Inside the Strategy that Makes Trulioo a Trusted Expert | Dawn Crew, Chief Marketing Officer, Trulioo

How do you create content in an industry where the stakes are really high, the competition is fierce, and your readers are really discerning. In fact, some of the most discerning in FinTech. If you don't know what industry I'm talking about, I'm talking about the compliance and regulatory space. And I know it's a topic we've covered before, but I keep coming back to it because compliance content.

When done well offers one of the best playbooks for FinTech marketers. You can't get away with mediocrity. The audience is just too sharp, too smart, and they can sniff out fluff from a mile away. But there's an upside, which is that they're also some of the most engaged readers out there for them.

Consuming content is really part of the job. But the challenge with this space is that it's quite saturated, and with the rise of AI generated content, there's even more going on. And in a space like compliance where accuracy and nuance is really important, you can't really outsource it to chacha, bt, and call it a day. The bar is just too high.

And I think what we're seeing in compliance now is really just the beginning and the rest of FinTech will follow high quality, expert led content. Content is really gonna be the only way to stand out. So in today's episode, I'm speaking with Dawn Crew, CMO at truly you. And she's someone who understands this better than most.

She's got leadership experience at SAP TransUnion and now truly you, where, she's seen the compliance content game evolve firsthand. For those unfamiliar with Tru You, they are a global powerhouse in digital identity verification, helping companies onboard users in seconds rather than days. And they currently enable verification for more than 5 billion people, 700 million businesses across 195 countries. With Dawn, we talk about why content is central, to truly use go to market, what enterprise level content strategy really looks like, how to differentiate in a crowded space and the lasting impact of the rebrand they did a couple of years ago.

I really enjoy this discussion and I hope you do too. Let's get into it. You are listening to the market like a FinTech podcast. My name is Ara Minta, MD admin studios and partner at the FinTech Marketing Hub.

And with this podcast, my aim is to explore the strategies and tactics that top marketers around the world use to grow FinTech companies. We have discussions about how to navigate compliance, the intricacies of marketing technical products, and targeting hard to reach ideal customers, all of that while living the startup life. I hope you enjoy this episode. I'd just like to start from the beginning.

So tell me a bit about your role as CMO. What does the day-to-day look like and also from a contact perspective where is your input? There? so my day to day, it varies.

I would say there is no day to day if I'm traveling I am typically up and at it, in the morning with meetings, and Doing that throughout the day, and the topics that, that I'm covering span from, what are we doing with our, like what are the go-to market priorities what's happening with, content to support the campaigns, the actual campaigns themselves, how we're performing, and then what's our, pR and media strategy. So, and then positioning and messaging. So do a lot of context shifting throughout the day.

It's primarily in person and virtual discussions, meetings, workshops, and quite a bit of travel to the events that we are at and other types of things that we do in the field with customers. Nice. So if we were to, dive into content, what would you say is the role that content plays across like True's wider marketing strategy? Content's critical, like content's the core of our strategy of our go to market.

It's really how we bring it to life and add value to our prospects and customers throughout the entire life cycle. So. We look at content from a few different angles. We look at it from the industry angles.

We have a large market share in marketplaces and payments type organizations. And so those are two different industries who may be doing identity verification, but doing it very differently. So we look at our. Content playing a part to add value from an industry specific lens for our customers.

And then for prospects, we look at, okay, if somebody is engaging in making a decision about identity verification technology. Are they early on? What are the types of things that, that they would need to know? Are they in evaluation?

Are they making a final decision? And so our persona as an organization, our brand persona is the trusted expert. So all of our content the role that it plays is to help amplify our voice as an expert in the identity world. And I've seen that you do a lot of different type of content across a lot of different formats.

What have you seen, like the trusted expert, what kind of content do you feel is the one that resonates the most or is most important for a trusted expert? Or would you say it's all of them? I think it's all of them and it's dependent. and so what we like to do is.

Look at, the industries, the big major problems, trends as well as where somebody is in their journey. Are they deciding on an identity verification solution or are they trying to optimize one that they've had for years? And I think in terms of coming forth as. The trusted expert the case studies and success stories are by far the most requested pieces of content from our customer success teams as well as our new business sales teams.

And because they tell the story. They tell the story of the power of our solution, and it's typically. The customer telling the story, which is even more powerful than us telling it ourselves. But we also do industry reports and we look at our data and the millions and millions of transactions that we see.

