Marketing for robotics and automation companies

• Pilots convert on payback math, not capability. If your marketing can't produce the ROI model, sales improvises it — differently every time.
• Two buyers, one deal: operations wants the labor answer, finance wants the capex case. Most robotics decks speak to neither and demo to both.
• A 9–18 month cycle means the account has to be nurtured between milestones — which requires instrumentation, not enthusiasm.
• Integrators and channel partners shape more deals than your website does. Most robotics marketing ignores them entirely.

I built account-based programs for robotics at Motivo Engineering — company-specific engagement plans, not spray-and-pray — and ran the conference program at Robotics Summit. I know the circuit (Robotics Summit, Automate, ProMat), the publications your buyers actually read (The Robot Report, Design World), and the difference between the person who loves the demo and the person who signs the PO.

And I can read the engineering. Servo sizing, end-of-arm tooling trade-offs, why your cycle-time claim needs a footnote — a marketer your robotics team doesn't have to babysit is the difference between content that ships and content that dies in review.

1. Build the ROI model as a marketing asset — the payback calculator your champion uses to sell you internally to finance.
2. Map the real buying group per target account: operations, finance, the integrator, the plant manager who can veto everything.
3. Instrument the pilot-to-production path in the CRM, so "where do deals die" becomes a report instead of a debate.
4. Fix AI visibility for your category queries — when a plant manager asks ChatGPT who automates their process, the answer should include you. Right now it probably doesn't.