Vision Systems Design recently published their 2025 Marketing Benchmark Report. It points out current trends in the marketing field and how they impact marketeers in the vision industry. Here are our learnings.

1. Marketing investment to drive lead generation

The report highlights key shifts in marketing investments, emphasizing a strong commitment to budget growth, with nearly 60% of marketers expecting an increase. Investment priorities include branding, lead generation, video marketing, and content development, reinforcing the growing importance of digital engagement. 

Our take-away:
Invest wisely into content that really resonates with machine vision audiences.

Sadly, marketing budgets are often the first to be cut in difficult financial situations. After a slow year 2024, the anticipated budget growth can be interpreted as correction back to normal or as a sign that companies are still struggling to generate enough leads to grow their business. Either way, generating engagement and leads requires valuable content. This is where many advertising agencies and service providers fail to deliver valuable support to our industry. Because fancy videos are worthless if they don’t deliver the right message and the right information for the machine vision audience.

At Vision Markets, we pair marketing expertise with in-depth technical understanding of computer vision technologies, their applications and markets. This allows us to craft content that really brings value to your audience and generates engagement.

2. Leveraging AI

AI adoption is on the rise, with half of marketers leveraging AI tools for content creation, the report shows. However, many struggle to balance automation with human creativity, pointing to the need for refined integration strategies. 

Our take-away:
Use AI but don’t step into the pitfalls.

For sure, AI tools save a lot of time and money. At Vision Markets, we use AI tools for translation, text generation, image or video generation, etc. For example, we can create a realistic video avatar for your tutorial videos rather than organize a costly shooting with an internal expert who may not be a great talent in front of the camera anyway. But our experience is that while these tools can speed up execution, they require the strategic masterplan of a human being to clearly define the message to be delivered and prompt them properly.

We also recommend to NEVER publish AI-generated content blindly as errors can always occur. This is where our vision expertise comes to play. We can do more than just prompt Chat-GPT. We can also proofread and edit its content to make it more valuable and personalized to your company and your audience.

Another aspect is authenticity. Even in such a tech industry as ours, people do business with people they trust. Nothing tops a good conversation with real people, as shown by the next finding of the report.

3. Maximize ROI of live events

According to VSD’s report, lead generation remains a top priority, with in-person events and webinars emerging as the most effective tactics. The focus has shifted toward acquiring high-quality leads rather than sheer volume, underlining the necessity of targeted marketing efforts. Event marketing continues to be a powerful tool, with 63% of marketers generating a significant portion of leads from live events. However, challenges such as measuring ROI and attracting the right audience persist.

Our take-away:

Invest not only in the event, but also in its promotion.

Focusing on lead quality rather than quantity makes a lot of sense but puts marketeers in front of a challenge: How are they going to deliver those quality leads to sales? As stated above, one key is quality content, as content engagement is a proof that a person has an active interest in a given technology or product. Events must be marketed like a product, with a comprehensive campaign upfront to attract visitors and participants. Once the first contact has been made, there are techniques to further nurture them with content and track their engagement level for lead qualification. Automated solutions like lead scoring help focus sales efforts on leads with the highest level of engagement. Contact us for advice!

4. Video as a powerful educational format

Video marketing is playing an increasingly vital role, particularly for product showcases and educational content. Budget constraints and skill gaps in video production remain hurdles, but organizations that invest in storytelling and analytics are seeing stronger engagement, says Vision Systems Design.

Our take-away:
Video doesn’t have to be complicated and expensive!

We too see video as a great format to quickly and simply educate an audience on your product. The good news is: there are many different formats beyond real-life shootings that allow us to produce tutorial videos fast and at an affordable cost for our clients – for example animated slideshows, cartoon animation, whiteboard animation, on-show demos, etc. Contact us for help!

5. Monitoring success

Finally, according to the report, research and data-driven strategies are becoming essential for marketing success. A mixed-methods approach combining surveys, interviews, and focus groups is helping marketers gain deeper insights into customer behavior and industry trends.

Our take-away:
Use market research before, during and after your marketing campaigns

Vision Market’s market research helps our client target the right segments and make informed decisions. We track the success of our campaigns with various tools such as our popular Search Engine Ranking Position report. We also help our clients perform ad-hoc research, for example with online surveys. For example, we recently organized a loaner campaign for a leading camera manufacturer combined with a feedback survey.

More than ever, marketing communications is key to grow your business in the machine vision market. With Vision Markets, take advantage of our double expertise: in marketing techniques and in vision technology.