top of page

What Content Will Have The Biggest Impact In 2025?

Updated: Jan 23

We’ve studied the competition, and we know how your marketing can stand out and get results! This article provides you with content ideas that use the latest digital trends and technology to improve your brand awareness, engagement, and product understanding.



3D render headshot of Matt. Dark Star Labs' Creative Director.

First Officer's log, Stardate 2025.01.23

Matt, Creative Director at Dark Star Labs





"This past year, Dark Star Labs embarked on an enlightening mission: to explore the marketing strategies of the galaxy's most innovative engineering companies.


Our prime directive, of course, remained unwavering: to provide immersive and engaging marketing experiences for the engineering industry.


We boldly delved deep into the marketing efforts of countless engineering companies. We analysed websites, dissected social campaigns, and even attempted to decipher the enigmatic language of some of their more…technical white papers.


We partnered with forward-thinking engineering companies, offering our expertise to translate their complex innovations into engaging stories, and transforming dry technical data into visually stunning interactive 3D content.


The below report shares the key insights and content ideas that we believe will bring impactful results.


Join us on this journey of discovery as we explore the future of content for the engineering industry."




Table of Contents






5) FAQs





This image shows the title of the blog with some branded graphics.



1. What Is The Challenge For B2B Engineering Content?



In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, the engineering industry is facing a unique challenge:


How to effectively communicate complex products in a highly competitive global space, to an audience that's overwhelmed with content.


Traditional marketing approaches have relied a tad too heavily on static brochures and presentations, which are no longer sufficient to capture attention, drive engagement, and ultimately, generate leads. The best way to get people engaged with your content is to make it a novel, fun experience that helps them solve their problem.


Imagine your audience interacting with your products in real-time, in 3D on your website (a little bit like this ⬇️), visualising all the possible configurations, its core features and benefits explained through simulations right there on the product page, without them having to open another window or scroll to the bottom of the page. Oh, and it also works on their phone!




This is an example of a simple Interactive Product Viewer. Give your customers all the information they need

to make a purchase. All in one interactive window embedded in your current site.



Imagine trade show event attendees queuing at your booth to immerse themselves in your bespoke VR experience or to beat the high score on your branded mini-game. Imagine them exploring your entire product ecosystem on a touchscreen, simulated in an environment that relates to them, that shows their problems being solved by your product.


These are not just futuristic fantasies; these are the real possibilities of modern content marketing. This article will explore how embracing innovative content formats, such as 3D animation and interactive 3D experiences, can revolutionise your marketing efforts and propel your brand to new heights.




2. How Do Your Competitors

Stack Up?



The good news (for you and us) is that many of your competitors haven't embraced this new form of content... yet!


Although some of the industrial manufacturing giants have got some great 3D animations and have started dipping their toes into interactive content for their trade show booths, there is still a long way to go before our vision is complete. It seems very few engineering brands have followed through to create a catalogue of consistent content that entertains and educates their audience on the true value of their entire product ecosystem.


All too often a new product gets one 5-minute video with 30 seconds of animation which is jam packed with industry context, technical details, and engineering jargon. 


Whilst I understand why this happens (I spent 10 years making marketing videos for a FTSE100 engineering company), it doesn't have to be this way. Essentially, content marketing shouldn't be a series of unrelated videos and posts - everything should work together to build a clear message that delivers more sales.


Interactive 3D web experiences and virtual 3D product ecosystems at industrial manufacturing trade shows are very rare indeed. Honestly, this isn't surprising - this content is new and shiny. It wasn't possible for the average business 5 years ago. Advancements in software and hardware have recently made this content cost effective, and therefore, worth the investment. This is the content that will make an impact!


At Dark Star Labs we embrace this technological shift and are committed to nurturing it within the engineering industry, because we believe it is a powerful tool in communicating the amazing innovations that engineers produce.




 

What Is Interactive 3D Content?


Interactive content gets over 50% higher engagement than static content. Traditionally, it can be anything from polls, quizzes, infographics, charts, contests, chatbots, or videos, but that's not what we are talking about here.


