Ivoclar

The client 

Ivoclar is a leading dental manufacturing company with over 3,500 employees across 56 global offices, shipping its products to over 130 countries.

In 2023, Ivoclar partnered with Hallam to support and launch a series of global campaigns targeting dentists, dental technicians and dental hygienists. These coordinated efforts aimed to bring the latest products to dental professionals with the purpose of ensuring that people have the best possible oral health.

Our partnership allows for close collaboration with Ivoclar’s global digital marketing team. Together, we ensure clear campaign briefs, well-defined roadmaps, and effective execution – all tailored to achieve each campaign’s specific objectives and ultimately solidify Ivoclar’s leadership in the dental market.

The challenge 

Ivoclar came to Hallam looking to achieve extremely challenging targets for numerous campaigns. 

Our focus was threefold: streamlining their media planning, understanding the nuances of each target market, and ensuring campaigns adhered to best practices. For example, if campaigns didn’t have a clear user journey then we brought in our in-house UX experts. Similarly, if campaigns didn’t offer strong enough value for the user, then we pushed back on product experts to address and change, in order to preserve budget and avoid wastage.

The global campaign needed to target dentists across EMEA, NOAM and APAC, aiming to meet lead generation goals for over 20 territories. It aimed to introduce dentists to Ivoclar’s direct restorative workflow by showcasing the benefits of their integrated product portfolio through Trial Pack requests. Following these requests, Ivoclar sales teams converted trial users into paying customers.

The complexities involved not only diverse lead targets but also varying sales team capacities, lead times, and regional business practices. We would need to continuously adapt budget allocation across campaign arms to navigate these ever-evolving factors.

What we did 

When we initially took Ivoclar on board, we believed the optimal dental audience was B2B and therefore suited to the likes of advertising platforms such as LinkedIn. We tested both LinkedIn and Meta and within days of the campaign launch, we discovered dentists exhibited far more B2C-like behaviour on social media. Consequently, Meta delivered an unprecedented volume of leads for Ivoclar.

We refined our audience targeting within platforms. Meta’s job title and interest targeting proved less effective than lookalike and retargeting audiences. Over time, we primarily allocated budget towards Meta lookalike audiences, which yielded a significant increase in leads.

To prevent ad fatigue, the campaign ran in phases. Every 2-3 months, we refreshed all ad copy. High-performing ads continued to run, while underperforming ones were swapped out. Having a vast pool of creatives in various sizes also significantly contributed to the campaign’s success. For every single territory, we adhered to translation changes and the varying T&Cs in each region. In areas with low traffic volume, we grouped regions together where it was logical to do so.

Through ad copy testing, we learned that action-oriented copy generated higher-quality traffic compared to USP-focused messaging. Following Meta’s recommendations, we experimented with Advantage+ audiences for most campaigns, excluding remarketing campaigns where it’s not advised. In some areas this performed better than others.

With up to three other campaigns running concurrently alongside Efficient Esthetics, we had to be mindful as to not cannibalise campaigns. We opted not to run this campaign across Search for example, whereby any relevant keywords could also relate to other areas of the business and convert for those areas instead. 

Since working with Ivoclar, we launched 6 distinct campaigns, establishing the initial media plans through to ongoing optimisation throughout the campaigns’ lifecycles. The standout performer has been our 10-month ‘Efficient Esthetics’ campaign, delivering exceptional results.

Our ongoing challenge for Ivoclar is to ensure optimal technical implementation. We’re working on integrating cAPI for Meta to gain full visibility on leads, from the platform all the way through to their CRM. 

The results 

We love to smash clients’ targets — and, for the ‘Efficient Esthetics’ campaign, we did exactly that.

In just 7 months of a planned 10 month campaign, the target of 3,000 leads was exceeded by 25%:

By the end of the campaign, we’d secured an impressive 130% of the initial 3,000-lead target, whilst making a cost-saving of over £20,000. This incredible performance allowed digital marketing to take the lead in achieving the overall marketing goals (encompassing both offline and digital channels). It also meant we could repurpose their budget into non-Paid efforts, to ensure the seamless and optimal customer journey.

Initially, the campaign targeted over 20 territories. As of April 2024, we only need to maintain focus on hitting targets in the remaining four. Furthermore, we’re forecasting a cost saving of 17.5% on the initial ad spend budget. This saving will empower Ivoclar to streamline their marketing efforts and reallocate funds towards future ventures and campaigns.

Overall, we can put these great results down to a few key factors:

• Testing and learning and pivoting our strategy in ways we didn’t expect when it came down to the ad platforms we leveraged
• Consulting the client on our UX and Creative recommendations before setting the campaign live, with intermittent reviews
• Working to a clear roadmap for creative updates, working in phases and avoiding ad saturation
• Testing audiences within ad platforms and shifting budgets accordingly into what we saw working best

Our relationship with the client has gone from strength to strength and the scope of our partnership has grown beyond Paid Media and into a unified approach encompassing Paid and Organic Search, Creative and Data & Insights. 

Do you have a similar project in mind?

We don’t work with only the world’s biggest brands. Our clients include many small to medium-sized businesses, non-profits and startups.

Just tell us what you want to achieve, and we’ll let you know what experience we have in your sector, and how we can help you. Alternatively, you can check out more of our work here. Our methodology has been successful in almost all sectors, delivering double and triple-digit improvements on average. Get in touch today.