Scenario 01 · Mechanical engineering
180 employees, unknown beyond the existing customer list.
A special machinery builder with excellent engineering and a sales team that has been calling the same numbers for twenty years. The problem only shows when the contacts retire.
In short
The bottleneck is the position, not reach: the company cannot say in one sentence what it stands for. The way forward is positioning by application, expert content from its own engineering team and a website organised by application. Campaigns come last.
Note: This scenario is a model case. It describes a typical starting point and the strategic response to it. It is explicitly not a documented engagement and contains no client names and no results from ongoing projects. Timeframes and orders of magnitude are based on experience from comparable market situations and are not commitments.
01 · Starting point
The company in this model case.
The company builds feeding and handling systems for the packaging and pharmaceutical industries. The systems are good, customers stay and margins are healthy. Eighty percent of revenue comes from twelve existing customers.
The sales team consists of three people who have known their contacts for years. New customers arrive essentially by chance, through a referral or a trade fair contact. There is no systematic new business development because it has not been needed so far.
The trigger for rethinking is unspectacular: at two of the twelve key customers, the long-standing technical buyer is retiring. The successors are in their mid thirties, do not know the old relationships and start their supplier search in the browser. There, the company can hardly be found.
Management's first reaction is the usual one: “we need to be more visible”, run Google Ads and build a LinkedIn presence.
Key facts of the model case
- Segment
- Special machinery, feeding and handling technology
- Size
- around 180 employees, revenue in the mid double-digit millions
- Order value
- €150,000 to €900,000 per system
- Buying process
- 9 to 18 months, 5 to 7 people involved
- Marketing so far
- Trade fair presence, catalogue, website from 2017
- Trigger
- Generational change in procurement at two key customers
02 · Diagnosis
Why visibility is the wrong goal here.
In this situation, a campaign would have worked like an amplifier on a microphone nobody speaks into. The company would have become more visible, but with a message it shares with forty other suppliers.
The review reveals that management, sales leadership and technical leadership give three different answers to the question of what sets the company apart from comparable suppliers. None of them appears on the website.
At the same time, the analysis of the last two years shows a clear pattern: the most profitable orders all come from one very specific application: handling sensitive primary packaging in validated environments. This application is not mentioned anywhere on the website.
The actual bottleneck
- No binding position
- Three executives, three answers. Without a shared statement, no channel can carry a message.
- Website as a company catalogue
- Organised by machine series rather than applications. A searcher does not find their problem.
- Expertise not published
- The design know-how that makes sales strong in conversations exists nowhere in written form.
- Sales model without a replacement
- The relationships are the channel. When the people change, the channel changes.
03 · Approach
Which phases, in which order.
The sequence is the real substance of this scenario. The individual measures are not unusual.
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01
Market position
Analysis of two years of order data by contribution margin, application and industry. Interviews with sales, engineering and three existing customers.
The result is a decision that is uncomfortable internally at first: the focus will be on validated environments in pharmaceutical and medical technology supply. Other enquiries will still be handled but no longer actively sought.
- Positioning on one application
- Differentiation from three specific competitors
- Definition of the non-target group
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02
Messaging and website
Restructuring by application instead of machine series. A dedicated page for each relevant application with requirements, design guidance and typical sources of error.
The messaging system translates the position into arguments per role: the person responsible for validation needs different proof than procurement.
- Website with application pages
- Messaging system per role in the buying committee
- Proposal and presentation template
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03
Expert content
A series of technical articles based on interviews with the design engineers: selection criteria for grippers handling sensitive primary packaging, validation effort compared, typical mistakes in cycle time calculation.
This content is the real lever. It answers exactly the questions a project engineer asks twelve months before a tender.
- One article per month
- Two downloadable design guides
- Comparison table of gripper principles
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04
Channels
Only now campaigns. Paid search on very few, very precise terms. LinkedIn on a named list of around 400 target companies in the DACH region.
The budget stays deliberately low, because at this market size precision matters.
- Search campaign with fewer than 30 terms
- LinkedIn campaign on a named list
- Campaign block ahead of the leading trade fair
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05
Handover and measurement
Setting up a lean CRM with source tracking. Defining when an enquiry goes to sales and how quickly it is answered.
Without this step, it remains unclear at the end of the year what worked.
- CRM with source tracking
- Response time agreement
- Monthly report up to the proposal stage
04 · Expected impact
What becomes visible when.
| Period | What becomes visible | How it is measured |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 to 4 | Internal clarity: management agrees on one message | Qualitative: three identical answers to the same question |
| Months 3 to 4 | Website live, first articles indexed | Indexed pages, first positions for niche terms |
| Months 4 to 6 | First enquiries via search, mostly early in the process | Enquiries with a recognisable application |
| Months 6 to 9 | Visibility for core terms stabilises | Ranking trend, returning visitors from target companies |
| Months 9 to 12 | First proposals from marketing-generated enquiries | Proposals triggered, with source attribution |
| From month 12 | Enquiries from companies without a prior relationship | Share of new customers in total proposal value |
Based on experience from comparable market situations; not a commitment. Investment cycles, competitive density and the responsiveness of your own sales team shift these timeframes considerably.
05 · Deliberately not done
What was not done in this case.
- No logo relaunch. The established mark worked fine. The money would have been missing elsewhere.
- No broad Google Ads campaign. With a search volume of a few hundred queries a month, a larger budget would only have bought unsuitable terms.
- No image film. Complex, expensive and hardly effective in the research phase compared with expert content.
- No marketing automation platform. At this number of enquiries it would not have been maintained. A lean CRM is enough.
- No expansion into further industries in the first year. Credibility is built in the niche; broadening is the second step.
Frequently asked
Frequently asked questions about this scenario.
Isn't positioning on one application too narrow?
Why do the campaigns only start in week 14?
What if sales does not support the positioning?
How much internal effort do the articles require?
Don't design guides give away too much?
Further reading
Relevant next steps.
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