Mike is joined by Alexander Levitt, Head of Marketing at Forward AM, previously part of BASF’s 3D printing division. With 15 years of experience in marketing, Alex shares insights into his career journey, the evolution of 3D printing, and the challenges and opportunities that come with marketing in a niche industry.
He discusses whether 3D printing is overhyped, core marketing and applications for Forward AM, and strategies for marketing across different industries.
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About BASF Forward AM
Forward AM provides 3D printing solutions across the entire Additive Manufacturing value chain from consultancy, development and innovative design, through digital simulation and prototype printing, to finishing and exhaustive component testing.
Forward AM traces its origins to BASF 3D Printing Solutions GmbH, which was founded by BASF New Business GmbH in 2017. In 2024, BASF 3D Printing Solutions GmbH was transformed into Forward AM Technologies.
Time Stamps
00:00:34 – Alex’s Career Journey
00:00:45 – The Evolution of 3D Printing
00:04:51 – Core Markets for Forward AM
00:08:45 – Balancing Brand Building and Lead Generation
00:10:33 – Challenges of Transitioning from BASF
00:15:24 – Tactical Approaches to Lead Generation
00:22:31 – Future Trends in B2B Marketing
00:24:42 – Final Thoughts and Advice for Marketers
00:27:41 – How to Connect with Alex Levitt
Follow Alexander:
Alexander Levit on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-levit/
Swell AI website: https://forward-am.com/
Swell AI on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/basf-forwardam/
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Forward AM website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Forward AM LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
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Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
Transcript: Interview with Alexander Levitt at Forward AM
Speakers: Mike Maynard, Alexander Levitt
Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today.
Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today, I’m joined by Alex Levitt. Alex is the head of marketing at Forward AM, previously BASF’s 3D printing division. Welcome to the podcast, Alex.
Alexander: Hi, Mike. Pleasure to be here.
Mike: It’s great to have you on. So I don’t know if you could tell us a little bit about your career, how you got to work for BASF, and then how you actually spun the company out and have formed Forward AM.
Alexander: Yeah, my pleasure. It’s a lot of topics. Happy to dive in. So maybe a little bit about my career and how I started. I’ve been in marketing for roughly 15 years, in the past seven years in leadership positions. building, scaling, ramping up teams into high performance and into business generation. Generally, the way that I see marketing, I see that as a business development function. That was always like the bread and butter, as we call it. First of all, get your pipeline ready, get your KPI straight, and then we take care of basically everything else. Generally, I was in the past six years in 3D printing. Otherwise, I was in software such as identity verification and so on. EdTech and other fields, always niches, always B2B niches. So 3D printing quite resonates with me because it’s also a niche of a niche of manufacturing.
Mike: And I mean, that’s interesting, because I think when you moved into 3D printing, I think you said about five or six years ago, clearly it was a hot technology. I mean, that hype seems to have died down now. So what’s happened? Is it really delivering results and just part of manufacturing, or was it really overhyped?
Alexander: It was overhyped. If we want to be straight honest, 3D printing started, I mean, 3D printing really exploded roughly 12 years ago. There was an IP that expired and suddenly the industry boomed. A lot of companies, a lot of 3D printing manufacturers, a lot of material manufacturers, software, they boomed. Everything got out, but the industry is not big enough. And the industry also promised to be the next industrial revolution. Forget traditional manufacturing, forget the way that you used to work. We’re going to revolutionize, disrupt everything. Revolutions are not that easy to create. The fact that you’re saying you will revolutionize, the fact that you’re saying that you will disrupt, those are very big words, especially in manufacturing. You know, it’s the physical world around us. With all the respect to software, there are physical, there are stuff everywhere.
Now, whoever is listening to that is listening on their phone or computer with their headphones or a speaker or whatever. Everything is manufactured. It has been like that for, well, decades in many cases. It’s not that easy to take everyone out of their box. And plus, when you go into industrial, when you go to mass production, your commitment is very high. You’re playing with very, very large companies and your promise is extremely demanding. If you are not accurate in what you’re saying, if you’re overpromising, you’re not being taken seriously. And that’s what happened somewhat with 3D printing. The more mature companies survived. The cool kids from the block, that’s really potentially great for B2C, but for B2B, People are less impressed by that and they want to see properties, they want to see tests, they want to see regulation compliance, they want to see repeatability, they want to see accuracy on nanomillimeters. It’s very hard to achieve. Very hard. So 3D printing is now, you know, it’s beyond the curve. Now it’s in the stage of consolidation. It will return, right? Once the consolidation will end and the market will formulate itself, 3D printing will return to be a big hype, also with new technologies and also with new use cases. Also in places that you don’t think of, right? In Heidelberg, where our headquarter is, there is a building 3D printed. It’s a hall. It’s a very big building. I think in Texas, I read this week or last week, they’re building a neighbourhood. They’re printing a neighbourhood. Printing a neighbourhood is a big deal. And when you print something, it takes you, well, less time and you don’t need thousands of units normally. So those are very interesting use cases also for the future.
