I'm Zach Ronski. I'm the Marketing Director at Fello Agency . We're a specialized B2B tech branding and marketing shop. Lean team. Built from the ground up. No VC money. Just reps, projects, and a lot of time around serious technology.

And when I say "serious," I mean it. We work with companies in AI, advanced manufacturing, MedTech, and defense tech. The kind of work where credibility isn't a nice-to-have. It's oxygen.

If you're a VP of Marketing or CMO at a defense aircraft manufacturer, you already know the real job. You're not marketing to "the public." You're influencing a small circle of people with enormous responsibility. Military leadership. Procurement. Appropriations. Oversight. Allies. Sometimes all at once.

So let's cut through the noise.

Winning government contracts comes down to trust, proof, and clarity. The tech matters. A lot. But the way you communicate it decides whether you even get taken seriously long enough to compete.

Government contracts are a trust problem first

Procurement people don't get rewarded for being brave. They get rewarded for being right.

They're making career-safe decisions in a world that punishes mistakes. That's why defense marketing can't feel like hype. The fastest way to lose trust is the oldest mistake in tech: overselling and under-delivering.

I'm obsessed with this because the trust gap shows up everywhere. In the Edelman Trust Barometer, only 34% of consumers said they trust most of the brands they buy or use. That's consumer data, but the point is universal: people walk into decisions assuming skepticism.

And trust isn't a "soft" factor. In that same survey, 81% of consumers said trust is a deciding factor in what they buy. In defense, trust is even more brutal, because it's tied to safety, budgets, and public scrutiny.

So when you're building marketing for government wins, you're building a trust machine. Your job is to remove doubt fast.

You're not selling to one buyer. You're selling to three agendas.

A defense aircraft deal rarely has one audience. It has at least three.

You have the warfighter or operator who cares about real-world use. You have the General or strategist who cares about doctrine, readiness, and future force structure. And you have the Senator, committee member, or political stakeholder who cares about spend, oversight, jobs, and optics.

When marketing stalls, it's usually because you're speaking to one of those people and ignoring the other two. Or you're trying to mash all three into one message, so nobody feels like you "get it."

This is where I get very direct: your website needs to speak business. Not "business" as in fluffy slogans. Business as in outcomes, risk, proof, and why a decision-maker should spend political capital on you.

How I structure a defense landing page (the simple version)

I like a specific flow, because it forces you to stop rambling.

You start with high-impact visuals that look real. Then you put a clear CTA statement right away that explains why this conversation matters. Not "contact sales." I mean a sentence that tells them the stakes.

After that, you segment proof by stakeholder. You give the operator technical visuals and usage context. You give the strategist capability alignment and readiness signals. You give the funder the money story, the accountability story, and the broader impact story.

I've done this kind of segmentation before in other deep tech contexts. For Sphere, we built distinct industry pages so factories, MedTech, and defense audiences could each land on a page that talked directly to them. Same principle here. The deal is complex. Your messaging can't be generic.

Lead with outcomes. Specs come next.

Deep tech companies love technical talk. Engineers live in technical talk. Defense teams often default to technical talk because it feels "safe."

But the people who approve budgets and sign awards don't wake up thinking about your payload, range, or avionics stack. They wake up thinking about mission readiness, program risk, and how not to end up in a hearing.

So the opening message has to be outcomes.

I'm not saying hide the specs. I'm saying earn the right to talk about them.

When we build homepages and landing pages, I push hard to lead with ROI metrics and case studies before the technical specifications. In defense, the "ROI" isn't always a spreadsheet. It's time saved. Threats diffused faster. Fewer unknowns. Higher readiness. Lower lifecycle headaches.

You can translate those into numbers when you're allowed to. When you can't, you still frame the story in a way procurement can understand.

And you keep it honest. Credibility in this sector is fragile. Once it cracks, it's hard to get back.

Visual fidelity is a credibility test (and the market is changing fast)

If it looks like bullshit, no one's gonna want to work with it.

That sentence sounds harsh. It's also true. Defense decision-makers might be discreet, but they're human. They make snap judgments, then they justify them with process.

This is why visual quality matters more than most teams want to admit. There's user-experience research showing 48% of website visitors judge credibility primarily by web design. Again, not defense-specific, but the behavior carries over. People see your site and deck before they ever see your factory.

I've seen the revenue impact of this in enterprise. I've talked about a situation where a client lost a deal with Amazon solely because their brand visuals were poor. If Amazon can dismiss you over visuals, imagine what happens in defense when your evaluators already assume risk.

Why this matters more now than five years ago

Defense procurement is changing demographically. Younger decision-makers are sitting at the table. The "network-only" world is still there, but it's not the whole game anymore.

That's why I point to Anduril so often. They competed with established primes with unique branding and superior product visuals. It worked. And now you can see legacy players start copying the visual strategies of disruptors after watching them win.

That tells you everything. Visuals are not decoration. They're a competitive weapon.