In a period, and we draw insights from those and we create reports that showcase our thought leadership. And then we do a lot of content, which is just specific informational type content about our solutions because people have basic questions and we want to have them out there so that they can have them answered at any time. So. I would say that those are, probably the key areas where we are continually developing content.

Yeah. One thing that I really liked is that when you go on the truly use product there's two CTAs. One is obviously book a demo, book a call, and another one is like. Read a solution sheet or read a buyer's guide, because I often find the issue with case studies is few people actually read case studies alone.

And so the best way to use case studies is to input them in other pieces of content. And so someone on a product page clearly looking to understand the product, that is the best place to add a case study. So how are you finding, like adding those solution sheets and everything to that, to those product pages? Have those worked really well you find.

Yeah, they work really well. We find that our engagement numbers are increasing because it's one thing to say, Hey, I want a demo. That's a big commitment from a customer or prospect to say like, Hey, I wanna take my time and actually. Interact with you virtually or in real life.

A lot of times they just wanna learn before they're ready to take that step. And so offering both has really impacted engagement because someone will come, they'll read, they'll learn by downloading something, and then they'll say, oh, I have advanced questions. Let me request a demo or a live interaction. So I see them working hand in hand.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I really like it. I think it makes a lot of sense.

so let's talk about content strategy. Like you're producing so many different types of content. how do you put together your strategy? Who's involved in creating the team?

Like how big is the team or who are the people involved in it? How does that work? Yeah, I mean, content strategy is a team sport. A lot of things in enterprise technology are team sports and marketing and content are no exception.

We build our strategy around really three pillars thought leadership and sort of authoritative pieces. Like. Bylines speaking sessions, interviews, things that showcase our expertise in identity verification and our. Longevity.

and our vision in, an identity verification. We also build content around our account-based marketing program. So we do very personalized account specific content that supports our sales team in engaging. Specific roles within accounts or helping them to accelerate a deal.

And then as I mentioned before, the case studies, right, the testimonials, the case studies, those real world examples with measurable outcomes are the third pillar that we build our content around. Yeah. So thought leadership makes sense that it's a big pillar. 'cause obviously you're the trusted expert.

How do you try and measure. It's hard to measure, depend, but like how would you try and gauge like how you're seen as a thought leader in the market? Do you try and measure that or how do you try and see if it's successful? Yeah, I mean, when we rebranded a couple of years ago, we did a global study on awareness and perception of Trulio in the market, and that was a baseline for us.

Today it really manifests by tracking engagement. so that's a very objective tracking who is engaging with our content through what channel, what topic. And then the other piece of it is more. Qualitative or subjective.

And that is the feedback from the field that somebody in the group that they're talking to is aware of Tru, knows our position in the market and has recently downloaded or read some content that they reference in a conversation. And so it really is that. Qualitative and quantitative view that we take to help us prioritize our time in creating future content. So let's talk a bit about channels.

'cause you just briefly touched on them there, what are the main channels that you're distributing that content through? You mentioned, customer success are gonna be using a lot of the case studies probably the sales team as well. What are some other ways that you get the content out there? Yeah.

there's a lot of channels and I read an article recently, I think it was put out by McKinsey, that the number of channels and the number of engagement points is I. More than doubled in the last several years in terms of how a company needs to connect with their customers. And we think about it as using all of our channels in an integrated marketing approach to connect with our customers or buyers in a meaningful way wherever they are. And so we look at, reach and impact.

Obviously we have a number of owned channels, so our blogs on our website are some of the most visited pages for new and returning visitors. We do create white papers. I've mentioned the case studies. We do a lot of webinars, and the webinars are interesting because we're able to engage with.

More customers in, sometimes in some cases than net new prospects because we try to create content through our webinar channel that's really very specific educational. And not combined with the thought leadership, but not only thought leadership we do have earned channels as well. So we have our PR channel of course, and we also have speaking. We consider that as a channel.

We have a bench of experts at Trulio that we have on stage at the various key conferences in the identity world. And those are very successful channels for us. We also have. Paid channel.

We work with a company that does content syndication for us. And we use them because as many channels as we own or can earn on our, by ourselves, they have access to even more. Digital channels where our buyers are spending time to learn and download content. And so I think those are probably the main channels.