Mike: So that’s fascinating. I mean, I’m interested to know now you’ve said, you know, it was overhyped. It’s not really delivered on expectations, but who’s using Forward AM’s products to actually 3D print? I mean, what’s your core market?
Alexander: We focus on four main industries where we identify very high demand. The whole industrial sector, where the machine builders are happening, where you need the tools. This is a classic industry for 3D printing.
Very related, but not the same as automotive. very demanding on applications, very demanding on requirements. And they know what they’re doing. They’ve been working with 3D printing for a long time, not only in prototyping, but also in, well, in end use, in mass customization. We can discuss use cases later as well.
Medical, there are two main use cases which are extremely interesting. One of them we all know, dental. You can 3D print teeth, you can 3D print molds for teeth. Generally, if you put a part in your body and a tooth is in a very demanding environment, right? you really need to know what you’re doing. You cannot, well, the worst case is it’s toxic, right? So you really need to comply with a lot of regulation. You need to be really well on top of your chemistry, I guess. And the other one is prosthetics, which is amazing. There is this NGO that we work with. They’re called Victoria’s Hand. They’re Canadians. they are contributing the designs for prints which they optimize to be printed everywhere in the world, mainly in conflict areas. That’s an amazing use case as well.
You have consumer goods. Generally, mentioning the customers is a little bit problematic because there are so many NDAs, because those are secret manufacturing processes. I can tell you that some of the leading fashion brands are working with us. I cannot mention them by name. But in places that you just would not expect, they use 3D printing for limited editions. Limited edition can be tens of thousands of units, but we’re not talking about millions.
Another industry that we work with a lot is 3D printing. Our business, basically, our vision is that 3D printing needs to be a core element of every manufacturing process, but an element. It cannot replace it. It should not replace it. It’s a lot to expect. So what we want to do, we want to optimize where it makes sense. And as part of that vision, we want to push the 3D printing industry forward. And we work a lot with the 3D printing industry. We work with machine builders, just to name a few, HP, Stratasys, EOS, and 80% of the market is working with us. We work with what is called generally a 3D printing service bureau. So think of a giant hangar or like a giant warehouse with 3D printers and manufacturing on demand. People can print one part or can print 10,000 parts. 10,000 would be more interesting for them, of course, but you can also print your one part. Upload the file to their website and they will print it for you. They can also drop ship it for you. So this industry is relatively big and it’s very interesting. They have to deal with a lot of different use cases. And of course, they’re everywhere. There are those who are also specializing in specific industries, those who are specializing in specific use cases. We work practically with everyone. If you’re in 3D printing, the chances are that you work with us or worked with us in the past or will work with us in the future.
Mike: I mean, that’s amazing. And I think my first question is, as head of marketing, how do you deal with such a diverse range of audiences? It seems like you’ve got to cover so many different industries and markets and personas. I mean, how do you approach your marketing strategy?
Alexander: Well, you prioritize. Not all industries are in the same size. Not all industries are on the same adoption. And some industries are easier to reach out to. In dental, you have five to ten large players. You don’t need marketing for that. You need business development. Automotive, you need to quite make your cases in marketing. It’s also a giant market and it’s also growing a lot. Generally, automotive, if you think about how it develops, they need to find new ways of working. They need to find new ways of manufacturing. They need to drive costs down. They have very serious competitions from different parts of the world. So we focus where we can bring most value. Where we can bring most value is by volume and by use cases. In some cases, you don’t need 3D printing, and we will tell you. You don’t need us. You will waste your time. You will waste your money. In some cases, we can bring enormous value. A very interesting project that we worked on, it was our material, but what was interesting was the development of it, which we also took part. It’s a football helmet, which is from the same material, but different consistency. So it can be softer in some places and harder in some places in the same print. football, like American football. Sorry to all European and American listeners. And it saves lives. It saves lives. It saves life quality and so on. And this is only the beginning. So the way that we go back to your question, the way that we go about it is priority and market size and where we can really help. Right. So not all our materials are good for every industry. So we need to really see where we can make the difference. Where can we move the needle? If we can’t help, then we shouldn’t go there.
