If you’re a business owner looking for ways to grow your manufacturing company, it might be time to consider some tweaks and improvements. We all know that the economy has been shaky and manufacturing is not immune from these challenges. There are strategies available to help manufacturers increase their bottom line by cutting costs and increasing efficiency.
The key is identifying what those opportunities are and applying them. In this blog post, we will cover some of the smart tactics used by successful manufacturers:
Focus on Quality
A significant factor in the growth of any manufacturing business is quality. Quality has become increasingly more important to buyers and manufacturers alike.
How do you use quality as a competitive advantage? There are several ways, and which ones are right for your situation will depend on the type of products manufactured:
- Reduce defects – find out why defects happen and fix the root cause.
- Cut cost – reduce waste by using online quality management software. from ETQ. The Enterprise Quality Management Platform (www.etq.com/platform/) has limitless flexibility allowing you to adapt the platform to your specific quality processes.
- Improve productivity – look for ways to increase the number of units produced while reducing manual labor required.
- Enhance customer satisfaction – find out how your customers use your products and improve design or packaging based on their requirements.
- Reduce changeover – lack of effective changeover can increase costs and time, hurting your bottom line.
Incentivize Word-of-Mouth Marketing Through Referral Programs
Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing available today. People listen to what other customers say about your products. A customer referral program is often cheaper. It gives you a “halo” effect and can be more effective than advertisements or print ads.
Know the Basics of SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most modern and powerful strategies to help increase traffic to your website. Once you have an established site, it’s time to start thinking about how your company appears in a search.
Here are some basics of SEO that every manufacturer should know:
- Start with an established site – a domain name, which is the address of your website, and an informative web page containing information of your products.
- Provide lots of information – adding additional pages to your site will help search engines crawl the content and bring more traffic to your business. Don’t stress about having it all written flawlessly from the start. Start with basic information and use it to drive traffic.
- Link to key pages – find out your most popular product or service pages, and add links within the content to those pages. This will help bring more traffic to those specific areas of your site.
- Keywords – choose keywords that search engines will look for when listing your site. This will help drive traffic to your website’s back-end or any pages linked from other sites.
- Create a blog – blogging is an excellent way to include additional content on your site. It also helps create more keyword links and content that can provide a better search result position.
- Check your results – spend time checking how well your site is doing with search engines using a tool such as Google analytics. This will help you understand what additional content or changes might be necessary to improve rankings and drive traffic.
Invest in the Right Equipment
Investing in quality manufacturing equipment is one of the most critical aspects of your business. The right machines will increase productivity and make the production process more efficient.
The most important things to look at when purchasing quality manufacturing equipment are the indirect costs, including maintenance, spare parts, and energy usage. Don’t be afraid to ask the manufacturer or vendor for all costs involved in operating a machine.
Ensure to look at the software available for your machines and whether it is easy to integrate with other systems. Just because something is more expensive doesn’t mean it will be better. The most important question to ask is whether it will improve your business.
Stay Connected to Industry Trends
Observe how your competitors are doing and stay up-to-date on new methods that might be better for your business. Many manufacturers have a hard time with this one because it means new changes and costs. However, adapting to new technology or methods can help you stay more efficient and save money in the long run.
Takeaway
These are just some of the smart strategies manufacturing industries employ. Be willing to change your approach when needed. If something isn’t working or you do not see the results you want, try and experiment with a different strategy. Start with a small budget and see what happens before spending a lot.