The document outlines a case study on Zenefits, detailing how they transformed their marketing strategy to drive growth through data-driven performance marketing initiatives, particularly on social media. Key elements include creating a content strategy focused on value drivers, aligning sales and marketing activities, and implementing rigorous testing for lead generation efficiency. The results demonstrate significant improvements in engagement metrics, lead conversion rates, and reduced costs per lead across platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook.

1. Building A Predictable B2B Growth Engine
From Social Ads
Yuri Daniels | Director of Performance Marketing

2. A Case Study on Zenefits
After this session, you will be able to:
● Design a content strategy that converts - built on value drivers and personas
● Build a segmented and layered audience strategy for active and latent buyers
● Implement a testing plan and scoring model for prioritization
● Create a data-driven team culture

3. OUR VISION:
Level the playing field for the other 99.7%

4. Founded as
Online Broker
2013
Became Employee
System of Record
Became crucial employment
system of record managing all
employer and employee
transactions as they happen
Fastest Growing
Company
Our Story
Expanded to Complete
People Platform
Record-breaking growth
driven from powerful ben tech
wrapped in services
Added native payroll, T&A, perf mgmt, gig
worker support, 50+ partner apps incl. Slack,
Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Lyft, Uber
2015 2017
2014 2016 2018
Disrupted traditional
benefits insurance industry
Pivoted Business Model
From Broker to Tech Platform
Startup Team → Experienced Leadership
Services Company > Tech Backbone
Licensed Broker → Broker Agnostic
Freemium > Paid SaaS
2019
Launched BenAdmin
and BenConnect
Partnered with OneDigital, NFP, GBS,
Marsh & Mclennan, ABD, Sequoia, Horton,
The Capital Group, Health Insurance Team
and BBG to leverage proprietary technology
paired with local service.

5. Running a business is hard
Running a small business…even harder

6. The Struggle Is Real
• People data in silos
• Workload on employer to maintain
• A lot of manual work & inefficiency
• Payroll serves as a limiting factor
• Redundancy, risk & errors
• Unscalable

7. Analytics Run on Over 8,000 Sales Conversations, 1,000 Deals & Interviews w/ over 500 Qualified Buyers
Growth &
Profitability
Hiring &
Retention
Cost &
Availability of
Healthcare
Compliance
& Taxes
What Really Keeps Buyers Up at Night?

8. Setting The Foundation
Where We Were Where We Are Now
• No common funnel taxonomy
• No alignment between sales and
marketing
• High CAC from SEM and Social
• Complete reliance on email marketing
• Rebuilt IP reputation after SPAM jail
• Single form-fill experience
• Rebuilt “Performance Marketing” function
• Full-funnel visibility and tracking by
channel
• Strong SDR <> Marketing alignment
• CRO methodology across all channels
• Content library built for buying stages
• Understanding our ICP

9. Common Taxonomy, Process, Strategy
Performance Marketing
Led by paid channels (Search & Social),
review sites, email campaigns
Content Programs
Blog, premium assets, checklists, templates
Rigorous Data-driven testing mindset
Across web properties, landing pages,
ads/creative, tactics
Aligned process across Sales / Marketing
Process, systems, data, enablement,
messaging
$ Subscriber
Suspect
Prospect
Qualified Lead
SQO
Closed-Won
People Data
Content
+ Programs
Automation
Engine

10. Zenefits’ Tech Stack
ACTIVE DEMAND
ENGAGE
ANALYZE & OPTIMIZE
LATENT DEMAND
AUTOMATE / ENRICH

12. Content Strategy

13. A Content Strategy Built On Value Drivers
Growth
Productivity Compliance
Growth
Platform to expand your business
Productivity
50-70% less time & cost
Compliance
75-90% less errors, 50% less cost
New Hire Checklist
Onboarding Guide
ROI Reports
2019 HR Compliance Calendar
Payroll Reports Templates
Employee Handbook Template
Employee Cost Calculator
Affordable Care Act Guide Book
HR Grader Quiz

14. And Buyer Personas
CEO / Founder
HR CFO / COO
CEO / Founder
Business Planning, Growth, Strategy
HR Director
People, Culture, Systems
CFO / COO
Payroll, Budgeting, Compliance
2019 HR Trends Report
Equal Pay Guide
Employee Engagement
Survey
Payroll Report Templates
Payroll Pocket Guide
State of PTO Report
Benefits Benchmarking Report
Flexible Work Guide
$

15. Editorial Board Output

16. The Results

17. Slide Title
Slide main text here
58,778,218
Impressions
7,118,997
People
685,854
Clicks
93,111
Leads
40%
Form completion rate
across all assets on FB &
LI, 4X industry average
(10%)
1.6%
CTR for ads on FB
more than 2X industry
benchmark (0.78%)
2 of 8
LinkedIn Content
Marketing Rank
Against 7 of Zenefits;
competitors.
8%
Prospect to QL
conversion rate for
content on LinkedIn
Industry Leading Paid Social Strategy

18. Professionals engage with purpose and with content
157MM members in the US
92% of B2B Marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content
15x content vs job postings in the feed
9 billion content impressions / week
Why LinkedIn

19. Lead Growth While Driving Cost Efficiencies
Account
Restructure
Creative Testing
Account
Expansion
Settings
Optimizations
• Change to an
audience based
account structure
• The hypothesis to
this strategy is
that it would allow
us to increase
scale while
optimizing each
audience to drive
more efficient
CPLs
• Audience-based
account structure
allowed us to test
multiple assets in
a campaign to find
the right audience
/ asset
combination
• Added
remarketing and
LAL audience
overlays
• Expanded into
operations targets
to reach SMBs
who may not have
dedicated HR
professionals
• Shifted
optimization from
clicks to leads
using “Lead
Submission
Optimization”
whilst expanding
customer overlays
and tiered
exclusions.

