Hybrid Storytellers

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and president of Survival Gear BSO. We provide survivalists and bushcrafters all over the world with their equipment needs, and we’ve been in business for a little over five years.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hybrid Storytellers?

They provide digital advertising and marketing services.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hybrid Storytellers offers just about everything. They handle social media posts, Facebook and Instagram Ads, SMS text marketing, email marketing, and more. Once a quarter, we have a photoshoot for our new products, and we have a full day of shooting.

Every month we get a content calendar — it shows a layout with small icons of the pictures they’ve already edited, which are ready to ship out to social media and our website. They lay everything out 3–4 weeks ahead of time. Hybrid Storytellers sends over the documents, we give them our approval or make changes, and they handle everything else.

Since we’re about a week away from Christmas, they’ve been on the ball for the holiday sales. They’ve helped us push one of the products we carry for another company, and the traffic has been incredible.

What is the team composition?

We’d been working with three people, but now we’re down to two. We mostly interact with the owner, and there’s someone else for support. Overall, they’ve figured out what we need and expect from them. Hybrid Storytellers has caught up quickly with our company; we don’t even have to talk as frequently as we did.

How did you come to work with Hybrid Storytellers?

We’d looked at anybody who had come into our doorstep with a proposal, but Hybrid Storytellers was the best company. We found them through a mutual friend, so it was word of mouth. He was using them for his business’ marketing.

The CEO lived about 10 minutes from me, so they were practically in my backyard. We got together, and they were nice. We decided to do a six-month contract, and then we extended it to a year.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2021, and our relationship is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Hybrid Storytellers has impressed us. We’ve done better business with them in six months than in the previous four years and a half combined. They’re easily the best marketing company we’ve ever worked with.

Moreover, the numbers are outrageous. Our average order is up by 30%, our conversion rates have nearly tripled, and our sales attribution to marketing has increased by 681% in six months.

Also, we actually got a call from the company we collaborated on sales. They were so impressed with the performance that they wanted to discuss how we could help each other further down the road and do more work together.

How did Hybrid Storytellers perform from a project management standpoint?

Sticking to schedule hasn’t been an issue for them; the problem is more on our end. We head in multiple directions, but they’ve been great at rolling with the punches. They’ve been accommodating when we’ve had last-minute changes, and they’re very accessible. We can contact them via email, chat, phone call, text message, and we’ve never had to wait more than ten minutes for a response.

We mainly use emails and texts to communicate. However, if we have a problem, we can go with them since they’re ten minutes away.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The quantity of tasks they do for their price is outstanding. Many of the costs are extra for every additional service with marketing companies. However, it’s an umbrella service with Hybrid Storytellers. They handle Facebook and Instagram Ads, SMS texting, and other things for a monthly fee. It’s shocking to see what they cover for their price.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve upon. We believe the company will grow rapidly; they have quality people on their side. Their biggest challenge will be to keep up with the demand once people see the results they get.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re serious about marketing your business, you’ll have to spend an appropriate amount of money for a top-quality marketing company, and there are a million of them out there. If we could go back five years and start with Hybrid Storytellers, we would’ve saved ourselves a lot of headaches and money. We gave them six months to prove themselves, and it only took three months.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the lead pastor of a church that launched in September 2019. We hold church services, community outreach, and local and global missions. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Hybrid Storytellers?

We wanted to come up with a brand and marketing strategy for our church. As a result, we went through the process of creating our brand, talking through who we wanted to be as a church, and what we wanted our message to be. 

Hybrid Storytellers was hired to help us flesh out our ideas into a digital marketing plan which includes our logo, website design, and more. Their main goal was to determine our look and feel, and overall media presence — whether it was print, social media, and website. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team started with the logo design process, and Hybrid Storytellers also listened to the client’s vision of their church. They recognized that the logo was a vital part of the message of their church and it would essentially give the first impression about their organization. After that, they proceeded to develop our website. Then, Hybrid Storytellers created our banners, signs, interior signage, and more.

Moreover, the team also did our initial print media which includes any type of handouts, and they helped design all of that. They also took care of our social media, specifically on developing a strategy for Instagram and Facebook on what type of posts could help us get the most engagement. Overall, we worked with them in all areas and facets of the design process for any marketing and media that we needed. 

What is the team composition?

There were two people including the designer and creator, and another one on the admin side. 

How did you come to work with Hybrid Storytellers?

I had a personal connection who pointed me towards Hybrid Storytellers. That person said they were great. When I went through their website and talked to their designer about my vision, I felt pretty confident that it would be a good fit. 

How much have you invested with them?

I’d say we probably spent $5,000–$7,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We probably started working together in March 2019, and we occasionally contract them out for various updates and different designs that we have. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

I appreciated their desire to get something done and create a logo and website that captures the heart of who we are. I also commend them for keeping our brand consistent across our collaterals. External stakeholders liked that our website was clean, sharp, and sleek, and the information was easy to find. Our branding was on point and modern, and that was showcased by our eye-catching designs. 

