In the past, Lundbeck had been using old school methods to market and sell their products. In order to generate new business or upsell to their existing customers, they would rely mostly on exhibitions or trade shows. However, the pandemic changed all of that. In the age of social distancing, exhibitions were no longer a viable way for them to market their products.

They realized that they would need to transform digitally if they were to continue being profitable. Of course, the easiest and the simplest way to do this would be to run digital ads. However, this was easier said than done.

Every ad network has extremely stringent regulations in place for pharmaceutical companies. This makes it immensely challenging for pharma companies to run Google Search ads or Facebook/LinkedIn display ads.

Lundbeck realized that they would need to leverage the power of content marketing and SEO in order to achieve their marketing goals. They also wanted to speed up their sales cycles which were typically very long (up to 2 years) and break the revenue ceiling they had hit in southeast Asia.

That’s when they reached out to us. Lundbeck needed an expert partner with a rich experiencein solving similar challenges. Our legacy of working with businesses of various sizes and industries, helping them realize their digital transformation goals and fulfilling them.

After careful consideration of Lundbeck’s products, value proposition, target audience, and the industry and competitive landscape, we came up with a holistic marketing strategy for them. Since exhibitions and advertising were out of the question, we would need to rely heavily on content marketing and SEO to enable Lundbeck’s digital transformation.

In addition, we would use marketing automation to design the UX and help them generate more leads from content marketing. And finally, we would enable their salespeople to break their revenue ceiling and shorten their sales cycles. So, here’s what we helped them with:

1. Content Co-Creation & SEO

Our objective was to create content that ranks well on Google and educates Lundbeck’s audience personas about different types of mental illnesses, new research on these topics, and new kinds of drugs available for treating these conditions.

So, Lundbeck and we collectively came up with the idea of building a content-based site called Progress in Mind to educate their ideal buyer personas.

It was meant to keep doctors in the know of things related to mental health as well as to inform new doctors about Lundbeck’s offerings. Mental health practitioners familiar with Lundbeck’s brand could also refer other doctors they knew to the site to learn more about a particular disease or topic.

Some of the content on the site was produced by Lundbeck’s in-house team, while we co-produced some of it with them. For example, we knew from our experience that people don’t like to read long whitepapers, so we picked snippets of their research papers to present the content in the best light. Here’s an example of an article we co-produced:

2. UX Design

We also designed the UX for Lundbeck’s new content-based site. For example, if one of their ideal audience personas clicks the Sign up tab, they would be directed to a form. In it, they would need to enter a few details such as their name, email address, and profession before they can sign up for their newsletter.

Next, we built an intricate email journey for their ideal buyer personas in Salesforce Pardot, the marketing automation tool they were using. So, once someone signs up for their newsletter, we would indoctrinate them with our email journeys as shown below.

So, once a person signs up, they would be receiving a generic email thanking them for their interest, split intentionally with information on various topics, to gauge their specific interest. Here’s one such example:

Source: Ahrefs

Then as they start to engage with certain types of content, we would mark their interest and send them a series of emails containing very specific information based on their interests.

For example, if they are interested in learning about depression, we would send them an email with specific information about it, then increase the depression email count by 1, and add them to the depression email list.

Then, depending on their interest, we would be sending them more content. The types of content would not be restricted only to articles, but others as well. For example, based on the earlier indoctrination journey, we would inform prospects about webinars they might want to attend, as shown below:

3. Sales Enablement

Finally, we also helped Lundbeck with sales enablement. As prospects start to engage more through the email journeys we set up in Pardot, salespeople at Lundbeck would be notified using the lead scores in Pardot. They could then re-engage with these prospects to drive more sales and reduce the sales cycle.

For example, if a doctor has been historically buying drugs from Lundbeck to treat depression, but starts showing an interest in Parkinson’s disease, salespeople can re-engage them and start a conversation to nurture their interest. This went a long way in breaking the revenue ceiling they had previously hit in southeast Asia.