We are bringing a whole new dimension here at Dark Star Labs. We're talking about users interfacing with 3D objects in 3D environments in real time, online through websites or in person with touchscreens, VR headsets, or with AR on mobile phones.


This is the future of marketing.


 



3. What Can Be Improved?



Onto the research! We analysed the content for over 500 industrial manufacturing companies (yes, it took a whole year!), and we have highlighted some areas where we think content can be improved. Don't worry we won't be naming names.



Social Media


It was good to see that many brands have embraced social media (specifically LinkedIn - probably the best place to invest your resources if you're B2B), but at times it was difficult to discern which content belonged to which company.


This is an all too common situation across many industries, and something content marketers will always be challenged with. HubSpot wrote a helpful blog on this last year, read it here.


When it came to video content (video is winning when it comes to engagement), we found a surprising lack that explored actual products and services. Any videos that did highlight the product had a heavy use of stock footage and static 2D technical images and charts, and some of the videos were even PowerPoints recorded over teams (not good).



Posts with 3D animations have been shown to increase engagement by 120%. - Source link in resources section.


Here are some recommendations to make a bigger impact with your video content:


  • Make more videos about your products: Selling your products is the purpose of marketing. If you get 60 seconds of quality 3D animation of your product's key features then you can reuse and recycle it across all your social channels, enhancing your posts, blogs, webinars, and presentations.


  • Use 3D animation: If a picture paints 1,000 words, then a 3D animation paints 1,000,000. As they say in Hollywood "show, don't tell", and anything is possible to show with 3D animation.


  • Steer clear of filling your videos with stock footage: This is what makes a lot of content indistinguishable online. Your target audience knows what industry your products serve, so show them the good stuff, the unique innovations that make your product the best.


  • Keep your videos short and focused on one message at a time: It's better to produce several short videos that separately tackle specific features in a product, than to produce one long "heavy" video.


  • Work with your sales teams: Discover what the most common questions and pain points are for your customers and then target each topic with its own video that clearly shows how your product provides the solution. This will also give you a few weeks of focused, valuable content to post across your platforms (using those 3D animations you prepared earlier to stand out).



Company Website


We found many websites were in need of modernising, but I imagine you know that already.


Interestingly, it was the product pages that were lacking the most for us, often showing only one photo of the product with minimal details. Customers want to be handed everything they need to know about your product in a user-friendly experience, it saves them time and time is money.


The best websites had multiple photos of the key components of the product and graphics that highlighted the inner workings, but with 3D animation and interactive 3D this could be enhanced so much more.



Having product videos on the product page has been found to raise conversion rates by 60%, and interactive 3D has been found to raise it by 94%. - Source link in resources section.


Your customers are too familiar with the user-friendly web experiences consumer companies like Apple provide, where the images are super high quality and videos automatically play to catch your attention. They guide you through each step with little beautiful bites of visualised information, educating the customer along the way. Even when you manage to convince yourself you don't need that shiny VR headset, you still walk away with all of the marketing messaging in your head, it becomes the bar you compare everything else to.


Some specific product landing pages were more effective as they had been clearly designed for a purpose, but these were difficult to find.


Here are some recommendations to make a bigger impact on your website:


  • Uplift the customer experience on your product pages: Do yourself a favour and go over to the Apple website or the Google store. They are product-focused and easy to navigate, and there's no reason why B2B websites should be any different.


  • Post links to your product landing pages across all social media channels: LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. The more ways to find your products, the better.


  • Simplify the customer journey: Websites with lots of pages can sometimes be a navigation nightmare. If it isn't clear where a user needs to go to find the information they need, they will often go to a different website. Remove or combine pages to make the user journey easier.


  • Target high value spaces for improvement: If you don't have budget for a full website uplift then pick specific high value pages or embed frames onto those pages with quality content like 3D animations and 3D product viewers. Dark Star Labs can help you with this.



