Consultants provide expertise in areas of your business that you either don’t have in-house or don’t have the capacity for. By outsourcing some tasks, you can focus on what you do best – manufacturing!
If you choose to outsource marketing, be sure you’re getting the most bang for your buck. Your marketing consultants should be an integral part of your company. They should want what’s best for your organization, just like you do! They should be proactive, not reactive. There’s a big difference between a contractor and a partnership. Which do you have?
Ask yourself, are my consultants…
- Staying up to date with the markets I serve?
- Finding clear ways to save or make more profit for the organization?
- Assist me with vetting subcontractors without commission or mark-ups?
- Aware of and seeking available funding options to offset their cost? (There are many grants available to manufacturers.)
If you answered ‘no’ to any of those questions, you’re probably not in a partnership and not benefiting fully from your investment. At Web Savvy Marketers, we partner with our clients using a monthly ‘program’. Like many marketing consultants, this is a monthly fee – but unlike many consultants, we don’t sit around waiting for you to tell us what to do. We use the program as an opportunity to build a partnership and become fully invested in your organization. We take the time to dive deeply, to find out exactly what you need; we don’t prescribe, we discover.
From the start, we look at your entire company. What is your number one challenge? For many manufacturers, that answer is: workforce. Like business development, talent is easier to find if they come to you instead of hunting for them. That is why we work closely with both sales and HR teams for many of our clients. Traditional marketing focuses on sales prospects, but in the current climate, recruitment marketing is essential.
Next, we ask about your capacity. I always say, “the only thing worse than having a product and no customers, is having customers with no product.” It’s important to know how to grow your business at rate you can manage. It’s also important to understand which products are easier to produce and/or most profitable. This will help determine your marketing (as well as business) path.
Whether you need an entire marketing department, or just extra help for your existing one, we can assist. If your consultants aren’t treating your business with the same love and passion that they treat their own, do not hesitate to contact us.