LinkedIn employer branding case study: how Tamro earned 3.9x its main competitor's engagement without ads

This LinkedIn employer branding case study shows what works without ads. Tamro Baltics, the PHOENIX group's pharmaceutical wholesaler in the Baltics, earned 1,342 LinkedIn engagements in May–August 2026. Its main competitor earned 346. That is 3.9 times more, with no paid posts at all. Per post, Tamro earned about 56 engagements and the competitor about 35. Three decisions made the difference: one page instead of three, people before products, and a rhythm that does not break in busy months.

Key takeaways

• One page for three small markets works better than three country pages. Tamro runs one English-language page for the Baltics. In September 2026 it had 9,234 followers.
• People come before products. Milestones, team moments and employee stories replaced product news and job ads. Heartbeat Stories, a format we built together with the client, now brings the best results.
• Consistency is the method, not a bonus. Posts are ready weeks ahead, a weekly call keeps the work moving, and every post is approved by the client before it goes out.

Contents

1. What is LinkedIn employer branding?
2. Why one page, not three
3. Training and profiles before the first post
4. People before products
5. Heartbeat Stories: a format we built with the client
6. A rhythm that survives busy months
7. The results against competitors
8. What we would do differently
9. How to apply this
10. FAQ

I am the founder of B2B Growth. We are now in our fifth year of running the Tamro Baltics company page. This article shows what we decided, why we decided it, and what came out of it. All numbers come from our monthly reports to the client. Competitors are not named.

1. What is LinkedIn employer branding?

LinkedIn employer branding is the work of showing, on your company page and through your own people, what it is like to work for you. The goal is simple: the right candidates, partners and clients should trust you before they ever contact you.

For a pharmaceutical wholesaler this matters a lot. Tamro needs highly qualified people in three countries. Those people do not apply because of a product post. They apply because they can see who they would work with, what the team does together and how the company treats its people.

This is where Tamro started. Before the strategy, the company used LinkedIn when there was time. Most posts were about products and job offers. There were open questions about country accounts and languages. Many employees were not active on LinkedIn at all.

The goals we agreed were clear:

• Employer brand: show how Tamro takes care of its people and introduce its leaders.
• Trust within its professional audience and among its partners.
• A larger audience across the Baltics, without buying reach.

The last point is important. Every result in this article is organic. We did not run ads.

How did the cooperation begin? Tamro first heard from us through an email and a free LinkedIn audit. Later, when they were looking for a new partner, we took part in a pitch against other agencies. We did not bring a few post ideas. We showed the whole order of work: training first, then profiles, then content. We showed how we create content and that we hold a call with the client every week. That order is the backbone of this case.

2. Why one page, not three

The first real question from the client was simple. Should they have one Baltic page, or separate pages for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?

My answer was one page. There were three reasons.

First, the markets are small. LinkedIn use in the Baltics is small too. When we started, LinkedIn activity in the region was quite modest. To get reactions and comments, it made far more sense to build one big page than three small ones. A small page with a small audience struggles to get the first reactions that a post needs to travel further.

Second, the money. It is not worth putting that much budget into three separate pages in markets this size. One page is the more sensible use of the same resources.

Third, the results. Three separate pages simply do not give results as good as one strong page. You split the audience, the content and the attention of the team that runs it.

So Tamro Baltics became one English-language page for all three countries, with contributions from each of them. The audience is too small to split.

Does this mean one page is always right? No. It depends on the goal and the size of the company. When a larger company enters a new market, for example Finland, Sweden, Norway or Denmark, and wants to win that local market, I recommend a local page. A page in the local language wins the market much faster and stands out better. Local culture matters there.

For three small neighbouring markets with one regional team and a shared goal, I would still build one shared page today.

What I ask in the first meeting

Before deciding the page structure, I ask the same few questions every time:

1. What is the goal, and how much resource can you put into this? LinkedIn needs endurance. It does not bring results immediately.
2. Who is your target audience? I want to understand how they think and what they want to do on LinkedIn.
3. Is the goal leads or brand? If the goal is leads, I recommend personal profiles, because they bring far more. If the goal is employer branding, the size of the company decides how important the company page is.

