The FDA Group had ambitious growth goals, but lacked the strategy to achieve them.
In 2015, The FDA Group had just had its best year ever. The pharmaceutical medical device and biologic consulting company was growing fast and wanted to hit even bigger targets in 2016, but their current marketing partner offered a simple and unfocused strategy.
After a rigorous qualification process, the FDA Group chose Madison Marketing Group as their new partner. Together, they implemented a data-driven strategy that reinvested marketing dollars in effective tactics that generated better ROI.
Read on for a summary of the results of our partnership, more about the FDA Group's challenges, and how we overcame them together.
Decrease cost-per-lead by 89%
Generate 412% more revenue from its website per quarter
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Achieve 33x ROI on digital marketing and advertising spend from 2016 to 2023
Section I: growing pains
As a whole, things were going quite well for The FDA Group in fall of 2015. The pharmaceutical, medical device, and biologic consulting company had recently been ranked among the 2015 Inc 500. While wrapping up its most successful year in its history, the organization had its sights set on reaching even loftier goals—including $10 million in revenue—in 2016.
To achieve this goal and continue its growth trajectory, The FDA Group needed to address weaknesses in its approach to generating leads and acquiring new projects online. In particular, this meant assessing their current vendor’s capacity to help them reach higher goals.
The company’s digital marketing agency was capable of handling basic needs and executing existing strategies, but VP of Business Development Tim Lamm, along with others on the leadership team, were starting to feel they weren’t getting enough for what they were paying.
"They weren’t able to offer anything we didn’t bring to the table. We were doing okay, but we knew we could do much better.” Tim Lamm, VP of Business Development, The FDA Group
Citing a lack of responsiveness, an underwhelming return on investment and—above all—a lack of strategic thinking, The FDA Group decided to find a new digital marketing partner as it sought to continue its rapid growth in 2016 and beyond.
"The landscape with online marketing changes so fast that what worked a couple years ago might not be the most efficient way to do things today.” Tim Lamm, VP of Business Development, The FDA Group
Company leadership knew its services and industry were a good fit for a content-based approach to marketing, but acknowledged that producing content for the regulatory industry could present challenges.
The FDA Group needed a partner that not only had the know-how and creativity, but could match the level of quality demanded by the industry.
"We’re a quality-driven organization. That’s just the nature of our industry, being highly regulated. Having material that is mistake-free is very important to us.” Tim Lamm, VP of Business Development, The FDA Group
All these things considered, The FDA Group chose to partner with Madison Marketing Group (MMG) starting in November 2015 following a rigorous qualification process.
Content Marketing
MMG's work with The FDA Group included copywriting and design for several top- and middle-of-funnel premium content offers, including whitepapers, guidebooks, and webinars.
Section III: Executing a new strategy
Following initial meetings to understand The FDA Group’s goals and discuss what strategies might be needed to achieve them, MMG conducted a thorough review of website analytics data.
Based on these discussions and the data review, Madison Marketing Group made the following recommendations to The FDA Group, in order of importance:
- Begin a digital content-based marketing campaign to help The FDA Group generate the volume of sales leads needed to meet their 2016 revenue goal.
- Optimize thefdagroup.com to better accommodate campaigns and get the most out of The FDA Group’s investment in it.
- Cut off the company’s ineffective Google Ads campaign.
- Reinvest the money saved from Ads in content creation and a modest LinkedIn advertising campaign to help extend its reach among a targeted audience.
"We certainly weren’t getting that kind of advice before. We were just throwing money in as many different areas as possible instead of putting our money where it was more efficiently spent.” Tim Lamm, VP of Business Development, The FDA Group
Strategic Ad Campaign Management
Following MMG's recommendation, The FDA Group discontinued an expensive but ineffective Google AdWords campaign and reinvested in quality content and a small, narrowly targeted LinkedIn promotion strategy.
By the spring of 2016, Madison Marketing Group and The FDA Group were ready to roll out a new campaign strategy, complete with:
- Fresh blog content focused on attracting qualified prospects
- Downloadable content at each funnel level to convert and nurture leads
- A robust marketing automation engine tying everything together
The two companies agreed upon deliverables for a campaign strategy built on builder and driver campaigns.
