously, many schools sought support for their school independently.
With the requirement to become an academy, or part of a MAT, by 2030, many organisations in the education sector have taken their day-to-day IT support in-house.
This change means that MATs are likely to seek specialist support for certain areas, such as cyber security, while managing technical support themselves.
Black Swan needed to know more about how their target customers behave in selecting a company to partner with, and what could influence their decision to choose them.
What was our solution?
To understand how being part of a MAT affects the choice of partner to work with, JourneyWeb® was chosen as the service to deliver this knowledge.
In the initial stage, we got together with Black Swan for a workshop that focused on the type of organisation (education sector and beyond) they wanted to work with. A key part of the discussion was the structure of MATs, their remit, and who the main participants are in the decision-making process. We discovered that MATs have a more involved structure, covering multiple sites, with a senior leader as part of the process from a strategic perspective. While they have a team covering different sites, it was important that Black Swan be positioned as a partner in those strategic decisions rather than just a technical support service.
Budgets are tight in the education sector, so we established that a MAT’s senior IT leader would still have to persuade a finance leader and/or trust board in any decision to show return on investment was positive for the trust overall.
From our research, it became clear that positioning the expertise of Black Swan would be important to the successful selection of their services to any organisation, regardless of sector. Our JourneyWeb® content map and strategy documentation put together a picture of what activities would help move a potential customer along the journey to work with Black Swan Cyber Security Solutions, in whichever direction they travelled.
Content creation
Once the JourneyWeb® strategy was completed, Black Swan asked us to help them implement parts of the strategy they wanted further assistance with, particularly content creation that they felt we would be best placed to deliver.
This involved managing their social media accounts, creating high-quality graphics and videos for each platform and engaging with the audience. There was no social media presence before, so this work laid the foundations for future audience growth that Black Swan could then take on directly once they’d seen how to create content that performs well.
As brand awareness was a key objective, graphics that used Black Swan’s strong branding were important to use. We created a set of brand assets based on a limited set of guidelines that they could then expand on in the future.
Social media content needs to grab attention, so we decided that post content should include video wherever possible, so graphics were animated to create video files to maximise reach.
Positioning the team as leaders in the cyber security space meant demonstrating knowledge at every opportunity. We decided this would be done using email marketing and articles available on the Black Swan website.
Monthly newsletter emails were written to offer help and advice to the target audience. A strategy to grow the email list was put in place. Articles were researched and experts at the team were interviewed to produce authoritative pieces to demonstrate leadership in cyber security and all things IT protection.
Working with LikeMind Media has been an invaluable experience since launching Black Swan Cyber Security Solutions. Their expertise in helping me identify my ideal customers and creating a JourneyWeb® for the new website was fantastic. Jon, in particular, was a pleasure to collaborate with. His creativity and guidance have set me up to confidently produce quality news articles and social posts in-house. Their professionalism and dedication are second to none.
Kevin Walker
Founder at Black Swan Cybersecurity
It was a real joy to work with Kevin at Black Swan, and it’s lovely to know that that feeling was reciprocated. Kevin knows his business and his industry inside out. That he was happy to put his trust in us, and give us the opportunity to try different angles and ideas, is extremely satisfying and encouraging.
Jonathan Paul
Content Editor at LikeMind Media
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