How Recovery.com drove enterprise engagement and inbound leads with executive thought leadership
With Inclusively, we launched a thought leadership ghostwriting campaign for their founders that quickly became something more.
Recovery.com's fast growth required a content strategy that could reach enterprise-level decision makers while building trust in a traditionally skeptical industry. Here's how we turned their executives' authentic voices into a lead generation engine.
Key wins
Hundreds of thousands of impressions across executive accounts
41 of 44 enterprise prospects engaged with content in targeted campaigns
Direct messages from prospects flowing into executive inboxes
6 executive thought leaders posting regularly
TLDR
"The best part about thought leadership ads with LinkedIn is they show the highest CTR for the lowest cost," says Andrew Averill, Growth Marketing Manager at Recovery.com. "We are not paying a ton of money to make this wildly successful. What we're seeing is both brand success as well as performance success."
Drilling Down
Recovery.com is a fast-growing health tech company helping treatment centers optimize patient acquisition and outcomes. Operating in behavioral health—an industry where trust and credibility are paramount—Recovery.com needed a way to cut through skepticism and demonstrate their expertise to enterprise decision-makers.
Three challenges drove Recovery.com's decision to invest in executive thought leadership:
Combat industry skepticism with authentic human voices.
The behavioral health industry views many tech products as "nefarious," creating automatic suspicion around new solutions. Recovery.com needed to lead with human beings—not corporate messaging—as the first impression prospects would have of the company.
Reach enterprise decision-makers at scale.
While Recovery.com's executives excelled in one-on-one conversations, they needed a way to demonstrate their expertise and industry knowledge to hundreds of potential clients simultaneously.
Create intellectual momentum that translates to revenue.
The company needed content that wouldn't just generate awareness, but would actually influence enterprise buying decisions and create warm leads for their sales team.
The Game Plan
We built a comprehensive thought leadership program around Recovery.com's executive team, combining authentic storytelling with strategic paid amplification to reach their ideal customer profile.
Selected thought leaders based on industry credibility and authentic stories.
We chose six executives who had deep roots within the behavioral health industry, giving them natural credibility with the target audience. This included leaders who combined personal recovery experiences with business expertise—a powerful combination for building trust in this space.
Developed content that mixed mission-driven storytelling with tactical expertise.
Rather than creating generic corporate content, we focused on authentic personal stories from executives like Cliff McDonald and Tom Farley, while also showcasing tactical business insights that demonstrated Recovery.com's operational expertise.
Implemented strategic paid amplification to ensure enterprise reach.
After allowing content to perform organically for one month, we used LinkedIn's Thought Leader Ads to boost high-performing posts directly to decision-makers at target enterprise accounts. This approach combined authentic organic engagement with precise targeting.
“We selected the people we chose because they have deep roots within the industry that we target. So that gives them a good chance of reaching or amassing organic engagement... What we’re seeing is both brand success as well as performance success.”
Andrew Averill , Recovery.com Director of B2B Marketing
“Working with Dan has been awesome. He has enabled me to find a voice that was buried, that was hidden, but that wanted to get out, and he had a really thoughtful way of doing that.”
Cliff McDonald, Recovery.com Chief Growth Officer
The Results
Enterprise engagement that translates to real business conversations.
In one targeted campaign, Recovery.com reached 41 of 44 enterprise-level prospects through thought leadership content. More importantly, these weren't just impressions—prospects began taking meaningful actions, with one major account's CIO screenshotting a post and forwarding it to their CMO with a recommendation to get in touch.
Warm leads flowing directly into executive inboxes.
Rather than forcing prospects through traditional sales funnels, Recovery.com's approach generated direct messages to executives like Cliff McDonald. As Andrew notes: "Every time that Cliff posts, he gets a handful of direct messages from people who are sharing part of themselves with him and saying, 'Hey, thanks. This really meant a lot to me.'"
Brand differentiation through authentic human connection.
By leading with stories rather than product features, Recovery.com created a different type of relationship with prospects. "People are feeling so strongly about it that they're coming up to us at conferences and saying, 'Hey, Cliff, I really like what you're sharing on LinkedIn,'" says Andrew. "This is unprompted. We're not fishing for these compliments."
A scalable content engine powered by authentic expertise.
The program created a sustainable system where executives could share their knowledge and experience without overwhelming their schedules, while the content continued working to attract prospects over time.
“Dan’s been able to provide me with structure, strategy and purpose... It’s still my words, which I love. It’s still me. It’s just the process, structure, strategy and purpose.”
Tom Farley, Community Outreach Director @ Recovery.com
