HubSpot support
HubSpot support
HubSpot support
  • English
    • thermo-fisher-white

    The success of
    Inbound Marketing

    How Thermo Fisher achieves more website traffic (+274%), more qualified leads and more customers with Inbound Marketing.

    Chapter I: About ThermoFisher
    Thermo Fisher Scientific, a successful spin-off from FEI Company wants to position itself as the thought leader in Desktop SEMs and generate more qualified leads. This case study shows a snapshot of Thermo Fisher Scientific between 2016 and 2018, and how it grew its business with Inbound Marketing.

    accent-line-red-xl

    Thermo Fisher Scientific: how it all began

    It's the year 2009. Thermo Fisher Scientific splits off from FEI and starts building its own network of distributors and partners. They sell high quality desktop electron microscopes that are functionally rich but simple to use.

    Their mission is clear: make nanotechnology intuitive and accessible to researchers in any lab. And in the years that followed, they succeeded: Thermo Fisher Scientific captured a leading position in an entirely new segment of the market. In doing so, they became a textbook example of a successful spin-off. In 2018, Thermo Fisher Scientific sells its desktop SEMs through a network of partners in 45 countries worldwide.

    Thermo Fisher Scientific strongly believes in the power of its network. High-quality products are combined with close cooperation with partners in different countries, each with its own application and focus market. They enable Thermo Fisher Scientific to stay focused on its key competencies: R&D, Sales, (Product) Marketing, Applications and Services. This formula has proven its success: between 2010 and 2014, Thermo Fisher Scientific already achieved 300% sales growth. In 2018, they are the No. 1 global supplier of desktop scanning electron microscopes and imaging solutions.

    The challenge

    Thermo Fisher Scientific was looking for ways to double revenue by increasing the effectiveness of their marketing and sales activities. They faced the challenge of implementing a strategy that would not only produce quality leads, but also provide clear feedback on the impact of their campaigns and the performance of their distributors.

    The solution

    Thermo Fisher Scientific implemented an integrated inbound marketing and sales strategy with HubSpot, which led to better lead generation and measurable results from their campaigns. This enabled them to meet their revenue growth goals and significantly improve the ROI of their marketing and sales efforts.

    Thermofisher

    How good is your network at selling your products?

    Thermo Fisher Scientific's ambitions reach far. In a 2016 interview, CEO Emile Asselbergs explained that the organization's ambition was to double sales from 20 million in 2016 to 40 million by 2020.

    To achieve such ambitious goals, the importance of generating good leads proved greater than ever. Every lead generated by Thermo Fisher Scientific should be part of a so-called "closed loop," providing the organization with feedback on how successful their Marketing is, as well as how successful each individual distributor is in selling their product. This case study shows a snapshot of Thermo Fisher Scientific between 2016 and 2018, and how they went through a commercial transformation to a successful Inbound Marketing strategy.

    Gaining insight into ROI from Marketing and Sales.

    In July 2016, Thermo Fisher Scientific was still achieving sales growth. However, the commercial teams (consisting of Sales Director Richard Geschiere and Manager Global Marketing Marilla Ruczynski, among others) realized they had an opportunity to improve their Sales and Marketing results.

    Lorelei de Boer was digital brand manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific and representative of the Marketing team in this case study, "In 2015, we didn't have everything in place to demonstrate ROI from Sales and Marketing activities. Our team deployed many activities to bring in good leads - through the website, SEA, Email campaigns, events - but we were not always able to rationalize the success of these campaigns.

    So in mid-2015, the team decided to take a close look at the current Marketing Strategy. Activities appeared to be particularly focused on top-of-the-funnel activities , such as branding.

    A new Marketing and Sales approach thanks to team performance

    The team at Thermo Fisher Scientific had a clear goal in mind. They were determined to align all Sales and Marketing activities with prospects' buying process in order to generate high-quality leads through digital channels.

    In addition, the team needed to embrace a way of working that focused onlead nurturing: providing leads with high-quality content and service, from first click to closing the deal. Since distributors are the number one sales channel, this meant Phenom-World had to find a way to work even better with partners and help them be successful in their Sales approach.

    Lorelei de Boer: "There was a need for a new set of Marketing and Sales tools that would allow us to generate,nurture and monitor behavior at every stage of thebuyer journey. This means: creating insight into how prospects find us, how they amount on our website and other online channels, and understanding why they buy from us."

    In addition, the team had to adapt a new skill set and mindset to work according to a new commercial process, in which Marketing and Sales work together structurally.

    "The ROI of Marketing and Sales activities was not clear in some respects. Conversations between colleagues were not always about hard data. Our team decided that this had to change." - Lorelei de Boer, Digital Brand Manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific

    Thermo Fisher's commercial transformation

    To achieve goals using a renewed Marketing and Sales approach, Thermo Fisher Scientific partnered with Webs. The team rolled out an Inbound Marketing strategy across the organization, along with the HubSpot Marketing Automation platform and HubSpot CRM.

    Lorelei de Boer: "The team started with four intensive workshops that helped us shape a growth plan. Webs implemented HubSpot Marketing and Sales software and integrated it with our current tooling. Sales, Marketing and the Applications team worked together on this implementation."

    Key milestones in the first 6 - 12 months:

    • Creating a growth plan;
    • Getting the right people on board (Management, Marketing, Sales, Applications engineers, Product Marketers);
    • Creating more focus (markets, target groups, challenges);
    • Setting up reporting;
    • Setting up Marketing and Sales funnels and an online (content) strategy to generate more, and better leads through online;
    • Implement Marketing and Sales tools from HubSpot to more smoothly close the deal;
    • Evaluate (and review!) every euro that goes into Marketing and Sales - and every euro that comes out.

    Selling better

    Since January 2016, Thermo Fisher Scientific has been working with Webs to implement the Inbound strategy to achieve goals. The infographic below shows that Inbound Marketing has been successfully implemented in the organization:

    Lorelei de Boer: "The HubSpot tooling allows us to form a very detailed picture of leads. We see every contact moment there has been with leads, and also how a contact moment influenced the closing of the deal. In addition, we store information about all the actual inquiries that leads make. When this information is compiled, we can very well brief our sales colleagues and distributors about every contact moment that has occurred with a specific lead. They are thus able to more easily make the connection and they can add more value in sales conversations.