Our social media definitely increased with their work; Initially, we had about 100 people following us and that jumped to 200–300 followers. Overall, I was really pleased with the work they did. 

How did Hybrid Storytellers perform from a project management standpoint?

They were professional and timely, and there was never anything that we didn’t finish by a certain date. Hybrid Storytellers was very communicative, and we never had never any issues with them. The team was very upfront and transparent about what they could do and when they could finish deliverables. We mainly communicated through email and texts, but the majority of it was done through email.

We went through multiple iterations and tweaked things until we arrived where we wanted to be. Our back and forth process helped us to get to our goal. I loved that they were fully on board to even the smallest of changes we wanted to implement. There was never any pushback on the Hybrid Storytellers' part. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their level of care for helping us become a better business and organization impressed us. They were also passionate and they wanted us to thrive, rather than just receiving a paycheck.

Hybrid Storytellers made sure that when we were done working with them, our organization was better than before. We consider them to be our go-to for any type of design for something that we want to look professional. Moreover, the team was good at framing our passions and desires and making them come to life in a tangible and visible way.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Two years ago, they were short-staffed. They were talented and their business was growing. Hybrid Storytellers were growing too fast, and they had trouble keeping up. In that sense, I felt that they may have felt pressure — since they were juggling multiple hats — and they were being stretched. However, it wasn’t that they didn’t give attention to us — they absolutely did and that’s why we met our deadlines. 

Back then, my biggest feedback would be for them to delegate more responsibilities to other people. However, I’m not sure how it looks like now since we only do side projects with them. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Articulate your vision and mission for what you want to accomplish in your organization, and Hybrid Storytellers is going to do a great job with that. Additionally, ask a lot of questions and let them what they do best.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-owner and co-founder of a coffee roastery working based on the “buy one, donate one” model. We partner with a local homeless shelter to offset their annual coffee cost by selling at-home coffee subscriptions as well as coffee to retail stores. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Hybrid Storytellers?

My partner and I have extensive experience in revenue organization in the tech space, but we’d never done it in the consumer goods space before. We knew how to get the customers’ attention and turn them from one-time purchasers into monthly subscribers. It was easy for us to communicate with the people we knew.

However, a random engagement on social media platforms with a stranger from another state was foreign territory for us. As a result, we hired Hybrid to establish our social media footprint. We wanted to give people a trustworthy experience with us on social media and a compelling narrative for them to want to participate in our cause. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hybrid helped us specifically with Facebook and Instagram. We wanted to see a 400% lift in our overall social media following and engagement. On top of that, we needed engaging content that established the tone of our brand. 

Hybrid conducted a full-day photography session on-site to create the actual content for the roastery and for the homeless shelter. They posted these pictures online and created captions for them. 

Every third week of the month, they’d send over a proposed content calendar, including original photography. My business partner and I would go over the content and check whether we wanted to change something or if they missed anything. We ensured that every post, comment, and engagement truly resonated with our brand voice. We did that for 3–4 months, and at least 120 pieces of original content were posted on our behalf.

What is the team composition?

We worked with Ryan (Creative Director) and Karisa (Project Director).

How did you come to work with Hybrid Storytellers?

A while back, I helped start a nonprofit for young adults in the greater Pittsburgh region, and Hybrid was involved with that. They helped us produce content on a pro bono basis because they loved what we were doing even if we had no budget to allocate toward content. Back then, they were only starting their company, and its name was different.

I decided to work with them on this project because of who they were and their business ethics; I grew to respect them first as people and then as professionals. I understood their hearts in terms of how they viewed their social responsibility on social media, where negativity was rampant. They focused on permeating that space with positive messages and inspiring content. When we saw what they did for other companies, we fell in love and decided to give them a go. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $2,000 per month for their services, including the ad spend that was allocated to the project. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Hybrid from September 2020–March 2021. Our budget has been diminished because we had to hire someone to do the roasting work. However, they’re still available to help us with some one-off contract work. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We had a consistent sales generation funnel, thanks to the custom-tailored content that Hybrid created. Over the course of 4–5 months, about 60% of our first-time orders in the third, fourth, and fifth months came from social media. Around 80%–82% of the first-time buyers who purchased a one-time bag in the second month upgraded to a monthly subscription, helping us support the shelter. We wouldn’t have been able to turn those people into customers on our own.

Moreover, people didn’t only purchase our coffee because they wanted to support our cause; they also wanted to make a difference. They started telling their friends about Richbarn, saying that the business was what conscious capitalism looked like. We received more comments like these on social media, and people got excited about it. 

In fact, a person who believed in our mission and vision found us on social media. We didn’t know her personally, but our message resonated with her. Apparently, she combed through and read all of our content. When she was done, she called us and said that what we were doing was amazing. She then asked us how she could help, and we figured it out. 

