Getting more business for your CNC shop is a lot easier if you let potential customers know who you are, remind past customers you’re still around, and make current customers aware of all of your capabilities. Hopefully you’re doing this through personal contacts, email marketing, and inbound marketing using blogs and your Web site.
However it’s easy to overlook one of the most effective and low-cost tools available for building and maintaining awareness: Public Relations. Here are some of the PR tools that can help promote awareness of your shop.
- Press releases. Keep your local media and appropriate trade publications aware of positive news about your business. Have you added capabilities? Are you using new technologies like 3-D printing? Have you landed a big order? Have you won awards from customers, suppliers or associations? Have you hired or promoted a key staff member? These are all legitimate news items you can write up and deliver to the media outlets. They should be written in a journalistic style, be concise and include photos when possible. If you’re not sure how to properly compose press releases, there are independent PR professionals in your market who can help.
- Special events. If you hold a career day, participate in a local charity drive, have an open house or conduct other events, contact your local media. Often newspapers, TV and radio stations cover such activities.
- Case studies & technical papers. National trade publications are always looking for interesting case studies that demonstrate techniques their audience can relate to and learn from. Let’s say you developed a time- and labor-saving method to perform a particular machining process, or that you’ve successfully instituted lights-out production. You may be able to interest a publication in writing an article about your experiences. Again, you can use a professional PR provider to write up and pitch the story or you can contact the publications directly. Don’t believe your customers read printed magazines anymore? All major trade publications have online editions as well.
- Post videos. Among the highest performing communications tools are online videos. YouTube is one of the top search engines people use when looking for solutions to problems or to explore new technologies. Consider posting videos of new or unique equipment you’re using so people can see that you have these capabilities. Or create a “how to” video that demonstrates the way you’ve solved a setup problem, for example.
- Social media. With the Millennial generation moving into management positions within your customer companies, don’t ignore the value of posting newsworthy items on social media sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter.
A consistent Public Relations plan can help you promote your CNC shop and bring in new customers and additional orders from existing ones. Not sure you can handle more business? Let the machine tool experts at Gosiger help you improve your productivity and profitability. Simply call (937) 228-5174.
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