For Tamro the goal was employer branding in a company large enough to need a strong page. That is why the company page was the right place to start.

3. Training and profiles before the first post

Most companies want to start with posts. We start with training and profiles. Here is why.

Everyone in a company understands LinkedIn in their own way. Sales people and leaders often think it is a recruitment channel. They do not see it as a sales channel. The HR manager sees it as a recruitment channel. Marketing believes that marketing on LinkedIn happens only through the company page. Many people do not know that you can search for people by job title and many other filters.

When there is no shared understanding, it is very hard to make LinkedIn work. That is why training comes first. At Tamro we trained the team so that employees understood how they can support the company page. If you want to know why a single training is rarely enough on its own, read our article on why most LinkedIn trainings don't work.

Then come the profiles. What we usually find is familiar. The background image is random, often a nature photo. The profile picture is blurry. Nothing is aligned and there is no consistency.

You cannot force employees to change their profiles. But if LinkedIn is a sales channel where you represent the company, consistency matters. It is also good branding: the same background image for everyone and a proper, smart casual profile picture.

The most important profiles are those of owners, CEOs, heads of marketing, sales and communication, and everyone who talks to people outside the company. These profiles get the most views. People decide what kind of company you are, and how much you know about your field, by looking at them.

At Tamro we updated the profiles of key people in HR, marketing and leadership, so the brand looks the same everywhere. If the profiles are not in order, the content loses much of its effect. A strong post that leads to a weak profile is a wasted visit.

4. People before products

The biggest change on the page was the content itself. Product news and job ads gave way to milestones, team moments and stories of employees.

What we see again and again: posts with people and the leadership team perform better than anything else. Two examples from the end of 2025 show it. The best post of November–December 2025 was news about the leadership team, with 8,856 impressions and 248 likes. The second strongest was Quality Day, held in all three Baltic countries, with 5,523 impressions.

The best posts of May–August 2026 tell the same story:

• May: the HR team at IMC in Rome.
• June: ISO 27001 certification in Latvia.
• July: Tamro Lithuania celebrating 33 years.
• August: a team canoe trip.

None of them is a product post. Each of them is about people doing something together, or about a moment the whole company can be proud of. Notice also that each month the best post came from a different country or team. That is what one shared page makes possible.

What makes a post good

When I am asked what makes a good LinkedIn post, my answer has three parts.

1. Storytelling. A post is a short story, not an announcement. Something happens, someone does something, and there is a reason to care.
2. Knowing your audience and the message you want to convey. Before writing, decide who should read the post and what they should think afterwards. For Tamro the reader is often a future colleague, a partner or a professional in the field.
3. Length and images. The text must be as long as the story needs and no longer. A typical content post is about 1,000–1,200 characters. That is not set in stone, and some shorter posts work too, but on average longer posts work better. The image must show real people and real moments. Photos of real people work better than designed graphics or stock photos.

One month is not the picture

A competitor can win a single month. A promotion, a new CEO, a merger or an award can bring one very strong post. That happens, and it is fine. We look at the big picture: half a year to a year, not a single month. Employer branding is built by many good posts in a row, not by one lucky one.

5. Heartbeat Stories: a format we built with the client

Heartbeat Stories was created together with the client. The idea was to start telling stories about people. For employer branding this is very important. A candidate wants to see who they would work with, not only what the company sells.

In each Heartbeat Story an employee explains what their work makes possible. It is a recurring format, so the audience learns to recognise it, and the team knows what to prepare next.

The idea was in our recommendations at the end of 2025. Our report for November–December 2025 recommended two things: Heartbeat Stories, and three brand ambassadors, one from each country. The first Heartbeat Story went live in September 2026.

It became the best post of the month. It reached 3,529–3,538 impressions and collected 84 likes. In the same month the page published five posts that reached 11,921 impressions, collected 251 engagements and brought 139 new followers.