Mike: And that’s interesting you talk about that. So, I mean, if you look at the different markets, do you have a different approach from market to market in terms of balancing building the brand versus just driving lead generation?
Alexander: It’s a good question. Generally speaking, yes. In some markets, we focus a lot more on demand generation. So we do want demand generation, by the way, it’s not only lead is also following up. It’s the qualification process. It’s identifying their need. It’s making sure that sales also reach on time. We generally take over the whole lead generation and the continuation basically until the opportunities is created. In some markets, it will not help your lead generation. Lead generation will not be your best driver, let’s put it like this. And brand is not necessarily publicity. It’s not necessarily design or logos or shiny projects or image videos. Brand is also SEO. SEO, for example, is a very strong tool for both branding and demand generation. So you do have a lot of overlaps where you can combine the two. It really depends on what you focus on. Do you focus on volume or do you focus on clutch, money time, money keywords, let’s say. So you’re focusing really on the consideration stage. People who already know what they’re talking about. It still is large volumes, but you are not talking what is 3D printing or why 3D printing is beneficial, but what in 3D printing is beneficial, how in 3D printing we can support. I see that as almost an overlap between brand and demand generation. And the majority of our effort is going there. If you are not yet aware what 3D printing is, You are very far from business, very far in years.
Mike: And I think it’s interesting the way you talk about brand, you know, not just being sort of building that big reputation, but things like SEO, because presumably it’s a bit of a challenge moving from being part of BASF, which is a gigantic company to having to, you know, stand as a brand on your own. Is that presenting challenges for you?
Alexander: Yes, of course. It’s presenting challenges on a level that it’s just a different use case of a company. The brand BSF walks before you. So when you say you’re BSF, your doors are open and there is a certain level of expectation. You expect it to work. You expect it to be super reliable. When you lose that brand, you need to prove it. We are in a lucky position that we can prove it. So the doors are not opening that quickly. which is a little bit early to say, right? We didn’t have any term. So no client said, hey, you’re no longer BSF. You know what? Let me take my business somewhere else. That did not happen. We did expect some kind of a backlash. It did not happen. We do have this tradition. We do have this heritage. So we are able to make those claims of quality, of reliability, of what we promise you is what you will get. We will not overpromise. and we will not under deliver. And this is something that we also need to validate because the expectation now from the market is different, you know, like our customers and generally the market is looking at us. OK, those are new, but we’re not new. We come from the same tradition as BSF. We were formed by BSF. We developed with them. We used their experience. They used our experience. Our heritage, our legacy is almost the same as BSF. It’s the same people. So when we think of BSF, it’s 160 years of excellence of this excellent product. We take that with us. We don’t want to rewrite history, and we don’t try to do that. We do associate ourselves with BSF. We also do collaborate with BSF. They are close partners. They’re very much in the background. It’s a different situation, as you mentioned. However, at the moment, there is no damage caused from it. Quite happy about it. This is our challenge. This is our task.
Mike: Yeah, and I think, you know, often when you have a management buyout, I mean, that’s an incredible vote of confidence in the company by the managers, the people who really should know the future of the company. So I think often that the management buyout is a really positive way to spin a company off from a much larger company. Because it indicates that, you know, not only do people who understand the market think there’s a good future, but also the people driving that business forward are the experts already. I mean, it must help you doing it that way, rather than maybe being acquired by an unrelated company.
Alexander: It’s a big plus for us. Also, we didn’t want to be acquired by any company. The company was not on the shelf and here by it, no matter who you are. We did want to feel good about ourselves and we wanted to stay true to our vision. We did not want to become a material supplier or solution supplier of a machine building brand, for example, which would limit our market, would limit our offering, and you don’t need us for this. So it is a vote of confidence. It’s a big risk, a lot of sleepless nights for our CEO, a lot, and we appreciate him for this. And it’s also a lot for us to prove. I have to say that It’s not a paralyzing situation. It’s not like we have to prove everything to everyone. We start from zero. No, we continue doing our thing. We continue communicating our messages and delivering products, delivering everything on time, working on those applications, bringing this value. This is what we’re focusing on. It’s also a bit of a relief, you know, you don’t need to rethink yourself. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You don’t need to, you don’t have that identity crisis. You know who you are, you lose those four letters in front of your name, but that’s it. You keep the same people, you keep the same processes, you keep the same IPs, you keep everything. It’s actually a little bit liberating because BSF, as you said, is a giant company. They have very rigid processes, very strong ones. They’re a chemical company. So if you take, for example, let’s compare the approach of BSF with another competitor, with a competition, let’s say, from China. And let’s take a material which is the most basic in the 3D printing world, PLA. In some cases, it’s being treated as a chemical. So you have to stand with the regulation. You have to comply with a lot of things. If you’re not a chemical company, you don’t have to do that because generally speaking, PLA will not be used like a chemical. It’s a commodity. It’s a consumer product. Well, it’s a consumer and can be also in industrial zone. It really depends on how the PLA is built. But you generally can do it a lot faster. You can generally release products a lot faster. You can innovate a lot faster. This is also where we are focusing.
