To launch a manufacturing business can be a cumbersome task, however, expanding one into new national and international markets can prove to be a different beast altogether. In fact, when you take into account all of the potential threats and risks involved with business expansion in this industry, it becomes all the more important to take your time to devise a comprehensive strategy that will leave nothing to chance.
After all, if you don’t have the money to expand, you shouldn’t be looking into expansion strategies, you should be focusing on growth within your local market and improving your revenue streams. But aside from money, there are other crucial considerations you need to factor into your strategy in order to create a foolproof plan and solidify your position in a new market as quickly as possible.
Explore markets and new verticals
Given the sheer amount of financial investment needed to break into new markets as a manufacturer, you need to look into smart ways you can use your existing products to cover your primary, and other complementary industries. This means that you need to explore new market verticals as well as entirely new industries that will allow you to keep doing the same thing, but cover numerous fields without overinvesting in new product lines and manufacturing equipment.
For example, manufacturers that specialize in the automotive industry back home can assess the need for new manufacturers in the aerospace industry in a new market. Then, you can use your track record and expertise to break into this new sector with minimal investments, guided and supported by your past accomplishments.
There’s not much you’ll be able to achieve without meticulous and extensive market research, simply because trying to expand into a new market without actionable and verifiable data will cause you to overinvest from the start. Needless to say, this is a recipe for disaster, so be sure to tap into the local market trends, the socio-economic factors that dictate the course your industry is taking, as well as the prevailing trends among your customers and competitors.
This will allow you to stay customer-centric at all times, and optimize your brand, marketing and sales, and product line to fit the exact needs of the customer – allowing you to fill a market gap easily. Likewise, researching your top competitors in the new market will allow you to determine what they’re doing right and expand on their success, but also what they’re doing wrong, meaning that you can leverage their shortcomings to strengthen your USP, and avoid the same pitfalls in these crucial months.
Leverage cloud computing
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As your manufacturing business continues to grow, and as the workload continues to inflate over time, there is a need to migrate your business to the cloud, in order to leverage the benefits and features that cloud computing brings to the table to make every process more efficient and effective. This is especially important now that you’re considering national and perhaps international expansion, as you can’t hope to run a smooth operation using outdated technology and manual operations management.
Instead, manufacturing businesses that are focused on growth and expansion should integrate comprehensive manufacturing software that has all of the features necessary to optimize sales, purchasing, inventory, finance, and more for the new market. You can leverage this type of cloud-based software to build a more reliable and stable structure for your manufacturing business, enable cross-department collaboration, real-time tracking for all processes, and make your company truly competitive in foreign markets.
Get in touch with legal
There are many potential legal risks and setbacks you can encounter as you’re trying to expand your manufacturing business, especially if you’re planning to expand abroad into countries that have significantly differing laws and regulations for your sector. In the initial stages of your research, you can use artificial intelligence to collect and collate relevant data (including legal data) for your industry, but you should make any concrete moves before talking to your legal department.
Create a localized marketing plan
Finally, there is no way of getting around the fact that you need to invest in marketing if you are to enhance brand visibility as a new player in the market, and if you’re to engage customers and incentivize them to get in touch. This means that you should research the marketing tactics that work best in the local market and within your field, and invest in the most promising ones while putting everything else on hold. There’s little to be gained from investing in PPC if the local market responds best to social media posts and 1st party online reviews, so it’s important to determine what works best from the start.