How to Earn 310% More Revenue Through Storytelling
Content marketing is more than just storytelling of course; it’s how you strategically and tactically use storytelling to drive conversion. This is how I drove an incredible amount of business to Happy Cabbage as their Fractional Head of Marketing using content strategy.
Project Overview
Happy Cabbage is a software company in the cannabis industry. They had a few tools: an SMS/Email marketing tool, an inventory management and purchasing tool, and a tool to educate budtenders.
They had a tactical marketing director running the ship until 3/23, at which point further marketing stopped. They brought me on July of ‘23 to help them tell their story and convert revenue. It took 3 months to get that engine fully running, and then I hired on a marketing director that could help me run it faster and better.
Our work generated $1.22M in inbound revenue in FY2024 vs $393k the year prior. More on how we did it below.
Low-Hanging Fruit
Happy Cabbage had a lot of data, a lot of insights into cannabis retail marketing, and a lot of great partnerships just waiting to be capitalized on. I started by telling those stories and working those relationships.
Getting a content engine producing takes a few months. There was an initial dip in our inbound leads and demos that rebounded in a big way 3 months after I began.
Once that engine was built and running, I hired an employee to keep it running, freeing me up to work more on what’s next.
Test, Experiment, Succeed
Now it was time to put fuel on the fire. We had a robust content generation machine and we were distributing that content regularly via email and social media. We needed more eyeballs.
Ads had not been successful previously for Happy Cabbage. Neither were events. I was going to show them how to do them well.
We deployed various ad tests across everything from Google and LinkedIn Ads to newsletters, magazines, and wholesale marketplace platforms. We appeared at very curated events that brought retail managers and leaders into their space.
Our inbound activity and subsequent revenue gains broke all the records for the company and resulted in its largest period of growth by orders of magnitude to date.
The Outcomes
The outcomes of our campaigns were great; truly, some of the best metrics of my career. Here are just a few highlights:
Revenue Increase: 310% over PY
Event ROI: 301%
Previously this channel was negative ROI, they believed events were a waste of time and moneyGoogle and LinkedIn ROAS: 198%
Demo -> Close Rate: 14% -> 29%, over 2X increase
This is explained by our inbound engine driving more qualified and interested buyersInbound Lead Form Increase: 159%