From Buzz to Belief: Mallory Russell on Storytelling That Actually Converts

ICYMI: Mallory Russell Catches Up with 10 Minute Martech on Why Storytelling is a Revenue Strategy

“Stories aren’t fluff, they’re the scaffolding that holds up your brand.”

Mallory Russell, an award-winning content marketing strategist, joins 10 Minute Martech host Sara Faatz to talk about why stories are the most powerful tool in a marketer’s arsenal, and how to tell them in a way that builds belief and drives measurable business impact.

From building trust through authentic customer narratives to balancing brand vision with sales objectives, Mallory shares her approach to content that earns attention, deepens loyalty and accelerates the buyer journey.

Mallory’s take is a sharp reminder that storytelling isn’t just a top-of-funnel play, it’s a full-funnel growth driver. She explains how great stories can bridge the gap between awareness and conversion, and why marketers should think less about “content output” and more about narrative arcs that customers can see themselves in.

Mallory’s 10 Memorable Moments on 10 Minute Martech

1. Story as Strategy

A good story isn’t extra. It’s the backbone of your brand and your most scalable marketing asset.

2. Authenticity Over Perfection

Audiences respond more to a genuine, imperfect moment than to a polished, sterile campaign.

3. From Brand to Buyer

Great stories make the leap from brand values to buyer needs without losing emotional resonance.

4. Customer First, Brand Second

Mallory prioritizes the customer’s voice over the brand’s talking points when shaping narratives.

5. Data + Story = Impact

The best content blends human connection with proof points with stories backed by measurable results.

6. Kill the Jargon

Clarity beats complexity. If a customer can’t retell your story in their own words, it’s too complicated.

7. Distribution is Half the Battle

A great story hidden on a landing page is a wasted story. Mallory bakes distribution into content planning.

8. Sales Enablement Through Story

Equipping sales teams with stories gives them relatable, memorable ways to engage prospects.

9. Evergreen > Ephemeral

Invest in content that builds long-term equity rather than chasing every trend.

10. Narrative Consistency Across Channels

Your brand story should be recognizable, whether a customer sees it in a keynote, on TikTok or in a sales deck.

Mallory’s Martech Hot Take

“The best campaigns aren’t about you, they’re about your customers. Your story is really their story.”

Mallory challenges marketers to stop centering themselves in their messaging and start treating customers as coauthors.

Mallory’s Recommended Reading List

• Customer interviews and case studies
• Industry trend reports
• Conversations with cross-functional teams, especially sales

Listen Now

• Watch the full episode on YouTube

  
  

• Subscribe on Spotify

• Listen on Apple Podcasts

Next Up in the 10 Minute Martech Series!

Sara sits with Juan Mendoza, CEO of The Martech Weekly, to explore how AI agents are driving a new era of volitional personalization—where consumers use tools like ChatGPT to shape their own buying experiences.

Want to keep reading in the meantime?

Full Episode Transcript: Mallory Russell

Here’s the full transcript to keep you transfixed. Every insight, every quote, unedited and unforgettable.

Sara Faatz: I’m Sara Faatz, and I lead Community and Awareness at Progress, and this is 10 Minute Martech.

Mallory Russell: You have to continue with your kind of more traditional SEO practice, particularly WITH content. Defence, you want to maintain the place you have in the field. And then this AI space is just complete offense, which is, I think, really exciting.

Sara Faatz: That’s Mallory Russell, award-winning content marketing strategist. Let’s get started

Sara Faatz: What is your burning MarTech idea right now, or what’s keeping you up at night?

Mallory Russell: When I think about MarTech, it’s just like such, it’s the engine that makes the machine run. I think content is only successful as much as you can scale it. We’re talking about what we’re producing, how we’re distributing it, is it working, how are we measuring it. And the questions always come back to kind of the MarTech stack, I think. You can’t separate content from that because otherwise it is such a manual undertaking if you don’t have the right tech stack that it doesn’t deliver on its… It doesn’t deliver a return.

Sara Faatz: Right. Well, and even content today is so different than it was even a year ago, right? And the role it plays within marketing.

Mallory Russell: Yeah. I like that ever-changing industry, but I think particularly within the last year, just huge, huge, huge shift in the playbook we were all very comfortable with. I think that’s the other part. And obviously AI is a big part of that, but there’s actually a lot of other things that are influencing it too. And part of it is just the expectations from consumers, how comfortable they are with content. They actually value brand content at this point. Like they expect it. And in some cases they trust it more so than more traditional kind of media sources. So I think all of that has led to a lot of shifts in where you need to show up with people. AI is obviously having a huge impact, but so are kind of the big players in the space who are changing the dynamics of their sites because they want to keep people there.