20. Previous LinkedIn Campaign Structure
Previous Account
Structure
eBook -
Performance
Management
eBook - Workplace
Wellness
eBook - Benefits
Guide eBook - HR Trends

21. Current LinkedIn Campaign Structure
Current Account
Structure
Prospecting
Function +
Seniority HR
Function +
Seniority Ops 1-
50
Function +
Seniority Ops 51-
500
Retargeting
Site Visitors
Multiple Content
Downloads

22. Audience Overlays
We adjusted the different detail
targeting options in order to
find an audience that is within
Zenefits target demographic.
To further refine the target
audience relevancy, we added
Lookalike audiences and
excluded Zenefits customers
and employees, and our
remarketing campaigns.
Increased spend 300% we
were able to drop CPL 58% to
$54.

23. Account Expansion - Remarketing
In order to drive efficient
conversions at the QL stage, we
launched a remarketing
campaign.
Specific lead forms allowed us
to track remarketing
conversions down-funnel, tied to
unique SFDC campaigns.
Lowered cost-per-qualified-lead
45%, below costs for SEM.

24. Ad Testing
In 2018, over 8 months, we
tested 221 ads across creative,
headlines, descriptions, and
CTA.
Finding the right audience and
creative combinations allowed us
to scale scale significantly while
gaining efficiency.
Monthly creative reviews
ensured team knew what was
working and what didn’t.

25. LinkedIn Performance Summary
Scaling spend while gaining efficiency
By Q418, we attained
● 54% increase in budget
● 147% increase in leads QoQ
● 38% decrease in CPL
35.97% form completion rate across
our top ads.
Higher engagement and CTRs than
our competitors, per LI content rank.

26. Professionals engage with purpose and with content
93% of social media advertisers use Facebook Ads
Only 38% of B2B marketers think Facebook Marketing is effective
58% of B2B marketers pointed Facebook as the social media
platform with the highest ROI
B2B digital ad spend is up 20% YoY on the platform
Why Facebook

27. Scaling Lead Performance To New Heights
Account
Structure
Monthly Content
Campaigns
Expanded
Audience
Constant
Creative Testing
• Changed to a
content-based
account structure.
• The hypothesis
was to target the
same audience
with multiple lead
gen assets to
drive engagement
and leads.
• 23 new pieces of
premium content
produced.
• Clear
performance
SLAs established
with content and
design teams for
launches.
• Tested Lookalikes
based on first
party seed
(customer) data.
• Created primary
and secondary
audiences for
testing.
• Over 6million
people in our
primary audience.
• Creative freedom
to test lifestyle and
functional
creative.
• A/B testing log
with demand
emails sent to c-
level.
• Monthly creative
review meetings.

28. Current Facebook Campaign Structure
Current Account
Structure
Primary LAL
11-50 Healthcare
LAL
11-50 Tech LAL
Acquisition
Asset 2
Secondary LAL
Secondary LAL
Beta
Acquisition
Asset 1
50+ All Industries
LAL
Retargeting
Level 4 - Blog
Level 3 -
Homepage
Level 2 – Leads
and QLs

29. Ad Testing
Over 325 ads tested in 2018.
This included testing formats,
images, headlines, ad text, and
form text - around one new ad for
every day or two of the year.
Set benchmarks for active and
latent demand campaigns.
Lowered CPL 70% whilst
lowering cost-per-QL $77%.
Captured buyer intent pre formfill
with Bomora

30. Lead Flow
Ad to Form Enrichment Leads and Reports Nurtures

31. Facebook Performance Summary
In 3 quarters, we were able to:
● Increase spend 6x
● Lower CPL 70%
● Lower cost-per-QL 77%
45% form completion rate across our
top ads. 4.5X industry benchmarks.
Top 3 pieces of content accounted for
50% spend and leads. The top asset
was downloaded over 50,000 times.

32. Takeaways

33. Key Learnings From Zenefits
Things you can implement today:
● Start by understanding your customer
● Build a foundation (infra, taxonomy, process) and ensure you’re aligned x-
functionally (esp. Sales)
● Set clear objectives and expectation for demand type: Active vs. Latent
● Build a content calendar based on customer-driven themes, events and
product roadmap
● Think beyond the click and conversion - tactics to drive cost efficient
strategies down-funnel (nurtures, retargeting, etc.)
● Test everything and create a data-driven team culture

34. Thank you.
in/yuridaniels
@yurideezy
ydaniels@zenefits.com