Mike: I mean, that’s interesting. It sounds so optimistic for the brand having, you know, moved from being part of this big umbrella brand to having to stand alone. You seem very positive. I’m interested to move to, you know, perhaps some of the more tactical stuff. In terms of driving the lead, you talked about lead generation in some markets. What works for you? What are the tactics that are kind of your go-to tactics that keep driving those new leads and opportunities?
Alexander: There is no replacement for SEO. And you should always look for replacements for SEO, but generally there is no replacement. The user journey, the buyer journey, not the user, the buyer journey. I think it’s proven in all the researches, I don’t know, that it’s not linear. A person doesn’t reach out to you in the beginning. I don’t want to speak with people when I’m researching. I don’t want humans to bother me. I’m reading supplier websites, I’m reading different articles on Google, I’m going to common AI tools like ChatGTP and others, and I’m making my own research, I’m making my own shortlist. The more information I will have there, the more optimized it will be for different channels, the more I will have exposure to your benefits. I will be able to call it very quickly if this is a marketing material, you know, a marketing mumbo jumbo. It’s a very easy kind of, not bluff, but it’s a very easy topic to call, you know, when you see marketing. So it needs to be honest. It needs to be honest and you need to know what you’re talking about. You need to use the right terminology. You need to talk about the right cases. You need to understand what your users are looking for. What kind of questions are they looking for? SEO is definitely a very strong one.
An unpopular channel that works really well, and I’m both sorry and not sorry, is called Calling. It’s amazing. People are answering the phone a lot less than in the past. I never answer, but it works. It works in some cases. I mean, you have conversion rates, you have a funnel, of course, and if you do it in a data-driven way, it works. In Europe, considering GDPR, it’s much more complicated. In the US, it’s a lot, a lot, a lot easier, a lot. Your ability to gain data is amazing.
I want to say that Google advertising or search engine advertising, let’s call it search engine advertising, is a very good channel. It really depends on your product. For us in solutions, it works really well because you need to understand more why. But if I want to buy a spool or a bottle of photopolymer, I will not convert into a lead. It’s a product. I want to buy it online. Don’t call me and tell me, hey, you want to buy this? Yes, I want to buy this. Allow it to buy it simply. So for advertising in search engines, you need a certain infrastructure to make it work. I would like to say webinars, but they don’t really work for business. They’re amazing tool, really amazing tool to create trust, to create this authority, to discuss those innovative use cases, to bring cases from the US to Europe, to China and vice versa. And there is so much knowledge. We have really quite a lot of knowledge in the company. And it’s a marketer’s dream on some level. We are working with so many chemists and physicists and so on. And they can talk about those topics in such an engaging way. Then you as a marketer, you have a different challenge. You need to simplify it. You need to bring it down to earth. You need to bring it down to people who are not experts. This is sometimes our Not a challenge, but this is something that we are actively working on.
So the rest, basically, after SEO, after cold calling, events are a good place as well, trade shows. It’s also for 3D printing, but also, you know, you need to go to the industries that you’re targeting. People will not come to you. They don’t care about you. You need to go there. You need to make a case, a relevant case for them. Everything else are components. So you have your big chunks and everything else you have like a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit here and a little bit here. And you don’t look on necessarily on leads. Leads is a trap. I can go now. I can buy leads very easily. Those leads will never convert. They will not even know that I have them. If I want to break the law, of course. It’s about opportunities. It’s about sales qualified leads. It’s about somebody who was verified for Purchase intent. Purchase intent is generally the game that we’re looking for. If you don’t have purchase intent, we can discuss on a different level. But to gain that purchase intent, to find, to find not to gain, but to find that and also actually to gain it in some cases, what works for us very well are those channels and the rest are, as I said, different components.
