Marketing to CISOs through creators sounds like a shortcut, and it usually is not one. Chief information security officers rarely follow influencers, ignore most vendor content, and decide slowly. Yet the people they trust are often the practitioners who publish. This post covers who actually influences a CISO, which creators reach that circle, and how to measure it honestly.
Do CISOs actually follow security creators?
Some do, but fewer than a media kit would suggest. Most CISOs are short on time and cautious in public. They read a few newsletters, skim conference programmes, and ask peers what they use. They are far less likely to follow a creator, comment, or click a sponsored link.
What they do notice is what their own team brings to them. A senior engineer says a tool looks solid because a researcher they respect wrote about it. That second-hand path is the realistic one, and it should shape the whole plan.
Who influences the CISO’s shortlist?
A CISO shortlist is rarely built alone. It is built from the opinions of people who will run the product and the peers who have already bought something similar. Three groups matter most:
- Practitioners on the team: detection engineers, AppSec leads, and cloud security engineers who test the product and report back.
- Peer CISOs: people met at closed events, in private chat groups, and on advisory calls.
- Independent researchers: names whose conference talks and write-ups the team already reads.
Creators sit mostly in the first and third groups. That is the point. You are not trying to put a post in front of the CISO. You are trying to make the people who advise the CISO already familiar with your product, for the right reasons.
Which creators reach the buyer you need?
Match the creator to the role you want to influence, not to a job title in their bio. A reverse engineer with a large audience is a poor fit for a governance product, however well the video performs.
For practitioner influence, look for hands-on creators whose audience writes detection rules, reviews code, or runs cloud environments. For senior buyers, look for creators who write about risk, incident decisions, or security leadership, often in longer written formats. Our note on choosing the platform for a security creator campaign covers how format changes who sees the work.
Ask each creator who is in their audience, then ask for proof: the aggregate breakdown their analytics already show, or replies from named people in the target roles. Do not accept a guess. Our guide to reading a security creator’s media kit explains which numbers are self reported and which you can check.
How should a small team approach CISOs through creators?
Start narrow. A security company with a small budget gains more from one credible practitioner who genuinely tested the product than from five shallow mentions. We make the same argument in where a first creator marketing budget should go.
Avoid paying several creators who all reach the same circle of readers. In a field this small, overlap is the norm, and paying three creators to reach the same people wastes budget quietly.
Give the creator what a practitioner needs: real access, an honest brief, and room to criticise. A CISO’s team will read the post looking for the flaw. A review that names a limitation is more useful to them than one that reads like a datasheet.
How do you measure influence on a buyer who never clicks?
Clicks will undercount this badly. A CISO who learns about your product through a trusted engineer may never touch the creator’s link. Look for slower signals instead:
- Branded search and direct visits in the weeks after publication.
- Inbound questions that mention the creator’s post by name.
- Warm intros or replies from people in target accounts.
- The question “how did you hear about us?” added to every demo request.
Be honest about what this shows. It suggests familiarity, not a closed deal. Enterprise security purchases run for months, and no single post should carry the revenue target. If someone promises a pipeline number from a creator campaign in a quarter, treat the promise as a warning sign.
What should you not promise a CISO audience?
Do not claim the creator reaches CISOs unless you can show it. Do not ask for scripted talking points, and do not hide the sponsorship. A senior security audience punishes undisclosed paid content, and the post should carry a clear #ad disclosure from the first line.
Influous is pre-launch, so we have no results to quote and will not invent any. What we can say is how we think about it: vet the creator on substance, match them to the buyer you want to influence, and measure over months rather than days.
If you are a security creator whose readers include senior buyers, you can apply to join Influous. If you are a brand planning a campaign, you can start one, or email us at info@influous.io to talk it through first.