Case study

Pharma4ever · Engineering consultancy for pharma and medical devices, Denmark

148 interested pharma professionals from LinkedIn ads and outreach in 11 months.

Pharma4ever supplies experienced engineering consultants to pharma and medical device manufacturers. We ran its LinkedIn ads to win customers and recruit engineers, then added outreach from the CEO's profile, where half of everyone we invited connected.

11 months
LinkedIn ads and outreach
Denmark and southern Sweden

Services provided

LinkedIn outreach
LinkedIn Ads
Strategy and targeting
Ad copy and graphics
Retargeting
Message copywriting
Monthly reporting

Who we targeted

1Audience

Project leaders at pharma manufacturers
Quality and validation leaders
Purchasing and portfolio managers
Experienced pharma engineers

Two tracks ran side by side: one to win customers and one to recruit experienced consultants.

2Industry

Pharmaceutical manufacturing
Medical devices
Life science engineering

3Company size

500+ employees

4Job titles

Project director
Senior project manager
Project manager
QA manager
Validation specialist
Process engineer
Automation engineer

Construction project managers were left out.

5Countries

DKDenmark
SESweden

Mainly Zealand. Southern Sweden for recruitment only.

The numbers

Half of everyone we invited connected, and 148 showed interest.

Results from the LinkedIn campaign data and lead tracking.

148

Interested contacts

92 potential customers and 56 engineers open to joining.

373

Replies

From pharma project leaders, quality leaders and engineers.

49%

Acceptance rate

Of the people who received a connection request accepted it.

775

New connections

Pharma professionals added to the CEO's network in four months.

Retargeting

8.37%click-through rate on ads to people who already knew Pharma4ever

We built an audience of people who had already engaged with Pharma4ever and showed them follow-up ads. In the same three months, they clicked more than five times as often as the cold audience seeing image ads.

Cold audience, image ads · 140 clicks1.49%

Retargeting ads · 537 clicks8.37%

Click-through rate, months 7 to 9 combined.

ChallengeReach more project leaders, and the engineers to serve them

Pharma4ever had a loyal base of repeat customers. To grow, it needed to reach more project leaders at large pharma manufacturers.

At the same time it had to attract experienced pharma engineers, because every new project needs the right consultant.

The goal: more conversations with pharma project leaders, and more experienced engineers ready to join.

SolutionAds that build trust, then a personal approach

We started with image and video ads to project leaders and decision makers at pharma companies with 500+ employees, and a separate set of recruitment campaigns for experienced engineers.

Testing showed that images of Pharma4ever's own people worked best. An image of the team with the line "A partner, not just a provider" beat a laboratory image by 271%. We then showed follow-up ads to everyone who had engaged.

From month 8 we added outreach from the CEO's profile in Danish, with separate lists for potential customers and for engineers.

Impact148 interested pharma professionals

In four months of outreach, 775 pharma professionals connected and 373 replies came in.

148 people showed interest: 92 potential customers and 56 engineers open to joining.

The first ad report showed a 1.68% click-through rate, about four times the LinkedIn average, and retargeting later reached 8.37%.

How we helped

What we did, and when

From two workshops to 148 interested contacts.

Before launch
Strategy and targeting
Two strategy workshops, one for customers and one for recruitment, plus a new company page cover and tracking across the website.
Month 1
Launch
Image and video ads went live to project leaders at pharma companies with 500+ employees. The first report showed a 1.68% click-through rate, about four times the LinkedIn average.
Months 2 to 7
Testing and optimisation
Recruitment campaigns for engineers, image tests where people beat laboratory shots by 271%, and retargeting ads that reached an 8.37% click-through rate.
Months 8 to 11
Results
Outreach from the CEO's profile: 1,576 requests, 775 new connections, 373 replies and 148 interested contacts.

Month by month

Replies kept coming as the network grew.

New connections and replies from the CEO's profile, during the outreach months.

New connections and replies

Outreach from the CEO's profile, by month.

New connectionsReplies

267
Month 827%
355179
Month 950%
23993
Month 1039%
15594
Month 1161%

How we count. Month 1 is the first month ads were live. Requests, new connections and replies are monthly totals from the outreach report for the CEO's profile, months 8 to 11. Acceptance rate is new connections divided by connection requests. In the chart, the rate is replies as a share of new connections. Interested contacts are unique people marked interested or meeting in the lead tracking, leaving out anyone noted as not relevant, a competitor or not interested. Retargeting and cold image ad click-through rates are clicks divided by impressions from the LinkedIn campaign data for months 7 to 9 combined (537 of 6,418 and 140 of 9,391). The 1.68% rate, the LinkedIn average and the 271% image result are as quoted in the reports.

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