Outer space is now big business. But getting an aerospace company noticed for the right reasons can be difficult.  Aerospace companies need to get their names out amid a host of startups and established companies looking to get into an industry primed to expand over the next two decades. A marketing partnership may be the missing component for visibility and interest in a company’s offerings. Communications Strategy Group (CSG®) can help. Here is our step-by-step guide to choosing a space marketing agency, whether you deal in O-rings for rockets, software for interplanetary probes, or any of the other exciting technologies at play in the space industry.

What Is a Space Marketing Agency?

A space marketing agency is a company that specializes in comprehensive marketing campaigns for companies and organizations involved in the aerospace industry. Whether it’s in LEO or at L2, helping an aerospace company rise above competitors, particularly along digital channels, requires focus, preparation and expertise. A space marketing agency will leverage several strategies to bring your brand’s message before your target audience:

  • Public relations to generate awareness and excitement for the launch of a new product, partnership, or initiative.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on your website.
  • Social media activity, including paid advertising, on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn.
  • Internet advertising, including on Google searches and other SEM avenues.
  • Videos, like those posted on social media and YouTube (the aerospace industry lends itself to captivating footage).
  • Content marketing.

6 Qualities to Look for in a Space Marketing Agency

Just like you can’t put a launch supervisor into a rocket and expect them to make a good astronaut, you don’t want to hire a space marketing agency that does have the capability in-house to manage the nuances of marketing campaigns. Before hiring a space marketing agency, look for the following six qualities. Each of these should show out in some way in the company’s own work.

Insight

You want to find a space marketing agency that possesses industry insights and can explain them in a compelling way. Does the agency know the various space decision makers and stakeholders within government space programs, department of defense (DoD) and commercial companies? Does the agency have case studies? Are the case studies about space companies? Here’s an example of a case study, from work CSG did for the NASA Globe campaign.These should be easily viewable on the agency’s website, or at least you can get access to them by dropping an email in a contact form.

Passion

Look beyond superficial shows of expertise to find out if a space marketing agency is truly passionate about expanding their knowledge of the industry. Look at their social media feed. Have they attended conferences, trade shows, and industry gatherings? Has their body of work grown in a way that suggests continued effort?

Agility

Agility measures how fast an agency can pivot from one task to another. Your chosen space marketing agency must be ready to adapt their strategies when things change. Even though space companies see things decades down the road, marketing isn’t the same. Marketing trends change yearly, if not sooner. For example, consider TikTok.Two years ago, no one cared about TikTok. Now, it is a gigantic engine of public awareness, opinion, and consumer behavior. You need a team that can alter a digital marketing campaign as metrics come in, trends change, and industry players rise and fall.

Modernity

Does the website look modern? Does it load quickly, appear sharp, and have pages relevant to current happenings in your industry? Moreover, does the company foster modern ideals of diversity, inclusivity, and a flexible work environment? A marketing partner for your company must be on the cutting-edge of their field just as you are in yours.

Experience

You can tell a lot about a space marketing agency by its processes when you first contact them. Do they deliver insights right away? Do they understand why you need a marketing agency for your area of expertise? Have they done a competitor analysis as a backbone of your marketing strategy development? You can also gauge an agency’s experience by looking at blogs, case studies, and trusted partners listed on the website. Always ask for references.

Enthusiasm

Again, you can gauge enthusiasm by critically reading a website and through social media. Does your chosen digital marketer demonstrate positivity, energy, and resilience? Do they show enthusiasm for client achievements and initiatives generally? Enthusiasm is the bedrock of passion, and without a baseline level of intrinsic love for the work they do, a space marketing agency cannot give you the results you’re pursuing.

7 Steps for Choosing a Space Marketing Agency

Similar to the multi-step processes used to accomplish a rocket launch, your aerospace company should undertake a multi-step process for choosing a marketing agency. Follow these steps to form a productive relationship with a marketing partner.