I would also consider like our website, the Uber channel there that the people come to, to access all of that. one thing that I really love about this space is that I feel like identity verification, compliance, and content are kind of like a, a match made in heaven because you're targeting people who, it's like their job to consume content. Have you noticed, like compared to other like FinTech companies that you've worked at that with Trulio, it's even more true. That content is super important because you're talking to people who are constantly having to stay up to date with regulations, having to understand like how to keep up with fraudsters, that kind of thing.

Have you noticed that as well? Yeah, I think this the personas in, our audience at large are always looking for new insights, ideas proof points methods, tips, tricks to take back into their organization and do their jobs better. Identity verification is not. there's not a simple solution.

It's a really complex problem and it varies from industry to industry, from country to country. In some cases, state or province, differ as well. And so Tru delivers very sophisticated solutions to help our customers address these complex problems. And so.

It's not a one size fits all. It's not a, here's a how to guide. It is a lot of content to help educate as well as inform on the most recent happenings. And so yeah, we do see the audience consuming a lot more content than I've seen in other industries.

Yeah. And that's what I find so interesting. And also it's like. You also often can't even just say, okay, this is the new reg.

You also have to interpret it and help the reader understand what's going on. Like ideally, like that's best kind of content And that's an interesting area too, in this space, right? Because regulatory compliance is, it's not black and white. It's variable.

And the compliance officers are in the position of really ensuring compliance without a ton of risk. And so managing that balance is something that. Our customers take full ownership of, and we operate as their trusted experts to share with them the flexibility and modularity of our capabilities and how they can implement them, to meet the regulatory compliance requirements as well as maintain the best kind of cost per good verified. User and future proof their identity verification processes as well.

So again, I come back to it's not a simple one size fits all solution and the regulatory landscape definitely keeps it interesting. Definitely. And also, there's quite a few players in this space creating a lot of content. what do you find is important to ensure that like Trulia's content stands out and is like really that trusted expert?

What do you think is necessary to take that like to the next level? I think that it stands out because it's true. It stands out because it's specific. It stands out because it helps our customers.

Learn things that they can then take back into their organization and deliver better value to their company. And I think by helping our customers be successful, we are inevitably successful. But would you say like in terms of producing that content, have you found that there's specific processes that help in creating like that really high quality, like for example, involving or asking the experts to write that content or basing it. On like interviews, how do you really ensure that it's, 'cause it's exactly what you said, right?

You have to stay on top of things constantly. So how are you able to do that, to ensure, like the content's at that level? Yeah, I mean we do have a pretty experienced, small but mighty, but very experienced content team and they draw upon others in the organization. We're also very fortunate that we have brilliant and prolific writers on our product management team.

so they are. Key for us in getting very specific technical insights into our content that an engineer or a developer appreciates. So it's not just the business outcomes, it's also the technical viewpoints that are really valuable to get into our content. And so the team taps into.

The product and engineering folks for that. I think the other part of the organization that's very active in supporting the development of our content there's two actually. It's our solutions consultants. So the technical expert architects who are in the meetings supporting sales, doing demonstrations, setting up proof of concepts.

they have, front seats to what's going on in the market, and so they provide a lot of input to our teams. Which ensures it's really timely and relevant content that we're putting out. And then last but certainly not least is our customer success team. The team that works with our customers day in and day out.

Not just to get them implemented, but to do ongoing quarterly business reviews and ongoing performance optimizations and ongoing support as they add on new countries or reconfigure their workflows. Those. Teams throughout Trulio are very much active in input to our content. It really involves everyone, like this is what's required to create the right quality, and this is often what I see, I think is the issue or why content isn't as good as it should be is because it's just the content marketer or just the writer doing the content based on research.

If you don't involve the people who are talking every day to customers then it's just not gonna resonate with the reader. Yeah. And there's different processes and methods that will go about it. From crafting something, from an outline perspective, just with bullet points.

And then, having them flush it out. Sometimes we get input. I know our machine learning and AI experts are. Bringing content fully written, long form content to us to then use in a way that makes sense through our multiple channels.

And then Lauren will also sit and interview our experts and gather insights for other interviews or speaking slots or, long form content. So there's a, a number of different ways, and I think it's really important for. A marketing organization and content creators to be flexible in terms of how they get that super deep and detailed information. It's gotta be based on how the stakeholder works the best.

Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And I think also writers who are willing to get their hands dirty and really understand the product themselves, like this is something that I'd say is. quite important in FinTech, especially where the products are quite technical.

