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New Shop Advertising, what did you do?

Mikehall1964

Plastic
Joined
Dec 4, 2022
So I have started my business, as of October 2022. I am a one machine shop right now with additional capabilities, i.e. welding, assembly, engineering design. I do this part time as I am working to grow it and keep the 8 - 5 to support the family. I had a handful of discussions with contacts in the industry as I was planning and preparing. I am getting some work right now and it is fine as I am learning many ends of the business that you don’t experience till every aspect of the business lies on you. My question is, what methods of advertising does everyone do? I have put together some brochures and plan to go door knocking periodically. I have been considering various social media methods, like Facebook mostly, but never had much success there with my other business. I had a lot of contact and interaction but not much work. My other business is more direct to end user and not manufacturing. I know a few guys that source work through Xometry, but I don’t know if I want to go that route. Because I am new and small, I have limited funds for a significant advertising campaign right now. The last thing I am working on is a website. I am putting together something simple that allows people to easily contact me and provide an overview of what the business does. What has worked for you and what didn’t work?
 
When I broke out on my own I found some work that companies were bidding on. I spent about 4 days doing the engineering and designed a solution for the client for free without telling them. I packaged the solution up nicely and sent it over as an example of my work. That resulted in relationship that has lasted almost 9 years now and got the ball rolling on my business that has been non-stop since. Never needed a formal advertisement. I still use this method and it hasn't failed me once.
 
If I had a full time job,I d be keeping a low profile so my employers didnt find out .........certainly wouldnt be handing out advertizing material..........I think approaching targets as you are doing is probably smartest.
I do watch what what current employer knows about however I am lucky that starting the machine shop does not conflict with any interests of my current employer. There is also potential I can pick up work from my employer in the future. but that part will wait.
 
I do watch what what current employer knows about however I am lucky that starting the machine shop does not conflict with any interests of my current employer. There is also potential I can pick up work from my employer in the future. but that part will wait.

I was fortunate in that respect as well, after my boss found out about my cnc at home he started sending some jobs home with me over the weekend. Most of them were low qty jobs, but after a few months he gave me a production job, 1000 pieces of D2. That job was a huge blessing, and its what jumpstarted me. I am still not full time in the home shop, but praying thats coming soon.
 
When I started I called on former employers. I had always left on good terms.

Got a little work from them. Also, people gave me leads that I followed up. Got some work there.

Cold called. No work there.

All my customers came from the strangest places.

Mostly they found me.
 
My website has been a big driver for one of my products. Ultra niche tho, so I’m always first thing on google for the topic.

My other products I’ve developed however, I dunno. Still trying to sort out how best to push them,
Recently bought digital billboard ad. time. The location is a dream but I’ve not had a call on it the first 1.5 months. Time will tell.
 
If you did develop a really lucrative product,there is a good chance your employer would claim ownership of it,and you would be fired and served with legal papers.

Wow.

You have a really screwed up vision of what "employer" means.

I've worked in many machine/die shops. If an employee came up with a better mousetrap, the employer usually made his machines and services made available at shop rate, if you needed them.

I myself have utilized wire EDM time many times.

I can think of no employer that would do such a thing, other than the D.O.D. types, But they don't count. They not employers, they're lobbyists.
 
If you did develop a really lucrative product,there is a good chance your employer would claim ownership of it,and you would be fired and served with legal papers.
I am not developing or making my own product. I am strictly a job shop cutting parts for customers. I do have some non compete and other stuff with my current employer and one of the forms does not if I create certain types of product or processes for certain fields the company does have ownership of it. But it is very specific and allow me freedoms to do things outside of work. there is potential to get machine work from my employer in the future but i am not ready to try crossing that bridge right now.
 
Develop an outgoing personality and be confident and talk with a lot of people and don't be afraid to bring up what you're doing (in a humble but confident way of course). That's how you get lucky.

The guys who "can never get enough work" and "never seem to make any $ in this horrible trade" also for some weird reason tend to be horrible people persons who are either unpleasant to be around or avoid social interactions at all costs. :scratchchin:

First big customer was through a friend of a friend who ran a dirtbike shop and couldn't get any replacement bushings from China during the big supply chain issues.
Then another friend who graduated engineering and went to work for a local valve design/manufacture facility.
Instagram community, the one time a cold outreach worked was when a shop in the bay had a crap ton of sheet metal parts to machine (nobody likes machining sheet metal so that was easy $ for me).
The owner of a California valley almond processing equipment manufacturer went to my wife's old church.
Current large customer is from when I was waiting at a local Western Tool outlet and started chatting with a gentleman in front of me (we were both bored) and it turned out he owned one of the larger oil and gas valve shops in town.

