Sharing Customer Problem-Centric Content Expanded StoryTap’s Client Roster by 220%

Any form of visual storytelling, especially videos, can make complex brand messages engaging and easy to understand. Thus, video storytelling is a powerful tool to deliver impactful messages to the target audience and get them to make a decision. 

StoryTap is one such platform that allows brands to produce and share authentic video stories from customers or employees at scale. Their patented technology allows brands to create and share video reviews, video Q&A, social content, and more. By offering a solution to a fundamental challenge in online content strategy, StoryTap has helped brands drive online engagement.

We got into a conversation with Hilary Roberts, the Sr Director of Brand and Customer Success at StoryTap. She told us all about her SaaS journey and how StoryTap found its way to being one of the most popular enterprise video marketing tools. To establish itself as a dominant category leader in authentic video stories, StoryTap is raising eyebrows with its innovative content strategies.

StoryTap’s Success Highlights

• LinkedIn has been the primary channel for StoryTap where they engage their audience who are interested in leveraging technology to scale video production.
• They share a mixture of organic content for prospects looking to help expand their business. Their content direct qualified leads to the sales team for a demo.
• The StoryTap team has made content marketing a priority. They leverage it to understand customer pain points and evolve their technology based on their interests.
• At present, they measure their content effort and growth, they track the amount of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) they generate through content or social ads.
• They recently launched a new website to boost their discoverability online and leverage tools like SEMrush, Google Analytics, and Moz to fuel their SEO efforts.

Let’s hear more on this from Hilary. 

Hello Hilary! Thank you for taking the time to share StoryTap’s brand journey. But first, our audience would like to know more about you. 

Can you introduce yourself personally and professionally?

As the  Senior Director of Brand & Customer Success at StoryTap, I bring almost 20 years of experience. Before joining StroyTap, I worked as a Group Business Director at  Zulu Alpha Kilo Inc. where she oversaw the strategic, creative, digital, and production processes for Tim Hortons and successfully led the launch of The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s (CAMH) brand platform. 

For almost 10 years, I was the VP and Director of Client Services at Manifest Communications, Canada’s leading social marketing agency. I led key strategic initiatives for government, corporate and not-for-profit accounts. Reporting to Butler, I led brand and customer initiatives and am based out of Toronto.

Tell us about StoryTap and how it impacts your customers

We’re on a mission to ensure our future is more truthful, authentic, and real – and it’s all about video stories. 

StoryTap is the patented video story platform for turning true stories into video content that builds trust at every stage of the customer journey. Using our technology, you can generate compelling and highly searchable videos for your organization – at scale, all without the high production costs. 

See how brands like UCLA, Danone, Canadian Tire, and TELUS are using StoryTap to rapidly grow business results by increasing loyalty, sales, and engagement at www.storytap.com.

At a time when the pandemic has forced businesses to readjust their digital marketing strategies, Storytap has delivered solutions that offer brands ways to engage with customers in a meaningful and authentic way.  

As studies show that 92% of consumers trust word-of-mouth or recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising, more brands are making use of StoryTap to populate e-commerce sites, marketing campaigns, and consumer help desk web pages with user-generated, on-brand video testimonials from real, relatable people. 

In 2021, StoryTap achieved over 147% growth and expanded its client roster by 220% with a multi-industry client roster in manufacturing, consumer services, brands, retail, telecommunication, and education.

What’s been your strategy when promoting StoryTap?

Our primary channel for promoting StoryTap has been LinkedIn. This social media platform allows us to speak to an engaged audience of business leaders and innovative marketing professionals who are interested in using our technology to scale their video production. 

We publish a mixture of organic content posts and advertising strategies to reach prospects who are looking for the next opportunity to help expand their business.

Our content helps direct qualified leads to our sales team to book a demo and learn more about our patented technology. 

As a startup, our leads are funneled through a target audience of marketing and brand professionals in leadership roles that are looking to make an impact online.

One of the biggest growth hack offerings that we can provide to our customers and leverage for our marketing is video SEO. This visual side of search often overlooked and when done right can be the most effective way to capture impressions online. With our patented video technology, brands have the opportunity to scale their creation of video content that ranks on search.

We use our events, speaking opportunities, and public relations tactics as an awareness technique to reach the top of the funnel (TOFU) leads. Our primary focus with content creation allows us to filter to the middle and bottom of the funnel leads (MOFU and BOFU) by filtering them by interest and identifying their pain points that we can solve with our technology.

How do content marketing and SEO fit into StoryTap’s overall brand strategy?

