In a subcontract Manufacturing Business you have to wear many hats, sales, marketing, operations, financial controller, you name it, you’re involved. It’s one of the advantages UK Manufacturers have over large overseas competitors, your business is highly flexible and your customers are connected to the guys doing the work. However, it can become a pretty tiresome and frustrating affair, often with potential customers falling through the cracks. So how do you wear these hats, yet still work efficiently and effectively?

The digital age has presented many opportunities for this style of working to flourish. The question is, are you taking advantage of these opportunities?

Let’s take the example of the sales function within your SME Subcontract Manufacturing business. You’re probably responsible for all manner of customer interactions, including marketing activities, and in some cases delivery or contract management. This is a huge skillset to master, whilst also demanding minute by minute changes in mindset. Not to mention time management challenges, always thinking you should be concentrating on “something else”. Dropping one ball to allow yourself to pick up another is a common necessary evil.

Marketing is one ball that often gets dropped, either forgotten about completely or compromised significantly. This typically leads to businesses establishing pool of customers, and then re-selling to the same significant few over and over again. The outcome of this mechanism is a high growth in customer base when the business starts up, followed by months and years of little to no real growth in customer numbers. Returning customers then become more of a significant part of your business, with individual customers potentially making up more than 10% of your revenue and profit.

What’s the problem? This leaves your business in a weak position. Firstly, your position for negotiation is weakened. You realise how important certain customers become, yet a change in management or buying policy at the customer end could mean you lose their business, leaving a gap in your finances. This means you will compromise your margins, sometimes heavily, just to keep hold of that all important customer. This has deeper implications, as you become reliant on certain customers. A slow down in sales for your customers or even a minor financial crisis can lead to a huge and instantaneous loss in revenue.

The learning point here is that growing your customer base is not just a mechanism for business growth, it’s important for survival. Those who invest in ongoing marketing to suit their business see more business stability throughout changes in economic, political and social landscape. The days of having a significant customer for life are almost certainly over, so marketing cannot afford to be the “dropped ball” any longer.

How to pick up the “Marketing Ball”

Firstly, let’s get one thing straight. Marketing is not Advertising and Advertising is not Marketing. Advertising is a facet, sub-set or minor subject within the field of marketing. The temptation is to invest all your marketing effort in advertising, as the effort required can be seen as minimal. Not to mention, we understand advertising best when it comes to the field of marketing. This is because we are surrounded by advertising in our day-to-day lives. This doesn’t mean you’re marketing your business effectively, staving off the risks of having a stagnant customer base.

The good news is, some of the marketing activities YOU can do are not only cheaper, but also a hell of a lot more effective than advertising.

Secondly, picking up the marketing ball doesn’t mean you have to drop the sales ball. In fact marketing activities can reduce the demands on your time for direct sales activities. This is the equivalent of making the balls you’re juggling a lot more balanced, lightweight and easier to handle.

It’s the digital age that has allowed this efficiency and balance between sales and marketing activities to be struck. Marketing channels and activities that work FOR you whilst you’re concentrating on other business critical activities are essential in striking this balance. We’ve talked about many of these activities in previous posts in this very blog, but here I’m going to give you an action plan.

Your Website is Central to your Marketing

Many subcontract Manufacturing Businesses have cited that their website is just there “for show”. This makes very little sense in a world where your day-to-day activities are balanced. More often than not your website is the first point of contact that your potential customers will have with you. This is such an important first contact, you can’t afford to just have an “also-ran” web presence.

This doesn’t mean you need an “all-singing, all-dancing” design with flashy images, pop-ups and the rest. It DOES mean that your website needs to be built with purpose. Your content (the written words) needs to guide the different types of visitors and it needs to result in visitors being prompted to take some action.

Here’s an article on guidance for writing content for your website that directs your visitors and drives them towards taking action.

When getting your website built, you should also avoid making fundamental mistakes. You cannot guarantee the quality of a website from web developers you hire. Some web developers are trading with very little knowledge of marketing and your industry as a whole, so mistakes get made. Find a reliable web developer by recommendation and spend some time reviewing their previous work.

