I have been reading increasingly about reshoring production over the past couple of years. It seems that costs and limitations of offshore production have been increasing, and so the cost benefit has much reduced, companies are valuing shorter lead times, smoother cash flows and easier quality control that come from local manufacturing – if not UK then Europe-based.

The large order value demanded of Far East producers, coupled with long shipping times (or high air freight costs), communication difficulties (not just from language) and difficulties of ensuring speedy resolution of quality issues, have all become well known and irksome problems of supply from a long way away. Now it seems that the equation has become re-balanced such that the cost saving often no longer justifies taking on the problems.

Could this be the opportunity that UK industry has been looking for? It may take some time for UK and European manufacturers to gear up – although it seems many are already well placed to do so with lean systems in place, costs of automation coming down and more relaxed working practices the result of many years when only the fittest producers survived.

It looks likely that production within a one day round trip may yet prove the optimum. Where engineers, buyers, marketing and sales can all get together for a meeting and be back at their own office the next day and where goods can travel to their UK distribution centre within 24 or even 12 hours. Short geographic development and supply chains again reflect the need for people to work face to face and recognise that a meeting on site can get much more done in a few hours than weeks or months of e-mails or even online meeting. We are learning the hard way the limitations of e-mail and video conferencing.

Actually, the optimum mix of employment/production efficiency/cost/social benefit (recognised in the prosperity of a country/society as a whole) is once again moving in favour of small to medium local industries.

Clearly the big global corporates are also prospering but it is interesting to consider that a very significant re-balancing is taking place that could last some time – unless additive manufacturing overtakes us all!

More of that another time …

I came across an e-mail recently that humorously defined things like sales, marketing etc in terms of a woman at a party promoting the virtues of her best friend to various men. So how about this:

Assume you are a woman – you and your friend see a rich attractive guy at a party – you write about your friend’s attributes in glowing terms with her phone number and references to previously satisfied boyfriends – you pass him the note with a smile.

That’s PRESS RELATIONS!

My guess – still there, we’re doing it. In short, when times are hard we switch from turnover growth to growing market share. That may well mean 10% or even 20% down on last year is a good result – achieved by running hard to stand still. However, if it results in greater market share then as we climb out of this recession we can expect to see the benefits of our hard work. One thing’s for sure, if we wait until we see the upturn then it will be too late to join in. The results will come from what we are doing now. So, let’s be happy that web traffic/enquiries are high – they represent business waiting to happen.

Doing the job properly – at the end of the day the whole industrial PR process – with or without search engines – is about getting genuine information to places where it can reach serious potential users/buyers. These are willing buyers – if they don’t buy then their business will not exist, but they must buy knowledgeably. Do that job right and it is worth doing from everybody’s perspective.

Search engines in their own way are only trying to facilitate the same process – so we are all working toward the same end – there is no need to try to manipulate the search engines – do the job properly and they will put an enquirer together with the information they are seeking. Although it does help to be able to think like a customer and to set up ones information and it’s distribution to fit that enquiry process i.e. understand the information that is important to a customer, how they may go about finding it, what form they may find it easiest to digest and how to make their life easy in progressing their enquiry. This is not “rocket science” but it does require a measure of knowledge, understanding, skill, experience, flexibility, balance and judgment – sound like any PR agency you know?

I guess we have all been interested in understanding how useful print media is these days – now that “bingo cards ” are effectively gone and so much seems to focus around the internet media and website traffic. Certainly I have been interested to understand this in terms of developing the effectiveness of our press release programs and of our advice to clients regarding their advertising. So I thought you may be interested in the following note which I made for myself, based on recent conversations with respected industrial publishers:

“Interaction between printed and web based media i.e. where a publisher runs both a printed and an online publication with the same title – a “twinned” publication , is a much neglected but very important area, although with little in the way of quantitative evidence. However recent anecdotal information based on publishers reported statistics suggest that in this situation the issue of the printed journal can give rise to as much as a third of the web traffic to it’s twin online site and so by extension, for a third of the enquiries. This is an important consideration since it suggests that a “twinned” printed journal can be as successful at generating interest as it’s twin website alone, ( if one allows for direct phone calls and website visits together with the 1/3^rd traffic generated through the publishers sister site).”I am encouraged therefore to believe that our efforts in printed media continue to be as worthwhile as they are in the internet media and am pleased to have found some external evidence to throw light on the real world process involved.

Interesting to hear over several years from a number of the media guys that their enquiry rates are maintained through the holiday periods (December, July, August etc.) – and to see that this is supported by client’s own monthly web traffic stats. In-fact web-stats seem to confirm apocryphal stories of hard pressed engineers taking work home and searching online over the weekends. As for holiday periods – is it that these are really quiet times when customers can plan ahead and do some product research – or is it that with colleagues away on holiday those left are more pressured to find what they need? Whatever the explanation, it seems we do not have a holiday period in PR these days and that readership interest levels are not a mirror of business levels. Obviously they are linked, but they do not track each other directly and why should they – the drivers are different and the timing is different.

The creation of easily digested information regarding products and services. By presenting genuine information in a quickly assimilated way we are helping engineers to stay up-to date with developments and trends so that they can quickly solve problems in design or production. This presents a wider profile of possibilities and helps optimise the innovation cycle.

Dissemination to enable it to be easily found – build a better mousetrap and people will NOT beat a path to your door – unless they actually need a mousetrap and know about yours! This is a genuine need – by putting our information where it can easily be found we are serving that need. People sometimes need to be told that a) mousetraps exist, b) some mousetraps are different/better/cheaper than others and which is which. A whole range of media publications have grown up to serve this need on a wider basis from the national press to Google, to a plethora of very small but very targeted publications.

Trade/Tech PR is often confused with Public Relations and the attendant spin and hype of the tabloid press. Nonetheless PR as Press Relations is still a valid term – we also relate our clients to the press – whether they are printed or electronic publications and provide for free what they need to attract an audience, it is a symbiotic relationship. In order to survive and make a profit, publications need to attract readers – in the trade/tech case by giving them valuable information which we provide – these readers then constitute an audience that can also be presented with advertisements for which the publishers can charge money.

I read somewhere the other day that Manufacturing industry in the UK had it’s best month for 16 years in April 2010 – and all my clients tell me they have had very good months (even record months ) since Christmas. (and we are still the 6th largest manufacturing sector on the planet.) So is now the start of a new growth phase? Well we won’t know for sure until it is too late to really take advantage of it – but a little effort now could reap huge rewards later – and actually not much later either – I am thinking weeks to months here.

So potentially, a small promotional investment now could see increased business in the next few months and leverage growth into next year. An ongoing commitment to a promotional program could help pick up business released by the companies that did not survive and build market share over the next cycle.

ID-Marketing has already offered our clients some very special pricing to help them take advantage of this opportunity – we and others in the market can help promote your way back to prosperity – so “strike while the iron is hot!”