Gilbert RegTech builds compliance software for the EU market. Its flagship product, the EmpCo Scanner, helps companies get their green marketing claims in order before a new European directive comes into force on 27 September 2026. Since May 2026, Invalshoek has been responsible for demand generation for this product: from LinkedIn and Google advertising to SEO, email marketing, and industry associations. This is the story behind building that growth engine.
Table of contents
In short
Invalshoek is building a complete demand generation engine for Gilbert RegTech around the EmpCo Scanner, a SaaS tool that scans websites, documents, and labels for prohibited sustainability claims. The approach combines LinkedIn (organic and paid), content marketing and SEO, direct email outreach, industry associations, and targeted outreach to large retailers. The goal: build a sufficient pipeline of qualified opportunities before the deadline of 27 September 2026, when the EmpCo Directive will apply without a transition period to every company selling to EU consumers.
About Gilbert RegTech
Client: Gilbert Regulatory Technologies B.V.
Location: The Hague & Rotterdam
Industry: RegTech SaaS, EU compliance for sustainability claims
Gilbert RegTech develops the EmpCo Scanner, a self-service platform that crawls websites, product labels, and documents for environmental claims and tests those claims against the seven prohibited categories defined in Directive (EU) 2024/825, better known as the EmpCo Directive. Where a traditional compliance investigation produces a report, Gilbert delivers a workflow: every claim receives a red, orange, or green assessment with the exact legal reference, a supporting evidence file, and a concrete remediation path.
The challenge
The EmpCo Directive is still relatively unknown territory for most companies, while the consequences are significant: no transition period, no minimum company size threshold, and fines starting at 4% of annual EU turnover. For Gilbert RegTech, this created several specific marketing challenges:
- Serving four different audiences at the same time. Marketing and sustainability teams, compliance and legal departments, SME leadership teams, and agencies all have their own language, challenges, and buying motivations. One message does not work for everyone.
- Building visibility from scratch. The website was not yet properly indexed by Google, while the topic was rapidly gaining relevance ahead of September 2026.
- Limited existing reach. The product’s LinkedIn page had only a handful of followers; there was no content history and no established brand voice.
- A hard deadline and a product that still needs validation. Anyone can now create an account for the EmpCo Scanner, but the first users are also the first reference customers. Every lead generated at this stage therefore carries double value.
- Limited budget alongside a major opportunity. With large retailers actively working to remove products with prohibited claims from their shelves, the potential market is significant, but every euro invested needs to demonstrate measurable impact.
Approach
Step 1: LinkedIn as the primary channel
For a product that needs to reach four different business audiences simultaneously, LinkedIn is the most logical channel. Invalshoek built persona-specific target lists in Sales Navigator (job title, industry, company size, geography) and implemented automated workflows to run connection and messaging sequences without overwhelming the account. Every response immediately pauses automation, allowing a human to take over. In addition, a combination of Text Ads and Feed Image Ads targets the same segmented audience to not only reach the most relevant contacts but also create awareness of the EmpCo deadline across entire accounts.
Step 2: Content and SEO that build trust
The target audience is legally sophisticated, and superficial fear-based content is quickly recognized and dismissed. The content strategy therefore focuses approximately 70% on educational content (what exactly does the directive prohibit, and why?) and 30% on product-focused content. The existing knowledge base was technically rebuilt: the website was running as a single-page application and was not being properly crawled, after which pre-rendering ensured that search engines and AI answer engines could access the full content. The results followed quickly: within weeks, the platform was already being referenced by ChatGPT, Copilot, and Claude, and it performed strongly on Bing.
Step 3: Direct outreach and industry associations
Alongside organic and paid LinkedIn activities, existing lead lists are being expanded across additional sectors, followed by direct B2B email outreach. In parallel, Gilbert RegTech is actively engaging with Dutch, German, and European industry associations for guest content opportunities and newsletter placements, with Germany leading in enforcement pressure and therefore urgency among the target audience.
Step 4: Targeted accounts in food and retail
For companies with the highest exposure, such as supermarkets and garden centers with their own private-label sustainability claims, a targeted account-based outreach approach is underway. This approach combines personal introductions with the broader list of prohibited claim symbols and practices already used by retailers, providing a concrete starting point for conversations.
Step 5: Everything comes together in the EmpCo platform
Every lead, from an accepted LinkedIn connection to a beta signup through the website, automatically enters the EmpCo platform, tagged by persona and source. This makes it possible to see which channels actually generate pipeline for each audience segment and allows weekly reporting to Gilbert RegTech to be based on hard data rather than assumptions.
"Invalshoek quickly understood not only our deadline, but also the complexity of four completely different audiences, each with their own reason for wanting to engage with us. This is already translating into a pipeline that simply did not exist two months ago."
Robert van Spingelen
Co-founder, Gilbert RegTech
Results so far
The project has been running since May 2026 and the EmpCo deadline of 27 September is still ahead, but the first results are already visible:
- Visibility restored: the website started being cited by major AI answer engines within weeks and is performing well on Bing and Google.
- Pipeline visibility by persona and audience: thanks to tagging by persona and source in the EmpCo platform, it is now possible to see which audience (marketing, compliance, SME leadership, or agency) is actually converting.
- Major accounts moving forward: including a positive first conversation with a major player in the food sector, with approximately five billion euros in revenue, and ongoing introductions with multiple retailers managing their own private-label claims.
- A scalable content engine: the combination of LinkedIn content, knowledge base articles, and industry associations continuously generates new opportunities, exactly as market interest increases toward September.
Invalshoek will continue scaling activities toward the EmpCo deadline in the coming months, with the goal of providing Gilbert RegTech with a full and high-quality pipeline leading into 27 September 2026.
Conclusion
The EmpCo case demonstrates what happens when demand generation and a hard regulatory deadline come together: there is no time to build a brand through trial and error. By aligning LinkedIn, content marketing, SEO, outreach, and industry associations from day one and bringing everything together in one system, Gilbert RegTech has built a visible and measurable pipeline within two months in a market that was still unfamiliar with the company. With more than two months remaining until 27 September 2026, this creates exactly the momentum needed to position the EmpCo Scanner with the right audiences in time.
