The Marketing Agency Built for Security Manufacturers
You do not need an agency that knows the security industry. You need one that knows how your buyer decides.
Request a strategy callMost security marketing agencies grew up serving dealers and integrators, and it shows. Their playbook is local lead generation with a manufacturer logo swapped in. Manufacturer marketing is a different job. You have to educate a channel, arm a sales team, create category preference and stay visible through buying cycles that involve integrators, consultants, IT and procurement.
Maize Marketing works only with security and technology manufacturers. We build the market-influence system that shapes shortlists before a lead ever reaches your website: positioning, thought leadership, PR, ABM, paid media, channel programs and sales enablement.
Nothing below is theory. The examples are named clients, named publications and dates you can check.
What manufacturer-first actually means
Preference forms early
Security buyers build shortlists long before they visit your website or complete a form. By the time an RFP exists, the list of acceptable vendors has usually been set in conversations you were not part of.
An integrator recommending what they already know how to install. A consultant writing a spec around a familiar feature set. An end user repeating a name they read in a trade magazine. That stage is invisible to most dashboards. It is also where the deal is decided.
Channels are the multiplier
A distributor stocks what moves. An integrator specifies what they are trained on and can install without callbacks. A rep firm sells what earns them the fewest support calls. None of those decisions respond to end-user advertising.
We treat channel education as core marketing rather than something sales handles after launch. Training content, spec support, co-branded material and launch kits a distributor can actually use.
Sales needs ammunition, not leads
Complex deals are won in conversations, not in forms. A rep walking in with a named customer story, a magazine cover under an executive byline and an award badge is having a different conversation than a rep with a brochure.
Our programs produce the proof and familiarity that make those conversations easier to start and easier to win.
What a launch looks like when it works
A feature launch is not an announcement. It is a sequence, and the order matters.
Seed it
Bylined articles introduce the thinking before the product exists publicly. Editors form context. Readers meet the idea before they meet the SKU.
Launch it
Product news reaches editors who already understand why it matters. Coverage comes faster and runs longer because the story is not starting from zero.
Enter it
Every launch becomes an award submission. Awards run on a predictable calendar, and a badge is the most portable piece of proof a channel partner can carry.
Run that sequence on every release and each launch gets easier than the last, because the editors, the readers and the judges already know who you are. System Surveyor's Boundaries feature went from soft launch to an industry award in fourteen weeks on exactly this sequence.
The trade press is still the shortlist
Security is a small industry that reads its own magazines. Security Sales & Integration. SDM. Security Systems News. SecurityInfoWatch. Security Business. Security Today. An integrator who sees your executive quoted in three of them over a year takes your next call differently.
Earned coverage also outlives paid. A cover story stays searchable, gets forwarded internally, and gets cited by the AI tools buyers now use to build a first shortlist. A banner ad does not.
We know these editors, and we know what each one will and will not run.
Trade shows, before and after the floor
ISC West and GSX are where the industry decides who is serious. Most of the value is not on the floor.
Before
Editor briefings booked before anyone lands, show daily placement, and appointments set against named accounts.
During
Executive availability, a demo narrative that holds up in ninety seconds, and award timing that lands while the floor is full.
After
The follow-up sequence that turns a badge scan into a conversation, and the content captured on the floor that feeds the next two quarters.
System Surveyor's largest deal of 2023, fifty enterprise licenses on a two-year commitment, closed during GSX launch week. Their 2.0 announcement reached 61,000 security professionals through the GSX show daily.
Proof you can check
Seagate SkyHawk: from component to specified brand
Seagate's surveillance drives were in everything and known for nothing. Widely used, specified as a component, absent from the publications where the decision got made.
Forty-six editorial placements over twenty-three months, twenty of them roundtables under a Seagate executive byline, across twelve security trade publications. Four industry award wins from four submissions across three years, including the SSI Security Solutions Award and a Platinum Govie. One customer paper produced more than 120 leads on its own.
Twenty-three months from no trade presence to a named, awarded product line.
dormakaba and Resorts World: the story nobody else could get approved
Resorts World Las Vegas was about to become the first property on the Strip with room keys in Apple Wallet, with dormakaba behind the access control. The window was narrow and the approval chain ran through three parties, including Apple.
We filmed on property, secured the VP of Hotel Operations as the primary voice, and moved the cut through roughly eleven revision rounds to deliver Apple-approved files on announcement day. Mobile check-in at the property went from 10 to 15 percent to 44 percent. dormakaba has since relicensed the work twice.
FLIR at Mineta San José: seven assets from one story
FLIR had won a perimeter deployment at a major airport against five competing technologies, and almost nobody knew. Airports rarely agree to be named in security vendor marketing.
We interviewed the airport, the integrator and FLIR, moved the draft through fourteen versions across airport operations, airport security and FLIR, and secured on-the-record quotes from the airport about its own perimeter. That single story became seven assets, including a three-page Security Today cover story under a FLIR executive byline. More than 132,000 impressions, print and online.
“Maize has never felt like a vendor. They know the category and they know the editors.”
Wes Moore, VP Security Marketing, FLIR SystemsWhat the program includes
- Market positioning and category strategy
- Thought leadership and executive visibility
- PR and security trade press relations
- Award strategy and submissions
- Account-based marketing and paid media against named accounts
- Channel and partner marketing programs
- Trade show programs for ISC West and GSX
- Sales enablement: decks, battlecards, customer stories, proof tools
How engagements start
Most begin one of two ways. A positioning sprint, when the story is not yet sharp enough to build on. Or a scoped program, a launch, a category push or an ABM pilot, that proves the model before it expands.
Either way you should know inside a quarter whether it is working.
Frequently asked questions
How are you different from full-service security agencies?
Most serve dealers, integrators and manufacturers at once, so manufacturer work inherits a dealer playbook. Maize is manufacturer-first. The strategy, the metrics and the deliverables are built for channel-driven, long-cycle decisions.
Do you replace our marketing team or work with it?
Either. Some clients use Maize as their strategic marketing arm. Others plug us in alongside an internal team for positioning, PR, ABM or launch capacity.
What results should we expect, and when?
Within a quarter: sharper positioning, trade press visibility and engaged target accounts. Over two to three quarters: measurable pipeline influence and a sales team actively using the program's proof and tools. Award outcomes follow the submission calendar, so timing depends on where in the year you start.
We already have an internal PR person. Where do you fit?
Usually on strategy and relationships. An internal PR lead is often strong on execution and short on editor access in this specific industry. We bring the outlet map, the roundtable slots and the award calendar. The internal team keeps the day-to-day moving.
Do you work with integrators and dealers too?
Our programs are built for manufacturers. Channel marketing to integrators and dealers is a large part of that work, but the client is the manufacturer.
What does a program cost?
Programs are scoped, not packaged. A positioning sprint is a fixed engagement. Ongoing programs are retainers sized to the launch calendar and the number of target accounts. We will give you a number on the first call.
How do you measure something as soft as influence?
By what moved, not by what shipped. Engaged target accounts, qualified consumption, sales-accepted conversations, pipeline influence, and placement in the outlets your buyers actually read. Cost per lead is a dealer metric and it will mislead you here.
We are launching at ISC West. How late is too late to start?
Six months out is comfortable. Three months is workable if the product story is already clear. Under six weeks we would focus on editor briefings and the show daily rather than trying to build a full campaign.
See how security buyers are building shortlists before they reach your website
Request a strategy call and we will walk through how preference is forming in your category, and where Maize would focus first.
Request a strategy call