Runa is a payout platform that, via a single API, enables companies to send and manage instant global payments at mass scale. Based out of London, it eliminates the need to have multiple payment providers to manage global payouts, with traditional bank rails taking three to five days to process payment and also charging high wire fees, as well as currency conversion markups.
Instead, its instant payout infrastructure supports money transfers with no minimum or maximum limits, across over 190 countries, 160 currencies and 4,000+ payout options. These payout options include prepaid debit cards, gift cards, bank accounts or e-wallets. Runa’s payment infrastructure is used across industries like loyalty, human resources, research and surveys and banking and fintech.
Runa is one of the leaders in embedded payouts. It has created financial technology infrastructure that enables businesses to send money using a range of payment options, like gift cards, to people instantly. Its single API gives access to over 5,000 payout options, in 160 currencies across 190 countries and counts the likes of Coinbase, Perkbox, Pluxxee and Shopback as customers.
The company had concluded a deep research initiative to identify new business verticals and markets it could build out a sales pipeline in. It zeroed in and defined its ideal customer profile (ICP) in new industries including direct selling firms, research and survey companies and affiliate and influencer management platforms.
A critical part of the go-to-market strategy for Runa’s marketing team was to create pillar content pieces for these new sectors. The overall aim of this content-led approach was to reach, educate and influence decision-makers in unfamiliar markets of the benefits of instant mass payouts technology through long-form, insightful industry guides. Authentic and authoritative anchor content marketing assets were required to impact Runa’s ICPs.
These evergreen content assets needed to support mid-funnel engagement to not only fuel organic inbound sales growth but also be relied upon to initiate meaningful outbound sales engagement.
One critical part of Runa’s brief was that the content had to be strategically structured and of editorial-level quality, not sales-led collateral or generic marketing white papers that don’t move the needle.
With a need for proven expertise in editorial content strategy and content creation, Runa chose Wise Up PR as its content partner. One of the biggest factors in Runa’s decision was that the agency is made up of a team of experienced former journalists and editors, who are especially adept at producing pillar content pieces that blend impactful editorial with brand storytelling that supports commercial performance.
Runa and Wise Up PR kicked off with a pillar content pipeline of three industry guides to be created and also agreed on a word count for each of roughly 3,000-3,500 words.
The content creation process began with Runa providing a detailed briefing document with input from Wise Up PR’s team. A new brief was created for each of the three guides, containing content goals, ICPs, tone and style, as well as primary and secondary keywords. This approach emphasized close collaboration and alignment of what form the content needed to take from the very beginning.
In starting the content creation process for the first guide, Wise Up PR also conducted a deep content audit of previous long-form pieces from Runa. The reason for this was to provide editorial recommendations on how the structure of these guides could be enhanced and optimized.
One important recommendation gleaned from this content audit by our team was that Runa needed to include a state-of-the-sector foreword or introduction from a member of the company’s C-Suite. Given the increasing prevalence of a “going direct” communications strategy, we saw a foreword as an excellent editorial device to immediately humanize the content and also speak directly to audiences.
Two other strategic decisions also heavily informed how the guides would be structured.
Firstly, we agreed upfront on the style and tone of voice, to avoid extensive editing in the future and also to make the project as efficient as possible for Runa’s internal approvals process. Each guide needed to project credible industry expertise, contain clear and precise language, offer action-oriented points of view, and ultimately create a sense of urgency with ICPs to seriously consider adopting embedded mass payouts technology.
Secondly, Wise Up PR’s team, given its editorial background, used its thorough journalistic workflow when drafting each guide. This included conducting interviews with internal experts as well as wider subject matter experts (SMEs, such as industry analysts) and performing extensive research to fact-check the content to ensure it resonated genuinely with ICPs. SEO optimization and keywords were then stitched strategically into the final content to help with discoverability by search engines and LLMs (large language models).
The proof of the approach from Wise Up PR working was that Runa consistently returned to the agency to commission new industry guides to be drafted. After the first was completed, the subsequent guides were drafted quicker as our team understood clearly Runa’s key messaging, tone of voice and expectations for what the final content needed to be.
By blending editorial rigor with strategic content marketing, Wise Up PR moved Runa’s pillar content pieces beyond mere broadcasting of key messages to building real conversations and new business pipeline.
400% Increase
Long-form industry guides increased organic traffic to Runa’s resource center hub.
3x Growth
Gains in discoverability and visibility across search engines and LLMs.
$2 Million
The guides were central to sales enablement and engagement with new business verticals to generate pipeline.
With this strategic content marketing campaign, Wise Up PR’s editorial-grade content guides increased organic website traffic by 400%, as well as threefold growth in search engine and LLM visibility for the brand. In total, this contributed to millions in sales pipeline, as the guides became key Go-To-Market (GTM) assets across the entire organization.
“Wise Up PR clearly understood our brief and brand from day one and crafted editorial-led, engaging content, instead of forgettable promotional material. The quality of the content from their team of former journalists has delivered genuine, tangible value for Runa, opening doors with prospects in new and exciting industries for us.”
In the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI) pumping generic and shallow content out, editorial-led content pillar pieces can really make brands stand out from the crowd. In fact, such content can open up new business opportunities at scale and producing high-quality content is the way to go.
By mixing a journalistic approach with content marketing, you get the best of both worlds as a brand. The content is thorough, backed up by reputable research and interviews are conducted with SMEs to ensure authenticity. For SEO, primary and secondary key words are woven organically into the long-form content for discoverability.
Marketing teams are being asked to do more with less, meaning developing high-quality, long-form content can be a huge challenge. If your brand is seeking to bring onboard agency support with such projects, ensure you understand what framework and process the agency has in place to ensure your content goals can be reached. Without an experienced process in place, it is unlikely the goals of your brief will be achieved.
In-house marketing teams are under more time pressure than ever before to support go-to-market initiatives. This means repeatability is essential when planning to target a range of new sectors with long-form content. An agency partner that can put a successful process in place from the first piece of content, can help marketing teams to scale effective anchor content over the long-term.