Set Your Objectives

Setting objectives for your multi-vertical marketing campaign is similar to setting goals for your company as a whole. Marketing happens on much shorter time frames than rocket launches, but setting goals is the same no matter how you apply the process. What objectives do you want to set? Common ones include greater brand awareness, diversifying your customer base, gaining more customers, securing new funding, increasing conversions, and enhancing sales. How do you measure KPIs for these objectives? This is where you quantify the goals to measure success.

Create a Budget

Your budget depends on your objectives. Do you want to land a $100 million contract in the next 365 days? How much are you willing to spend to consider the ROI to be effective? Or, at the other end of the spectrum, do you want brand awareness? A more modest digital marketing campaign over longer timelines will tend to cost less per month, obviously, than going after explosive short-term results, so you’ll need to find the ideal balance between your company goals and your limitations.

Research the Best Space Marketing Agencies

Look for things that lend credibility to the recent success and experience of space marketing agencies. Search an agency’s website and social media to find elements like these:

Take a look at LinkedIn. How long have employees been with the company? How long has the company been in existence? Is there any word of mouth from former clients you can tap into?

Write a List of Questions to Ask the Agency

You’re the one hiring the agency to run your digital marketing campaign. Before you sign a contract, you deserve to have your questions and concerns addressed. Ask candidate agencies the following:

  • What’s your typical process for aerospace marketing?
  • What can you do for my company?
  • How much is this going to cost me?
  • What big-picture marketing strategies will you come up with?
  • What is the timeline for implementation?
  • Who do I talk to if I have other questions, comments, or concerns?

Consider these questions and any others that are important to your business.

Have Meetings

Meet with the stakeholders of your company to help them understand what you’re trying to accomplish by hiring a marketing agency. Communication is vitally important when selecting a new vendor/supplier. Having internal alignment on the matter will help ensure that you choose an agency suited to your values, goals, and projected circumstances.

Set Expectations

Once you decide to hire a space marketing agency, make sure everyone involved at your company understands the expectations that will come along with the new marketing campaigns. This is the time to set parameters for communication, such as designating a company liaison who talks to the marketing agency. It’s also time to set the expectations for the kinds of PR, content marketing, and social media pushes you want. Figuring out what you’ll delegate to your partner and what you’ll leave in-house means no surprises about your personnel’s bandwidth for tasks later.

Onboard Your Space Marketing Agency

After that, it’s time to onboard your space marketing agency and begin promoting your company through the channels and messaging you agree on together.

What Can a Space Marketing Agency Do for Your Company?

Space marketing agencies can provide a host of benefits related to branding, earned media coverage, organic traffic, and more. Their services include the following:

Brand Communications

Telling your brand’s story requires a storyteller (i.e., a space marketing agency).The brand communications an agency will undertake revolve around getting your story out to your target audience through your chosen channels.

Content Marketing

Content marketing means writing, imagery, sound bites, podcasts, videos, and the like across your website and social media channels. If it’s producible and people can read, watch, listen to or view it for edification, entertainment, instruction or news, it falls under the content marketing umbrella. This type of material makes up the foundation of digital marketing.

Crisis Communications & Reputation Management

In case of unforeseen adverse events, you’ll want experienced crisis communicators on your side who can help you take control of the story and bring public focus back to productive areas. An aerospace marketing agency skilled in reputation management offers just this sort of support.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing encompasses a variety of content. Paid ads, social media, website builds, search engine optimization, multi-vertical marketing campaigns, and videos are all part of a balanced digital marketing battery that can drive leads, conversions, and improved SEO performance.

Internal Communications

Alignment from the inside has a huge effect on the message that ultimately travels out of the company. Internal communications can make sure your team sees the big picture, buys into it, and understands how their individual roles contribute.

Public Relations

A public relations agency with industry contacts and expertise can pitch stories to high-visibility outlets, promoting their company’s work and giving their target audiences a sense of their credibility, vision, and values.

Social Media

Social media allows plenty of room to express a company’s personality and leverage creative content.

