How to market for 3D printing business?

Making money from 3D printing might seem challenging but if you are persistent and you know enough about the business there is room for you as a 3D printing businessperson. Whether you are a beginner or you want to maintain your 3D printing business, below are some tips that might be suitable for you. First, let’s talk about some necessary tips that might help you if you are new in the business and just want to get started.

Learn as much as you can

It is always important to have enough knowledge in 3D printing, materials, and designs. Learn as much as you can about 3D printing and about starting a business. It is also a good idea to spend some time working in the industry before starting up your business.

Create a website

Don’t forget to create a website. WordPress enables you to build your website easily with available templates. You can add different plugins as well, which are proper and designed for 3D printing services. Here, you can read about different plugins and templates suitable for 3D printing.

WordPress for 3D printing

Add design service

Most people who use 3D printing services will ask for the design as well. You can either recruit a full-time designer or decide to work with freelancers. There are different websites in which you can choose to work with freelancers one of the most known websites is freelancer.com

first, you have to decide what kind of design service you are looking for, product designer, 3D modeling, or sketching designer. Then you can interact with them and start working with them and offer design services to your clients.

Branding in 3D printing

Branding in 3D printing is basically the same as branding any other business. There are some other things you should take into account for 3D printing.

First of all, you should know what a brand is. A brand is a combination of activities, the service you provide or produce that distinguishes you from the rest of businesses and attracts a specific target market. It includes your website design, logo, even the color of your brand to how you interact with customers and your mission. You should create your brand and specify your mission.

Content Marketing in 3D printing

Content marketing is a strategy in which you can attract viewers to your website and make sales. You can attract clients through the content you create. First of all, you should know about SEO and content marketing if you want to be noticed in digital media.

SEO for 3D printing services

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. The goal is always to be the first result on google’s first page. To reach this goal you have to build a strategy and create your content thoughtfully to appear on the first page for your intended keywords and phrases.

There are different formats of content providing:

Infographics

Most 3D printing service customers are confused about manufacturing technologies and materials. Infographics help you provide your customers with concise and useful information about materials.

You can show statistics and graphs that might be useful for your customers in their area. Providing your customers with a graph of different topics such as “the growth of 3D printing in the last 5 years in medical equipment and implants” can help them get an instant overview. This type of content is easy to view so it is viewed more as well.

Videos and podcasts

Video content can be an amazing tool to help you get noticed more. They can be promotional o educational. You can create different videos whether it is educating people on the field of 3D printing or giving information about your company, its history, and the service it gives. You can also hold webinars and share the story of different customers who reached a certain goal in their own business or how your service helped their business enhance and get better. There are many platforms in which you can share these video content from your own website to youtube and social media from Instagram and Linkedin and Twitter.

Podcasts are growing more and more each day, there are different apps for podcasts such as Castbox and Spotify in which you can share information. This podcast can be the written content of for e.g. your blog posts or white papers customized for podcasts or interviews with a specialist in the additive manufacturing business.

Generating Knowlagebase for 3d printing service

Knowledge bases are self-serve online libraries of information about a product, service, department, or topic. 3D printing is almost a new industry so many of your clients probably do not know about the different technologies and materials and 3D printing in general; creating a knowledge base about the service you provide alongside the technology and material you use can be very helpful for both attracting customers and receiving fewer calls in your call center.

Use social media for your 3D Printing service

Social media is an important tool for the 3D printing business. The importance and basics of content marketing are explained in the last part. Social media is important for you to promote your brand. Social posts make your brand fresh for your customers. Also, You can use the paid ads in the platform and stay active in these platforms to attract the maximum clients and be noticed.

You can share photos of your designs or any other object you created or printed. Then promote them via social media, the web, and YouTube. It is always a good idea to get feedback from people and gain some reputation on different online platforms.

Customer Testimonial

3D printing business is mostly regarded as a B2B business; so you have to provide the 3D printers with a service used in their own business. B2B businesses have their own way of marketing and since most of your marketing strategy should be designed for this type, it is important to use testimonials which proved to be an effective method.

A testimonial is a piece of writing from your customers, mostly. They can share their experience of working with you. Keep in mind that it is best t shoot them in video format as it is more effective, you can share it on social media and YouTube, or your own website. Also, keep it short (around 30 seconds to a maxim of one minute) and real. Avoid exaggeration and making up unreal stories.

These customer testimonials can be shared as videos or blog posts on your website or social media platform.

Lead generation for 3d printing services

Lead generation means attracting customers and getting their contact information to make sales. After creating your brand and creating content, potential customers will reach your website;

You should encourage your customers to leave their contact information for you. You can do this when you are sharing an educational white papers or giving them  price quotations or simply when they visit the website. After getting the customer’s contact information you should note that you should choose the best time to contact and reach them and contact them when they’re ready.

Focus on your niche

When you are engaged in the business for quite a long time, you can get to know what you’re better at, we call this a niche in business. You can work in this field and spend most of your time in that area of expertise.

Conversion Funnel in 3D printing service

A conversion funnel is a term used in commerce which means different stages in a customer’s journey which lead to purchasing the product or service.

This term comprises three stages including “upper funnel”, “middle funnel”, and “lower funnel”. Observing and knowing each stage can help you increase your sales.

“Top of the funnel” or “Upper funnel” is a user that starts to look for a product without having a specific background of the exact needs of the product. In this stage, the customer searches different brands in order to find the most suitable one.

“Middle Funnel”: In this stage, users provide the brands with their contact information to know more about the product or brand.

“Bottom of the Funnel” or “Lower Funnel”: In this stage users have chosen their favorite brand and they look for information on their purchase. In this stage of re-marketing, techniques can help you sell your product or service.

One of the most important tasks for you as a 3D printing service marketer is to increase your users’ conversion rate which is very complicated. What percentage of those who uploaded the file registered the order? What percentage of those who placed the order returned and placed the order again? And questions like that.
Layers marketing tools help you measure your 3d printing service conversion rates.

Buy the right printer

Buying a printer is one of the most important things in a 3D printing service. Printing quality not only depends on your skills but also it is on the printer you use; so purchase the right printer for your business. You should first decide on the technology you want to use.

Tips on scaling up your 3D printing service business

Offer more technology and materials

There are various technologies that you can choose from. Buying and adding new technology and materials can be a good idea. Adding new technologies means buying a new printer so maybe it is better to think twice and look for less expensive methods to expand your business.

Work with more workshops

Working with more workshops enables you to offer a wider range of technology. Selling a 3D printing service as a broker can be a suitable substitute for expanding your business but not necessarily by buying new printers.

Purchase suitable software

There is some software that can help you in the 3D printing business in different ways: in this blog post, you can read about these softwares:

Useful software for 3d printing