And on and on... six or seven good customers in various industries who rotate through the months is plenty to support a small one man shop. This isn't like selling $5 trinkets where you need mass advertising and hundreds of customers.
 
First thing, is a website. I had mine done for about $2k and am very happy with it.
Get yourself a phone number - I used Grasshopper but there are others as well. I have a "800" number and it gets forwarded to my cell. It has messaging, call logs, and even a "fax" capability - all for $10. a month!
Business cards are a very long lived form of advertising. I got mine from Vista but just about any print shop or office supply store can do this. They're not very expensive, either. I've gotten a tremendous amount of work from cards I left places years ago.
You'll need a social media presence and - like it or not - you'll have to become proficient at it. I have a very active twitter account that I post to near daily. It lets people know you're there.
Same with other accounts. I'm (finally) starting a FB and LinkedIn account as well.
About once every few weeks, I hit the road and always come back with something. Always.
 
So I have started my business, as of October 2022. I am a one machine shop right now with additional capabilities, i.e. welding, assembly, engineering design. I do this part time as I am working to grow it and keep the 8 - 5 to support the family. I had a handful of discussions with contacts in the industry as I was planning and preparing. I am getting some work right now and it is fine as I am learning many ends of the business that you don’t experience till every aspect of the business lies on you. My question is, what methods of advertising does everyone do? I have put together some brochures and plan to go door knocking periodically. I have been considering various social media methods, like Facebook mostly, but never had much success there with my other business. I had a lot of contact and interaction but not much work. My other business is more direct to end user and not manufacturing. I know a few guys that source work through Xometry, but I don’t know if I want to go that route. Because I am new and small, I have limited funds for a significant advertising campaign right now. The last thing I am working on is a website. I am putting together something simple that allows people to easily contact me and provide an overview of what the business does. What has worked for you and what didn’t work?
I can tell you what I did many years ago, before the internet mind you. I looked in the phone book or the old Thomas register and found companies in the area I thought might be large enough to be sending work out. I contacted those companies asked for the engineering department or the tool room and set up meetings. I wont lie I had maybe a 10% sucess rate in getting a meeting and maybe 1% of those meetings ended up with work.I made up folders with info on the shop and some of the parts we had made to bring with me to these meetings,even put a free calculator in there, looking back I think it was a waste of money but who knows. I also contacted companies I did work for at my former employer, this was long after I quit them of course and those were by far the best prospects because I had experience with their parts.Two of those companies are what got me going to where I felt it was an actual company making a few dollars. I have to say it is hard, very hard to find work so plan on spending hours but NEVER give up, if you want this you have to work hard for it harder than you probably ever worked in your life, it is all consuming. It is tough to convince some places that have established vendor bases to change so you have to be persistent not a pest just persistent , follow up calls maybe once a month , make them understand you are serious . After a few years it all started coming word of mouth, an engineer leaves one place goes to another and remembers you. One critical thing is you need to provide fast service good prices and quality parts right from the start. I have not knocked on a door or even sought out new customers in over 20 years thank god, it all comes from word of mouth now and that is by far the best way. I do have a web site I think I got one customer from it in 30 years but it is cheap to keep up and requires zero attention so I leave it up.Best of luck to you, I do not and never have regretted this , yes there have been tough times no question about it but I have lasted 37 years so must have done something right, well at least some of the time.
 
Not quite on point to answer the original question, but when I was deciding to go out on my own I had a few people tell me to keep a day job to pay the bills and wait til the business was really performing to go fully on my own. I realized for me that I would never get to make it a full time gig while I was full time employed elsewhere.

Anyway, one thing I was concerned with was how was I supposed to conduct business during normal daytime hours if I was on the clock for someone else? I'd guess it will be hard to do commercial work without be available at least some amount of time during the day. If that is the case, then I think that points a person in the direction of online sourced work which I think would mean you'd have to be up on your social media game on as many platforms as you can.
 
Instagram is my best tool. Everyone knows who I do work for as I tag them in content. They share it on their own page that drives others to me. It cost nothing but time.

Is it stupid? Maybe. So far it has been solid.

I'm old so in my early career it was forbidden to share who you did work for. All secret hush hush. Now I think I'll put it out there and let the masses compete. My work speaks for itself.