In the following months, she’ll help us do deliveries on weekends at no cost. She wants to donate her time to ensure that people who buy Richbarn products are delighted. In other words, Hybrid literally generated a part-time employee for us at no cost because their message resonated very strongly with the audience. 

Overall, they accomplished and over-delivered on everything we asked them to do even when we had an aggressive growth target. In terms of content creation, the monthly flow was amazing. It was also awesome that we owned every piece of content they created.

How did Hybrid Storytellers perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the biggest perks of working with Hybrid was their ability to own the project like they were stakeholders. They didn’t sit around waiting for guidance, and they always took a proactive ownership mentality around content and deliverables. They owned the entire project, which was why we needed them — they literally took the process off of our hands. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

As a consultant, I know how difficult it is to find someone who lives and breathes the business as much as its owners or founders do. I don’t ever expect someone to care about our business as much as I do, simply because it’s not their business. 

However, Ryan and Karisa did that to a tee. From the moment we started engaging, we felt like we had a full-time marketing department that was carrying the load with us and that cared about our business as much as if not more than me. I don’t find this quality very often in the contracting or consulting space.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. They surpassed my expectations, and the content was phenomenal. The way they planned and executed it was exceptional. I’d change nothing about what Hybrid did. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re thinking about working with Hybrid, let them be stakeholders. Don’t direct them; allow them to do what they do best, which is to think outside the box.

Look at what you hold so dearly — the mission and vision of the business that you worked so hard to create — and let them take it. Let them help you think differently about the company. What you believe resonates with the target market might not actually be correct. 

When we’re too close to the business, we can only see it in one way. As a result, instead of telling Hybrid what to do, ask them what speaks to them about the company and how they would communicate it to the greater public. The way they went about our project was very different from what my partner and I would have done, but it worked. 

Leave the ownership-founder pride at the door and believe that Hybrid, specifically Ryan and Karisa, are intelligent, smart, intuitive, and ambitious enough to make the business better than what you can do on your own.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a singer and songwriter, and I own a music business, 192 Productions.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hybrid Storytellers?

I needed help with social media management and content creation — I wasn’t a big fan of doing so myself, and it took a lot of time.

The goal was to create a steady stream of content for the people who were already following me.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We did quarterly photoshoots. Ryan (Creative Director) took pictures and then created graphics and copy. He was also responsible for scheduling the posts and then actually posting the content. They handled everything on my Instagram and Facebook pages. 

On top of that, we had some one-off projects surrounding my personal brand. They put together a whole branding deck for me — a new logo, colors, fonts, and everything else.

What is the team composition?

At the time, there were two people that worked on the project. 

How did you come to work with Hybrid Storytellers?

I met Hybrid Storytellers at a coffee shop, and we began talking. We had actually gone to the same high school, so we bonded over that. I thought it would be a good opportunity for them to take over my social media management. 

I also saw some of the work they'd done for other companies, and it seemed like exactly what I needed. I didn’t have any experience hiring social media managers and content creators, so this was a trial for me as well. It ended up going really well.

How much have you invested with them?

It was probably $15,000–$25,000.  We did different projects based on what I needed, and we didn’t have a set rate every month. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2018, and we finished the engagement around the fourth quarter of 2020. We wrapped up because I was no longer as involved in the music business.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

I don’t have any specific metrics other than the content they created and what the engagement rate for that was like. The goal wasn’t to grow my numbers; rather, it was to create a steady stream of content.

The consistent flow of content was a lot more engaging for my audience. It was helpful for me to be able to just give them the content, but not have to necessarily focus on creating the content. That built a more engaging approach to my whole platform, which I wasn’t taking advantage of beforehand. 

I noticed a lot more likes and shares on the individual posts, too. Hybrid Storytellers also helped me manage those engagements by reaching back out to anyone that sent messages. They then relayed certain things to me based on what they thought they needed to share and what they thought they could take care of and handle. 

How did Hybrid Storytellers perform from a project management standpoint?

We typically communicated through email and phone calls, and it was great. They were very responsive and always clear and honest if they were working on projects on an hourly basis. I never had to question what they were submitting. The team was thorough in letting me know what they could deliver, and then they would deliver on that. 

We went back and forth a lot because I had never done a logo or anything specific to my own music brand before. It was a really fluid and easy process. They were very thorough and sent graphs of everything. They provided super valuable materials that I’m still using today.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were very thorough in what they delivered, such as file sizes. If we needed different file formats, they sent all the formats to begin with rather me having to reach out and ask for them. That was always pretty clear.

They also excelled in communicating with other people. At one point, I had a PR company helping me, and they had nothing but positive feedback regarding their engagement with Hybrid Storytellers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I honestly don’t have anything that comes to mind. It was a great experience; I have no negative feedback.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

When I went to them with different ideas or projects, I sometimes wasn’t as clear or as concise as I could’ve been. Because they provide such thorough work, make sure that you specify exactly what you’re looking for. This was more on me, but there was a lot of design work and trial-and-error. Having a clear vision at the beginning of the project will minimize some of that back and forth period.