Zengrowth GmbH

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of growth at an Amsterdam-based company that designs and sells software for salon owners to help improve their business.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zengrowth GmbH?

We wanted to grow faster in Germany, but we lack a bit of understanding of that market. Given that, we decided to engage Zengrowth. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Zengrowth helps us with three things, namely Google Ads, social media, and SEO. For social media, they work on our Facebook and Instagram efforts. 

What is the team composition?

We work with Ysabel (Project Manager). Another person works on our Facebook and Google Ads. We also collaborate with Anne (Freelance SEO Consultant). They’re the main team members working with us, although we’ve also worked with a couple of other people from their team. 

How did you come to work with Zengrowth GmbH?

We found Zengrowth on Clutch. We also checked a couple of other agencies. Zengrowth had a good proposal, although they were a bit more expensive than others. We decided to take a risk and go with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around €45,000 (approximately $51,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in April 2021, and the engagement is ongoing. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Our main success metric is the number of signups and leads we generate. We check how many people sign up for our 14-day trial. Meanwhile, Zengrowth has been highly transparent in their work.

How did Zengrowth GmbH perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication is good. We have weekly check-ins, and they prove to be transparent about everything. They give us their notes afterward, so I see results every week. In terms of tools, we’ve used Basecamp. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Zengrowth finds solutions with us. I’ve worked with freelancers in other locations, and their communication is simply not as open as the Zengrowth’s. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re quite expensive if compared to other agencies. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Assign a person to assist the Zengrowth team and provide them with the things they need. In our engagement, our team has also done work from a design and content perspective. That has helped us set things up faster with Zengrowth. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Head of Marketing at XOM Materials, the go-to online platform for trading materials such as steel, metals, and plastics. It provides intelligent, ready-made procurement and sales solutions for buyers and sellers aiming to future-proof their businesses. XOM enables customers to digitize easily without having to invest in developing their own technology. At XOM, the focus of our marketing activities are lead generation and content creation.

For what projects/services did your company hire Zengrowth GmbH?

Before we hired Zengrowth, we had recently switched to Salesforce Pardot as our CRM tool. WE have no CRM expertise in the team and we opened a Pandora Box of possibilities and potentials and didn't really know where to start. On the top of that, the Pardot itself is technically very complex, we were a bit overwhelmed. We had trained ourselves on marketing automation but didn't know how to adapt the concepts to our company. That's where Zengrowth came into play.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to build a unified marketing and sales funnel from lead generation through paid campaigns, to lead nurturing via Pardot and then converting and reporting on the Salesforce Sales cloud.

How did you select Zengrowth GmbH?

Zengrowth reached out to us at the right time, we had a pain point and needed help. On paper, they looked like they could be the partners we needed. We had a 1st interview of our now project manager and a content marketing manager and were really impressed by the depth of their knowledge and the level of proficiency. You could see it was not only blabla.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

We define the marketing and sales funnel, defining conversion targets and important KPIs as CPL etc. We ran some customer interviews and created some personas, based on which we created a content-funnel-matrix (which content to which target group at which point of their decision process?), we ran some campaigns (mostly LinkedIn), we created some lead nurturing flows on Pardot, and are currently working on the Reporting.

What was the team composition?

One project manager who is also an absolute performance marketing expert, a content marketing manager, a Pardot marketeer and an online marketing manager.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We have built a great lead gen machine, which is now bearing fruits. We are running successful campaigns generating real leads.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

At the beginning, we had problems identifying which Zengrowth contact person for which topic, so we asked they skimmed the team to the minimum. Now the communication with us and among themselves is working better. We also told them that knowledge transfer is important to us, we don't want just an agency to do the job, we want to learn how to do it, and this is also happening.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They work results-oriented, we defined the goals of the project according to our OKRs, which they always hit precisely. All project partners are real experts, there is no bull***. And we have leads coming in.

Are there any areas for improvement?

As I mentioned, the coordination with all parties (Zengrowth members as well as our team) was a bit complicated at the beginning because we were too many involved. We worked on a clear task and role distribution and it now works better.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP for operations and business intelligence at a business travel & expense management tool.

What challenge were you trying to address with Zengrowth GmbH?

We needed help with marketing and lead generation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We started the engagement with a pilot project, letting them help with our outbound channel and setting up links we can contact through mail. At the end of last year, we sent the service over to LinkedIn campaigns.

Their team set up the LinkedIn campaigns with building persona and RTP. We have a freelance head of marketing and lead gen who helps us with the complete marketing and lead gen and department. This includes assisting with content writing, measuring campaigns, Google Ads, SEO, and our newsletter.

What is the team composition?

There are five people on the team. There’s a LinkedIn specialist that also works with technical implementation tasks like connecting tools to our CRM and automating other systems. We have a content writer, an SEO specialist, a Google Ads person, and someone who creates the lists for outbound mailing.

How did you come to work with Zengrowth GmbH?

Marco (Founder & CEO) contacted me through LinkedIn. After talking to him, we saw that he had the right experience.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with their team started in June 2019.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We’re using the time we’re experiencing now to lay the groundwork. One of the biggest successes involved our ad spend and SQLs. They reduced the market expense by 10% and with the same output.  

How did Zengrowth GmbH perform from a project management standpoint?

