Marketing Outsourcing AXIOS

The Challenge

AXIOS is an industrial services provider with an uncompromising commitment to safety, reliability and efficiency. For several decades, the company primarily served those in the oil and gas industry. Because it is owned by a private equity firm, AXIOS sets aggressive growth objectives for revenue and market diversification.

To reach these targets, AXIOS required a marketing strategy that could align with its sales efforts and deliver measurable results.

The Opportunity

AXIOS understood changes were necessary to right the marketing ship and modernize the way it brought new business. It needed to harness the web to build brand awareness, reach new target markets and generate more leads. But the company didn’t have the skill sets on site to launch a digital-first marketing initiative, nor was it equipped internally to manage B2B digital marketing technology.

That’s when AXIOS outsourced its marketing to HexaGroup. This gave the company an instant marketing department outfitted with strategists, content developers, technologists and a strong creative team to launch this KPI-driven initiative.

The Solution 

Goals and KPIs

At HexaGroup, we begin every new project with clearly defined goals and key performance indicators (KPIs). This helps us identify wins, make note of areas that can be improved and track the overall success of a marketing campaign.

For AXIOS, we laid out five main goals right at the start:

• Establish a streamlined workflow between the teams at HexaGroup and AXIOS.
• Increase brand awareness; transform AXIOS into the most well-known name in its industry.
• Extend products and services to new markets.
• Turn the website into a lead generation machine.
• Improve lead management.

Streamlined Collaboration

At the beginning of our relationship with AXIOS, we worked to put a system in place that established responsibility and accountability: This included:

• Clearly defined roles: HexaGroup and AXIOS agreed to a framework for who did what.
• Weekly meetings: Team members from both companies gathered weekly to review campaign progress, address issues and brainstorm new initiatives.
• Vigorous reporting: HexaGroup tracked numerous metrics to keep AXIOS informed about campaign status and success.

The partnership was made even more effective by CEO Joe Compofelice, who personally took the lead on collaborating with HexaGroup. Because Mr. Compofelice was the chief decision maker at his company, he was able to interface with HexaGroup much like he would with a VP of marketing. This gave HexaGroup a reliable point of contact inside the company, enabled quick approval on new ideas and ensured buy-in for the project started at the top.

Applying Methodology

HexaGroup utilizes a time-tested methodology, developed in house, to customize marketing activities for the goals a client hopes to achieve. Thanks to our prior experience in the industrial space — particularly with companies in the oil and gas industry — we had a head start on assembling a plan for AXIOS that would help the company meet its stated objectives.

Clustaar Analysis 

Clustaar is a proprietary tool, a system to gauge where a client and its competitors stand in the Google search landscape. Once we have a lay of the land, we identify opportunities for a client to target and rank for relevant keywords that drive qualified leads to their website and increase brand awareness.

We utilized Clustaar to identify five core keyword categories based on products, services, current markets and future industries the company wanted to do business in. From there, we created a list of 316 highly specific keywords covering a search volume of over 70,000 monthly queries. We then targeted these keywords with landing page content, blog posts and pay-per-click ads.

Brand Messaging

AXIOS already knew which industries it had historically been selling to and which ones it wanted to pursue in the future. It became HexaGroup’s job to consolidate those two lists and build a strategy around getting the AXIOS brand in front of those companies.

For AXIOS, it was important to differentiate itself from the competition. The company recognized the current state of play: it was a smaller company than its competitors, but no real leader had emerged in the space, which meant it had an opportunity to establish itself as the go-to solution for its industry.

Following extensive research, HexaGroup cultivated seven “personas” representative of the customers AXIOS wanted to acquire. We developed the core messaging of the AXIOS offering around trust.

Content Development

AXIOS wanted to improve its standing in its current markets while also breaking into new ones, which meant creating highly targeted content specific to those industries. With that in mind, HexaGroup developed a list of content objectives to expand the company’s reach in five key product and service areas.

Each objective required a different approach in terms of content development and marketing execution. The creatives at HexaGroup worked to create new landing pages, PDF guides, blog posts and videos to increase the visibility of AXIOS in those targeted categories. Our pay-per-click ad specialists deployed finely tuned ad campaigns to further cement the company as a leader. Our social media experts researched key trends and implemented a rigorous content calendar.

Part of the content development process also included improvements to the website and management of other company outposts on the web. HexaGroup added a FAQ section to the website to help potential customers more easily find information. We optimized the company’s Google My Business presence and shared new content there in an effort to make the page more visible in search.

Marketing Technology

HexaGroup is a digital-first agency that believes strongly in the power of martech -- marketing technology. For AXIOS, we utilized a number of different tools to help the company reach the ambitious marketing objectives laid out at the start of the campaign.

• Clustaar: Research of AXIOS’ search market position
• SparkToro: Audience insights and additional market research
• HubSpot: Website management and overall marketing optimization platform
• StackAdapt: Programmatic advertising platform
• LinkedIn for ABM and persona-based advertising
• Google Ads
• CallRail: Call tracking software
• Google Analytics: Website analytics

The Results 

HexaGroup, in collaboration with AXIOS, executed a meticulously crafted marketing strategy based on a foundation of research and a body of highly targeted content. One year into the campaign, AXIOS had already experienced a transformation in its business, with year-over-year improvements in every crucial metric.

Brand awareness for AXIOS increased dramatically in 2020 as represented by the company’s Alexa Rank. The AXIOS website rose 1.3 million places, while competitor BrockGroup experienced slower growth, and competitor Safway fell in the rankings. AXIOS showed up in far more search results than in the previous year, with impressions rising by 624 percent. In the first half of 2021, AXIOS surpassed the Alexa Rank of BrockGroup and reached parity with Safway, taking one more step toward becoming the most well-known brand in its space.

AXIOS solidified its positioning in current markets and started seeing opportunities within new industries, despite slower growth brought on by the pandemic. Website traffic saw a 176 percent increase, while organic site traffic saw a 246 percent increase fueled by a 35 percent increase in top-ranking keywords.

Lead generation rose significantly as new customers found the website. This resulted in 1,231 calls and 213 form submissions in 2020, and those figures accelerated in the first part of 2021.

Finally, the use of HubSpot as the central CRM for AXIOS paid dividends in managing leads. Thanks to HubSpot’s integration with landing pages and forms on the website, the company was able to gather more information about potential customers and could determine how a lead was captured, what piqued their interest and where they were in the buying process. HubSpot helped close the loop, tracking a contact throughout its life cycle from first touchpoint to eventual customer, all while keeping a constant nurturing workflow in place.