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Marketing Strategies for UAV, LIDAR, and Emerging Automation Markets

With this year's show coming up, we looked back at the success of AUVSI Xponential 2017, the conference for unmanned technologies, drones, and robotics. The show featured more than 650 exhibitors and more than 200 courses covering the future of unmanned systems in energy, defense, automotive, wireless communications, and other industries.

Exhibitors and attendees, from optoelectronic component manufacturers to lasers and system integrators, had many common questions:

Our team had the honor to teach a course called “The New Sales Model” during this year’s Photonics West industry track. We shared sales and marketing “wins” from our clients in the industry and asked participants to do the same.

Photonics West brings together more than 20,000 optics and photonics leaders from all over the world. SPIE’s industry track of courses is gaining momentum, and this year our team had the honor to teach “The New Sales Model.” There were some exceptional discussions among myself, Launch Team VP of Account Services Sarah Campagna, and sales and marketing professionals the industry. Couldn’t make the session? These attendee questions might provide some insight.

A Word to the “Whys”

You’re starting 2017 with a whole bunch of New Year’s resolutions for your business, gung-ho about your strategic plan. (Don’t have one yet? Download the one-page business plan.) A great plan has a clear vision and mission, a unique value proposition, measurable goals, and actions with accountabilities.

Most-Viewed Blog Posts

The data geeks in us love reviewing the year by the numbers. We identify what content was popular and useful to our audience so that we can continue to provide value in the new year. By views, here are the top 5 posts from 2016:

Elements of a Strong Marketing Strategy

In our work over the years, we’ve created many marketing plans and inherited dozens more. Most address the same basic components of a strategic marketing plan:

It was Michele, Aimee and Mandy’s turn to attend HubSpot’s INBOUND conference this year in Boston. Each year we send part of our team while the rest hold down the fort at the office. While every member has been through HubSpot’s extensive training and certification, the conference offers the chance to interact with thousands of HubSpot agency partners and customers and to hear their experience with inbound marketing. Here’s what we learned:

Many business leaders, particularly in manufacturing and high tech companies, are skeptical of inbound marketing; they think it’s “squishy” and question its value to the business. While it does take time to see significant growth, even those just starting to implement inbound strategies can achieve some wins relatively quickly.

In our annual deep-dive into the medical device industry, Launch Team collaborates with technical documentation and training company Novatek, which serves medical device and other regulated industries. Read their take on MEDTECH 2016 on the Novatek blog.

This year’s MedTech conference in Albany provided interesting insight into the direction of the medical device industry. While the impending election holds the fate of things like the Affordable Care Act and medical device tax, other changes are clear. Defining a value proposition is more important than ever for medical device companies, and buying power is steadily shifting to consumers.

According to a recent Gallup report, only 29% of B2B customers are engaged or feel a strong connection with the companies they buy from. Often a lack of engagement is caused by poor customer service or difficulty doing business with the company. This situation represents a significant loss of growth opportunities for B2Bs.

More and more companies are realizing that they can get better ROI from inbound marketing than traditional outbound strategies. In an age when most buyers prefer to do their own research before engaging your sales team, providing informative content is key. Content marketing is especially important in technical industries, where sales cycles are longer and engineers are often making purchase decisions. Yet many high tech companies still rely on an outbound marketing approach.

The dream of any entrepreneur is to build a successful, profitable business that can survive long after he or she retires. Often the goal is to pass the business down to children or close relatives, as evidenced by the fact that 80% of businesses worldwide are family-owned. In the U.S., family-owned companies are responsible for 60% of all employment and 78% of new jobs.

Despite their prevalence, 70% of family businesses last just one generation before they either fail or are sold. Some common pitfalls can cause problems in transitioning the company down the road.