If you don’t know what to look out for in a good website, here’s an article we wrote about common mistakes that we found when studying Subcontract Manufacturing Business websites. Check yours, and the web developer’s previous projects against the list.

Important Points to Remember about Websites

A website is a combination of functionality and content. If either are poor, the website is a failure and it will not lead to a balanced sales and marketing approach. You want your website to work FOR you, so make sure it’s provided with the ammunition to do so.

Functionality

Functionality is the “Web Development” part of the equation. There are loads of platforms out there for developers (or complete novices) to build websites with great functionality. Wordpress is a favourite of many, not only making it easy to build a website, but also a piece of cake to update it.

Content or Copy

Content is the “Marketing” part of the equation. Small web development agencies typically don’t have this resource in house (I said typically). However they may be able to offer the service as they use subcontract “copywriters” that’s copywriters with a “w”. This is arguably the most important part of the equation, with best advice out there stating that web design should start with content. This is otherwise known as “Content First Design”.

When hiring someone to build you a website, first quiz them on development of the content and how they plan on getting to know your business to develop effective content. This will inevitably weed out many of the “Web Development Only” businesses. If they do offer to develop the content, you can expect to pay anywhere between £350-£2000 for the content alone. So don’t get suckered into poor content created for peanuts. Pay peanuts, get monkeys!

Email Marketing is your work horse

Remember I said about driving website visitors towards taking action? That action should be related to getting their contact information. If you know who they are, you can directly market to them. Correction, your email marketing system can market to them. YOU don’t do the work, you let your website and email marketing system take care of things.

This basically means you need to have an email list signup form integrated into or linked to your website. This is really easy and if you’re getting a website built, this should be a part of the specification. I’ve written a series on email marketing, so if you want to find out more I’d suggest you start with Part 1 of the 3 part series right here.

Getting someone to give up their email address can be a challenge, especially if they don’t see what’s in it for them. You need to make an offer that benefits your potential customers. This could be any number of things, a weekly email with useful information or articles, your monthly newsletter, or something called a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a really useful guide, article, poster, checklist or something that can be delivered to the website visitor once they enter their email address.

We wrote a pretty comprehensive article on lead magnets, with a guide on how you can create your very own, check it out here. This can sound a bit crazy, particularly if you think this online stuff is all a bit outside of your “comfort zone”. However, we really break it down in our lead magnet article, and even suggest how you can get someone else to create your lead magnet for you.

Once again, capturing the email addresses, delivering the lead magnet and following up are all automated activities. You setup the system, and it works FOR you whilst you juggle the other business balls.

Search Engine Optimisation is Both for Maintenance and Fine-Tuning

SEO is seriously misunderstood, and in many cases portrayed as a “black-art”. Your web developer will be keen to sell you something like an “SEO” or “Website Maintenance Package”, because they see it as within their skillset. It’s true, there are some heavily technical aspects to SEO, however the Search Engines like Google are pushing more and more towards rewarding those with real capability and authority, not just the technical know-how.

What does this mean? Well, if you want an overview of SEO for Subcontract Manufacturing Businesses, I’d suggest you check out our article on SEO. Fundamentally, SEO has shifted towards mainstream marketing. These days it’s not about “tricking” the search engines into ranking your website, and more about constantly creating new content on your website. This is more often referred to as business blogging. Now this is where time can be consumed and the marketing ball can become over-inflated once again. I wrote an article criticising this movement towards a content driven online marketing world for industries like our very own UK Manufacturing industry. You can check out our perspective on the situation in this critical, but insightful article.

However, there are still some Search Engine Optimisation activities and tactics that YOU can do for your business, without technical prowess and without too much in the way of marketing capability. These activities are described in our series of articles showing you how to boost your online presence by 1000% in short sprints of 10-30 minutes of your time.

You can check out part 1 in the series here where we show you how to claim and create your own Google My Business and Google Maps listing in less than 30 minutes. Best of all, it’s free!

The thing to keep in mind here is that the Search Engines, like Google are looking for correlation and consistency across the web. The more places they find your business information, web address and contact details across the web, the more confidence they have that the information is accurate and relevant.

A word of warning though. Where your details appear is also important. Credible websites, directories, search engines and business lists are where you want your details to appear. If you start putting links to your website and contact details on poorly constructed and poorly targeted websites your website could get punished.

