Axial3D expands customer base with Grand Scale boost

About Axial3D 

Belfast- Headquartered Axial3D is a leader in the field of 3D modelling for the health sector. Set up in 2016 by Dan Crawford, the company now employs 48 people across Northern Ireland and North America. Axial3D’s ground-breaking, machine-learning software enables 2D data to be quickly converted into the 3D data required for 3D printing medical models used in preoperative planning. This innovation has the potential to significantly accelerate the uptake of 3D-printed models across the global healthcare market. 

 

The challenge

Having identified the right market for its services, Axial3D’s challenge was to reach and convert a high volume of prospects to enable it to quickly scale up its customer base without having to expand its sales and marketing team. 

“We have a niche market that we need to target but our marketing efforts weren’t generating the leads we needed, which was impacting our business growth,” says Crawford. “We lacked confidence in the repeatability of our approach and needed a systematic, measurable, scalable approach to quickly build sales.” 

Axial3D’s sales and marketing activity was based on cold outreach to people who had no awareness of their brand or services. It was taking too long to acquire customers, leaving the company under immense pressure to meet the sales targets set. 

Axial3D needed a new approach to acquiring customers, one that would automate as much of the process as possible. 

 

The solution 

When Axial3D became aware of Grand Scale’s proven approach to helping companies rapidly grow their customer base, Daniel Crawford (Founder) and Roger Johnston (CEO) knew it was the right fit. 

With decades of experience working at the highest level of marketing across the globe, but with a special interest in small, early-stage tech companies, Grand Scale’s founders, Ro and Leanne, were uniquely placed to provide the expertise Axial3D was looking for. 

“One of the biggest things Ro and Leanne did for us was making us take a step back and really look at what we are selling, who we are selling it to, and what those people need from us. Some marketing consultancies will force feed you things to do rather than working out what you need to do. Grand Scale empowered us to understand our business and how we could uniquely sell to our customers. That’s been eye-opening and has transformed our sales and marketing.” says Johnston.  

 

“Crucially, they helped us to harness the power of marketing automation by combining an effective system with our market intelligence to supercharge the results.” 

 

By taking part in one of Grand Scale’s growth marketing programmes, the company’s sales and marketing team learnt how to examine each market and individual customer persona and then create tailored content. Using an automated marketing platform they could then feed each prospect appropriate content at each stage of the buyer journey and measure and rank prospects. Being able to identify warm leads meant that closing sales became much easier.

 

Programme Outcomes

• Focused strategy on our customer acquisition
• Confidence to secure prospects at scale
• Deliver tailored content directly to interested buyers
• Nurture leads until they're primed for sales
• Lead generation powered by automation platform
• Transparent and defined KPIs
• New skills to deliver ongoing customer acquisition strategy
• Aligned sales and marketing team working on common goals

 

“What we learnt was a much more sophisticated approach to sales and marketing than what we’d been doing before. This was leading-edge, marketing best practice,” says Johnston.  

 

Axial3D subsequently got additional support from Ro and Leanne who provided further strategic marketing leadership to empower Axial3D’s sales and marketing function. 

 

“Ro and Leanne have been instrumental in shaping our marketing team with their hands-on, no-nonsense approach. They are enabling us to continually improve and hit our targets,” says Crawford. 

 

The result 

Using the skills gained from the Grand Scale programme, Axial3D’s marketing team has run over 30 marketing campaigns.  

“This systematic, repeatable approach enables us to run a high volume of targeted campaigns based on specific customer types and geographies. The result has been a pipeline of quality prospects coming into our sales funnel as well as an increase in brand awareness internationally. By automating our manual processes we’re doing a lot more with the same team,” says Crawford. 

Within five months of using the new marketing strategy, the company had seen a 106% increase in the number of new prospects. There was also a substantial uplift in the number of surgeons requesting a free sample and an almost 40% increase in sales of 3D models when compared to the same period the previous year. 

“Comparing our first quarter this year with the same quarter last year we’ve seen an increase in customers acquired of almost 150%. It’s a phenomenal result,” says Johnston.   

 

Another outcome for the company was clearly seeing how its marketing activity is linked to sales. “Both strategically and operationally our marketing and sales teams are now working hand-in-hand and the result is more focused activity and more successful outcomes,” says Johnston.   

 

With transparent reporting of performance metrics for both marketing and sales activity, the company could also clearly see the impact of its investment.  

 

“We can now calculate the ROI so we can consider investing more in this approach to meet the growing market demand,” says Johnston.  

 

“Grand Scale has enabled us to achieve big company sales and marketing impact on a small company budget. Our investors can clearly see the results and the long-term potential. 

 

“If any company is looking to scale their marketing without having to bring on a lot more staff, Grand Scale’s automated approach is the solution,” says Crawford. 

 

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