Does the space industry need marketing?

Marketing in the space sector starts with understanding the market and delivering real value. It provides a strategic foundation that connects technology with business growth.

If marketing is synonymous with intrusive advertising, cluttering up the Internet, and painfully tedious, sometimes even embarrassing content on TikTok, then indeed, it won't contribute much. But if you are willing to put your old beliefs aside for a moment and look at marketing from a different perspective, we invite you to read on. You will see that we are not talking about excessive spending, but about the foundations of building and developing your business.

Communication is at the end

The concept of marketing comes from the word “market.” And it is the market, i.e., the group of customers whose needs you are able to meet, that is the starting point and foundation of a solid strategy. It is obvious that these customers need to be informed about what they can achieve thanks to you, but we will get to that later. Meanwhile, the key question is: who are your customers?

The answer to this question is difficult because, despite commercialization, private sector development, and decentralization, New Space is characterized by two quite significant problems:

• the vast majority of money comes from grants (e.g., from ESA) or public contracts; the B2B market is still in its infancy

• the founders of space companies are predominantly engineers who are proficient in technology but do not necessarily understand market mechanisms

As a result, decision-makers in the sector, seeing that the flow of finances is primarily guaranteed by the efficiency of filling out grant applications and liquidity in tenders for projects from the military and government agencies, do not see marketing as an opportunity. Or they reduce it to PR, which in turn usually takes the form of cooperation with the press and one-way information campaigns.

The market is dynamic

And here and now, you serve at most those customers whose needs you have identified and convinced to use your services. Therefore, the first step in implementing marketing will not be millions spent on advertising, but cross-sectional analyses aimed at expanding your audience. And yes, in some cases, you will find that you will not find anything else, because you produce highly specialized components that will only work, for example, in suborbital rockets. But according to the Novaspace report, the largest and most dynamic piece of the pie in the space sector is satellite communications and Earth observation (EO), and from there it is only a step away from scaling up and entering new markets.

Examples? There is no need to repeat the well-worn case study of the famous agricultural technology supplier John Deere. Think about the insurance industry and developers who calculate risk and update valuation models. Think about real estate brokers and rental agents who need reliable, low-level knowledge about the condition of a building and its surroundings. Think about banks that want to reward consumers who make more environmentally friendly purchasing decisions. Think about city administrations that want to manage traffic more efficiently. Think about ports, airports, train stations, and pipelines. Think about advertisers who already use geolocation data to identify customer behavior and verify the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. There are countless examples, yet the global utilization rate of satellite data does not exceed 10%.

Choose a direction and scale

Marketing, therefore, begins with searching for a market. A market, i.e. needs that you can satisfy. Go down this path. Don't start with the technology you'll try to sell later—that's the worst decision you can make. Someone once said that the most common sequence of actions in startups is as follows:

• You have an idea

• You create an MVP

• You look for an investor

• You release the product

• You try to sell it

And that's why so many of them fail. Meanwhile, in light of the rules of marketing and, more broadly, business development, it is better to proceed in the following order:

• You have an idea

• You sell it

• With the money from the sale, you build a product (well, its first version)

• You develop it and sell it further

In reality, it's more complicated than that, but this philosophy promotes rapid learning and recognition of market needs. Once you find your product-market fit, i.e., build a product that people (or companies, but ultimately people) are willing to pay for, you've achieved your first success. Scaling a startup is a separate story and a whole new set of challenges. Going beyond the group of early adopters, acquiring larger corporate clients, expanding structures while shaping processes, specializations, and new management methods is a universal minefield. It goes beyond marketing, but on this occasion, it is worth returning to marketing communication. What is it really and do you really need it?

B2B marketing is still marketing

Even if you don't buy ads on Instagram or dance in TikTok videos, you still need to:

• make yourself visible to potential customers

• search for them yourself and reach out to them

• build a sales funnel and relationships with potential customers

• close subsequent transactions.

And this cannot be achieved without the right materials that translate your technology into business benefits in a language that is understandable to people who are not necessarily passionate about space. It also cannot be achieved without the right mechanisms for collecting leads/potential customers, building their engagement, suggesting solutions to their problems at the right moment, and finally – converting them into customers when the purchasing decision window opens.

In other words, you will need a well-designed website, content marketing strategies and tactics, building your position in business (and not only!), social media, customer relationship management strategies and tools, building awareness in the press and at conferences... And many other elements, which – from the perspective of the space sector – you can read about on this blog.