As a content marketer or a writer, you need to be willing to spend time understanding the product. 'cause if not, it's gonna get tough. I also think this is an exciting use case for ai, which we'll talk about in a second, where. You try and ask the SME the subject matter expert to share their thoughts recording and then you can somehow use AI to turn that into a piece of content.

But anyway, I'll talk about that in a second. I wanted to ask a bit about your rebrand, 'cause you did that a couple of years ago and I think, you know, a lot of companies are often scared of doing a rebrand of implications. So I'd be curious to hear like, what was the process behind the rebrand and how did you find that really helped your content strategy or how did it affect your content marketing? Overall?

our rebrand really was a comprehensive end to end. Repositioning of Trulio in the marketplace, and as I said, we did this global survey. We got input from our customers and personas within target type accounts to understand their awareness of TRU and how. They viewed trulio and the thing that came out in every single way we sliced and ded the data was that we were viewed, we had a high level of awareness in the market and we were viewed as a trusted expert, hence our persona.

And so that has really driven a ton of our content strategy. The other things that we look at are our brand pillars when we're creating content. Truly global. So wherever you are in the world, we perform the best.

Built for business. So really focusing on the enterprise grade identity tech that we deliver. And then, intelligent technology, so the depth of our AI ml and the specific product capabilities. So our rebrand really impacted kind of the voice that we take out to the market, and then the pillars within which we organize our content.

And so regardless of whether we're speaking to. Compliance leaders or product leaders or risk people, we are able to communicate to them against that framework, so to speak. it also, I would say, caused us to do more socialization on inputs and reviews before we put content out. We also focused on specifics around our solution and why it's better, why it's different, and why it's better at a very technical level, not broad brush statements.

And I think if we hadn't done the rebrand, we would've maintained our, good quality content. But it wouldn't have been at a level, maybe a couple of, it wouldn't have stayed a couple levels higher than what our. Customers truly value. I would say that the biggest impact it made is how we look at all of our content being created through the lens of we are the trusted expert.

Yeah, I really like that. So you didn't have that persona in mind of the trust expert before you did the rebrand. That was not something you had in didn't, we did not have a okay? persona Okay.

Okay. Yeah. so that was part of our entire rebrand process. It wasn't just a visual rebrand.

It was a full inside out rebrand. Yeah, and so this kind of helps direct what the style guide should be, what tone you should take when writing the content is all from this. Like imagine you're that trusted Hundred percent. That's exactly right.

Yeah, no, this is awesome. And I really like that idea of a persona because I think. When you're a writer, it really helps to imagine who you are. It sounds like it's a little bit like the older brother who's like a bit more experienced or older sister or whatever.

And that helps a lot when writing. 'cause you can more easily imagine who you're talking to you mentioned content for or enterprise as one of your pillars. How do you find like creating content for enterprises like different to other types of companies? Have you found that something seems to work better than others, or maybe they're more interested in webinars?

What have you seen as maybe different about targeting Um, I think the biggest difference for enterprises, you have to have several different form factors for. Them to engage with and they, while they all have to sort of hang together in a cohesive way, they all need to add value on their own enterprise. Leaders especially, in our identity space, as you referenced before, like they're always looking to learn things and so you've got to be creating content that could be accessed through multiple channels, but you also have to be creating different types of content.

Some may want to join a webinar and that will spark some ideas for them to come back to our website to look for things. To download more specifics on something that they may have picked up in the webinar, whereas maybe a small business or medium sized enterprise. They sort of take a more, all in one platform approach to learning everything at the same time. And the enterprises are gonna go deep into a specific topic that's relevant to what they need to be working on at that time.

They're larger organizations, typically a lot of different people trying to tackle a similar problem. And so the quality and quantity of content and the variety has to be there. Yeah, because the content targeting, like the person who's gonna implement the solution versus the person who's going to figure out how this fits into the product versus the other consultant that's advising, they're all gonna care about different parts of the product. How do you find.

That it's important that the right person finds the right kind of content. Do you think that's just a matter of like, making it really clear within the website or how would you make sure that the, each person on that committee finds the content that's relevant specifically to them? Yeah, I think There definitely is. It's important to make sure that we have content created for the different members of the buying group, because as you said, they all care about different things.

Not all of that content is accessed through the website. We do targeting, through. Email, for example, or digital, but our sales team is also a really big channel for us. I didn't mention that earlier.

And that's where the content, like for the developers or the engineers, they're gonna access that more through. I mean, they may go online and hopefully they do read our developer documentation. There's a lot of very rich content there. But our sales teams also, as they get to know the members of the buying group, know what the topics are that have, that are of key interest, the problems that they're trying to solve and the angle that they're trying to sell them from.

And then they'll work with the content team through product marketing and product. To access content we have in our library or to create bespoke content for them. And I would say this is maybe a big difference between enterprise and other types of companies. Where enterprise is gonna be, the sales team is probably gonna be your, or the people delivering the A BM campaigns that are gonna be The channels, The main channels.

I mean, you'd be surprised these days how many enterprise customers are interacting with us before they get on the phone or enterprise prospects. Quite a bit. But those are going to be the more top of funnel thought leadership, right. Mid funnel type pieces.

Once you get into architecting a solution it's definitely through the sales team. Yeah. Nice. I'd like to finish on the topic of ai, 'cause it's a very interesting one in the content space.

Could you share some ways that you're testing it from a content or a marketing perspective as well, just in general, some ways that you're finding it to improve the content or. Save time or save resources, anything like that. What have you found has worked quite well. I mean, look, everybody's playing with ai.

I think it is great for, Either helping draft something by just putting in your raw bullets or ideas drafting something to, the ball rolling. Exactly. It's also good to help summarize really long things like white papers or even webinars optimizing for SEO. I mean, we still need heavy human interaction to make it at the level of a truly trusted expert and I think in our business where.

The problems are complex and the solutions are really sophisticated. We can only take AI so far and maintain our trusted expert persona. So don't get me wrong, we're using it everywhere. We're experimenting with it everywhere, but we still need that human interaction.

Definitely. I think it's interesting also because whereas maybe in other audiences the buyer will use chat PT to do their research in compliance, they're gonna be a lot more wary of chat PT because it could hallucinate, it could get things wrong. And in identity and compliance, the sticks are so high. Right.

You cannot get something like that wrong, and so they might be less willing to do attach GBT and much more willing to go straight to the truly you website to a trusted expert and get their content straight from there. That's a thought I had, I Yeah. Yeah, and, and I think the other dimension, which isn't necessarily a productivity one, is as marketers, we have to really understand the AI and ML in our own solutions, that's not natural for marketers, all marketers to be able to just pick up.

And so AI for content creation, yes, that's one thing. But marketers understanding AI as they develop their content is something else that we've really found. We have to, and that we have invested in. Yeah, as in don't give it certain data or understand that it's word prediction like, is that what you mean?

Like how it Well, no. It's a couple things, but what you're saying, yes. I mean, we can't put anything. We never put anything into, you know, a chat GPT for example, that's proprietary things that are gonna live on our public web.

Fine. But nothing proprietary, so there is some kind of learnings that have to go on. No, but what I mean is as marketers, we have to create content that explains our AI and ML in a way that's very technical and yet engaging. I think that's a new motion for a lot of marketers these days.

And in order, right? Everything's ai, there's so much noise that the challenge for marketers today is to communicate effectively of why our AI and ml, is different, why it's better and that is something that customers are asking more and more for. Very interesting. That's a whole topic in itself.

my last question is, could you share a piece of content that Trulio has created that you're proudest of? one piece of content I would say that's out there right now is our trends report. That's been a standout piece for consecutive years. We do a comprehensive analysis of key trends and offer insights and suggestions of how our customers tackle.

Those trends. I did mention our, our case studies, but I also think, one of the things that I'm most proud of and. Shout out to our, leader Lauren Kay, Has driven this for us is really the number of our thought leaders, our experts that we've gotten on stages at conferences or, Have been part of expert panels at customer conferences. That is a testament to living our trusted expert persona.

And while it's not long form written content, it is a channel for us and we are delivering content in a, presentation or panel style. And I think of anything, that's the thing I'm most proud of. That's amazing. I love that.

Well, thanks so much, Don, for your time. I really appreciate it and I'm really excited to, to get this case study up and published. Great. Well, thank you so much.

Thank you for listening. You can find show notes and information about guests at fintechmarketinghub. com forward slash podcast. And finally, huge thanks to Orama.

tv for producing this podcast. We look forward to having you on our next episode.