There’s always a story
Telling stories is as old as time. They bring us closer together. They entertain. They build brands. Storykit knows better than anyone the power of a good story. Storykit’s purpose? Help businesses around the world deliver more impactful messages.
Although officially launched in spring of 2018, the Storykit tale began way before that. And it began with asking questions. What if anyone who wanted to could create a high-quality video? What if you could turn any text into video? And what if you could do it all without losing quality, consistency and your brand?
In answering those questions, Storykit has grown to be the leading video creation tool in the Nordics and is fast expanding across Europe and beyond.
Making data-driven decisions daily
In the beginning, they realized that they had to find a way to keep track of everything. Almost immediately, says Storykit’s Head of Sales, Emma Ekdahl, as they were growing and scaling, they “needed a user-friendly CRM for the sales reps to work in. Sheets, bits of paper and post-its? That wouldn’t do.”
A CRM that’s created for users is absolutely crucial for sales. Storykit found that HubSpot worked on multiple levels. An automation tool for driving leads. A platform allowing the team to make data-driven decisions. A way of carrying out email nurturing and follow-ups.
“When you have thirty or forty sales processes going on you need someone - you need HubSpot! - to help you. Something to tell you what to do and when to do it,” says Emma. “Hubspot helps me get all the data to make daily and weekly decisions.”
Helping out with that decision-making has been crucial to Storykit’s success, says Emma. “I would be nothing without HubSpot! It helps us all track, follow, and be up to speed with the sales process.”
Leads are their lifeblood
Like a lot of businesses, leads are what propels Storykit’s success. When combining the HubSpot platform with LinkedIn ads generation, the results were powerful.
“The sales and marketing challenge we were most seeking to address with the LinkedIn ads integration was definitely lead generation,” explains Storykit’s Marketing Director, Jonna Ekman. “Lead gen forms on LinkedIn lower the threshold - we’re able to collect information on the LinkedIn platform without forcing customers to take another step to our website. This means we can still get all the information we need into HubSpot.
Not only that, but it allows Emma and the team to experiment. To see what messaging works - and why. “We can A/B test different forms in the local language for different markets," says Jonna. “That increases our conversion rates, while also making the dialogue and collaboration between sales and SDR much more convenient.”
Seamless conversion tracking
How do you know how well a campaign has performed and how to optimize your messaging in future? How can you tell where your marketing efforts are best directed? Where does a click, interaction, download, or purchase come from?
Enter, conversion tracking. And getting to grips with it was straightforward. “I really appreciate how seamless the conversion tracking process has been,” says Emma. “It’s so easy to follow each inbound lead on a contact level. You can see the exact ad they clicked on whether they filled out the lead gen form or continued to our site to complete a contact form.”
Having such information at your fingertips, means that you can craft your messaging accordingly - perfect for marketing directors like Jonna. “Being able to export an Excel sheet with the necessary information means we can use that contact or company list in LinkedIn to create a more niche ABM-campaign,” she says.
Directing efforts where they matter most
Directing campaigns where they have the most impact has been invaluable to Storykit. Think of any finite resource at work - time, money, energy - and putting messaging in front of people where it won’t resonate, strips that resource. But put that time, money and effort into the right areas, and it lifts the whole team.
They have the figures to prove it. With HubSpot and LinkedIn Ads integration, Storykit says that they have managed 50% saved time when it comes to lead scoring and 50% saved reporting time. Meaning the sales and marketing teams can direct their efforts where it matters most.
“HubSpot with LinkedIn ads has really helped us follow-up on results,” says Jonna. “It has given us the right insights we need to improve our marketing efforts. This helps us be even more effective. We can make sure that we’re doing the right activities moving forward: high-quality campaign set-up and ad content.”
From an ad, to closing a deal
For a company that helps the world tell better stories, the relationship between sales and marketing has always been a happy one. Yet although there has always been good alignment between the departments, they are always finding ways to improve.
“One thing we’ve been working really hard on, is getting leads of the highest quality possible,” says Emma. “We don’t want our sales team to spend a lot of time and effort on companies that aren’t a good fit. The only way to do that, is to constantly communicate with each other about what marketing is doing and what effect that has.”
This approach is certainly working, with high-quality leads turning into high-quality deals. “Enabling the sales team to follow the leads from a specific LinkedIn ad all the way to a closed deal is amazing!” says Emma.
Continuing to tell stories together
Storykit says they are determined to get more users around the world telling their stories. And who better to tell stories than big companies with even bigger stories to tell?
“We want to target larger and enterprise companies with active social media accounts,” explains Emma. “With the LinkedIn campaign manager, we can find the right kind of companies as well as the right person. We do this by combining targeting criteria, such as company size, member skills and job function.”
The impact, says Emma, is clear. “We’ve seen that the majority of all our booked inbound meetings come through LinkedIn Ads,” she says. And it seems that this is a relationship with plenty more chapters left in it.
“We see that LinkedIn is one of the best channels for us. With always-on campaigns running, we’re setting a good foundation for retargeting audiences. We’ve become increasingly good at targeting the right leads with the right content. Regardless of our business goals, HubSpot and LinkedIn Ads will be a huge part of reaching them.”
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