Manufacturing - Sales & Marketing

[Essex_Moulder]

Hi,

I'm trying to find prospective new customers for my Plastic Injection Moulding business.

I've used a website which provides email, direct mail and phone contacts to build lists of companies that I believe I should target, it has worked with mixed results. Most of the companies we called said either, "all our parts are made in China/ India etc.", "we're happy with our existing supplier", "we're not developing anything new". On some occasions we've had the more postive reply of "ok, we've added you to our list of potential suppliers". And on rare occasions even "we have something here now that we'd like you to quote". (That actually happened once out of about 200 calls so not bad)

What I need to know is how are "people that want things made" finding their suppliers?

I personally think that most companies seem to just stick with there existing manufacturing suppliers unless something happens which prompts a reason to change, e.g. prices increase, quality reduces, quantity required changes, a new product is being developed or new buyer joins the company.

So when one of the above "prompts" happens what do the buyers do, search google or google maps if it's a location specific requirement, seach one of the hundreds of B2B online directories or pick up the yellow pages, or something else?

I want to make sure I'm focusing on the most important sales areas and not wasting money on techniques that are out dated.

Any advice or insight would be of help.

Thanks.

 

[businessfunding]

Hi,


I personally think that most companies seem to just stick with there existing manufacturing suppliers unless something happens which prompts a reason to change, e.g. prices increase, quality reduces, quantity required changes, a new product is being developed or new buyer joins the company.

Thanks.

This is entirely true and - ironically - these are precisely the customers you want to target; so your mid-term strategy must be to be their first port of call when they want to change (Or preferably to precipitate that change

In the meantime you need to 'buy in' some business - sub-contracts, cut prices (not at a loss!),

 

[namratamahadik]

Many time if you need anything you just went to the internet. Its does not matter that it will be. Most of the if we just wanted to start a business then we just try to find out the reports on the internet. Like if you are in agriculture then you will go for agriculture industry market research reports and so on.

 

[Shelly Watson]

There must be some people finding suppliers like you. There are new companies coming every day, so the key is how to find your target audience. Do you have a website? If yes, you can make an online marketing plan, including SEO, Google Adwords, email marketing, etc. If you don't have a website, you can try offline marketing methods, such as exhibition.

 

[Normansmith]

In a previous life i bought large quantities of injection mouldings, grit bins,motorway marker posts etc. I would always search the internet, nobody or very few look in hardback business directories, or even the online equivalent. Most big companies have approved vendor lists, so you need to be on those lists. I assume your machines can spit out bits very quickly so you are looking for high numbers ! Or are they the larger type when smaller numbers are acceptable.
I searched for "injection moulders" and your website was nowhere to be seen in the search results. But it does need work on it to rank in Google/Bing/Yahoo. Depending on budget, while the website work is going on you could run a test with PPC, see if that brings in the enquiries.
Good luck.

 

[strikingedge]

Could you offer a 24hr / overnight / weekend service to differentiate yourself? Are there times when companies need mouldings in a hurry?

 

[Uzair Kharawala]

If you do a little search in Google Adword Planner, you'll see that there is a good number of searches per month being made on keywords like

plastic injection moulding
plastic injection mould
plastic mould

This means that there is a niche market for your product/service and when you go to Google and search for these keywords, there are a lot of advertisers advertising. This means that these keywords are commercially viable and converting.

Hence, the above suggests that you need to look at advertising on Google Adwords and drive visitors to your website.

Hope this helps.
Oz