Classification doesn't kill storytelling. It forces better creative.

In defense, the most frustrating marketing constraint is obvious. You can't show everything. You can't name everything. You can't film everything. Sometimes 90% of your "proof" is redacted.

The wrong response is to give up and publish vague pages that say nothing.

The right response is to get creative without getting cute. You show what you can. You simulate what you can't. You stay honest about it. And you build a narrative that still feels operational.

The NDA reality (and what we did anyway)

We worked with a very early-stage defense company in Canada. I'm keeping them confidential because we were under NDA. This was when drones were becoming a major focus during the early stages of the Ukraine - Russia conflict.

They were trying to raise money and they were getting crushed. Not because the idea was bad. Because they had no product renders and no clean way to show what made them different.

We worked closely with them to generate high-fidelity renders that showed how the product would work and what the design capability looked like. Their deck became sharper. The story became easier to believe. They were able to raise a bunch of funding off the back of that.

That's the job. Make the work legible to the people who control the next step.

My go-to approach when footage is restricted

When a client can't share real-world visuals, we lean into 3D renders that simulate the product in the environments it's designed for. Over water. In the air. On land. We can show performance concepts without exposing classified details.

We also film controlled exercises when possible. Not combat footage. Just proof that it works in a field context. That's how you fight the "science project" stigma without pretending you have combat validation you don't have.

And every time, I come back to the same rule: be honest. If you oversell, you lose.

"Past performance" is not a buzzword. It's procurement language.

Here's where marketing teams sometimes get stuck. They treat case studies like nice content. In government contracting, proof is part of how awards happen.

Under U.S. federal procurement rules, evaluators look at past performance alongside price when making award decisions. That's not a "marketing preference." That's literally how the system works.

So when I see a defense company with no dedicated case study or testimonial page, I treat it as a red flag. You're asking someone to trust you with a serious commitment, and you're making it hard to verify you.

And if you're asking for high-six-figure contracts or more, written testimonials alone often feel thin. At that level, professional video becomes part of the trust package. It signals you're serious. It shows you can execute. It makes the proof easier to digest.

How to case-study in defense when you can't name names

You focus on the customer's perspective, even if the customer has to stay anonymous. I'm strict about this in every industry: the story needs to be told in the customer's voice, not your product voice.

When I interview customers, I ask about the frustrating times before they had the solution. That's where the truth comes out. That's where the emotion comes out. And in defense, emotion doesn't mean drama. It means stakes. Safety. Time. Risk.

You can also structure proof around outcomes that don't violate security. You can talk about what changed operationally. You can talk about what got faster, safer, or simpler. You can talk about readiness. You can show a render. You can show a controlled demo. You can show a workflow.

You can build trust without spilling anything you shouldn't.

Yes, you still need to "sell a lifestyle" in defense

I know how that sounds. Defense isn't sneakers. Defense isn't "vibes."

But the principle holds. People buy the result. They buy what life looks like after the decision. They buy the experience of being safer, faster, and more capable.

I say it like this: not how smart the device is, but how much smarter you're going to be.

In defense, the emotional hook that lands is force protection and threat diffusion speed. Procurement officers are risk-averse for a reason. They don't want to gamble with lives. So your narrative has to respect the reality they live in.

For that early-stage drone company, we framed the story around diffusing threats quickly and protecting the people operating in the field. That's what mattered. Specs supported the story. They didn't lead it.

Human selling still runs this world (AI won't save you)

Most defense deals take time. Six months. A year. Two years. Sometimes longer. And a lot of the key stakeholders are older and relationship-driven.

So I'm going to say something I say in every sector: you still need a driver behind the car.

AI can help you produce. It can help you move faster. But if your marketing turns into AI generated slop, you lose trust. If everybody's "super," then nobody is. The content all starts to look the same, and serious buyers tune it out.

Your marketing should make your human conversations easier. It should give your BD and government relations teams tools that hold up in a room where nobody wants to waste time.

One simple tactic I like in long cycles is high-value content downloads, like brochures, that capture contact info and keep your brand resonant between meetings. People forget. Calendars get packed. Staff turns over. A clean follow-up system matters.

Your website is not a brochure. It's an operating system.

I'll say it the way I actually say it: if you don't have a proper CMS, there is no point of even having a website.

I've seen teams get trapped by unmanageable website builders. I've also seen companies stuck with legacy backends built by a developer who got fired. The site becomes a museum. Nobody can publish. Nobody can update. Then the brand goes stale right when the market shifts.

One benchmark I use is simple. Your team should be able to launch a blog post within three minutes once the content is ready. If it takes longer, people stop publishing. Then you lose momentum.

At Fello, we build fully editable, autonomous websites because clients hate being dependent. They want control. They want speed. They want to move without booking a developer for every change.

Collector pages still matter in defense

Not every page is meant to "convert" today. Some pages build loyalty and legitimacy over time. I call them collector pages. Your mission, your partnerships, your about page, your credibility story.

