When marketing for manufacturing, there's a challenge around every corner. You're dealing with a bigger product at larger scale and many traditional marketing methods don't cut it.
Below are some of the most enduring challenges in marketing for manufacturing (and a few ideas of how to meet them):
1. Marketing a Product Before It's Built
How can you market what doesn't exist? This is a question that confounds many a manufacturing marketer. Heavy machinery can take a long time to engineer, design, and build. But, if you have to hold off on all marketing until the product is ready to ship, you're buried. You want orders placed long in advance (the money doesn't hurt either). Sure, you could list the specs and describe what the machinery will look like and do. Or, you could show it. With CAD to CGI conversion, data can be used to 'build' your machine before it's built and can place it in animations, pictures, and other visuals with stunning detail and accuracy. You can display your product in any environment and give buyers a clear picture of what they're getting when they pre-order. Instead of leaving potential customers to guess what you're marketing to them, give them visuals that make it obvious and close the sale.
2. Marketing GIANT Products
Marketing heavy machinery is problematic because the product you're selling often weighs a ton (or 50 tons). You can't easily carry something like that into a conference room to make a presentation. It's also hard to imagine dragging people to a job site or factory every time you want to make a sale. Fortunately, Augmented Reality can solve both of those problems. Augmented Reality can eliminate worries about size or location. AR can bring heavy machinery to life from a smartphone, tablet, or headwear, allowing potential buyers to see a 360 multi-layered view of your product. Your customers can get a virtual version of your product in a boardroom, their office, or anywhere else they need. AR takes a GIANT mountain-of-a-marketing-challenge and turns it into an ant-hill.
3. Budget Constraints
Manufacturing companies are focused on, unsurprisingly, manufacturing. Most of the yearly budget goes into creating the product line, leaving little for marketing or selling it. Finding ways to market your products for less is always a good strategy. To help build that strategy, you might want to look outside your company and to an Innovation Agency. The right kind of agency will have relevant expertise and a strong blueprint for using innovative and cost-effective ways of leveraging technology for manufacturing companies. Using technology, you can find solutions that fit within a limited budget and produce greater ROI than ill-fitting traditional methods.
4. Stale Ideas
Marketing relies on fresh ideas and concepts to spur potential customers into paying attention and then engaging them through the sale. Without new methods to surprise potential buyers and catch their eye (and later dollars), marketing can be tuned out completely. Even if your current methods work with your existing customers, leveraging technology in your marketing can attract new customers and grow your revenue. Whether you use CAD to CGI to improve your visuals, Augmented Reality to present your product in new ways, or something else entirely, make sure you're using the technology available. It will make marketing for manufacturing easier than you ever thought it could be.
