3 Tips To Drive Sales To Your Machine Shop

If you operate a machine shop, you already understand that reaching your target market today isn’t as simple as it once was.

The move to a global manufacturing economy is putting pressure on everyone. You are competing with manufacturing sources from all over the globe while margins get smaller. Meanwhile, the amount of information available online means that your potential customers are under more pressure to do research and find the best shop for their job.

We get it. You didn’t sign up for a career in marketing, you signed up for a career in machining. Getting a handle on what works with marketing today (and what doesn’t) is going to become more and more crucial to your shop’s success.

More Than Bricks and Mortar

E-commerce isn’t just for Amazon. Customers today want and need machine shops to be available both online and off-. The good news is, however, that you don’t have to become an expert in digital marketing all at once.

Start out by focusing on just one thing: your website.

Your No. 1 goal in marketing should be driving potential customers to your website. Just as your shop is your physical face to the world, your website is your digital one. If you aren’t making it work hard for you, you’re missing out.

Right now the online world is full of real growth opportunities for small-business owners with the commitment to make it happen.

Here are three incredibly powerful yet simple ways to take advantage of the big opportunities digital marketing can offer you.

1. Make Your Website a Selling Machine

Your website can do far more than just tell visitors who you are and how to reach you. It can transform your business.

The days of static websites are over. Today’s website visitors surf the internet to decide if they think a business is worth visiting, make a purchase decision, and to stay in touch with businesses they are interested in working with in the future.

So what can you do to ensure your website is doing enough for you?

First, make sure your website is user-friendly. “User-friendly” is a big buzzword right now, and for good reason. If the information on your website isn’t easy to understand or takes a bunch of clicks to find, people are going to leave.

Start with a clean, simple menu that answers questions your web visitors may have. Next up, decide what exactly you need your visitors to do, a.k.a. your “Call to Action.” You need a clear visual, like a red button, that asks your visitors to do something, such as “Get Quote Now.”

Make sure your call to action is clearly visible on every single page of your website.

2. Make Google Work Hard for You

Once you’ve got a great website, you need to start getting people there. Google is far more than just a search engine; it’s a secret weapon for business owners like you.

The top search results from Google get the action. How do you ensure your business is netting top status? Through the use of keywords. Hundreds of thousands of people are searching Google right now for keywords such as “machine shop” and “manufacturing shop.”

The best way to start driving traffic with keywords is by search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is, to keep it simple, the way search engines decide which websites are most valuable. For example, the more your website seems likely to be relevant for someone searching for “Canadian machine shop,” the more likely your website is to get top search results status.

The best way to achieve this is through developing keyword-rich, high-quality content for your website.

Blogs and resource pages are an excellent way to start doing this. Pick topics related to words people would use to find a machine shop like yours, and start writing about them.

It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare. Just focus on giving readers something to read that’s worth their time. Then after blogging, focus on links.

Search engines use the links on your website, and links to your website from other websites, as clues to decide your site is more than just spam.

Links are signs people think your website is worthwhile.

On your website, start linking to blogs you’ve written and other websites of value. To get links to your website, ask fellow business owners to give you a shout-out in link form (and you can do the same for them). Finally, get listed in directories. Local directories are a great place to start, and make sure each directory listing includes a link to your website.

3. Go Digital and Start Profiting from Search Engine Marketing

From email to YouTube to social media like Facebook, we spend (maybe waste) a lot of time online.

Traditional marketing is marketing that happens offline (television ads, billboards, and flyers are examples of this). With the amount of time customers now spend online, it’s becoming more and more important to ensure you have a good digital strategy.

Google AdWords™ is a good place to start. With Google Adwords, you pay Google to show your company’s ad on the first or second page of a user’s search results when they’re searching for something like “local machine shop.” Bing, another popular search engine, works the same way. Google’s remarketing program is a bit of a different beast, but along the same lines. Ever noticed that after you’ve visited a website you continue to see ads for it days later?

Google’s not a mind reader; it uses cookies to remember the websites you’ve visited and then shows you ads for that website in the future.

The bottom line is, digital marketing isn’t rocket science. It’s just a new spin on the same idea that’s been around for a while: meet your customers where they are, and tell them what’s in it for them.