CLIENT
NEEDS
- Clear, defensible category positioning
- Shared story for sales and marketing
- Trustworthy attribution and reporting
- Consistent content without internal lift
- Brand continuity through M&A
CLIENT
INDUSTRY
- Payroll and HCM technology
- Mid-sized employer market
- Compliance-driven buyer concerns
- Crowded, feature-and-price category
CLIENT
TYPE
- Founded 2004, Massachusetts-based
- Service-led HCM provider
- Lean retainer, full-stack scope
- Acquired by OneDigital
Client Snapshot
MP: Wired for HR is a Massachusetts-based payroll and HCM firm founded in 2004. Over two decades, MP built something most competitors can’t offer: Fortune 500-grade HR technology paired with a service team that answers the phone.
The problem was that buyers couldn’t see it. On a feature-and-price sheet, MP looked like every other payroll provider, which hid its real advantage at the exact moment a prospect was deciding.
Red Branch Media was brought in to fix the story first, then build every system that story needed to travel: the website, the sales process, marketing automation, and a steady content engine. Midway through the partnership, OneDigital acquired MP, and the mandate expanded to keeping the brand steady through the transition.
Initial Challenge
The payroll and HCM category is crowded and the language is generic. Mid-sized companies are stuck between big platforms that weren’t built for them and local providers that can’t scale with them, yet MP’s messaging didn’t name that gap. Sales reps improvised without a shared story. The aging WordPress site had attribution gaps, and Pardot email traffic was being misreported as “direct” in Google Analytics, so marketing couldn’t prove what it produced. Content was sporadic and produced internally.
The mandate: build MP a category instead of a tagline, then build the sales, web, automation, and content systems to carry it, and keep all of it running through an acquisition.
Strategic Objectives
- Define a category MP owns as the third option between enterprise platforms and local providers
- Arm sales with one story through a narrative deck, talk track, and objection handling guide
- Fix attribution at the source so email and content performance tie back to the right channel
- Run a compounding content engine across blog, social, email, and webinars on buyer compliance topics
- Hold the brand steady through a leadership change, paid-media pause, and OneDigital acquisition
What Red Branch Media Delivered
RBM built the “third option” framing: the HCM partner for mid-sized companies that big platforms weren’t designed to serve and local providers can’t scale to match. The system included the core story arc, a seed sentence for sales and marketing, objection handling, a proof-point discipline, and a voice standard (“empathetic authority”) every writer could follow.
Impact: A single source of truth every deliverable pulled from, approved at the CEO level.
RBM turned the narrative into a working sales process: a 16-slide sales deck built on the story arc, a double-sided Sales Talk Track Card, and an Objection Handling Guide. A Narrative Activation content set mapped the same message to every funnel stage, from awareness through decision.
Impact: Three anchor blog posts plus the full sales kit shipped on schedule, aligned across blog, social, and founder LinkedIn.
RBM ran the content migration off legacy WordPress, unblocking the move to Pardot with a WP Engine redirect fix. The team fixed Pardot UTM tagging, updated every published email template to the new standard, cleaned up the sitemap and crawl errors, launched an on-demand webinar library and FAQ page, and stood up a live Looker Studio dashboard for executives.
Impact: Email stopped hiding inside "direct" traffic, and executives got GA4 performance on demand without asking for a report.
RBM ran blog, social, email, and webinar promotion end to end on the compliance topics MP’s buyers worry about, from pay transparency to AI in hiring, and ghostwrote LinkedIn content for MP leaders. When OneDigital acquired MP, RBM wrote the acquisition landing page, rolled out the “MP powered by OneDigital” identity, and delivered an organized handoff.
Impact: Blog views grew from 1,228 to 4,732 in a 28-day window by late June 2026, with zero ad spend running.
Performance Category
Why This Partnership Worked
The story came before the systems. Because RBM fixed positioning first, every deck, email, blog post, and landing page pulled from the same source, so the brand sounded like one company no matter who was writing. Fixing attribution early mattered just as much: once Pardot traffic stopped hiding in “direct,” the content gains could be trusted and the plan could follow the data. That foundation is why a lean retainer of roughly 72 to 77 hours a month could run a full-stack marketing engine.
MP went from a payroll provider buyers couldn’t tell apart to a defined category with a sales system, an instrumented website, and a content engine that kept growing through a leadership change, a paid-media pause, and an acquisition.
we know you’re itching to ask these
Frequently Asked Questions
What results did Red Branch Media drive for MP: Wired for HR?
Red Branch Media grew MP’s blog views from 1,228 to 4,732 in a 28-day window by late June 2026, a 157% increase, with zero ad spend running. MP’s webinar page views rose 199.7% after Red Branch Media launched an on-demand webinar library, and blog promotion emails to more than 33,000 contacts hit a peak open rate of 25.31%. Red Branch Media also held MP’s social audience of more than 22,800 during a paid-media pause.
What marketing services did Red Branch Media provide to MP: Wired for HR?
Red Branch Media ran full-stack marketing for MP: category positioning, a narrative system, sales enablement, website migration and management, Pardot marketing automation, attribution fixes, and a blog, social, email, and webinar content program. Red Branch Media also ghostwrote LinkedIn content for MP leaders and handled acquisition messaging when OneDigital acquired MP.
What is the “third option” positioning Red Branch Media built for MP?
The “third option” is the category Red Branch Media created for MP: the HCM partner for mid-sized companies that enterprise platforms weren’t designed to serve and local providers can’t scale to match. MP pairs Fortune 500-grade HR technology with a service team that answers the phone. The positioning gave MP’s sales and marketing teams one shared story, approved at the CEO level.
How did Red Branch Media fix marketing attribution for MP?
Red Branch Media found that MP’s Pardot email traffic was being misreported as “direct” in Google Analytics. Red Branch Media fixed the Pardot UTM tagging, updated every published email template to the new standard, cleaned up sitemap and crawl errors, and built a live Looker Studio dashboard so MP executives could see GA4 performance on demand.
Is MP: Wired for HR part of OneDigital?
Yes. OneDigital acquired MP: Wired for HR during its partnership with Red Branch Media, and MP now operates as “MP powered by OneDigital.” Red Branch Media wrote the acquisition landing page, rolled out the new identity across MP’s site, and delivered an organized handoff to the OneDigital team.
How many hours a month did Red Branch Media spend on MP’s marketing?
Red Branch Media ran MP’s full-stack marketing program on roughly 72 to 77 tracked hours a month. That retainer covered positioning, sales enablement, website management, marketing automation, and a full blog, social, email, and webinar program, made possible because every asset pulled from the same narrative system.
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