Inficon

A digital marketing hub for global B2B sales

For INFICON, a leading global manufacturer of innovative measurement and sensor technology and Industry 4.0 software solutions, we built a comprehensive digital marketing and sales platform based on the HubSpot sales CRM and implemented numerous successful HubSpot campaigns in international markets.

Customer:

INFICON Holding AG

Industry sector:

B2B

Duration:

Introduction 3-6 months
Ongoing support

Services:

Introduction of HubSpot
Marketing automation strategy
Landing pages with HubSpot
Lead generation campaigns

The initial situation

Manufacturers in the B2B environment are often faced with the problem that their products and services are complex to explain and the purchase decision takes months, sometimes even years. If you want to be successful here, you have to constantly provide your target groups with new information and keep them interested in your own products - a method known as "lead nurturing".

INFICON has recognised that such measures require a long-term digital lead strategy and must be supported by software that can be used to automate the processes to a high degree.

Lead-nurturing process for event registrations at INFICON

Personalisation strategy for the individual target groups at INFICON

The result

MASSIVE ART has implemented a digital marketing and sales platform for INFICON and supports the internal marketing team as a long-term sparring partner in carrying out global lead generation campaigns.

The highlights of the project are:

Development of a long-term digital strategy

Development of a marketing masterplan for digital sales with a multi-year focus
Evaluation of CRM systems and recommendation for action
Data analysis and preparation

Implementation of the marketing platform with HubSpot

System set-up and customisation
Setup & optimisation of the necessary modules
Planning & implementation of basic workflows for common campaign types
Internationalisation for global markets
Integration into the corporate website & product landing pages

Realisation of campaigns in global markets

Development of campaign ideas for various product groups
Evaluation of target groups and suitable communication measures
Setting up lead generation campaigns
Implementation and ongoing performance optimisation
Performance analysis & reporting

With the introduction of Hubspot and the support of MASSIVE ART, we can address our target group individually and in line with the customer journey and use the data to identify potential new customers.

Jürgen Büchel

Head of Global Communication at INFICON Group

These challenges have kept us busy:

What challenges do B2B enterprise companies have to overcome in digital sales?

The problems faced by large companies in B2B industries when digitising sales can be roughly divided into three areas: international markets, differentiated customer expectations and complex data sources.

The processing of global customer groups is associated with a wide range of influencing factors such as time zones, languages and cultural differences. The effort required to sell one and the same product on different continents can suddenly increase exponentially. Software-supported marketing is therefore essential.

Another factor is the usually very broad product range or the sale of similar products in different sectors. This means that a wide variety of customer needs must be covered and, of course, communication with each target group must be as accurate as possible. An optimised marketing platform helps to keep an eye on the various brand and product messages and to measure their performance efficiently.

Ultimately, all sales teams in larger organisations struggle with heterogeneous data sources. Often, even simple language variants are stored in different formats because the translations were done by local product managers. Centralised marketing software makes it easier to work across borders and ensures that essential information is available in the required formats and can be used quickly.

Introducing a marketing and sales platform is complex and takes a long time. Is that true?

The consistency of the branding and the brand message were particular challenges for INFICON. For this reason, a strategy was developed at the start of the project that would allow the quality of the communication measures to be controlled centrally.

The system chosen was the marketing and sales CRM HubSpot. As a cloud application, it is not only available worldwide, but also offers all the necessary functions for digital sales out-of-the-box and with many customisation options.

Nevertheless, the introduction of HubSpot did not require a long lead time. Instead, the system was quickly put into live operation and then consistently adapted to the company's needs in small iterations. This led to quick findings that were immediately implemented in optimisation steps.

An important part of such a CRM implementation is usually the collection and cleansing of data, usually customer information. HubSpot provided numerous interfaces and functions for this purpose, with which a clean and data protection-compliant data status could be efficiently created.

What does marketing automation actually mean and how does it work in real life?

After setting up the CRM platform and providing the necessary data and workflows, INFICON was able to carry out the first campaigns together with MASSIVE ART. Here is a typical example of such a measure:

INFICON offers online seminars on various product groups, which are offered via platforms such as LinkedIn. Thanks to HubSpot, the entire sales funnel could be automated:

Postings & adverts on social networks
Landing page with all relevant information about the seminar
Registration forms for the virtual event
Opt-in for the quality check of the submissions
Automated emails with link to dial-in & additional information for participants
Storage of participants & automated ranking in CRM
Evaluation of campaign performance

Step 1: Targeting the target group via social media

Step 2: Re-targeting the target group with deep knowledge events

Step 3: Landing pages suitable for the target group & content with CTA

Step 4: Lead generation through event registrations on the landing page

Can sales system processes be automated?

This scenario impressively demonstrates the various processes that can be handled fully automatically with the help of a single sales system such as HubSpot. What's more, once the workflow has been set up and tested, it can be used as often as required for similar applications.

INFICON is now able to efficiently implement digital marketing and sales measures in any market worldwide with a short lead time. The performance of individual campaigns can be monitored in real time. This provides an optimal digital platform for the future to sustainably scale product sales.