You absolutely have to have a website people can refer to. It doesn't have to be great but so they can see your capabilities.

We live in a world of show-off. Meek old school thinking is not going to make it in an internet age. Go bold. The better you can make content the better you will look.

Good luck!
 
Instagram is my best tool. Everyone knows who I do work for as I tag them in content. They share it on their own page that drives others to me. It cost nothing but time.

Is it stupid? Maybe. So far it has been solid.

I'm old so in my early career it was forbidden to share who you did work for. All secret hush hush. Now I think I'll put it out there and let the masses compete. My work speaks for itself.

You absolutely have to have a website people can refer to. It doesn't have to be great but so they can see your capabilities.

We live in a world of show-off. Meek old school thinking is not going to make it in an internet age. Go bold. The better you can make content the better you will look.

Good luck!

We were just discussing this on another site. Basically how we all think our shops are too ugly and disorganized to shoot pictures and video so we don't.
 
We were just discussing this on another site. Basically how we all think our shops are too ugly and disorganized to shoot pictures and video so we don't.

My shop is pretty clean so I wont speak to that, but I mostly just show close up machining so you don't see the shop.

I think that the majority of the world has no concept of what we do, so even people who are not interested in machining find every day, for us, stuff fascinating. My stories that go viral are things like using an edge finder or rotary broaching. Things I would not have thought were remotely interesting.

Us machinists spend too much time in our heads and think other people see the world like we do...they don't.

Not to go too off the rails, but if we don't start exposing our incredible world to the youth we are doing ourselves and them a disservice.
 
All posts above are valid.
They disagree - but are still valid.
Imho.

Personal contacts from past - good.
New contacts from doors - good.
Sub/previous shops work - good.
Instagram etc. - good.

It´s really hard to sell at first.
Making feelies and thingies (polished?) might be a good idea to leave with prospects.
Anyone making say aircraft parts could not care less about the polish on Your freebie.

BUT If You are committed enough to make a good freebie, and polish it nicely, You are probably committed enough that the next silly low-volume item they MUST deliver, they would probably send to You, rather than someone else.
(not an aircraft part--certs, but an auxiliary delivery).
Then, You sold maybe 5 parts for 100$ each, that they pass on for 100-400$, .. but so what ?

You maybe made less than minimum wage, but You are actually making aircraft parts (even if its a hangar hook) and are a supplier for them.
AFTER you make some good parts for peanuts, their other sub or collabs will also want similar parts, 5 of, for 100$, that cost 200$ in work hours.
You make them, deliver them on time, they look nice, never mind that they are coat hangers of some type.

Pretty soon several makers are turning to you for silly widgets -- and You up your prices to profitability.
Most will be ok, some will not (initially), but generally fast and good is more important than cheap in unit qty (less than 100-10.000).

Some guys can actually sell real machining contracts for a new job // new shop for millions.
It´s improbable You are one of those guys, and could deliver on the contracts as the customer expected.
 
Don't understand the last post but...

Anyway, I hate to give away my best advice but hopefully you wont gun for my job until after I'm done...

Make friends with your Material / Gas / Chamber of Commerce / tool reps!!!!!!!

This is a thing.

Take them to a golf tournament, or a charity baseball thing or something.

Ok, darn, the golf thing costed $300/pc for you and them. They work every day walking into other shops and mfgs, talk to those people, make relationships, know what they are quoting and all of their new projects and they know the people who make decisions already. If they are friends then they can either keep an ear out if anyone is looking to farm things out or they can put a bug in people's ear that they have a shop that is looking for work if someone is at capacity...

Then if you end up buying a bunch of material or gas or whatever from said rep, they start picking up the green's fees!

It helps if your people are pleasant to be around, and even better if you are too! But, I never even knew about this resource I had, known as the 'outside rep', until recently when I started doing actual volume with suppliers. They came to me. But, I guarantee you now that i know now what I know now that if you have an account with these places you have one assigned to you. They might not buy your shop lunch, but I am sure they will let you buy them lunch, and their literal business is to know what everyone who does what you do is doing all the time. They are the holy grail.

Best of luck! This is a bitch! Cost me 15 years of relationships and every hobby I ever had except drinking, and most of my toys that I could sell for cash, my sanity, my health, and as much as I hurt in the mornings I am hopelessly addicted...

And if you are around KC, let me farm work to you, don't steal my jobs please... haha!
-Parker
 








 
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