The very first story was the best post of the month. It confirmed that people stories are the strongest content on the page.

How is a Heartbeat Story made? It is a joint process. We propose the story and the questions. The client reviews them. Then we talk it through together. The questions are built around the person: their position, who they are, how long they have worked at the company, and similar. That is why each story sounds like the person, not like a template.

We choose the employee together with the company. Not us alone and not the client alone, but together.

Why does a format like this work? I see three reasons. It puts a real person at the centre. It answers the question every candidate has: what would my work here actually be like? And because it repeats, it gives the page a recognisable rhythm.

6. A rhythm that survives busy months

The third decision is the least visible and the most important: a rhythm that does not break.

At Tamro, as at every client, our account manager holds a call with the client every week. The most important things here are consistency and accountability.

In most companies one or two people are responsible for LinkedIn. Usually it is the head of marketing. They have nobody to talk to about what to do on LinkedIn, and they get stuck in their own head. Our account managers bring ideas and keep the conversation going, so the work does not stop. This is one of the most valuable things we do. When our call disappears, the number of posts drops too.

The reason is simple. For the client, LinkedIn is about the tenth thing on the list. Focus gets lost. The weekly call brings it back every week.

The second part of the rhythm is preparation. Posts are prepared weeks ahead. On the weekly call we show the finished posts and agree on publishing dates. No post we write is ever published before the client has approved it.

This matters most in summer. Holidays come, people are away and nobody has time to approve anything. If several weeks of posts are ready and approved before the holidays, the page keeps its pace even without weekly calls.

There is a third part, specific to a page that covers three countries. The content has to come from all three, not only from the head office. That is why the best posts listed above come from Rome, Latvia, Lithuania and a team canoe trip.

How does content from Latvia and Lithuania reach the page? Tamro has one contact person on its side. Every two months there is a joint call with Latvia and Lithuania. Between the calls, the contact person talks to the people in Latvia and Lithuania who provide the content. The topics are written in advance, so everyone knows what is needed. The countries give the input. We also follow what has happened in each country ourselves, so good moments do not get lost.

The lesson is simple. One person on the client's side owns the contact with the other countries. A fixed call every two months keeps it from being forgotten. And written topics make it easy for busy people to say yes.

7. The results against competitors

Every month we compare Tamro with its competitors: number of posts, total engagement, engagement per post and new followers. Here is what the reports show. All results are organic.

Engagement against the main competitor

In May–August 2026 Tamro Baltics published 24 posts and earned 1,342 engagements (reactions, comments and shares). Its main Baltic competitor published 10 posts and earned 346 engagements. That is 3.9 times more in total.

Tamro did not win only by posting more. Per post it earned about 56 engagements. The main competitor earned about 35 per post in the same period. So Tamro was ahead both in total and per post.

Follower growth

• Followers grew from 7,992 in December 2025 to 9,234 in September 2026.
• In 2026 the page gains about 138 new followers a month.
• Before the strategy it gained about 37 a month. Growth is now 3.7 times faster.

A full year of content

In 2025 the page published 88 posts. They reached 225,644 impressions and collected 5,941 engagements. The engagement rate was 2.63% without clicks.

Monthly impressions tell the longer story. Before the strategy, the page averaged about 4,052 impressions a month. In 2025 it averaged about 18,804.

What the client says

"Tamro Baltics has been working with B2B Growth for over three years and we are very satisfied with their services. Indrek and the team are responsive and solution-oriented." — Mara Sokolova, former HR Development Manager, Tamro Baltics (PHOENIX group)

How to read these numbers

Total engagement depends on how many posts you publish. That is why we always add engagement per post, and why our main metric for comparing pages of different sizes is engagement per 1,000 followers. A page with many followers will always collect more in total. The question is whether its content earns attention from the audience it has.

And again: look at half a year or a year. One month with an award or a new CEO can put any competitor ahead for a moment.

8. What we would do differently

If we started again, I would start the brand ambassador programme earlier and push it harder. The other parts of the work have done what they should.

