About Herli Medical

Herli Medical is a Belgium-based wholesaler of medical equipment for both professionals and individuals. They offer an extensive selection of products and instruments for the care and health sector, from blood pressure monitors to sutures and examination lamps. Thanks to their years of experience and expertise, Herli Medical fulfills an important role in the medical sector.

Task

Herli Medical is ready to take a big crossborder leap. Herli Medical already operates in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, but now have further international expansion in their sights. They would like to expand into Germany initially, with Austria joining later.

Action

While analyzing Herli Medical, we noticed that the campaign structure is outdated. The campaigns are built on old principles with a limited number of products per campaign and minimal use of Smart Bidding strategies. Therefore, the campaigns and associated data points are quite fragmented.

Despite its outdated campaign structure, Herli Medical is managing well to produce significant sales, which is why we at Tomahawk see the great potential for growth. We focus on modernization with a strong marketing mix that includes all the necessary aspects for crossborder expansion. For starters, we make sure the tracking is up to date so that we make decisions based on complete, accurate data.

We then modernize the campaign structure by merging different campaigns so that there is more data in the campaigns. This benefits Google Ads' learning algorithm. Where possible, we implement Smart Bidding so that factors such as time of day, location and user search behavior are factored into the bidding process without the need for manual adjustments. This balances cost and revenue.

One of the key steps in this process is launching smart PMax campaigns, where we divide items into two "buckets." We use one bucket for low-margin products, and one bucket for high-margin products(read more about bucket strategieshere ). With this information on margins, we calculate profitability goals: financial goals for campaigns based on product profitability. Data from Google Analytics 4 (GA4) remains our guide here: we accurately collect data that allows us to make the right decisions while the campaigns are live. We also run separate low-margin and high-margin campaigns in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria and Spain. Thanks to our shared focus on profit, we allocate more budget to higher-margin products. For the products that do exceptionally well, we run separate push campaigns with a low ROAS in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany.

Advertising with medical products presents challenges because there are specific safety regulations involved. Within these frameworks, we can still set up PMax campaigns and start retargeting with product IDs. Because of these rules, the focus for Performance Max campaigns is less on Shopping ads compared to other accounts at Tomahawk. We are putting more effort into Search and Display.

For the Dutch expansion, we are optimizing the existing product feed. We repeat this process for the crossborder expansion to Germany, Austria and Spain. We translate all text fields and titles so that Herli Medical is optimally connected to the new markets.

Results

We see a big increase in revenue within GA4. Google CPC revenue is a whopping 491.25% higher in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, according to Google Ads. Of the Google CPC revenue, more than €400,000 comes from Belgium, the Netherlands and France. That is an increase of 5.6 times over the first half of 2023. The campaigns in Germany, Austria and Spain have only been live for a few months, but are already realizing profitable sales that were well above agreed ROAS targets. Offline orders have also increased significantly due to our efforts.

All these spectacular results were achieved in just six months. Therefore, Tomahawk and Herli Medical are exploring the next steps in this success story, such as advertising on platforms outside Google and advertising in even more European countries.

Evaluation

"The cooperation with Herli Medical was accompanied by a lot of trust in us, so that was incredibly pleasant. Therefore, they are always open to new solutions and we have all the freedom to use our expertise optimally without micromanagement. The mutual understanding and respect for each other has only increased. Herli Medical has an awful lot of knowledge about their products and industry, so we can always exchange information about the latest developments."

Julia, SEA marketer