Meltwater
Sr. Content Marketing & Creative Strategist
From Social Media Monitoring → Social Listening → Outside Insight
Meltwater, a B2B SaaS media intelligence company with a Sales-first culture, had never had a Marketing department. I was the third hire.
Where we started:
The Melwater site was an unispired B2B “media monitoring solution” brochure, without any thought leadership or differentiation from competitors.
Where we ended:
The “Outside Insight” concept was an evolution from the success of the “Social Listening Across the Organization” big rock theme.
From Social Media Monitoring → Social Listening → Outside Insight
The challenge: move from also-ran to segment leader
I started this role at the advent of “social media monitoring” as a SaaS solution, and Meltwater was completely outgunned spend-wise by Salesforce. Our strategy was to rename this category (“social media monitoring” was both clunky and boring), and - per the directive of my CMO - to “be the smartest” in our long-form content. I came up with the phrase “social listening” - and that term is still used industry-wise. Practically for Meltwater, it meant that we already had a ton of SEO relevancy on the term, and therefore drove a huge number of organic leads once the heavier hitters (Salesforce, Cision) adopted it.
The solution: differentiated Content Marketing strategy and Sales Integration
In originating the Content and Influencer Marketing functions, I came up with a “Social Listening Across the Organization” as a Big Rock concept. This led to a gated book and webinar that drove thousands of leads. This morphed into the “Outside Insight” concept that Meltwater is still using today.
I also scored us a huge win at SXSW when we teamed up with Mashable to do daily recaps of what folks were talking about, with infographics that the published each morning. (Grumpy Cat was the big winner in mentions.)
Building a Marketing Department from Scratch
Sales had up to this point had no enablement tools or framework, so we built a standard lead generation stack, worked with Sales to define MQL/SQLs, and implemented Marketo for lead nurturing.
I also acted as defacto Product Marketer and Creative Director, as we had neither. The inaugural blog both raised traffic significantly and drove 2/3 of all traffic within a year, all of it organic (I had no budget). I managed this through syndication, content and influencer partnerships, social distribution, gated content, outbound, and SEO.
My time in bullets:
Performance Marketing: Built sales & marketing integration program from the ground up to a team of 4 FTE & helped the company grow from $15M -> $40M over 2.5 years.
Content Marketing, SEO, & Performance Marketing: Drove the creation of a full-funnel acquisition stack for a high-demand B2B media intelligence firm, leading to a 40% increase in customer retention and a 30% decrease in customer acquisition cost. The Meltwater blog was responsible for 65% of direct jtraffic within a year. SEO efforts paid off, and drove 30% of traffic.
Product Marketing: This function was a side job for me, as we didn’t have this position staffed. Built competitive matrices, ran SWOT, etc.
Writing: Wrote 90% of creative content: 12 books, 5 webinars, and 200+ articles spanning 13 languages and multiple countries. Piloted social media and social selling program.
Creative Direction: Took on creative director role, optimizing design department while managing FTE, freelance writers, videographers, and multimedia firms. Led rebrand.