B2B has always C: how to promote 3D printing technology among engineers by using B2C content
Hi! I was Head of Marketing at Anisoprint — a startup developed a unique technology of composite 3D printing — for 1.5 years. During this time, we’ve become one of the leaders in the field of composite 3D printing among the biggest American companies. Before Anisoprint, I’ve been working for B2C companies, and I believe this experience helped me differentiate the company from competitors and effectively communicate to the audience. Let’s see how it works.
While creating new ideas of content and promotion I always kept in mind that we talked not to companies but people. Working in B2B there is a temptation to imagine an audience as a common mass of non-individual employees with one or two decision-makers. So, in my case, such employees were engineers and researchers. That actually makes their imagined portrait even more “average” and even boring.
However, my B2C experience said that all these engineers and researchers are people first of all. And that means we can do content with common ideas which are important for every person.
At the same time, we should be extremely correct with any technical details since our “human” audience consists of professionals.
Keeping all of these in mind, we did the content where the articles with technical details, strict experiments and precise numbers went hand in hand with posts with memes and jokes, stories about team and partners with “family-portraits”-style pictures;
we made image videos with common associations instead of typical boring technical video-descriptions of products (we made “boring” ones too, but not only them!);
and even stories and posts from the office and printing lab every-day life with humorous domestic testing of samples and engineers’ jokes.
My story probably looks like a planned strategy but actually, it’s not: in the beginning, there was only the idea that we work for people not for companies which I’ve brought from B2C. And it led us to the tone of voice that differs from the other companies and makes ours memorable.