How SnellMedia created paid search & paid social demand
generation campaigns to generate
10,000+ live event registrations
"Derick’s agency is fantastic - we really like his approach to business and his growth mindset. The insights he has given us and results from paid search and social are extremely valuable, and we highly rate his opinion. We can highly recommend SnellMedia to any international B2B marketing team."
The European Wound Management Association (EWMA) is a European not-for-profit umbrella organisation that unites national wound management organisations, individuals and groups interested in wound care. EWMA aims to promote the development of indigenous epidemiology, pathology, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of wounds from all aetiologies.
The EWMA's purpose is to assist in implementing multidisciplinary and cost-effective wound care at the highest level. The organisation aims to achieve its goals by being an educational resource, organising conferences, contributing to international wound management projects, promoting the adoption of current knowledge within wound management technology and offering information on all elements of wound treatment.
The EWMA hosts the largest conference of its kind in Europe and has been running for over 30 years. The conference attracts an average of over 1500 delegates from across 23 European countries and provides an opportunity for healthcare professionals to share best practices and the latest research in wound management.
SnellMedia is a demand generation agency with 25 years of marketing experience. SnellMedia has created hundreds of successful B2B channel mix marketing campaigns for clients primarily in SaaS, healthtech and manufacturing automation.
In early 2020, the pandemic struck and changed how people live, work and communicate. It forced brands to re-evaluate their communication channels and their relationship with audiences.
As the leading organisation in wound care education for the past 30 years, the EWMA had started preparations for that spring’s in-person conference in London when the pandemic first struck. Because of this, the EWMA was forced to choose between cancelling the entire event and losing momentum on all the goodwill they had built up over the years with sponsors and attendees, or moving the conference online. They elected to get help from SnellMedia, using the best marketing channel mix to quickly revive the conference to host a virtual summit with the goal of 3000 registrations (their average yearly in-person conference attendance) within 7 months.
Phase 1:
Determine what matters most to the target audience and where they consume content
Phase 4:
Reallocate budget from underperforming initiatives to create a series of pilot campaigns that can be easily scaled once proven effective
Phase 2:
Assess current marketing initiatives that are underway with the EWMA’s internal marketing team and evaluate performance
Phase 5:
Add new budget and scale up media/content creation to channels that produced repeatable results from test campaigns in phase 4
Phase 3:
Identify current marketing initiatives that are performing well vs underperforming
Phase 6:
Measure and optimise campaign budgets to incorporate the user journey and increas erevenue.
We surveyed 300 of the previous year’s attendees to find out:
With these insights, paired with the knowledge of what the best channel opportunities were at the time, we had a clear way forward.
It became clear that the EWMA’s Facebook and LinkedIn long-form video content stood out from all their other marketing activities and showed significant engagement which we could leverage into a series of tests to other popular channels uncovered by audience insights gathered from phase 1. It was also clear that the EWMA’s email campaign was producing results, however; it was decided they would pause their SEO efforts in exchange to focus on what was creating the lion’s share of demand.
We reallocated budget from underperforming initiatives to create a series of 19 pilot campaigns with a set budget of €500-€1000 per 1 month test:
Text ads served based on specific search queries:
Long-form speaker video placements targeted by:
Banner ad placements on the Google Display Network:
After the first month, we increased media creation and scaled all pilots that generated a minimum of 15 registrations and produced €5+ for every €1 spent. What initially was a small series of experiments for the first month ended up generating over 10,000 conference registrations. From the original test pilots, the following list of 9 campaigns produced repeatable results that were scaled and optimised over the following 7 months leading up to the conference:
Text ads served based on specific search queries:
Long-form speaker video placements targeted by:
Banner ad placements on the Google Display Network:
Over the 7-month collaboration, we were able to generate 10,000+ registrations for the EWMA’s virtual event - more than three times the number for their average in-person event.