Sara Faatz: Is it about how much content you create?

Mallory Russell: No. No, exactly.

Sara Faatz: I was hoping you’d say no. No, absolutely not.

Mallory Russell: That has never changed. I don’t think that’s ever changed. I never bought into the more, more, more because there’s no point in producing more if you don’t have a great way to distribute it. And also if you’re not getting it in front of like the right people to begin with.

Sara Faatz: Yes, 100%

Sara Faatz: I think quality over quantity, quality is going to bring in quality traffic, quality engagement, and then support your business metrics at the end of the day. So I don’t think that part has ever changed. Actually, it’s maybe even of more importance now to really think about quality and how you’re producing that and being really aware of how you’re using your resources.

Sara Faatz: And you mentioned metrics a little bit, are you still looking at those same metrics? What metrics do you look at in 2025?

Mallory Russell: That’s such an interesting question. I mean, content measurement is furious and fascinating, it’s really frustrating because it’s such an inexact kind of science. And I know there are a lot of people who will disagree with me on this, but it’s such a function of your marketing that there are a lot of different ways you can look at it. And it’s so omnipresent that getting a full 360 degree view is really hard. The kind of ratio of traffic to conversion is going to look completely different because of the impact of AI and how search is just, even without AI, was evolving. We do have to start looking again at things like impressions on search, which is crazy. It does matter again that someone is getting an impression of your content in that SERP from AI. And it’s actually probably a full recap of your article or whatever. That actually does mean something. So I think those metrics are changing too in a really interesting way. That’s actually much more specific to how people engage with the content, which is great. I think we’re going to get a better view of that.

Sara Faatz: End user has control now of their journey. They probably always did, but even more so than they ever did before. How are you planning for that? How are you taking that into consideration when you’re thinking about your content strategies?

Mallory Russell: It’s a real change with zero-click search. You do want to show… I mean, it’s taking up the full top of the search, the SERP at this point, so you do want to capture that. And then it’s like, okay, what do you do with that? We’re doing a ton of experimentation on this, on how you capture that and then how you make sure you’re optimizing the rest of the SERP to get people in potentially to the site and get them into the place where they’re actually interested.

Mallory Russell: So instead of just taking them to the top of an article, can we get them to the place in the article maybe that references the thing they’re looking for with and have things there like CTAs or referrals to other kinds of content. But I think the other part that then becomes super, super critical, it always was, but it had kind of taken a little bit of a backseat in the marketing world for a long time, I think, is brand. And what it is your brand stands for. Messaging’s become so critical to have a message, not just have a message, have a differentiated message with kind of topical areas you can own, you want to own, points of view that are really unique. So you can also track not just clicks coming in through search, but like you start tracking things like brand sentiment and perception as a real part of that. And having content play like a really big part in that strategy, which it always has, but I think being more conscious of that piece of it is really important. So like things like sharing voice become really important again.

Sara Faatz: I find it kind of ironic that with the rise of technology and everything that puts on the table, we actually have to be, in my opinion, far more in tune with the humans who are consuming what we’re doing. When you think about that, how do you keep the human in the loop outside of some of the things that we’ve already talked about?

Mallory Russell: I was on a panel and someone referred to me as a skeptical optimist because of my opinions about AI. But it was this. It was this from the beginning. It wasn’t like going full in on their tools and remembering that their tools, I think, is really critical, that it’s not using them for the sake of using them or using them to create more content. There has to be a time saving for the actual people who sit on your team and need relief. But then it actually has to drive performance. And I think the only way it actually does that is by having what we kind of talked about, which is like a very clear view of your audience and your message, a clear content strategy that you adhere to. And then you need all of that kind of unique insight to put into your actual content. So the kind of AI tools, that piece of it becomes a way to optimize for performance, to manage your library, which is insanely time consuming, to atomize your content. Oh my gosh. Atomization of content is such a great use case for AI. To version and personalize. And it’s a starting place, right?

Sara Faatz: Right. Awesome. So, I mean, we’ve talked about human centricity, we’ve talked about your burning idea in MarTech. And we even covered, obviously, in all of that, AI. Are there any other ways that you are using AI or your team is using AI that is either unique or different or even just like, oh, my gosh, it’s just saving you so much time. It’s worth talking about.

Mallory Russell: Yeah. A lot, a lot, a lot of testing in various kind of ways, which is great. It’s actually really exciting to do that and figure out what works and what doesn’t. It’s not even what works and what doesn’t in terms of the optimization or updates or versioning that we do. It’s actually the tool itself. Does this use case work for us? Do we need more from it?

