B2B audiences are hard to reach, convince and convert. They work hard, are stretched and busy, and receive large quantities of communication that are of little relevance to them.

Working in this context, SD Worx launched a campaign aimed at HR professionals with ambitious goals in terms of :

• brand basics,
• the company's perception in relation to customer experience,
• lead generation.

With one strong insight and one umbrella idea, driven by relevant content and a combination of a classic outbound campaign with an innovative digital inbound approach, SD Worx managed to blaze a brand building and lead generation trail.

1. CONTEXT, CHALLENGES & OBJECTIVES

Context

As a leading Belgian and European payroll and HR services provider, SD Worx offers a wide range of solutions including payroll, HR services, legal support, training, automation, consulting and outsourcing. Historically, SD Worx is the market leader within the social secretariat business. It is also a leader when it comes to innovation of services and solutions.

In recent years however, the difference with the competition had started to erode. Increased automation and digitalisation made payroll management more of a commodity, resulting in less differentiation and increased (price) competition.

This trend of more competition translated to a disconcerting trend with respect to brand parameters. Growth and upselling were under threat from lower brand awareness & lower brand success, especially amongst prospects.

Target group

With this campaign, SD Worx was targeting both prospects and customers at SMEs and large enterprises (LEs). It promoted 2 solutions in particular:

• Salary Calculations & Administration
• Flex Income Plan (FIP) solution

Objectives

SD Worx had established 3 objectives:

1. Brand building: revitalise the SD Worx brand by increasing NPS scores, brand success amongst prospects, and brand awareness
2. Customer experience: positively impact the positioning of SD Worx as a customer centric and open organisation
3. Lead generation: create more sales opportunities by generating both more leads and leads of higher quality

2. INSIGHTS AND STRATEGIC IDEA

Consumer insight

For many companies, HR was and still is not a business-critical or strategically important part of the business. It's a highly operational and supportive unit, still mainly making sure that the basics are taken care off. Consequently, a lot of time is spent on solving 'unpredictable' ad-hoc issues and challenges, both big and small.

The understanding that "prevention is better than cure" and realising that this rings true for many daily issues will lead to a light-bulb moment within the HR target group. Hence the campaign slogan: "Had ik dat geweten…" (HIDG) / "Si j'avais su…" (SIJASU). (This translates to "If only I had known" in English)

Strategy

Core idea: a customer centric company needs a customer centric campaign
Everything we did and said in the campaign, kept the main focus on the customer. We did this by being as accurate and relevant as possible in our target group definitions (the who), the message we are conveying (the what), and the way in which this message will be delivered (the how).

The who: accurate target group definition through personas
We created personas for the 2 product solutions SD Worx wanted to bring forward in this campaign: one for salary calculations and administration (Danielle, HR responsible for a SME), and one for the Flex Income Plan (Isabelle, HR manager for a LE). The GOAL was to focus our message as much as possible on their specific needs and questions.

The what: co-creation as a baseline to define the message
We organised co-creating sessions with SD Worx employees and customers, seeking an answer to the question: "What are the most common and supposedly "unpredictable", but perfectly avoidable "If only I had known" situations?

The how: outbound campaign & inbound content platform
The co-creation presented us with an insight bounty, 14 of which ended up being the basis of radio spots, magazine adverts and social media posts.

This outbound campaign led people to our inbound-marketing platform, where our personas Danielle and Isabelle could browse a wide selection of relevant content (articles, self-tests, eBooks, trends reports, videos, testimonials,…). In total more than 100 content pieces designed to offer first aid for, and avoid, recognisable, daily "If only I had known…" situations.

The goal was to first get all Danielles and Isabelles to the platform through a content piece in line with their fields of interests. The content structure and automated flow of the platform were built in such a way that each content piece would redirect the individual visitor to a related, more valuable and more engaging piece of content tailored to their interest. In that way, visitors would be identified as leads. Next, the leads with the right profile would be led to other relevant content to see if they qualified as "sales ready leads".

For that purpose, we had established a scoring model behind the inbound platform. Each interaction had a specific value based on: 1. The content's value for the customer, 2. The visitor's engagement level, and 3. How closely aligned the content was with the product solutions offered by SD Worx.

The more points 'Danielle' and 'Isabelle' amassed during their multiple visits to the site, the more interesting they became as leads to SD Worx. The sales ready leads and the valuable information gathered about them through their click and surf behaviour would be passed on to the sales team. This let the sales people contact them with a targeted pitch, using a relevant sales speech.

By A/B testing content-pieces and optimising them, we also increased the messaging relevance and effectiveness of our platform and improved our conversion rate.

3. RESULTS

Campaign results

A post test-survey of the radio campaign showed results that 1. were significantly above the benchmark (across all criteria), and 2. effortlessly outperformed the competition (who were also running a campaign at the same time). The real-life examples that we presented in our communication were experienced as being recognisable.

Brand building results

The results achieved were something we could not have hoped for: for every important brand parameter (NPS, Brand Awareness &: Brand Success), we not only reached our objectives, but transcended them.

Customer experience results

Amongst prospects, all 4 brand KPIs relating to the customer experience showed a positive trend. When it came to customers, only 1 KPI (of the 4), "concerned partner", saw a slight fall.

Lead generation results

Using an innovative digital Inbound approach, we wanted to use the campaign to create more sales opportunities by generating more leads and more leads of better quality. The results show that, throughout the whole lead generation funnel (visitor > online lead > sales ready lead > sales opportunity), conversion rates were above benchmark. Allowing us to reach our objective of doubling 'sales ready leads' compared to 2015.