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In the early days of my business back in 2010, I was approached by the owner of a small machine shop who was in a tough situation. After nearly 30 years, Pete was thinking that it might be time to shut his doors. This situation is repeated throughout the U.S. in hundreds of shops. Increased overseas competition, increasingly complex marketing strategies, competition with shops that have larger budgets for technology, and a tax and regulatory environment that is not conducive to growth. This leaves them asking “where do I find work for my machine shop?” Pete by the way was my first experience in marketing a machine shop, and it began a long process of learning, understanding the challenges of machine shops, and coming up with solutions that really work. It took some time, but we saved Pete’s business, and now his son is taking the reins of a stable profitable company that doesn’t worry about where its next customer will come from. Now on the verge of 2025, I’ve worked with hundreds of shops, spent time volunteering at organizations like the NTMA (National Tooling and Machining Association), given talks for the U.S. Department of Commerce, and interviewed manufacturers about their challenges. Here’s what I hope to accomplish for you in this article:
The first key is really, really, really, understanding what you’re good at. I’m not just talking about what type of part you’re good at machining, it’s understanding what size company you work best with, where are they’re located, what they like about you, what’s the biggest value you provide them. Competition for machine shops is more intense than any other type of manufacturing service,
so without a niche, you’re just another shop claiming “precision”, “fast turnaround”, and “customer service”.
This information has to be presented in every public-facing message (your website, social media, taglines, advertisements). Don’t worry about the thought in your head which says “well I don’t want to exclude anyone or say no to business”. The reason you’re reading this article is that you are already excluding your ideal customer and presumably your biggest opportunity by trying to be too much to too many people. Here’s an example of how you can home in on your niche:
XYZ Machining (you): Is a small machine shop that has a superior ability to turn around small run jobs faster than the competition in the Detroit MI market.
Refinement: The jobs we perform the best on are Swiss turn jobs because we have a top of the line Makino Lathe, and some extra capacity
Who we’re targeting: Based on last year’s customer orders, we have quite a few larger shops who outsource swiss jobs to us when they get behind. They hire us because they know they can still make a margin on the parts after they pay us, and they know we can keep them on schedule with their customer demands.
Compelling Market Offer: We’re the overflow shop: We can give you 24 hour turnaround on Swiss Turning jobs, guaranteed to meet your specs, and allow you to make a margin with your customer.
If you’ve been successful in identifying your niche you need to turn that into a statement like the compelling (unrefusable) market offer statement above. Your goal here is to come up with something unique, that only you can provide (or that many shops can’t). THIS is how you’re going to jump out from the “me too” crowd.
Technology has a way of consolidating power. Think about Amazon. They figured out a way to streamline the online buying experience and within a decade, the standalone privately owned e-commerce store was a thing of the past (largely). Technology is advancing faster at this moment in time than it has in the history of the world. This means that we all have a small window of opportunity before we get knocked out of the marketplace. I’m not being dramatic here. Machine shops that I talk to every day are feeling the effects of maladaptation to technology. Sure they got away with it for a while, but tech is progressing too fast now and their lifespan will be short if they don’t adapt fast. In my humble opinion, I’d recommend the following steps (all of which weCreate will help you with):
If you understand the value you bring to the market (this is how you constructed your market offer), then you are operating off of the assumption that there are people looking for that value. If that assumption is correct, then there are people “googling” or searching online for someone who has that offer. We see the data from hundreds of past customers. We know what people are Googling. Here are some examples:
There exist thousands of queries like the ones above which real people are searching for, and the companies that show up at the top of search are the ones who get the RFQ. If you are able to understand the queries that would apply most to your value proposition, then you’ve taken a big first step towards growth. The process I’m describing here is called: Search Engine Optimization. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, and you probably get emails regularly offering SEO services. SEO is the process I recommend to 100% of the machine shops I talk to, because getting ranked at the top of search for the keywords your ideal customer is searching for, is the absolute best way to get leads consistently without investing huge dollar amounts.
The attached graphic compares the effectiveness of SEO, PPC, and outside sales by plotting:
This dual-axis chart highlights the superior performance of SEO in both close rate and ROI, making it clear why SEO is a critical strategy for machine shops and manufacturing businesses. The visual emphasizes that while PPC and outside sales have their place, they trail behind in terms of cost-effectiveness and lead conversion.
What can you realistically expect from a vendor offering lead generation services? First, it’s important to realize that marketing your shop is no more optional than having a lathe or a mill. If you have very low overhead, and revenue expectations below $1M/ year, then the minimum you need to spend to achieve and maintain that (with SEO) is $16K split out over a 12-16 month term. There is no shortcut, and there is no vendor that can do what needs to be done for less. If your revenue expectations are much higher than that, then geographic reach and ranking for more services requires more effort. In these cases you will expect to spend 30 – 50k. REMEMBER, this is investment which you can consider a 1 time investment even though it’s broken out over a period, and that investment has a long-term ROI. This is AMAZING, and there are no other lead generation options that work the same way.
How confident am I that it will work? Let’s just say that we currently offer these services to some shops at no upfront cost if they have all of the right tracking, fulfillment, and machinery in place through a pay-for-performance contract. Even if you aren’t in a place where we start with this, we can look at it down the road. I’m 100% confident it will work for you and am happy to have a short call to assess your situation and show you what we’ve done for other machine shops.
[1] https://seoprofy.com/blog/seo-statistics/
[2] https://www.sixthcitymarketing.com/ppc-stats/
