Peer to Peer Advisors

Manufactuers Only Peer Groups

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A 1-2 Punch Approach to Social Media Strategy

Bill’s organization launched a new production capability last month.  Prior to the launch through today there has been a lot of mention of the new capabilities in social media.  There has been a steady stream of LinkedIn articles and postings, blog posts, Instagram photo postings, and even some Facebook postings.

Bill’s organization is $18M in revenue, with a focus in the aerospace industry.  Social media and online marketing are essential components of their overall marketing strategy.  Their recent social media push is based on a simple 1-2 strategy.

  1. Use organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools in the social media postings to elevate the firm’s URL in Google searches.
  2. Use limited budget paid advertising in social media to help build the list of subscribers for the company’s e-mailings.

Bill and his team know that social media is a direct marketing tool.  It is the replacement for what was formerly direct mail marketing.  In today’s world the prominent social media platforms are the most common venues to reach your prospect base.

The purpose of social media is to build a list of subscribers and then use your own email marketing and personalized selling strategies and tactics to connect with your subscribers.

Bill did acknowledge the #1 challenge with social media – the need for content and the time to do postings on a consistent basis.  Many of the owners, CEO’s and Presidents in the room agreed that the solution for this can fall into a couple of categories.  One, limit what you do and allocate specific (but limited) times to carry out the content development and posting.  Two, engage an intern or virtual assistant to take care of things.

Everyone agreed that the content challenges needs to addressed.  There needs to be consistency in social media marketing.  Without consistency the company’s presence fades away quickly.

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A Different (and Effective) Perspective on Shifts

Think differently about what happens during a shift, and you may get more production and results from each shift.  Ted owns a $6.5M company that produces both long run commodity type products and short run custom orders.

To optimize production on each of his shifts, Ted considers his 2nd shift to be his primary production shift, and his 1st shift to be the one where new people are brought on, training occurs, and all other issues and distractions are handled.

On the 1st shift there always seems to be interruptions.  These interruptions are often necessary, but they distract production and reduce output.  On the 2nd shift production is much more stable.  There are simply fewer outside distractions.

In terms of personnel, Ted looks to the first shift for training and new hires.  It makes more sense because of the time of day, availability of outside resources, and the availability of senior management to participate and mentor.

In the same discussion, Rick and Craig talked about preventive maintenance and the need to focus on it in order to avoid capital investments in replacement equipment.  Building on Ted’s perspective on shifts, both Rick and Craig will now allocate preventive maintenance to a 3rd shift area of focus.

The advantage for Rick and Craig is simple – they can implement scheduled preventive maintenance, as opposed to doing the preventive maintenance when the schedule allows.

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Think About Giving Up the Middle Ground in Your Planning

We were talking about planning, specifically annual strategic planning.  It frequently seems to be a laborious process comprised to some degree of guesswork.  The overriding questions usually are: Where do we want to be a year from now? and How are we going to get there?

One group of owners settled on a different approach.  Instead of thinking in terms of next year, or 2-3 years out, they are going to set big goals 5 years out or more, and everything else is in 90 day increments.

The reasoning is simple.  The big goal(s) speaks to the vision for the business.  It could be exceptional growth, sale of the business, succession to the next generation, whatever.  The benchmark is that it is big in terms of optimal outcome.

Getting to that goal is a matter of immediate steps in short term horizons, and adjusting as you go.  Engage employees and management on short term (90 day) goal development and tracking, being sure the short term goals align with the longer term vision (5+ years) for the business.

Focusing on shorter term activities is how businesses operate.  As Tony said in the group discussion, we are all in survival mode in one form or another.  We look at the current customer base, new opportunities that can close in the short term, and the resources needed to deliver on time, with top quality, and within budget.

So, give up the 1, 2, or 3 year middle ground planning horizon.  Instead, know the ultimate outcome.  Then overlay a 90 day structured process of goal setting, measurement, tracking and discussion.  Plans are dynamic and the short term activities continually adjust based on the results.

Using this approach helps organizations always knows where they are in the immediate time frame, and makes sure that where they are going aligns with the long term goals.