For cylinder manufacturers, one of the best ways to distance yourself from your competitors is to show your potential customers why they should use your services. Help them understand the secret sauce of your offering— a different product configurator — in a way that will have leads knocking on your door, begging to do business with you.
When you use a 3D cylinder configurator on your website, this gets a lot easier.
A 3D cylinder configurator is a digital tool you can integrate into your website to allow users to get 360-degree and augmented reality views of your products. It can also give them the ability to customize your products.
It interacts with computer-aided design (CAD) to generate images of a prospective cylinder product. This 3D CAD model created by the CAD configurator allows the buyer to see what their customized cylinder will look like before purchasing it.
In short, it makes your customers' lives a lot easier. You should tell them that so they will buy from you. But how can you use it to generate leads?
The answer is simple: by viewing it as a benefit for your customers and promoting it that way.
Here are three ways to turn a 3D cylinder configurator into a lead generation magnet for your cylinder manufacturing business.
1. Visually Showcase the 3D Cylinder Configurator and What It Can Do
A 3D cylinder configurator is an interactive tool enabling distributors to give their users the on-demand capability to design their own customized manufacturing products. Once the customization is complete, you can then produce those products for them.
It's a versatile tool that allows users to draw hydraulic cylinders, configure pneumatic cylinders, and download CAD drawings.
With all of these capabilities, you'll want to show your potential customers how they can get the most out of the configurator. In order to generate leads, you'll want to provide them with the simplest explanation possible.
The best way to do this is to create a video tutorial. Research shows that 65% of the world is made up of visual learners, and visual aids greatly increase the ability to retain information.
Show your customers how simple and easy the tool is and what they can gain from using it. Then you'll increase the chances of them wanting to use it for themselves.
Of course, creating visual aids like this will be helpful. But that’s only if you have the right distribution channels to connect with your audience.
2. Highlight and Promote It in Your Marketing Materials
No matter the product model of your cylinders, you'll want to spread the message of what you can help your customers build with your 3D cylinder configurator.
A great place to highlight this is in your marketing materials. Your website, social media channels, and messages to your email subscriber list are fantastic avenues to tell your audience about the benefits associated with using a product configurator.
These include benefits such as having the ability to better customize and visualize heavy-duty cylinders using state-of-the-art AR technology.
You can incorporate the mention of the configurator in your messaging across channels. It's more than just a capability on your website, after all. It's actually a major selling point as to why customers should opt for your solution as opposed to your competitors.
If you have any case studies you regularly promote, you can refer to the configurator in your "call to action." Encourage readers to try it after you've highlighted the findings of those case studies.
You can even create a short blog post or fact sheet with step-by-step instructions on how to use it. Then you can pair these materials with the tutorial video you created along the way.
Share how flexible the 3D cylinder configurator is to use and how they can incorporate their other materials through automation. They can download CAD drawings or datasheets and then use these as part of the production process.
The configurator's 3D CAD catalog can also give them options on different customizations and variations they can implement.
Framing the configurator as a value add encourages companies to use it to manufacture their products with you. It's an extra edge they may not be able to find elsewhere when they want versatility in the pre-production phase.
Click here to learn more about our 3D cylinder configurator.
3. Advertise It as a "Free Preview"
When you incorporate your 3D cylinder configurator tool into your website — even if you already use tools like SolidWorks and CADENAS PARTSolutions, you should pick a configurator that can integrate with these — it will become a standard part of your sales operations.
Once you're advertising your product, you can use this to your advantage. Tell your customers they can get a "free preview" or a "free trial" of the configurator.
They can design their own product at no charge. You can then direct them to your configurator online, where they can take a no-pressure walk-through of the tool.
Customer Engagement
A few minutes playing around with the configurator, and they'll be hooked. They'll get to see all the ways they can customize their product. It's useful whether they're constructing an actuator or a tie rod cylinder.
They can experiment with the tool, almost looking at it as a toy or a game. Rather than entering the first stages of the buying process, they'll see this as the first step in developing their dream cylinder.
This "free preview" phase is when you're turning your manufacturer into an artist using your 3D cylinder configurator as their canvas.
The ability to preview their cylinder is a major benefit of using the configurator. After building the tool itself using your site, they will then be able to visualize their creation through stunning, photorealistic images and a 360-degree view of their customized, finished product.
Don't underestimate the power of providing your customer with visual evidence of the cylinder they're going to receive based on their precise specifications.
Once they see the configurator's functionality and use it to build their own custom cylinder, they'll be even closer to making the final purchase. From there, you can make it easy for them to request pricing. They can also close the deal and buy from you.
3D Cylinder Configurator Solutions From Threekit
Are you interested in discovering more about how a 3D cylinder configurator can:
- Generate new leads?
- Lead to new business?
- And close sales?
We can help. For more on how to level up your website with a 3D cylinder configurator, reach out to us today.
