Content Marketing Customer Stories
Shantel Shave, Director of Demand Generation at HootSuite, discussed with us how HootSuite is using content generated from TechValidate and using it across their marketing campaigns & for sales enablement.
TechValidate: What are the main marketing initiatives HootSuite is running at right now?
Shantel Shave: As social media usage matures, we’re very focused on helping organizations transition from departmental use to becoming a social business, so they can realize its advantages company-wide. With TechValidate, we have a tool to celebrate our customers’ success, and provide guidance to organizations who are just beginning this transition.
TechValidate: Are there specific places you are planning to use the content?
Shantel Shave: We use the TechValidate content in our marketing campaigns, and are working to integrate it throughout our website.
TechValidate: What are the original reasons you got started with TechValidate?
Shantel Shave: It can be a challenge to navigate legal teams to get approval for different types of content once you are selling within very large organizations. The ability to generate case studies very rapidly that are validated by a 3rd party allowed us to build up a content library very rapidly. We wouldn’t have been able to do that through traditional organic means.
TechValidate: Is the sales team also accessing and using the content?
Shantel Shave: We have the content accessible to our sales reps in Salesforce so they are able to quickly find and share case studies or testimonials specific to a particular business challenge, vertical, or region.
TechValidate: What feedback have you gotten from internal & external stakeholders about the TechValidate content you’ve created?
Shantel Shave: What we’ve found really helpful is that final question where you ask people if they would be willing to be a reference publicly. We have been able to build up a database of people willing to participate in case studies, or people that will speak with us on webinars, or speaking opportunities and events, and that’s been really helpful. It is not just the content being created, we are actually able to use the results of those surveys across the marketing organization.
TechValidate: Any wisdom to pass on to marketing teams at other companies in terms of using TechValidate to generate marketing/sales content?
Shantel Shave: The more segmented you can be in your questions; the more relevant the content you generate is going to be for a specific audience. So if you segment your database for other programs, think about segmenting within TechValidate as well to support those.
TechValidate: How would you sum up the impact that TechValidate has had on HootSuite’s marketing?
Shantel Shave: For right now, it is the ability to streamline the process of reaching these customers. We’ve seen a lot of productivity savings, and there is no way that we would have been able to generate the amount of customer proof – case studies, testimonials – this year if we hadn’t had TechValidate in place.
TechValidate: Are there any other best practices that you could speak to?
Shantel Shave: Find a way to build TechValidate into your process, so that it becomes part of the natural cadence of your marketing program. Make sure that you are rolling out projects at the pace you’ve established from the beginning, to the right audience. We’ve found a quarterly pace works well for us. Because using TechValidate is so easy and the turn around is relatively lightweight, running TechValidate is not going to consume a bunch of your time. And then you constantly have that stream of fresh content.
