Many industries require manufacturing. You might manufacture and sell products directly to your customers, or perhaps you have a B2B model happening. Either way, you want to avoid making any serious mistakes that will derail your business venture.
Let’s talk about a few of the manufacturing mistakes you can make. We’ll also go over how you can best avoid them.
Not Having Clearly-Defined Goals and a Plan to Achieve Them
You might feel like you know everything about the industry you are about to enter. Perhaps you’re manufacturing titanium machine components. You know that when hot forming titanium, you heat the forming tool between 900-1,200 degrees Fahrenheit.
No matter how well you understand the manufacturing methods and take safety precautions, though, if you don’t have a specific goal for creating, shipping, and selling your products, your endeavor will likely fail. Before you start the manufacturing process, you should have your first buyers lined up.
That way, you won’t be stuck trying to move your products once you already have a warehouse full of them. If you start to make client connections before you begin your manufacturing process, you’ll be in a better position.
Remaining in Your Comfort Zone
You can line up your clients and start selling to them, and you may find early success. You must realize, though, that if you want to expand your company and influence, you’ll need to take some risks eventually.
That might mean trying to get a bank or credit union loan if you’re ready to expand into new territory. Maybe you want to start shipping your products to other states or overseas.
You might come up with a new and aggressive marketing campaign. Getting away from your comfort zone can mean spending more money in the product research and development phase, or you could add some additional store locations.
Ignoring Customer Research or Not Doing Any
Maybe you’re excellent at manufacturing a particular product or line of products. Where your business is struggling, though, is in the area of customer research and interactions.
Very few entrepreneurs also know a great deal about marketing. That’s why you might need to hire someone to handle this aspect of your business.
They can perform some market research, reaching out to customers or potential customers. They might do so via a focus group or an email survey. They might also use analytics software to look at your sales and figure out who your most likely customers are.
If you do not allow your marketing team to do this critical research, your business’s success is much less likely. Remember that you can manufacture the best products in the world, but if you don’t know how to market them, you’re not going to get very far within your niche.
Being Passive
Being too passive is seldom going to help you in the manufacturing business. You need to hunt for clients and other vital connections, such as funding sources.
You might be okay sitting back and resting on your laurels once you’ve secured a considerable market share, but that’s not something that happens overnight. For the first few years that you are in business, you have to keep hustling so your would-be customers can hear about you. You need to establish that you’re an industry powerhouse, or your competitors will keep stealing your clients.
Letting Your Website Grow Stagnant
You probably know that your manufacturing business needs a website, and you need to put some time, energy, and thought into it. You probably won’t have the time or the skills to set up your site yourself, but you might hire an expert to do it for you. They can use WordPress or Wix and utilize the color scheme, font, and graphics that most appeal to you.
You should have product pages, an FAQ section, an About Us page, and so forth. These are all basics your customers will expect. You might also consider having a company blog, which you can use to speak directly to your clients about industry topics in which you have expertise.
However, you have not finished your job once you’ve set up your website. Think about it like a plant or an animal for which you must care.
You’ll need a site admin who can constantly adjust it based on new blogs you write, new products with which you come out, and so forth. Search engines will drop stagnant websites down the rankings if you don’t keep updating them.
Article by Born Realist