For life sciences and healthcare technology companies, breaking through the digital noise requires more than a great product. It demands a data-driven SEM strategy that balances compliance, efficiency, and brand visibility. This case study explores how a global health analytics company partnered with Rebound to build its first life sciences SEM framework, reaching over 100,000 healthcare decision-makers and reducing CPC by 35% in just four months.
That was the challenge facing a leading global health analytics company. Their Healthcare Solutions division needed to increase visibility among healthcare providers. And because paid search was a completely new channel for the team, they had to start from the ground up.
The challenge was clear: How do you build credibility in a saturated market when you’re starting from zero?
That’s where Rebound came in.
The Challenge: Standing Out in the Crowded Life Sciences Market
For this health analytics leader’s Healthcare Solutions division, brand awareness was a prerequisite for growth. Their team needed to reach physicians, healthcare providers, and operational leaders with targeted, relevant messaging at scale while staying compliant in one of the most tightly regulated industries
Roadblocks to overcome:
- No existing SEM data: Every benchmark and KPI had to be defined from scratch.
- Limited budget efficiency: Every dollar had to deliver measurable visibility.
- Balancing reach vs. relevance: Too broad meant wasted spend; too narrow meant lost visibility.
- Regulatory constraints: Ads needed full compliance to avoid disapprovals that could kill campaign momentum.
To meet these challenges, the team needed a well-structured SEM strategy that balanced performance, efficiency, and precision targeting while laying the groundwork for future lead generation.
The Strategy: Building a Scalable, Compliant SEM Framework
Rebound collaborated closely with the company to design a full funnel, comprehensive SEM framework that focused on building awareness
A Strategic Campaign Framework
The first step was to design a scalable SEM campaign architecture that mirrored the company’s diverse healthcare solution areas. Rebound built four distinct campaigns, each tailored to a specific focus, from patient acquisition to physician engagement, ensuring every message spoke directly to a clearly defined audience segment.
This structure brought both clarity and control. Each campaign could scale independently while maintaining consistent messaging, precise audience targeting, and budget efficiency across the broader portfolio.
The result: a modular SEM framework purpose-built for life sciences marketing, capable of growing with the brand’s evolving goals.
- Defining Awareness KPIs that Drive Long-Term ROI
With no prior SEM data or historical benchmarks to guide optimization, Rebound and the client had to define success from the ground up. The focus was on awareness, visibility, and engagement quality.
Together, the teams established a set of awareness-driven KPIs tailored to a life sciences audience:
- Impression share to measure market visibility
- CTR to gauge message relevance and resonance
- Landing page engagement to evaluate audience intent and content alignment
These became the foundation for continuous optimization, allowing the campaigns to show early traction, capture meaningful signals, and evolve toward stronger ROI as the SEM program matured.
By tracking awareness metrics first, Rebound turned an untested channel into a measurable growth engine, setting the stage for lead generation to follow.
- Precision Targeting for Healthcare Decision-Makers
To avoid wasted spend, Rebound implemented a detailed audience refinement strategy, filtering out irrelevant clicks.
Detailed negative keyword filtering and audience segmentation reduced wasted spend and helped filter out irrelevant searches, allowing the campaigns to consistently reach decision makers and healthcare influencers rather than general consumers.
- Compliance-First Execution for Regulated Markets
Every aspect of execution was designed around a compliance-first framework, ensuring creative impact without regulatory risk.
Ad copy, visuals, and landing pages were built to meet strict industry and platform standards while maintaining clarity, accuracy, and message strength.
This approach eliminated delivery issues and kept campaigns running seamlessly from day one.
By treating compliance as a design principle, not a limitation, Rebound delivered high-performing paid search campaigns with zero ad disapprovals and full regulatory confidence.
The Results: From Awareness to Engagement
Within just four months, the campaign went from zero baseline to measurable impact:
- Campaigns delivered CPCs that were 35% lower than industry benchmarks, helping the team maximize results from a modest budget.
- More than 70% of impressions appeared at the top of the search page, securing prime visibility within a highly targeted healthcare B2B audience.
- Over 100,000 impressions were generated across targeted B2B segments, with SEM traffic driving 68% of all page views during the campaign period.
- 7 times higher engagement events from SEM visitors compared to other channels.
- CPC visitors delivered 71% of key engagement actions.
- 10+ early conversions, with strong scalability indicators.
The campaign established a strong foundation for ongoing optimization and future lead-generation growth, positioning SEM as a core part of the company’s marketing mix moving forward.
Why It Worked
This SEM program succeeded because it prioritized quality, compliance, and data. Every optimization was backed by performance insights, structured testing, and a focus on meaningful engagement rather than click volume.
Rebound built a data-driven SEM framework that could evolve, balancing visibility, efficiency, and regulatory precision. By grounding every decision in analytics, the campaigns continuously improved without compromising compliance or clarity.
The outcome: a repeatable, scalable paid search model that now powers both brand awareness and lead generation across the client’s healthcare solution areas.
Key Takeaways for Life Sciences Marketers:
When executed strategically, a life sciences SEM campaign builds credibility, trust, and measurable commercial value in even the most regulated B2B markets.
For life sciences and health tech companies, a well-structured SEM program can be the difference between being seen and being remembered.
Wondering if your paid search could drive stronger results?
Schedule a call with Rebound to uncover hidden opportunities in your life sciences SEM strategy, and see how data, compliance, and creativity can turn search into your next growth engine.