Mike: I think that’s fascinating the way you talk about how all these different things interrelate. I mean, how do you see it changing? I mean, do you see any major changes in the next five years, either in terms of, you know, B2B marketing or particularly for you as you’re in your role as head of marketing?
Alexander: Well, yeah, there are several trends which are social and technological, which are very important, I think. Well, it’s a cliche, right? AI is a big deal for productivity. I don’t think it’s a good end-use product. So you cannot put text in AI and then it will emerge into this super engaging video or text and everything. And you’re like, oh, great. Input, output, out. That does not work. Humans are also in five years, in my opinion, will still need to be a big part of the process. You will need to adopt SEO, by the way, to AI. Otherwise, I mean, Google will lose its share. It will still be there, but it will be, you know, like, I don’t know if you compare radio in the thirties to radio today, radio is not dead. Print is not dead, but the proportion changed. I don’t think that Google will be like print or like radio, but it’s definitely something that we need to look at. If we’re talking about productivity and talent, I think remote working is a game changer. You have people that are working in countries which are not considered to be high on talent. Of course they have talent. Of course they have super experienced people. Their salaries are different. Their expectations are different. Their work ethics are different. Your ability to move between countries and your ability to hire from local talent according to your needs, I find that to be a game changer. My team is remote. In my previous company, my team was remote. In my previous company, I had roughly 15 people from seven different countries, all in the EU. We did not feel it. We did not feel those different mentalities or cultures or whatever. Everyone had a slightly different flavour or approach, but that was amazing. It was really good. I would love to return to that model anytime. I think those are the main ones.
Mike: That’s fascinating, Alex, I’m, you know, I feel like I could ask you so many more questions. And particularly the topic of remote working, I think is one that almost justifies a whole podcast. But I’m very aware of your your limited time. So we’d like to ask people a couple of questions, the same sort of quickfire questions at the end of the interview. So I’m interested, what’s the best advice that you’ve ever been given about marketing?
Alexander: It was not by a marketer, but it was by one of my previous bosses. He was a chief commercial. He said it’s always what matters is the story. It’s always about the story, not the numbers, not offering. It’s about the story. It’s finding the right story for the right audience. That’s a great. advice that I got and followed because you don’t need to tell the whole story to everyone. You need to highlight very specific. You have very short time. To more senior marketers, I would also say that develop your own philosophy, develop your own approach and test it and test it in everything. Even if your boss doesn’t let you test it officially, test it unofficially, try to understand different elements. Try to understand how things work, how people react to things, to initiatives, to activities. What did you expect versus What is the reality and why did it happen? Even I would suggest not to have this giant debriefing process with presentations and everything. Just think with yourself and try to implement it in other scenarios, in a different company, in a different setting and be willing to pay for your mistakes and be willing to pay for your sometimes wrong bets.
Don’t think that in a modern environment, losing your job is the worst thing that can happen to you. I think losing your integrity or losing your grip over your career, that’s a much scarier situation. And I’m not saying be a maverick, but see how your approach shapes by the organization that you work in.
And to young marketers, I would say, Do not chase money and titles. If you’re promoted too early, that’s a red flag. If you go after money, you will be stuck in a super comfortable place. And then, guess what? You will not be that young anymore. And your skill set will be, well, quite limited because you will be working in one, two companies. And this is not great. It’s good to change places. It’s good to change approaches. It’s good to fail. It’s good to also not make the most that you can make financially. That time will come, but when it will come, you will make a lot more. You will, you will be in a much better position. You will be in a much more interesting position. If you’re looking for an exciting marketing career, take risks and don’t chase money.
Mike: That’s awesome. What a great way to end the interview. I’m just interested, if somebody’s listening and they’d like to contact you or learn more, what’s the best way to get hold of you?
Alexander: Well, I’m happy to connect with everyone who wants. Best way would be LinkedIn. I’m low on social media intentionally. So LinkedIn would be the best way. I am there, Alexander, Levitt, L-E-V-I-T. That’s me. Just feel free to reach out, discuss, discuss ideas, discuss philosophies, discuss tactics, strategies, always happy.
Mike: Alex, thank you so much. You’ve been a fascinating guest. I really appreciate you, you know, talking to me and thank you for being on Marketing to B2B Technology.
Alexander: Thank you so much, Mike. I’m really honoured to be in your show.
Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or on your favourite podcast application. If you’d like to know more, please visit our website at napierb2b.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.
