Michele Nichols, President of Launch Team, joined the AZO Network podcast to discuss current engineering marketing trends and challenges, as the industry makes shifts to virtual event marketing and adapts to digital transformation.

Personalized marketing messages add value. According to McKinsey, marketing’s holy grail is digital personalization at scale because “personalization can reduce acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lift revenues by 5-15%, and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 10-30%.”

With so many product launch timelines tied to trade shows, it’s a good time to step back and consider how to add an element of excitement, unveiling, and engagement without a live event.

Whether planned or a last-minute call, the vast majority of 2021 tradeshows will be virtual events. With a variety of offerings, platforms, and formats, it’s hard to know if this is a good investment or if you’re better off diverting the funds to your own marketing and events. Here, we break down one event, Photonics West, but our recommendations and ideas may be worth considering regardless of event or industry.

I hope you have taken the time to recognize and reflect with pride on what you accomplished last year. The team you built showed resilience and grit in adapting to challenging circumstances. The hard news: your team members are now in danger of burnout. As leaders, it is our job to provide the structure and tools to help them prioritize and focus on the year ahead.

Traditional thinking dictates that a venture capitalist’s first step after investment is to strip out overhead cost and create efficiencies. But in recent years, we’ve noticed a shift in the conversation  - new leadership is now focused on leveraging and positioning the existing brand. We are working with investors and CEOs to:

It's hard to imagine that we will be missing FABTECH 2020 this year, among many other cancelled trade shows. Last year, leading up to FABTECH 2019, we covered the market drivers, upcoming trends, and widespread changes in the advanced manufacturing markets. This year, despite the cancellation, sales and market growth continues.

Now that we’ve entered the second half of a challenging and unpredictable year, it’s time to re-look at 2020 goals, and begin the planning and budget cycles for 2021. But how? Maybe it’s the unknowns, maybe it’s concern for the impact goals can have on your team’s morale and motivation—this feels particularly hard this time.

Effective product launches and rebrands are thoroughly planned out according to specific timelines – the best time to announce the name, events with the biggest audiences, tactics that get the most traffic. It's rare that product launch planning has a contingency plan for a global pandemic.

Another year at Photonics West, the leading event for photonics and laser companies, is in the books! With over 5,000 presentations and 1,300 exhibiting companies, the consensus so far is that traffic was down and quality was up. After months preparing client booths, websites, collateral pieces, and campaigns, we're excited to share a few favorites!

Product Launches with a Bang, not a Trickle

There are a lot of moving pieces to an effective product launch. Whether you're new to it or a veteran of product launch planning, there are a lot of moving pieces and business ramifications. As the launch date approaches, the activity increases, making it easy to overlook something or cut corners. Keeping track of who is responsible for what and when it must be done challenges even the most organized professionals. Many business leaders find it is in their best interest to seek external support to help organize and execute key activities.

Developing a marketing plan that sustains steady, consistent growth is imperative for your organization's success. Building a strategy that yields double digit revenue growth every year requires putting the customer first, and building around their specific needs. In the webinar Marketing and Sales Models for Sustainable Growth, Launch Team’s President Michele Nichols talks about how a company can achieve this goal by focusing on the customer first, with a data driven, educational mindset at the core of their marketing efforts. Michele also touches upon how customer behavior is changing and how companies should be adapting to support them.