An ambassador programme is especially important in large companies, where the employer brand matters a lot. Today Tamro does not have an ambassador programme. That means we do not know which employees really comment on the posts and help them travel. This is exactly why we want to build the programme: more visibility and a stronger page.

Our recommendation is already written down. Three ambassadors, one from each country. Their job is to react and comment early, because early reactions decide how far a post travels. On a page that covers three countries, one ambassador per country also makes sure that every country sees itself on the page.

The lesson for you: do not wait until the page is running well. Ask for ambassadors from the first month.

9. How to apply this

You can use the same approach on your own company page. Here are the steps in the order we follow them.

1. Write down the goal and the resources. Is the goal employer branding, trust or leads? How much time and how many people can you give LinkedIn? Plan for endurance, not for quick wins.
2. Choose the page structure. If you work in several small markets with one shared audience, build one page in a shared language. If you are entering a new market and want to win it locally, build a local page in the local language.
3. Train your key people first. Agree what LinkedIn is for in your company: sales, recruitment and brand together. Show people how to search, comment and support the page.
4. Fix the key profiles. Start with owners, the CEO, and the heads of marketing, sales, HR and communication. Use the same background image and a proper profile picture.
5. Put people before products. Plan milestones, team moments, leaders and employee stories. Keep product news as the backdrop. Check every post for three things: the story, the audience and message, and the length and image.
6. Create one recurring people format. Build it together with the people who will deliver the stories, as Tamro did with Heartbeat Stories. Give it a name and keep it regular.
7. Prepare weeks ahead and hold a weekly call. Show finished posts, agree dates, get approval. Before holidays, prepare and approve several weeks in advance.
8. Start an ambassador programme from the first month. At least one ambassador per country or team, who reacts and comments early.
9. Measure the big picture. Every month compare posts, total engagement, engagement per post and new followers with your competitors. Judge results over half a year to a year, not a single month.

If you want to see how we set this up as a service, read about our LinkedIn company page management.

10. FAQ

Should a company that works in several small countries have one LinkedIn page or one per country?

In most cases, one. When markets are small and the audience is shared, one page collects more reactions and comments than several small ones and is a more sensible use of resources. A local page makes sense when a larger company enters a new market and wants to win it in the local language.

Can a B2B company page grow on LinkedIn without ads?

Yes. Every Tamro result in this article is organic. Followers grew from 7,992 in December 2025 to 9,234 in September 2026, and in May–August 2026 the page earned 1,342 engagements against 346 for its main competitor.

What kind of posts work best for employer branding on LinkedIn?

Posts about people. On the Tamro page, leadership news, Quality Day, anniversaries, team events and Heartbeat Stories perform best. Product news and plain job ads perform weaker. A good post has a story, a clear audience and message, and the right length and image.

What are Heartbeat Stories?

Heartbeat Stories is a recurring post format we created together with Tamro. In each story an employee explains what their work makes possible. The first one, in September 2026, became the best post of the month with 3,529–3,538 impressions and 84 likes.

How long does it take to see results from a LinkedIn company page?

LinkedIn needs endurance. A single month can mislead you either way. We judge results over half a year to a year and compare them with competitors every month.

Why do you hold a weekly call with the client?

Because LinkedIn is rarely anyone's first priority. The person responsible for it usually has nobody to discuss ideas with. The weekly call keeps the ideas coming, keeps approvals moving and keeps the rhythm from breaking.

Want a similar result?

Every engagement starts with a free LinkedIn audit of your company page or a leader's profile. You speak directly with me, Indrek Põldvee. Write to indrek@b2bgrowth.eu.

Read the full case: Tamro Baltics: 9,000+ followers and 3.9x the engagement of its main competitor.

About the author

Indrek Põldvee is the founder of B2B Growth. B2B Growth is a LinkedIn agency in Tallinn, Estonia, that builds company pages and the personal profiles of founders and executives for B2B companies across Europe. Indrek on LinkedIn: LinkedIn