Best marketing agencies for cybersecurity companies in 2026

Why listen to us

This list is written by 100Signals. Peter Korpak, the founder, spent seven years heading marketing at Brainhub and has run 300+ campaigns for software development firms and IT companies. Those firms hire marketing providers to promote their own services. That experience informs the questions we ask about a provider's client fit, delivery scope, and evidence; it does not establish the provider's performance. 100Signals is excluded from this provider comparison. Our services are described on the services page. The separate note at the end of the list explains the scope of our coordinated program.

Methodology

Each agency was evaluated on four points: cybersecurity-specific media and analyst relationships, named security clients, balance between PR and demand generation, and geographic fit. Facts come from each agency's own pages and are stated as the agency's claims. No agency paid for inclusion. Agencies are organized by use-case category, not ranking.

The bottom line

Security vendors needing media and analyst relations, especially in EU, UK, and global markets, should evaluate Eskenzi PR, which says it is the only global PR and marketing agency dedicated to cybersecurity. For security firms that want PR, content, and demand gen under one roof, PAN Communications combines an integrated B2B tech practice with demand generation and account-based programs. Firms preparing for acquisition, IPO, or a major rebrand in the federal and defense space should look at Bluetext or Merritt Group rather than a pure-PR shop. Israeli and early-stage vendors entering North America or Europe without a marketing team should look at SAGE Marketing, a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner. Mid-market vendors running HubSpot-based ABM belong on Ironpaper's shortlist. Security firms needing direct reach into CISOs, SOC leaders, and MSSPs without a traditional agency relationship should evaluate CyberRisk Alliance as a media and marketing-services partner. For outsourced SDR work across North America and EMEA, memoryBlue (formerly Operatix) is the SDR option on this list.

What makes a cybersecurity marketing agency different from a general B2B agency?

Two things: buyer psychology and media access. Cybersecurity buyers (CISOs, security architects, compliance leads) have been saturated with fear-based messaging and are acutely skeptical of generic marketing. An agency without experience in this buyer segment will default to threat amplification, which is exactly what buyers tune out. The second difference is journalist and analyst access. Security trades (SC Media, Dark Reading, CyberScoop, The Record) and analyst firms (Gartner, Forrester, IDC) have specific editorial criteria for cybersecurity content. An agency that primarily covers enterprise software or fintech will not have the relationship depth to earn those placements consistently.

What decides what a cybersecurity marketing agency costs?

The service type sets the shape of the bill before anything else. Earned-media and analyst-relations work is staffed by people with security press contacts, creative and web projects are scoped by deliverable, fractional CMO leadership is scoped by the hours of senior time you want, and outsourced SDR work depends on pod size and geography. For security specifically, three further drivers apply: how many markets the agency must cover (a US-only plan is a smaller job than US, EU, and APAC together), whether federal or defense procurement language is involved, and how much of the analyst briefing and media outreach the agency runs for you. To compare two proposals, ask each for the same list: named media and analyst targets, who on the team holds those relationships, what is delivered each month, what is excluded, and how success is measured against qualified conversations with CISOs and security leaders instead of clip counts. If one proposal cannot show how its deliverables connect to the buyer you are trying to reach, it is not yet comparable to one that can.

PR agency vs. demand-gen agency: which does a cybersecurity firm need first?

It depends on what is breaking. If no one in your target market has heard of you, or if analyst relationships and media presence are blocking enterprise deals, a PR agency fixes that first. If you have brand recognition but the pipeline is thin (outbound is flat, inbound is inconsistent), demand gen is the lever. The two are not mutually exclusive, and the best outcomes usually come from firms that treat earned media and demand generation as linked: PR creates the entity authority that makes outbound land, and demand gen converts the trust that PR builds. Doing one without the other is common and usually explains why each channel underperforms on its own.

Do cybersecurity startups need a specialist agency?

For early-stage firms (pre-Series A or sub-$3M ARR), a specialist agency may be more than you need if the problem is still positioning, not distribution. Fix the positioning (which framework, which sub-vertical, which buyer) before engaging an agency to amplify it. Once the message is specific enough that buyers self-select, a specialist agency accelerates it. The firms that overspend at the agency layer usually haven't made the positioning choices that give an agency something real to work with. For Series A and beyond, specialist agencies with security media and analyst access are substantially more effective than general B2B agencies, because the editorial relationships and buyer-language fluency compound quickly.

How do you measure cybersecurity marketing agency performance?

Avoid measuring by impressions or clip counts alone. The metrics that connect to revenue: qualified pipeline attributed to marketing (meetings with real buyers, not downloads from adjacent personas), analyst coverage placement (Gartner and Forrester mentions in relevant Magic Quadrants or Wave reports), media placement quality (Dark Reading or SC Media placements matter more than general business press for security buyers), and AI citation rate (whether the firm gets cited when buyers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for vendor recommendations in your category). PR agencies that report only on reach and impressions are optimizing for metrics that don't reliably connect to the security sales cycle.