The brief
A Japanese hospital-bed manufacturer with a solid domestic track record wanted into Europe. The product was strong. The problem: European procurement managers research vendors online before they'll take a meeting, and this company had nothing to find. No LinkedIn page. No executive profiles.
The CEO had spoken at two MedTech conferences in Germany without following up afterwards with anything. No posts, no engagement, silence. The sales team had been emailing hospital procurement offices for months. Open rates were close to zero.
Our strategy
We started with the CEO. He didn't see himself as a content creator, and said so more than once. We reframed it. You already give presentations at conferences. LinkedIn is where those presentations keep working after you leave the room. That landed.
His first posts covered what procurement teams actually worry about. EU bed safety standards. Infection-control requirements for hospital furniture. Total cost of ownership over a ten-year horizon. He wasn't selling beds. He was showing buyers he understood their world. An early post comparing safety certification timelines across four European countries got picked up by a German hospital-supply trade account. That gave him the confidence to keep going.
The company page went live the same week. Content was built for specific readers: procurement managers, equipment distributors, healthcare-facility architects. We cut anything that looked like generic company news. Every post answered a question a buyer might actually type into a search bar.
LinkedIn Ads filled the gap between visibility and pipeline. Sponsored content targeted procurement decision-makers at hospitals with 200+ beds in Germany, France and the UK. The offer was a product-spec comparison sheet. Low commitment, but genuinely useful for anyone already in evaluation mode.
One adjustment mid-campaign. UK ads were underperforming, click-through about half of Germany and France. We reworked the creative to lead with NHS-compatible certifications, and the numbers climbed over the following two weeks. Not dramatically. The UK stayed the weakest of the three, but cost per lead settled at a level that worked.
The result
Nine product demonstrations booked in the first quarter. That was the number the client brought up on every call. Behind it: 1,800 followers on the CEO's profile, a 2.9% engagement rate, 650 company-page followers. The ads produced 74 qualified leads at $52 each across three markets. Germany carried most of the volume. France engaged well but converted more slowly. The UK was acceptable, not great.