Awareness and qualified leads in a regulated market: a global pharma standards body’s journey

The challenge

• A technical, compliance-heavy subject with zero margin for error in communication.
• Audiences spread across search, professional networks, and niche pharma platforms.
• Multiple approval layers—including legal and compliance—that can slow campaigns in high-trust industries.

The goal was not just reach, but relevant traction that could be measured and optimized in real time.

Strategy first

We designed a funnel-aligned program:

• Search to capture high-intent demand.
• Display to scale awareness and retarget professionals who engaged.
• LinkedIn to connect with decision-makers directly through in-platform lead generation.

But channels were only one part of the solution. To make this work, content, creative, and data clarity had to carry equal weight.

Content & Creatives: Precision Under Review

Every asset needed to balance scientific accuracy with clarity.

• Campaign messaging was crafted to simplify complex compliance themes without losing rigor.
• Visuals and copy were reviewed across multiple layers—technical, legal, and compliance—ensuring accuracy at every step.
• Despite stringent approvals, campaigns shipped on schedule, maintaining both precision and impact.

This ability to move quickly without compromising accuracy became a defining strength of the program.

Attribution & Execution: Building for Clarity

Before launch, we set up full-funnel attribution across search, display, and LinkedIn. This gave us the visibility to act fast once campaigns went live.

As the data came in, we optimized in cycles:

• Search → Expanded coverage of high-intent queries but paused underperforming ad groups early to prevent wasted spend.
• Display → Excluded irrelevant placements, increased bids on high-value industry sites, and split campaigns to separate retargeting from broad delivery for cleaner performance.
• LinkedIn → Expanded audiences, rotated creatives to test messaging, and quickly scaled lead gen forms when they showed strong traction.

This rhythm of cutting what underperformed and scaling what worked kept the program sharp.

The Outcomes

Over the campaign period, the program delivered:

• 14M+ impressions and 137K+ clicks.
• 1,274 form fills, with 622 validated qualified leads.
• LinkedIn emerged as the strongest driver—589 qualified leads at $25.97 CPL.
• Display awareness campaigns generated 335 leads, 29 of which were validated at $123 CPL.
• Retargeting achieved a 7.9% CTR, showing strong resonance with warmed audiences.
• Engagement rates stayed consistently high: 88–96% across channels.

Why It Worked

• Nuanced content and creatives → accuracy survived multiple compliance reviews without slowing delivery.
• Attribution from the start → gave clear visibility into which channels and assets were truly driving outcomes.
• Optimization discipline → pausing, reallocating, and refining weekly kept budgets aligned with impact.

The Bigger Lesson

For complex, compliance-focused topics, performance comes from building a system where:

• Strategy aligns channels to the funnel.
• Content balances precision with clarity.
• Attribution enables fast, data-driven decisions.
• Execution scales what works and cuts what doesn’t.

That combination turned a technical, high-trust campaign into measurable traction—with accuracy and agility intact.