- Monthly builder campaigns helped The FDA Group build out quality website content and a promotion strategy that would continue to help it grow for years to come.
- Quarterly driver campaigns, built around a single piece of mid-funnel content such as a whitepaper or webinar, increased The FDA Group’s campaign reach and generated quality leads in the short-term.
Builder Campaigns
Goal: build the foundation of your digital presence
- Typically one year in length
- Flexible—deliverables can change monthly based on needs.
- Possible strategies and deliverables
- Make website updates based on visitor behavior.
- Increase search traffic with foundational blogging.
- Create email newsletters and social media content to engage prospects.
Driver Campaigns
Goal: generate sales leads around a specific persona and specific business goal
- Typically one quarter in length
- Rigid—all deliverables center around one conversion piece.
- Possible strategies and deliverables
- Premium content creation (eGuide, webinar, etc.)
- Supporting blog content creation
- Automated email nurturing campaign set-up
- Digital advertising campaign management
Section IV: Results
Within a few months, The FDA Group’s investment in a more responsive digital marketing partner and more strategic digital marketing plan started paying off.
By early 2016, the firm’s driver campaign strategies were starting to produce cost-efficient, high-quality leads. The content and promotion strategies developed by Madison Marketing Group were bringing more people to the newly-redesigned website—thefdagroup.com—and more importantly, were converting more of them to leads.
While the initial site build and driver campaigns helped The FDA Group hit the ground running in 2016, the content Madison Marketing Group produced as part of the ongoing builder campaign took The FDA Group’s lead generation efforts to the next level in 2017 and beyond. Madison Marketing Group worked with The FDA Group to add high-quality educational pages to thefdagroup.com, building trust with The FDA Group’s potential buyers and resulting in an accelerating influx of traffic and leads.
As time passed, The FDA Group’s buyer personas began to shift, and it became clear that a new website focused on the new types of clients and projects The FDA Group was looking to secure was needed.
Madison Marketing Group designed and developed the website complete with updated messaging, fresh design, and upgraded functionality in Q2 of 2018. After launch, thefdagroup.com continued to produce high-quality leads.
Compared to the three-month period immediately preceding their partnership with Madison Marketing Group, The FDA Group achieved the following gains without significantly increasing marketing costs:
- 195% more leads generated per quarter in 2016
- 818% more leads generated per quarter in 2017
- 1,478% more leads generated per quarter in 2018
- 2,100% more leads generated per quarter in 2019
- 3,226% more leads generated per quarter in 2020
- 2,892% more leads generated per quarter in 2021
- 2,903% more leads generated per quarter in 2022
- 2,430% more leads generated per quarter in 2023
And while lead quantity increased following its partnership with Madison Marketing Group, lead quality improved as well. The FDA Group started seeing an uptick in sales revenue generated via its website in its second full quarter working with Madison Marketing Group.
By the end of 2023, Madison Marketing Group’s strategic approach contributed to a 412% increase in average quarterly web-generated sales revenue.
Not only did Madison Marketing Group assist in sourcing a multi-million dollar deal in 2016, but sales revenue attributed to digital marketing has grown each year The FDA Group has partnered with Madison Marketing Group prior to 2020, when the business saw growth stagnate across all online and offline channels due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This influx of leads and sales produced a marketing ROI of 33x, and afforded The FDA Group the ability to focus its efforts on pursuing the kinds of deals that helped it hit its most recent revenue targets.
"We made a big shift in the type of companies we target and the type of deals we target. The marketing strategy we put together to target larger companies and larger deals has certainly helped us hit and exceed our very aggressive growth goals.” Tim Lamm, VP of Business Development, The FDA Group
Throughout this process, The FDA Group’s leadership team developed a sound working relationship with Madison Marketing Group personnel, leaving the days of dealing with an unresponsive, uncalculated marketing partner in the past.
Chris, I would like to share with you my absolute pleasure in working with your team. They are extremely responsive and their output is amazing. They are very collaborative and definitely think about what they are doing to optimize results. — email from The FDA Group President & CEO Nick Capman to Madison Marketing Group President & CEO Chris Murvine, January 2018
If you’re ready to kick off a serious inbound marketing campaign, we’d love to help.
