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.
Data drives everything in our lives from the advertisements we watch to the music we listen to. It has become so intertwined in our daily life that we don’t think about it. However, January 28th marked International Data Privacy Day, and it might be worth investigating the last time you updated your website’s privacy and data collection policy.
At the beginning of the new year, people often set new year’s resolutions like going to the gym or eating better. But setting a goal is just the first step – you actually have to follow through with action. THAT’S where the rubber meets the road, because if you don’t want to do it, it’s probably not going to happen. I mean, we all know that running is a good way to lose weight, but if you hate running, it probably isn’t the right task for you. So, maybe you should try a team sport or swimming instead. You’re way more likely to complete a goal that you like!
Today’s topic is funding. More specifically the grants available that could help you meet your 2026 business goals.
As we approach the new year, many businesses are considering how they want to grow in 2026. Should they expand their offering in some areas and scale back in others? What does the market demand? To determine this, you need to have a sustainable way to attract new business while maintaining your current customers’ needs.
“I need a new website” is a statement we often hear. While a website is one of your most important marketing tools, it is easy for your site to get lost in the vast sea of search results even if you offer a superior product or unique solution.
With each passing week, it seems that more businesses have started to utilize AI to introduce new features and enhance productivity in their workforce. While this can be useful, in many cases as with any new technology, oftentimes who comes out ahead is not who can use it the most, but who uses it the best.
While Connecticut’s larger manufacturers typically have marketing departments (or at least an agency contract), the majority of our state’s smaller manufacturing companies do not. When asked why, they’ll typically say it’s because they’re “too small”, so it’s not in their budgets. They see marketing as more of a luxury than a necessity – and they couldn’t be more wrong.
I attended the annual Women in Manufacturing Summit earlier this week. There were over 2,100 people at the Summit in Boston which offered more than 60 educational sessions. I was fortunate to attend the presentation on Reshoring by Rosemary Coates, Executive Director of the Reshoring Institute.
It’s manufacturing month and I’m feeling inspired. I was at the ElevateHer quarterly meeting on Tuesday, the CT Manufacturing Summit on Wednesday, and will be at the Women in Manufacturing (WIM) national summit next week. There’s so much going on that it’s hard to keep up. For that reason, I thought, why not share what I’ve learned? Here are some interesting articles. Take a look and let me know what you think.