More than 2 billion people use Facebook every day — how could any business owner not want to tap into that awareness potential? For that reason, social media marketing is a vital part of any digital marketing strategy. Whether you want to leverage LinkedIn ads to market to industry CEOs or publish a video about your new rocket propulsion system, social media channels give you a place to do it.

Video Marketing

A space agency’s video marketing services can help your company take advantage of consumer content preference for video, bolstering engagement and moving leads down-funnel with sometimes stunning efficiency.

Website Development

Website development can drive organic traffic to your content, move more leads down-funnel, and jumpstart the positive feedback loop of SEO performance and visibility that can make big impacts on a business’s success in a short amount of time. Finding a communications partner who is also proficient in this aspect of marketing can simplify the process of promoting your business significantly.

What Businesses Can Benefit from Space Marketing?

If your company sends anything to space, it needs a certain level of finesse in content marketing and marketing strategy development when implementing a marketing campaign. The following kinds of businesses can benefit from space marketing initiatives.

Aerospace Manufacturers

An aerospace marketing partner can leverage digital and traditional ads, as well as earned media, to put manufacturers’ names out to decision makers of supply, software, and launch platform companies to make sure their products are in consideration for new orders. In addition, they can help these companies build authoritative websites and video content that showcases what they can do. Aerospace manufacturing is a flexible niche with lots of marketing potential, as companies can leverage either side of the supply chain, either as a supplier to the manufacturer or buying products from the manufacturer.

Satellite Communications

Say you have the industry’s best software developers working on new communications protocols and technology, or you’re developing new digital antennas that can send even more data per second. If one knows about these advancements, they cannot grow your business. Running PR campaigns and creating exciting content that touts your next-gen tech, such as video updates and white papers that speak to industry experts while telling your story, can clear this roadblock.

Space Logistics and Infrastructure

Space hardware, which is highly advanced and usually very expensive, needs to get from the plant to the pad in one piece. Digital marketing can help logistics companies tell the story of the journey and how they protect the integrity of the products involved. Given a choice between a logistics partner whose marketing explains their safeguards, experience, and successes, and one whose marketing does not, most aerospace companies will want to work with the former.

Rocket Propulsion Systems

Highlighting the safety, consistency and performance of your company’s rocket propulsion system through digital marketing, traditional media and your owned-media content will help you stand out from competitors and break into new markets.

Space Launch Services

The stories behind a rocket launch are often compelling, full of hard work and heroism, and they often go unsung. A space marketing agency can change that, showing your audiences just how much preparation and expertise goes into a successful launch, and giving potential clients all the more reason to seek you out.

Space Tourism

Space tourism is set to become more and more popular in the coming decades. Business sectors are taking note with sponsorships and high-profile launches. This niche is ripe with chances for earned media such as broadcast media placements and other coverage that generates public excitement.

Geospatial Imagery

It does no good to have your aircraft or satellite taking gorgeous photos from above if the people on the ground don’t get to see those photos. Digital ads, website development, SEO initiatives, and other strategies can bring an imagery company’s offerings forward in search engine results and put more eyes on the company’s achievements.

FAQs About Space Marketing Agencies

Read answers to several frequently asked questions about space marketing agencies.

Is Hiring a Space Marketing Agency Worth It?

Yes. A space marketing agency has digital marketing experts who can elevate your brand, increase website traffic, and manage PR efforts surrounding your initiatives, while you keep your focus on your daily operation.

Can You Advertise in Space?

Yes. There are several avenues for advertising in space, such as selling naming rights for a rocket, having astronauts wear sponsored gear, and selling advertising space on the sides of rockets.

How to Get Started with Space Marketing?

Research your options thoroughly and then contact a space marketing agency for more details. Then wait for them to reach out to you with a proposal.

Get In Touch with an Award-Winning Space Marketing Agency

Ready to reap the benefits of partnering with a driven, experienced space marketing agency? The digital marketing experts at CSG can design a comprehensive digital marketing campaign to propel your aerospace company through the stratosphere.

Contact us to get started.