‘700% outperformance’: Employment Hero and Salesforce bring B2C playbook to B2B, watch lead costs tumble, growth power – but diverge on in-housing vs agencies amid AI shift

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Employment Hero and Salesforce are at opposite ends of the B2B spectrum. One’s a rapidly scaling $2bn platform, the other a $260bn behemoth. But both have adopted a consumer marketing playbook, applied it to B2B and are watching growth power. Employment Hero’s Tasman Page says the approach is notching 700 per cent gains.

Lifting B2C’s distinctive assets, emotional, humorous playbook and deploying brand characters – while swapping out whitepapers and rational content for 30 second video ads – are netting leads and acquiring customers at much lower cost, per Page, because the brand investment is fuelling cheaper leads and customer acquisition, up to 70 per cent cheaper.

That’s linked to a generational shift within B2B buying groups – of which 71 per cent are now Gen Z and millennials, per LinkedIn ANZ Head of Enterprise, Andrea Rule. Video natives, busy and human, they want something that both strikes an emotional chord, quickly tells them something interesting without boring them, and gives them a reason to go deeper if they are in market, or lands a memory if they are not yet buying. Video consumption is soaring across the platform locally, per Rule, who unpacks the types of content that is getting best traction.

Cat Bowe, Salesforce’s Senior Director, Marketing, has likewise seen big improvements in results using video over static ad formats. But she’s also leaning heavily on LinkedIn to own agentic AI amid an arms race. It’s working.

AI is enabling Employment Hero’s 30 person in-house agency team to move even faster – speed to market is critical per Page. Which is why he says external agencies just can’t deliver the turnaround times he needs without hoovering up all of Employment Hero’s budget.

Salesforce’s Bowe says a hybrid approach is currently working for her team – the agency can work on what is immediately in front of them, giving the in-house team time to think a little further out.

But both are fully aligned that there is a “fundamental technology shift going on”, per Bowe, and a fundamental shift in B2B marketing approaches that are massively moving the needle.

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