Content marketing and SEO are a priority for StoryTap’s overall brand strategy and are led by our in-house marketing team. We create content that we know our target audience is looking for as a way to recognize their problem and speak to the marketing solutions to solve it. We prioritize content that highlights our original data and research. 

This allows us to not only share the results from our customers using our technology but gain insight from real people and consumers who are viewing video content. It is a great way to understand consumer sentiments and evolve our technology based on their interest.

We are always keeping track of our growth and measuring our success through our objectives and key results (OKRs). Our objectives include establishing StoryTap as a dominant category leader in authentic video stories at scale, establishing a consistent and reputable source of qualified leads on the marketing channels that we operate on, and finding ways to retain, grow, and provide value for our customers.

From a growth perspective, we measure our content efforts by the amount of marketing qualified leads that they generate. We acquire leads through a variety of efforts including those who see our content or advertisements on social media, learn about StoryTap through our editorial coverage or attend an event where our leadership is speaking and follow up for more information or a demo after the presentation.

We recently launched a brand new website that has allowed us to increase our discoverability online and use tools like SEMrush, Google Analytics, and Moz to improve our SEO efforts and measure our success based on leads generated through promotional activities.

What’s your link-building strategy been like?

Our link-building strategy has been primarily focused on our PR efforts. We share our expertise with journalists, content writers, and bloggers to be included in their articles and blogs and have them link back to our website to drive traffic and increase our domain authority online.

Is there any piece of content that you own (ebook/ whitepaper/ podcast) you’d like to tell us about?

Check out our latest research piece by downloading the Influencer Consumer Trust Report here.  Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about our upcoming webinars and eBooks launching soon, including one that focuses on video SEO.

We recently relaunched our website with sections that highlight our customer case studies and thought leadership. We also used our technology to launch a series of FAQ videos to learn more about video content and that rank in search.

Any advice you’d like to give to marketing professionals, especially in the SaaS domain?

If I could give one piece of advice to marketing professionals in the SaaS domain is to always evolve and experiment.

There is no one right way to launch a marketing campaign and your strategy needs to evolve as the campaign shifts. 

The best way to be adaptive and responsive is to have your strategy remain fluid and always be reading and learning to understand the shifts in marketing and to be able to experiment with intention.

• Know your audience – what their problems are, what questions they’re asking. You need to be the solution they don’t even need. 
• Understand where your audience gets advice (blogs, webinars, influencers, etc.).
• Experiment, but give it time to play out.
• Let the data speak for itself – if you’re seeing something work, double down on it.
• Focus your efforts. As a startup, be smart with your dollars. Don’t try to be all things to all people.
• Spend time with CS + sales – they know your audience better than you do. They can help you identify topics/areas that keep coming up.
• Think of your team as a sales-driven team.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment, but do it with intention 
• Make content that matters – don’t copy and paste what others say just to get content out there. Have a POV and don’t be afraid to use it.

Let the data from your marketing efforts speak for itself. If you’re seeing something that is working, double down on it. Or if something isn’t performing, be agile enough that you can shift.

It is also critical to know your audience and the questions they are asking so that you can be the solution they didn’t realize they needed. Find out where your audience gets their advice (i.e. blogs, webinars, influencers, conferences, etc.) and create content in that medium. Spend time with sales and the customer experience team to understand your audience and help to identify areas of potential growth and to create content that matters.

SaaSy Tidbits from Hilary Roberts

• It’s always about putting your customers first. Listen to what they have to share. Give them the power to advocate for the things they care about. 
• There’s no right or wrong way to launch a campaign. You need to evolve as per the market and customer needs and preferences. 
• Pay close attention to marketing data. Track your content efforts on tools like SEMrush and Google Analytics to gauge whether or not your campaigns are working. 
• Produce content that addresses your audience’s needs and interests but remember to share it on channels where they are presently getting their advice. 

StoryTap has truly proved that if a SaaS business listens to its audience and tailors its strategies as per their interests, capturing leads and achieving conversions is a breeze. 

This interaction with Hilary was insightful for us as a customer-centric SaaS content marketing agency. We too have been focusing our efforts on understanding our audience and delivering solutions that address their needs. Going forward, we’ll practice it with renewed enthusiasm. 

If you have any questions on how StoryTap works or want to learn more about their journey, we recommend connecting with Hilary on LinkedIn. Alternatively, you may visit their impressive new website. 

Author

Hazel Kamath

Hazel Kamath is a Senior Content Writer and Strategist at Growfusely – a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.

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