Sara Faatz: I think there’s a lot of FOMO in marketing and MarTech, right. People are like, there’s this AI thing’s going on. I don’t know what to do, I’m behind. And I think the ones who are actually just experimenting are going to be the ones who actually went out in the end because nobody has the right answer right now because there isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s really just about making sure you’re leveraging it, leveraging it in the right way, thinking about quality content, thinking about authority, thinking about unique positioning, thinking about brand. All of those things play into it in a very different way now.

Mallory Russell: I totally agree. I mean, I think you said something the other day about kind of you have to continue with your kind of more traditional SEO practice, particularly content, defence, right? You want to maintain the place you have in the field. And then this AI space is just complete offense, which is, I think, really exciting. I love that there’s not really a playbook yet.

Sara Faatz: Yeah, me too, yeah.

Mallory Russell: I think it’s great because it makes people a little less afraid to try things. If there’s a playbook and you’re asking people to experiment, they’re like, oh, but it’s not going to work. We’ve always done it this way, all of that. With AI, it’s like no one knows. There is not any single person who’s cracked the entire code. When you’re doing something so long the same way all the time, it can get a little monotonous. And this has definitely broken it up.

Sara Faatz: Well, one last question for you, or maybe two. What is your MarTech hot take? I mean, we probably could figure that out based on the things we’ve talked about today, but do you have one hot take?

0:09:49.9 Mallory Russell: I think because of this question of things are evolving so rapidly and also, it’s not even just AI, it’s kind of the media mix is so different than it once was. The audiences are getting much more, they’re harder to reach.

Sara Faatz: Yeah. They’re more sophisticated.

Mallory Russell: More sophisticated, they know what we’re doing. You have to get really deeper in these kind of like niche communities and really dig in. And that presents a lot of challenges when it comes to like building, tracking, measurement, even just placement. No one has enough people to do all of these things at this kind of level. And so I’m thinking about the MarTech stack a lot. And there was a time even a few years ago when all I wanted was kind of a tool to solve all my problems. And I am very much at the space where I don’t now. It’s not even that I don’t think I could find one. It’s like I actively don’t want that. I want really like to find products that work really specifically for my use cases at this moment in time. You have lots of tools out there, but to me that’s kind of the space that we’re in at this point it’s like you do need lots of different tools to do really specific things for you.

Sara Faatz: If you build that MarTech stack in a composable way, right, then it’s more like building blocks or Legos. And you can have that best of need tool as opposed to like, oh, I’m going to just get the best of breed, tis one size fits all thing. You have exactly what you need for that particular function within the stack. And if it’s truly composable, then you should be able to take, to add and delete as needed based on what you’re trying to accomplish within the stack. But that also requires a different philosophy from a MarTech stack’s perspective.

Mallory Russell: It does, and it requires some different skill sets from people within the team, even. If you don’t have a group within marketing who’s responsible for your tech stack, maybe you’re all individually responsible for it. That requires a different kind of understanding from the person buying, but also all the people using, and how you think about training them and all of that, which I think is also an interesting kind of challenge. But if you can get people on board doing it, they become more sophisticated marketers because they do have exposure to all of these different ways and tools to do this work with.

Sara Faatz: Right. Well, I think with Agentic AI and even just GenAI, built within a lot of those tools, you actually have an opportunity to have more of those non-technical people become citizen developers, for lack of a better word. But you also then, I mean, that comes with its own set of problems, right? Because you have to put guardrails around that and make sure that people truly understand where they can play and where they can’t. But if you do it right, it could be a pretty powerful way to build your stack for sure.

Mallory Russell: For sure. And for content people, that actually is what you need because content moves so quickly that we actually can’t wait around for other teams with more technical capabilities, usually, to help us with things, whether that’s pulling data so we can understand performance. We need to be able to see it every single day. And someone needs to know how to action on it, in five minutes. And that’s just one example. So you actually need more tools for people who aren’t technical, which is sometimes a challenge.

Sara Faatz: Yeah, absolutely. One last question. Who do you follow for inspiration or information?

Mallory Russell: I feel like I find myself these days just like on my LinkedIn feed. Because I get, I have a lot of connections with people, particularly within the content space, a lot of my like partners who are just posting things that they’re learning on the day to day basis. And so everyone is a bit of a creator at this point.

Sara Faatz: 100%.

Mallory Russell: And so I think it’s actually that whole community of people that I’ve built on that platform that’s giving me the right insights that I need at any given time. That’s kind of where I’m going right now versus going to like individual people. I kind of want like that, a lot of different perspectives.

Sara Faatz: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Mallory. Really appreciate your time today and loved our conversation.

Mallory Russell: Yes, thank you so much.

Sara Faatz: Listeners, thanks for tuning in. Make sure you like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, I’m Sara Faatz, and this is 10 Minute Martech.