In an uncertain world like we’re facing today, many countries are lifting their defence budgets, which is leading to more demand for those who supply this sector, particularly manufacturers. It also means there is a problem that most marketers would love: too much demand.
Major defence contractors and their suppliers already have years of work on their order books. NATO spending commitments keep rising, and procurement teams are under pressure to qualify new suppliers faster than at any point in a generation. It is an opportunity for many companies, but defence buying doesn’t behave like any other B2B category. If you run standard ABM techniques, they will not work.
The buyers are not obvious
Defence decision-makers are systematically hard to reach. Many can’t state where they work on LinkedIn. Engineering and procurement teams inside primes operate behind locked-down networks where your retargeting pixels never fire. Intent data, the comfort blanket of modern ABM, is patchy at best.
For each target account, construct a map of contacts. You must be smart, scanning tools like Contracts Finder and Defence Sourcing Portal records to see what’s been awarded and to whom, conference speaker lists, technical-paper authorship, and trade-body membership (ADS Group, techUK). You cannot cut corners.
It takes time. Lots of time.
Defence buying cycles are measured in years, and a design win can pay back for decades. MQL targets are meaningless here and reporting them will get your programme killed before it matures, so build your measurement around movement within named accounts.
Track the metrics that actually precede a design win, such as new stakeholders mapped and engaged, depth of technical engagement, progression from first contact to qualification to invitation-to-bid.
Track independent signals, not lead volume, and always bring in conversations had.
That gives leadership a credible way to judge the programme on the pipeline it shapes long before revenue lands and the patience to let it work.
Qualification is specification-led
Defence is one of the most specification-heavy markets there is. Procurement runs on layered, formally documented requirements. Capability needs to cascade into system, subsystem and component specifications, all tied to Defence Standards, NATO STANAGs and allied quality publications that a single part may have to satisfy at once.
Crucially, this means specification is a gate rather than a preference: parts are formally qualified to a standard, and once a qualified component is designed into a platform, swapping it triggers costly re-qualification, re-testing and recertification, which is exactly why incumbents are so sticky.
Getting specified can mean supplying and supporting that design for the life of the programme, while missing it locks you out for just as long. For suppliers, this makes specification selling close to the whole game. The people to influence early are the design authority – the systems and qualification engineers at the primes and tier-1s – with credible technical evidence, and well before procurement is ever involved.
Get onto the framework, or you can’t be specified at all
Beyond qualifying individual parts, defence buyers and primes purchase through approved supplier frameworks and pre-qualified vendor lists. Achieving the relevant certifications and accreditations (and securing your place on those frameworks) is the gate you must clear before your product can even be considered for a specification.
Technical credibility travels
Defence engineers are professionally thorough, so provide rigorous content. Avoid overly glossy claims and format your assets so they are easy to pull elements from to be circulated.
Align them to the projects and initiatives that are important to your target company, such as in the UK, GCAP and AUKUS.
Commission one genuinely authoritative asset per programme problem rather than a quarter of gated ebooks. A technical paper co-authored with your own engineers that engages honestly with qualification standards, test data and integration constraints will travel through closed networks you could never advertise into. Engineer its distribution by:
- Ungating it. Make it easy to forward.
- Give your champion something to share. Make it easy to scan, read and summarise.
- Seed it where they already are. Standards working groups, trade-body technical committees, LinkedIn engineering communities and the relevant primes’ supplier portals.
- Make it discoverable in AI. Procurement and engineering teams increasingly scope suppliers through tools like ChatGPT. Structure your content so it’s the source those models cite.
The market runs on recommendation
Defence is the original dark-channel category. Suppliers must be respected and recognised, so push your people forward to be people who get vouched for. Get your senior engineers publishing and speaking, brief your existing customers to make warm introductions, and treat every credible referral as a success in its own right.
Treat the physical world as your highest-intent channel
In most sectors, exhibitions are a nice-to-have. In defence, DSEI, Farnborough and DVD are where relationships form because they’re among the few places these audiences are reachable at all. The mistake is treating them as standalone events.
Make the event the crescendo of a three-phase ABM motion, not a stand you turn up to.
- Pre (6-8 weeks out): use your account map to book meetings before the show. Reach named stakeholders through your champions and a tightly targeted outreach sequence built around a specific reason to meet – a capability relevant to their platform, not a generic “come see us.”
- At the event: run booked meetings against an agenda, capture the technical questions raised, and get the next step agreed in the room.
- Post (the part everyone skips): follow up against each account for months, not days – answer the technical questions raised, share the paper that addresses their constraint, and keep the named contacts progressing. The show is where the conversation starts; the pipeline is built in the twelve weeks after.
Budgets are flowing down the supply chain to companies that have never had to market themselves before. The suppliers who build trusted visibility now, map strategic accounts, create credible content, plan events that run as campaigns, and measure in a way that the board believes in, will be designed into the platforms of the next twenty years.