The VoxelSensors Marketing Playbook: Why They Skipped Having a Website Until CES 2023
Until CES 2023, if you searched for VoxelSensors online, you’d find virtually nothing. On Category Visionaries, CEO Johannes Peeters revealed why this wasn’t a mistake – it was their strategy.
The Anti-Marketing Approach “Until CES earlier this year, I don’t think we even had a website or the website was under construction and it worked,” Johannes shared. “We had fantastic seniors, we met the right people and so we didn’t need to do a lot of marketing to get our name known in that industry.”
This wasn’t about saving money or lacking resources. It was about focus. VoxelSensors recognized that in consumer electronics, their total addressable market was tiny: “In the consumer space, it’s half a dozen, maybe ten, maybe a dozen max… companies that are big enough, that can drive an integration program.”
The Private Suite Strategy Instead of broad marketing, VoxelSensors opted for highly targeted engagement. At CES, Johannes noted, “We don’t go to the convention center, and so we don’t have a public booth. People come to us to see what we do.” They maintain a suite in one of the hotels where they showcase their technology to selected prospects.
The Inflection Point The shift in marketing strategy came with business evolution. “Towards investors, towards hires, towards secondary markets where were of course less known. And especially investors and people that you hire, look at your website and try to understand what you do, how mature things are, how credible things are,” Johannes explained.
This led to a calculated expansion of their marketing efforts: “At the beginning of the year, weren’t doing a lot of great things yet, so we needed to ramp up our marketing game. And so we started making press releases, announcements, being more visible on trade shows.”
The Public Debut Mid-2023 marked their first public demonstration at AWE in Santa Clara. This broader exposure brought new opportunities: “Then, of course, you get all the people you haven’t spoken with, the people in your supply chain, the smaller people, the software developers, that also get an appetite in what we do.”
The Marketing Momentum Rule Johannes highlighted a critical insight about marketing momentum: “From there on, I think once you start doing marketing, PR and communication, you need to keep doing it. And so that beginning of the year, we started, and we’re continuing that in the coming years.”
Key Takeaways for Deep Tech Marketing
- Early-stage marketing should match your actual go-to-market needs
- Direct relationships can be more valuable than broad visibility
- Marketing expansion should align with business evolution
- Once you start public marketing, maintain consistency
- Different stakeholders (customers, investors, recruits) need different marketing approaches
VoxelSensors’ experience suggests that for deep tech startups, the best marketing strategy might be no marketing at all – until you’ve proven your technology with the customers who matter most.