The head of marketing reports directly to me. We use Slack for direct communication with different channels. We also use Notion.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We receive immediate access to exceptionally qualified people. They have a good network of people that they can directly access in all areas. The people they access already worked in big-name companies and have the right experience. They were a nice add-on for our business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. We enjoy the cooperation with Zengrowth GmbH.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Marketing and Sales Growth Director at a communications platform based in Germany

For what projects/services did your company hire Zengrowth GmbH?

Performance marketing via Linkedin and Facebook ads. Social Media Marketing Business intelligence Project

What were your goals for this project?

Lead generation Engagement on social media Create a comprehensive tracking system

How did you select Zengrowth GmbH?

We already engaged them in other projects

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

• Lead generation
• Creating campaign and promotion plans for different customer segments and verticals
• Banner briefs and copy suggestions
• Upload and campaign management
• Retargeting campaigns
• Monthly reports Engagement on social media
• Creating and posting content on social media Create a comprehensive tracking system
• Google Analytics audit
• GA Connector implementation
• Lead cycle model, tracking system
• Workshops regarding predictive analytics reports

What was the team composition?

Lead generation:

• Sophie (Project manager + Performance marketeer)
• Yvana (Growth Marketer) Social media
• Polina (Social Media marketeer)

Business intelligence project:

• Sophie (Project manager)
• Avner (Bi- Engineer)
• Quentin (Google Analytics Expert)

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

April -Sept 2020 Lead generation: 1.640 Bi Project: Created an MVP tracking system to understand the lead cycle.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We set up weekly calls and the rest of the communication is handled via email. The Zengrowth team is very flexible and is also able to communicate and deal with new tasks rapidly.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team has great ideas on how to improve lead gen and marketing processes plus they execute tasks very well. In addition, they follow through all the tasks and activities and make sure we don't lose sight of has happened and what is planned.

Are there any areas for improvement?

There's always room for improvement, so we have organized a way to avoid constant back and forth communication for smaller and yet time consuming tasks.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm cofounder of Retorio, a company, which analyzes people's personality through short videos to optimize job-candidate matching.

For what projects/services did your company hire Zengrowth GmbH?

We needed to find out, which keywords work best for our target personas depending on their region and industry.

What were your goals for this project?

We were hoping to get insights about KPI's such as: which keywords work? if we increase our budget, do we get more leads?

How did you select this vendor?

We heard of Zengrowth through personal contacts.

Describe the project in detail.

First, we defined the roadmap, budget, and targets. Then Zengrowth comes up with a proposal and clear guidelines. Each week, we get regular updates about the progress of the activities. In between, we also do regular checks if everything is on track.

What was the team composition?

There is a project manager and several team members depending on your needs.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We could see that we got siginficantly more leads due to the measures installed. Due to the strong technical support, everything was smooth and easy.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The team is very proactive and has always time to chat.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I like the clear structure and fast pacing working style.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Not yet.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Avrios is a VC backed B2B software company. Our plattform revolutionizes the way companies manage their fleets. As a marketing director I am responsible for the EMEA pipeline.

For what projects/services did your company hire Zengrowth GmbH?

We hired Zengrowth for SEO consulting for our blog and website

What were your goals for this project?

Organic traffic has been one of our main acquisition channels. Our aim was to dominate SEO in the industry. Thus we needed support in the SEO content strategy/content structure and technical support for our website and blog.

How did you select this vendor?

Initially, I collected references for SEO consultants from several friends from other high growth companies. Thereby, I could already sort out 90% of the agencies and focus only on those whith the reputation to meet the demands for truly nailing SEO. I looked for a partner that meets the requirements of a high growth tech company. Among others these are 1) experience in truly scaling SEO 2) a team that focuses on output and the DNA to constantly deliver 3) top notch technical SEO know-how. We ran a short test-project and Zengrowth and I choose them among all the references. What also truly convinced me is the selection of people. Most have experience from high growth product companies, a difference you can see in the work they do.

Describe the project in detail.

It consisted of several steps: 1) mapping all keywords and content to plan the content strategy for the next year 2) developping a new blog that meets the requirements to scale our SEO. This means it meets all technical requirements for high-end SEO optimization and has a great UX for our content writers. 3) technical optimization of our website from a SEO point of view

What was the team composition?

We worked with three represenatives from Zengrowth: - Kyle the SEO consultant - Romario a product designer Our main contact was Kyle. It's a big advantage of Zengrowth that you don't waste any time with account managers but you work directly with the team on the ground. This way you get what you discuss and the briefings are very efficient.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Since working with Kyle, we improved our SEO rank for all transactional bottom of the funnel keywords remarkebly. Whereas we used to be among the top10, we are now top 1 for almost all of them. The blog we deveopped under the technical supervision of Kyle and the design by Romario was one of the best web development project I experienced so far. It has a beautiful design, great UX, and is technically very sound. It ranks top in all technical SEO test.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

I was very happy with the coordination. The team is quick in responding. One important aspect of this efficency was that our SEO consultant served also as account manager. This serves a lot of time and avoids misunderstandings.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

In strong contrast to most agencies, Zengrowth has a team with the DNA with focus on delivering constantly output in high quality. Most team members have worked at succesfull product companies. Thus they also know the impact of their recommendations.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Zengrowth is too bureaucratic when it comes to the contract signing/negotiations. They should simplify their paper work and focus on what really makes sense.