Marketing with its safety boots already on
Wrap Marketing is an industrial marketing agency for heavy equipment OEMs and the dealer networks that sell for them. We also work with the hire and rental companies that keep their fleets working. We turn complex machines and services into marketing that engineers trust, buying committees can sign off and branches can actually use. Then we connect it to qualified pipeline.
Your buyers read the datasheet before the brochure
Industrial buying is slow, technical and unforgiving. Your buyers research in private, trust peers over adverts and remember the supplier who let them down for a decade. Technical buyers now complete 62% of the purchase journey online before they contact a supplier. And when two products are technically similar, seven in ten choose the brand they already know.
Generic agencies try to make that audience behave like consumers. We do the opposite. We start with how your market buys: who specifies, who signs and who can veto. Then we build marketing that earns its place in that process.
Most equipment brands do not sell direct, so we plan for the channel too. The dealer, the distributor, the hire desk and the branch decide which of your campaigns ever reaches a customer.
Eighteen months, eleven people, one decision
A capital equipment decision can take six to eighteen months. It passes through procurement, finance and often a dealer in between. Across B2B, buying groups now run to eleven people. Buyers make first contact around 70% of the way through, usually with a preferred supplier already in mind.
That changes what industrial marketing has to do:
- Be findable the moment a problem first surfaces, in search and in AI answers.
- Prove competence before anyone speaks to sales, with specification data, case studies and content that survives scrutiny.
- Stay present through the long middle, on LinkedIn, in the trade press and at the shows your buyers still attend.
- Convert without friction, on a website built to qualify rather than simply inform.
- Close the circle by demonstrating the full lifecycle of your equipment across uptime, residuals, parts, servicing and aftersales support.
We've already done the induction
We have spent over twenty years in heavy plant, construction equipment and hire. You will not need to explain your supply chain.
For Caterpillar, we built one sustainability story that every European dealer could tell in their own market. We also marketed the VisionLink and Product Link telematics platforms behind it. For Finning, the world’s largest Caterpillar dealer, we were lead strategic and creative agency for six years. That work spanned the UK, Ireland and Canada, from dealer campaigns to the Cubiq and FinSight digital platforms. Its parts programme reached a 50% unique open rate and tracked £73,000 of won deals.
We led brand strategy and creative for Sunbelt Rentals, supported the Caterpillar dealer network, including the Cat Rental Store, and helped Instagrid, whose portable power units are now hired as an alternative to site generators, build a pipeline worth over €4.45 million.
See Finning
Dealers do not run campaigns. They run businesses.
If you sell through a dealer or distributor network, your brand is on the machine. But the dealer owns the relationship. They decide which of your campaigns ever sees daylight. Most central campaigns fail there. Not because the idea was weak, but because it was built for head office rather than the branch.
So we build channel marketing the way dealers work. They get one clear story to repeat and localise, plus sales tools that help close a deal this week. Simple rules, fast approvals. It is how we helped Caterpillar’s sustainability message travel across a network of independent businesses without being translated into something else.
Our article on why the OEM campaign dies at the dealer’s door goes deeper.
Questions from the yard
It starts from how industrial buyers behave. Decisions are long and committee led, and engineers research in private. Products are specified rather than chosen on impulse, and routes to market run through dealers and distributors. A general agency optimises for attention. An industrial marketing agency optimises for trust, specification and qualified enquiries over a sales cycle measured in months. Wrap Marketing already has the experience and can hit the ground running (in steel toecap boots).
By treating the channel as an audience in its own right. We build the central brand, campaign and content assets. Then we work with dealers and distributors on localised versions they will actually use. Controls keep the brand consistent across markets. We have done this for the Caterpillar dealer network across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. We also did it as lead agency for Finning in the UK and Ireland, Canada and Chile.
By starting with utilisation. We look at which categories and regions have capacity, and who books them and how. Then we build regional visibility, category campaigns, branch support and a booking journey around that. Brand matters, but in hire it has to show up as availability, reliability and dependability.
A site manager needs the right machine quickly and buys on availability and trust, usually on a phone. Procurement buys on rates, compliance, coverage and account management over a longer cycle. We give each a different journey, different proof and different messages, while keeping one brand.
As a business in its own right. For most equipment brands and dealers, it is where the margin and the loyalty are. Owners need reminding before a service is due, a wear part fails or a machine comes off warranty. And the message has to reach the person who books the work. For Finning, our parts programme reached a 50% unique open rate and tracked £73,000 of won deals. We also marketed the telematics platforms that tell a dealer when a machine needs attention.
Yes. GlobalSpec's 2026 State of Marketing to Engineers survey found search is still the main research tool for 77% of technical buyers. And 69% now use generative AI somewhere in the purchasing process. So every programme we run makes you findable and citable early. That means the moment a problem is first researched, well before any tender or RFQ.
No. Every engagement starts with a free discovery session, then a scoped strategy piece or a programme sized to the opportunity. We would rather earn the next phase than tie you into one.
Hire is a utilisation business. Marketing is a utilisation tool.
Every idle machine in the yard is a cost. Every one out on hire is margin. So hire marketing is about keeping the fleet working, branch by branch and category by category, for two very different customers.
- The site manager wants the right machine, on time, from someone who answers the phone. They decide in minutes, usually on a mobile, and remember the branch that let them down.
- The fleet or procurement manager wants rates, compliance, coverage and fewer suppliers. They decide over months, on frameworks and national accounts, and they want proof.
Most hire marketing leaks in the same places. Branches are invisible in local search and booking journeys are built for desktops. Campaigns ignore idle categories, and nobody can trace an enquiry through to a hire. Each one is fixable, and fixing the first two often pays for the rest.
Thinking, demand and craft. Under one roof.
- Strategy and positioning. Positioning, value propositions and go to market plans built on real market intelligence, so you compete on capability rather than price. Including senior marketing leadership when you need the thinking without the headcount.
- Demand generation. Search, AI visibility, paid media and LinkedIn programmes aimed at engineers and buyers who are actively looking, landing on a website built to convert. Every pound tracked to pipeline, not impressions.
- Brand, creative and content. Technical content, case studies, campaign creative, film and photography that make complex products clear and credible, from the exhibition stand and printed literature to the dealer’s inbox.
- Dealer, channel and branch marketing. Programmes the dealer, distributor or hire branch will actually run, with room to localise and the sales tools to close a deal this week.
Other sectors we work in
The same machine is built by a manufacturer, sold through a dealer, hired out by a rental company and used by a contractor. We work across the whole chain, and beyond it:
- Construction and building materials: contractors and the building product manufacturers that supply them.
- Advanced manufacturing and engineering: automation, Industry 4.0 and technical brands whose buyers check the maths before the brochure.
- Defence: suppliers to the MOD, allied forces and the primes that lead major programmes.
- Fintech: banking infrastructure, payments and regtech that has to make complexity look simple.
- Sustainability and ESG: credible sustainability and social value stories, in every sector we work in.