Trade Show Booths


We found this to be a mixed bag. There are some innovative companies out there putting together some really interesting booths, and they are leading but there are some that aren't given the right budget to compete (you know who you are).


Traditional engineering trade show booths often rely on static displays, physical product demonstrations, and video loops playing on screens that are frankly too small. While these elements can provide some information and engagement when done right, they often lack the dynamics and flexibility needed to truly make an impact.


If an event attendee pops into your booth after the end of a video has caught their eye, do you think they'll wait patiently for that video to loop back around? Wouldn't it be better if they could walk up to the screen and choose the content that solves their problem?



Interactivity at booths has been shown to increase the level of engagement between visitors and exhibitors by around 50%. - Source link in resources section.


If your company exhibits at a lot of trade show events this should be something you take seriously, because your customers will be able to compare you with your competition, sometimes your booths are literally opposite each other.


Here are some recommendations to make a bigger impact with your trade show booth:


  • Get interactive: If you want to pull people in and keep them there while your sales teams chew their ear off, interactive 3D content is the way to go. Advanced product configurators, product simulations, or even a branded mini-game that sees your product as the hero!


  • Embrace digital: Save yourself some money and stop shipping big, heavy demo parts around the world. Go digital with a touchscreen that has some awesome content on it. Make it once, use it at every trade show.


  • Make teaser videos advertising your interactive booth: Before the event, share a sneak peek of the value your booth will provide. This will give your audience something to look forward to. They'll seek your booth out to interact with the simulations or to play your game. You could also post a video after the event that shows how well it was received. It could simply be smart phone footage of people interacting with your content and some text cards that highlight the impact it had.


  • Make a hybrid event: Your physical booth is set up in Germany, and your digital replica of the booth is also live on your website, bringing your whole global audience together. Use the event to promote your interactive website, anyone who couldn't go to the event can now at least see your booth from the comfort of their laptop. This is a bit more advanced and will need a strategy to make sure it's successful, luckily we can help you there.




4. What should we do?



To summarise, if any of these areas of improvement sound a little too familiar, don't worry, you have more options now than you ever did, and the options are actually really fun and very effective. Don't forget, your competition is pretty much in the same place, so getting ahead won't be too much of a challenge.


Examples of 3D animation & Interactive by Dark Star Labs.

And how will you get ahead? With 3D animation and interactive 3D content of course! Now is the best time to start. We will see more interactive 3D content in 2025, the question is, will it be your content that gets shared and reposted, or your competitors?






  • Will you cut through the noise? Stand out from the competition with content that is visually stunning, engaging, and memorable. Setting the bar in your industry with high-quality, educational product simulations.



  • Will you enhance your brand perception? Position yourself as a leader in innovation and demonstrate your commitment to providing a superior customer experience, giving them something new and fun to share with their communities.



  • Will you drive meaningful engagement? Foster deeper connections with your audience by creating interactive experiences that allow your customers to actively engage with your products, and learn about and connect with your solutions.



We will be releasing more blogs in the coming months to help you understand and implement these innovative forms of content.


If you would like some help understanding the possibilities right now, then Dark Star Labs is always happy to have a free consultation call with any company that is flirting with interactive 3D.


We are super passionate about making social content, websites, and trade show events fun and impactful with 3D animations and interactive content.




5. FAQs



Where is the best place to start implementing interactive 3D content, and why?

Your website. It's running 24/7, it's global, and it should get more qualified eyes than anywhere else. Enhancing the customer experience on your website is the best place to start and it will see the highest ROI. More visitors, spending more time on your site will improve your SEO.


Preferably, you want to focus on your products - 3D product viewers, configurators, interactive simulations, or mini-games that teach the user how your product is the best solution and how your brand has the best service.

How can I integrate 3D interactive elements into my current website?

What is a 'virtual product ecosystem'?

What are the costs involved with 3D animation and interactive content?




6. Resources









Dark Star Labs Dry Gas Seal product viewer: https://seal.darkstarlabs.io/




Want to add 3D animation and interactive content to your strategy?

bottom of page