Building a consistent and credible appearance of your business across the web is important. If you follow our 10 minute takeaway series, you’ll be on the right track. So check out part 1 right here.

Important Point to Remember about SEO

It’s easy to get drawn into an SEO or website maintenance contract when paying someone to build your website. Don’t get drawn in by the ease of it. The likelihood is, the SEO activities that your web developer can offer may be grossly misaligned with your needs. If you are going to pay for SEO on an ongoing basis, it better include the writing and publicising of some content that sits on your company blog. If it doesn’t, you could find yourself pouring money down the drain.

Not all SEO’s are bad, but you can be smart with your money. Ask them to do specific activities like those suggested in our 10 minute takeaway series If you can’t afford the time, pay someone else to do it. These will lay some solid foundations for your business marketing activities, without a great deal of cost.

Is that all there is to it?

In short, No. However, if you were to concentrate some effort on getting a worthwhile website built with content that drives action, setting up some basic email marketing maybe with a lead magnet, and doing some free SEO for yourself, I can personally guarantee you will be ahead of the majority of your competition.

This doesn’t mean you can rest easy if you’re already doing these things, their effectiveness can always be improved. You can always use the benefit of your experience to improve and edge forward.

Edging forward doesn’t always have to mean more work or a lot more expense. Much of the effort put into setting up your website, email marketing, lead magnets and SEO is in the up-front work. Once setup, you can move your focus onto the next thing that might move your business forward, remembering you are trying to grow your customer base not for growth, but for survival.

Spotting opportunities to move your marketing efforts forward is about being in tune not only with your industry and your customers, but also with current marketing tactics and strategies. Staying up to date with the best advice out there, directed at the subcontract manufacturing industry couldn’t be easier. Simply make sure you’re signed up to this blog and we’ll keep you up to date and fighting fit, without the hassle and effort required to find information from across the web.

So signup now to receive our weekly article, directly to your email inbox. What are you waiting for? It could be the best free investment you make, ever.

The 8 Key Takeaways

1. You have many balls to juggle and many hats to wear as a busy subcontract manufacturing business. The digital age has produced opportunities for you to change the game, balance the balls and be more effective at juggling, you just need to take action.
2. Marketing does not have to be done at the expense of other activities, in particular, sales. A focus on marketing can make your sales efforts more effective and more manageable.
3. Getting trapped with a stagnant or decreasing customer base is typical of UK Manufacturing businesses who haven’t devoted time to balancing the juggling act between sales and marketing activities. Growth in customer base is necessary to secure your businesses position, not just for business growth. A lack of growth in customer base opens the door to risk and weakness in your business model.
4. A website is central to your marketing efforts in this day and age. Your website shouldn’t be just “for show”, instead should be a funnel through which website visitors can be turned into leads through well written web copy or content combined with appropriate functionality.
5. When building a website or getting one built, focus on content and then functionality. Choose a web developer who understands this and can help you turn your website into a sales and marketing machine.
6. Email marketing is a vital but easily accessible step towards making your website work FOR you. Don’t shy away, get educated and take action.
7. Search Engine Optimisation techniques don’t have to be a black-art. You can take action which delivers real benefit at minimal cost in short 10-30 minute sprints.
8. Keeping up to date with opportunities to move your business's marketing efforts forward doesn’t have to be a full time occupation. Sign up to blogs with actionable advice and remember to take action on that advice. This is what we offer right here at the Manufacturing Network blog.

Conclusion

We hope you took a lot from this article, and go forward to implement our advice. Many of you will even have noticed that we haven’t even muttered the words “Social Media”. There are things you CAN and SHOULD be doing before we even head down that road. Social media is a powerful tactic, but it’s just a tactic. It needs to be built upon solid foundations, which many UK Manufacturers have not yet even attempted, let alone mastered. This is an opportunity, one which should be screaming out at you right now.

If you made it this far, congratulations and thank you for reading. We really do enjoy creating powerful content that has the potential to transform the face of online marketing for the UK Manufacturing Industry. We hope you take action to change your world and advance your business within such an amazingly innovative and capable industry. Power to you.