Defense buyers often lurk before they reach out. They're watching. They're listening. They're checking if you're real. Collector pages help you build that quiet trust.

Landing pages do the opposite job. They drive action. They support specific program conversations. You need both, and you need them to feel like they came from the same serious company.

Speed wins, even inside slow procurement

Procurement is slow. Politics are unpredictable. Budget cycles are brutal.

You can't control most of that.

You can control how fast you move on your side.

I tell clients this all the time: you need to move 10 times faster than you think you do. Especially when you're well-funded. Money can make teams complacent. It takes the pressure off. Then the market passes you.

At Fello, we move fast because we're prescriptive. We do research, then we tell you what's going to happen. That cuts the committee loop. It cuts the endless options. It keeps the project from dying in internal politics.

And if you're operating in Canada, you feel this even more. Canada is a great place to build deep tech. We have resources. We have talent. We're terrible at going to market. The U.S. says "why not." Canada says "why." That cultural drag shows up in marketing timelines too.

A clean 90-day push to improve contract-winning marketing

You don't need a reinvention to get better fast. You need focus. Here's how I'd run the next 90 days if I was sitting in your seat.

Weeks 1 - 2: Find the trust leaks

Look at your website and top decks like an evaluator would. Where does it feel outdated? Where does it feel vague? Where does it feel like 10 departments wrote one paragraph?

Also check the basics. Do you have a strong case study hub? Can someone find proof in 30 seconds? If they can't, you're forcing them to take a risk on faith.

This is also where you find out what pisses off your clients the most. Not what your team thinks matters. What creates friction in real conversations.

Weeks 3 - 6: Build one story that can handle multiple stakeholders

Write one clear positioning statement that a non-technical leader can repeat. Then build the landing page structure around your three core audiences: operator, strategist, funder.

Get the decision-makers involved early. Loop in the right people. If you don't, you'll get late-stage edits that slow everything down and water it out.

Weeks 7 - 10: Create proof assets that survive classification

Pick one flagship proof asset and do it properly. A sanitized case study video. A filmed exercise. A render-based capability story. Something that signals operational maturity without pretending you can show everything.

This is where visual fidelity matters. Multi-million and billion-dollar commitments demand Michelin-star details. If your visuals look cheap, the buyer assumes something else is cheap too.

Weeks 11 - 13: Deploy a system, not a one-off

Once you have a flagship asset, squeeze value out of it. Repurpose it into a written PDF, a web case study, and slices your BD team can use in outreach. That's bang for your buck. It keeps the message consistent, and it saves time.

Then make sure the website infrastructure can keep up. If publishing is painful, you'll stop. If you stop, you fade.

The closer: world-class tech still loses without trust

I've been in rooms with companies building the future. Quantum computers. Industrial 3D printers. Defense tech that's meant to protect people.

The pattern is always the same.

The companies that win very heavily don't only build the best tech. They build the clearest story, the strongest proof, and the most believable presentation. They respect the politics of the decision. They respect the human risk.

If you want more government wins, don't make evaluators work to understand you. Make it obvious. Make it credible. Make it easy to trust.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does website design actually influence government procurement officers?

Yes, it is a primary credibility filter. Research indicates that 48% of visitors judge credibility based solely on web design. In defense, where risk aversion is paramount, low-fidelity visuals suggest low-fidelity engineering. Evaluators act like consumers. If your digital presence looks outdated, they subconsciously question your program's technological maturity before reading a single spec.

How do we align engineering specifications with mission-focused messaging?

Lead with the operational outcome, then validate with the spec. While engineers live in technical data, funders and strategists care about risk and readiness. Your narrative must first explain how the platform changes the mission reality - such as threat diffusion speed - then use the technical specifications as the proof layer. You have to earn the right to talk about the avionics stack.

Why is brand trust considered a critical factor in defense contract awards?

Trust is the currency of procurement. With only 34% of consumers trusting brands generally, skepticism is the default state. In defense, where mistakes cost lives, this is amplified. Since 81% of buyers cite trust as a deal-breaker, your marketing must function as a risk-reduction machine, using past performance and visual fidelity to remove doubt.

What is the best way to maintain engagement during multi-year acquisition cycles?

Focus on 'collector pages' and high-value tangible assets. Since decision cycles can last years, you need mechanisms to stay top-of-mind without being annoying. High-quality digital brochures and white papers capture contact info, allowing you to nurture relationships through inevitable staff turnover. You are building a digital infrastructure that keeps your brand resonant between the quarterly meetings.

How can marketing support government relations and lobbying efforts?

Marketing must provide 'air cover' for the Hill. While lobbyists work the relationship, your content must arm them with clear, defensible narratives that justify political capital. By creating high-value collateral that simplifies complex tech into mission outcomes (jobs, safety, readiness), you give your BD teams tools that hold up in rooms where you aren't present.