We helped Akadeum increase traffic, leads, and sales
In 2015, when biotech company Akadeum Life Sciences started to really consider their marketing needs, they identified several priorities, including integrating customer relationship management (CRM) software and a redesign to their website, with the goal of improving its ability to draw qualified leads. They wanted long-term solutions and a partner to help manage their marketing.
Akadeum holds the patent for a crucial improvement to cell isolation. Their Buoyancy Activated Cell Sorting (BACS) uses tiny microbubbles to isolate testing targets through flotation-based separation. This new system is an improvement on their competitors’ volume and equipment restrictions, and a significant boon to the medical industry.
The problem? Customers weren’t finding Akadeum organically, and despite some inbound word-of-mouth interest, Akadeum had no system for storing contact information or mapping out marketing campaigns.
What did we do?
- Scientific Illustration
- Marketing Automation
- Copywriting
- Website Development
- Social Media Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization
- Content Marketing
- Brand Design
- Graphic Design
- Paid Search/Social Advertising
- CRM Implementation
- Event Promotion
Brand Guide
Like with any client, one of the first steps we took with Akadeum was to fully understand their various buyer personas; who they are, where they gathered information, and what their pain points are. From there, we began to understand how Akadeum could stand out and provide a solution.
Once that was fully understood, our graphic design team moved to the brand guide. This helped establish Akadeum’s personality, voice, and style, and it informed all designs and language used across marketing materials.
Website Design
Next up was designing and building a brand new website. The goal was to make it just as beautiful as it was functional, because what’s the point in designing a masterpiece if no one sees it? This website is more than a pretty face – it also has some serious SEO power. Additionally, the site supports Akadeum’s sales efforts with e-commerce functionality and a HubSpot integration. This allows their sales team to manage the sales cycle with complete visibility into contact and deal records.
Let’s take a trip back in time to see where the website started, and where it is today!
Emails + CRM Implementation
After going to market, Akadeum began to create quite a buzz in the cell separation space. People were interested in learning more about their technology and as a result, Akaduem’s contact database began to grow.
Akadeum needed a sophisticated solution that would allow them to track, organize, communicate, and sell to their contacts. Their needs included:
- Contact relationship management (CRM)
- Transparent reporting to better understand customer journey and marketing ROI
- Landing page generation
- Email generation
- Sales enablement
- Custom reporting dashboard to measure marketing and sales performance
After listening to Akadeum’s needs, our team recommended HubSpot Marketing Pro and Sales Pro. As a HubSpot-certified agency, Metric Marketing is able to both onboard and manage all HubSpot services.
In just over a year, Akadeum creatively built their contact database from 100 to over 15,000
….and as a very niche product, this type of growth is worth celebrating!
Paid Advertising
Advertising is important for any business, but when you create a new technology like Akadeum did, it’s arguably even more important.
In the early years of the relationship, Metric was tasked with reaching Akadeum’s niche market in a cost effective way. So we started where we always start – with buyer persona development and a paid ads strategy. After working collaboratively with Akadeum on the strategy and getting approval, we launched highly targeted campaigns across multiple platforms including Google AdWords, Google Display, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
These campaigns were critical in the early stages of the company. Over the years they’ve become more robust and efficient, and these channels continue to be a key part of the marketing mix years later.
Search Engine Optimization and Content
In addition to paid advertising, Akadeum needed more ways to be found online. There was already a healthy amount of search volume for keywords they wanted to show up for, like “cell separation.” Now, it was Metric’s job to help them rank organically for these terms.
Enter, content strategy. This content strategy was aimed at building up Akadeum’s experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness in the cell separation space. The Metric team drafted long-form, informative content about cell separation and how Akadeum’s microbubble technology can act as a viable alternative to traditional methods.
In preparation for content creation, Metric Marketing performed in-depth keyword and competitor research and asked Akadeum to provide information for topics that would showcase their expertise in the area. We then married the SEO aspect of the content with the way Akadeum wanted to present their brand, technology, and products. From there, we laid all of the necessary SEO foundations into a content outline, including keywords to target, headings to include, and word count.
The Results: Increased Traffic and Sales
With Metric’s help, Akadeum’s organic search traffic increased exponentially year over year, and the company now outranks competitors for keywords like “cell separation,” “protein therapy,” “red blood cell depletion,” and “naive cells.” Other milestones include:
- 2020 vs. 2019: 131% increase in traffic
- 2021 vs. 2020: 731% increase in organic traffic
- 2022 vs. 2021: 99% increase in organic traffic
From 2019 to 2020, sales increased by 27%—and nearly doubled by 2021.
Because Akadeum was ranking high for such specific keywords, the number of qualified leads to their website dramatically increased, meaning a significant percentage of the people landing on the Akadeum site were there to make a purchase.
Akadeum ranking first for “cell separation,” “protein therapy,” “red blood cell depletion,” and “naive cells”
Once Akadeum’s expertise, authority, and trustworthiness were established for Cell Separation, the robust content strategy focused on cell separation technology started to result in a major increase of organic traffic. In 2020 alone, organic traffic increased 132% YoY.
While Akadeum’s organic presence has skyrocketed, Akadeum’s traffic changes are not solely due to SEO. Highly targeted paid search and paid social campaigns also play a huge role, driving over 60% of Akadeum’s monthly traffic.
Akadeum has two sales channels: HubSpot (via custom quote generation) and their website (via ecommerce functionality). Looking at ecommerce sales alone, Akadeum continues to see YoY growth. Sales increased by 27% from 2019 to 2020 and nearly doubled in 2021.
Continued Work With Akadeum
We continue to work closely with Akadeum to think creatively about where and how to source qualified leads. Some major projects for Akadeum have included building out their contact database from 0 to 10,000 contacts (in only one year), launching new products, and creating a strategy for contacts to be organized into different cohorts and buyer personas and creating personalized communication plans (e.g., email workflows). Combining all of these marketing efforts together have lead to a huge increase in qualified leads, sales, and revenue in previous years… and it’s not slowing down anytime soon.
"I’ve been working with the team at Metric on SEO, paid search and social, and content marketing campaigns. Without a doubt, their guidance and work-product has been a major boost to our commercialization efforts. As a direct result, we have seen consistent gains in web traffic, conversions, and happy customers. Having worked with other firms in the past, it’s obvious that Metric excels at leveraging modern digital marketing tools in the most capital-efficient way"
Vice President of Business Development, Cell Therapy @ Akadeum Life Sciences
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