Client Overview

Working with Directive has been one of the best marketing decisions I’ve made. Their ability to provide both the strategy and execution for our paid channels has allowed me to focus on other areas of my role that need more focus and attention. Their partnership has been invaluable.

– Kelly Pugh, Director of Demand GEN @ ZAPPROVED

Zapproved lacked their own in-house expertise in paid media, so they needed a partner who was more than just going to push buttons and send weekly reports. They needed a true consultant partner. So, it was important that Directive provided not only the savvy management of an agency but the sophisticated strategy of a consultant. Zapproved wanted and needed a partner to help teach the marketing best practices and provide guidance on how to grow the right way.

Thankfully, this eager need for a consultant partner opened Zapproved up to a more trusting nature than most agency-client relationships. Directive was far more of a partner than a hired hand when it came to the implementation of strategy and execution.

Zapproved trusted the strategists they worked with, and that trust allowed Directive to make certain broader level account changes that revolutionized their partner’s performance. These changes included an account-wide restructure based on segmentation by industry, as well as the addition of LinkedIn in order to leverage the platform’s advanced demographic targeting features. This would allow Directive to continually optimize the targeting of Zapproved’s campaigns based on different end-buyer persona points.

With no closed-loop conversion tracking, Zapproved had a muddled picture of their customers’ and campaigns’ actual LTV. So Directive began the partnership with an account wide cleanup of conversion tracking as well as restructuring the account to focus on industry segmentations based on end-buyer value.

This way Directive not only had more faith in the data they were analyzing, but also could prioritize which campaign to optimize first based on which audience it was targeting.

Directive leveraged the new industry segmentation to help focus the campaign as a whole. But in addition to this first optimization, we also added LinkedIn to the multi-platform campaign so we could use its more sophisticated demographic layering. This also allowed Directive to use our bread-and-butter: LinkedIn Conversation Ads, to maximize conversion volume for Zapproved.

To ensure that none of the blanket targeting or surface level optimizations of the pre-Directive campaign were clogging up the conversion funnel, Directive also optimized all the copy and messaging for all of Zapproved ads. This included refocusing the initial offering and messaging on the JTBD (jobs to be done) and pain points of their new industry segments. It also included heavy market repetition across both Google and LinkedIn to maintain consistent buyer’s awareness – which generated significant returns

After Directive’s account wide restructure and LinkedIn expansion, Zapproved saw improved performance across the board. Just for starters, Zapproved’s Google Quality Score sky rocket from 2.9 to 7.3 (broken down further by Expected CTR 2.2 to 5.2, ad relevance 8.3 to 9.6, landing page experience 3.2 to 9.2), but that’s truly only the tip of the iceberg. Directive was able to cut Zapproved’s LinkedIn CPL nearly into thirds, resulting in a pipeline twice the size of before their partnership. These results truly go to show that trust can pay huge dividends.