If you want to get ahead in the product based business landscape, you need to have more efficient manufacturing. Long gone are the days where you could throw up a product, drop ship it, and use a simple website to rack up sales. So make sure your profit margin gives you enough to manage payroll and have some left over for personal savings and investment. Use the tips below to get your manufacturing side in shape.
Test the Market First
The last thing you want to do is order something that you don’t even know your market wants. That is one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make. Just because something is cheap to order doesn’t mean it equals instant profit. So use free tools like Google Keyword Planner to scope out your target market and test the waters before diving in with thousands of dollars of capital.
Create a Scalable Marketing Plan
Marketing to a niche is one thing. Marketing at scale online is an entirely different game. You need to make sure that you don’t just get lucky with a hot campaign. Implement repeatable ad copy that can be applied to various products. That way your team’s job is more along the lines of copy and paste rather than going back to the drawing board each time.
Tweak and Test
You need to constantly be testing your product designs after you have picked one out. The first prototype might not be the final one you end up using. Make sure you are looking to user feedback to tell your manufacturer what changes need to be made and what you want to keep the same. Open communication with them limits your risk and costs overall by saving time.
Get the Pros on the Task
Sometimes, you need to admit when something is outside your wheelhouse. The more complex your product, the more likely you will want engineering pros doing the implementation so your manufacturing doesn’t take ages. For instance, electrical engineering for product design from marsint.com or another source will cut down on your back and forth time and help you get it right the first time around.
When it comes to running a product based business, it is not always easy. However, you can make your job a whole lot easier and more effective by following the right game plan. So use the tips above. Position your business to be more efficient from the manufacturing side so that your costs go down while your profits soar higher than ever before.
Lizzie Weakley is a freelance writer from Columbus, Ohio. She went to college at The Ohio State University where she studied communications. In her free time, she enjoys playing with her Husky, Snowball, camping, and binging on Netflix.