The pandemic sped up many changes for enterprises by forcing them to accelerate their digital marketing efforts.

As revenues dropped due to the lockdowns, suddenly selling remotely became a great priority. Moreover, even engineering minded C-level managers realized that their company might not survive without a great sales and marketing setup, which allows them to generate income with sales people unable to do their jobs as before. In fact, we see a prioritization of Sales and Marketing, as most of the new budgets are actually funneled into this area of IT investments.

Some might look at this as a problem, but in reality, it is the greatest opportunity companies have had in the last two decades. The market (customers) was already forced to adopt buying in the digital space. Payments, delivery and return options are well established, and thus a brand must rethink its digital and sales strategy.

Digital transformation can connect siloes within the company and help efficiency. The biggest impact will be on the top line (revenue), if marketing is allowed to think boldly and capitalize on the credit and trust their brand has built.

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform can greatly enhance marketing processes:

• Speed
  • Get products to the market faster
  • Create campaigns and get influence from the right customers
• Control
  • Help to enhance product design
  • Control spending on marketing channels
  • Maximize profits by focusing on key activities and ignoring unnecessary ones
• Production
  • Focus on creating better content with the money saved
    • Better location
    • Higher-Quality Execution
    • Influencers (celebrities), etc.

Yet, if marketing is allowed to think ahead, it can set up a business model that would benefit the brand, customers and the environment as well. Imagine the following scenario:

What if a major brand used the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to generate marketing assets in the beginning of the process? Then the market response could be gauged, along with potential buyer feedback before it is produced? Then the benefits would be even better for the company:

• Speed
  • Get a product sold before it is on the market
  • Create campaigns and get influence from paying customers
• Control
  • Help to control design of new products with validated feedback, maximize profits by focusing on key features
• Green Effects
  • ​​​​​​​Produce only what you sell, maximize profits, without discounts or warehousing & reduce waste and raw materials needed

Financial benefits

1. Money gets to the company’s bank account months before the first product is ever produced, earning interest for the company
2. No discount is needed to reduce overestimated stock
3. No depreciation of inventory, etc.

Design and Engineering benefits

1. Once the first MVP iteration is ready, the paying customers can already give feedback on the product thus creating accelerated development
2. Multiple Design and Engineering teams can respond to the customer feedback, while others can simply keep dreaming up new products, accessories or iterations for a product that was already successful, hence not wasting time
3. Marketing can then focus on efforts, that will make the product more valuable and extend its lifecycle and loyalty

Environmental benefits

1. Lower carbon footprint
2. Less raw materials needed
3. Less waste is produced

All this made possible by allowing the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to do its job and let Marketing act as it always should – how to sell better and more products, with greater profits to more people more efficiently.

If this idea is far-fetched for you to believe, consider this: Kickstarter and Indiegogo already provide this model to startups. Would established brands with customer trust actually benefit from this?

If you are still skeptical, here is an Indiegogo campaign from 2019, that was asking for about 50K Euros. It was launched by a big brand, and you can see for yourself what effect it had on the customers.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/philips-picopix-max-1080p-full-hd-pico-projector#/

Would your brand be able to do this? With Dassault Systèmes 3DEXCITE, the answer is yes. Find out which roles you need on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to extend the value of CAD into Sales & Marketing: