Where to Find Work For My Machine Shop

In the early days of my business back in 2010, I was approached by the owner of a small machine shop who was in a tough situation.  After nearly 30 years, Pete was thinking that it might be time to shut his doors.  This situation is repeated throughout the U.S. in hundreds of shops.  Increased overseas competition, increasingly complex marketing strategies, competition with shops that have larger budgets for technology, and a tax and regulatory environment that is not conducive to growth.  This leaves them asking “where do I find work for my machine shop?” Pete by the way was my first experience in marketing a machine shop, and it began a long process of learning, understanding the challenges of machine shops, and coming up with solutions that really work.  It took some time, but we saved Pete’s business, and now his son is taking the reins of a stable profitable company that doesn’t worry about where its next customer will come from. Now on the verge of 2025, I’ve worked with hundreds of shops, spent time volunteering at organizations like the NTMA (National Tooling and Machining Association), given talks for the U.S. Department of Commerce, and interviewed manufacturers about their challenges.  Here’s what I hope to accomplish for you in this article:

1. Help you understand that there is a solution to your lead generation problem, and that it’s not that complex.
2. Simplify your shopping experience.  There are a thousand different companies (with different strategies) you could hire, and even if you don’t choose to work with me, then you should at least know what to look for.
3. Clarify expectations. What can you really expect to gain from hiring a lead generation agency, and what’s the minimum you can spend, for the maximum return.

Free Demo on our MFG Lead Generation Program

What’s the Key to Finding Work For Your Shop?

The first key is really, really, really, understanding what you’re good at.  I’m not just talking about what type of part you’re good at machining, it’s understanding what size company you work best with, where are they’re located, what they like about you, what’s the biggest value you provide them.  Competition for machine shops is more intense than any other type of manufacturing service,

so without a niche, you’re just another shop claiming “precision”, “fast turnaround”, and “customer service”.

What do you do with the information you’ve gathered about your niche and ideal customer?

This information has to be presented in every public-facing message (your website, social media, taglines, advertisements).  Don’t worry about the thought in your head which says “well I don’t want to exclude anyone or say no to business”.  The reason you’re reading this article is that you are already excluding your ideal customer and presumably your biggest opportunity by trying to be too much to too many people.  Here’s an example of how you can home in on your niche:

XYZ Machining (you): Is a small machine shop that has a superior ability to turn around small run jobs faster than the competition in the Detroit MI market.

Refinement: The jobs we perform the best on are Swiss turn jobs because we have a top of the line Makino Lathe, and some extra capacity

Who we’re targeting: Based on last year’s customer orders, we have quite a few larger shops who outsource swiss jobs to us when they get behind.  They hire us because they know they can still make a margin on the parts after they pay us, and they know we can keep them on schedule with their customer demands.

Compelling Market Offer: We’re the overflow shop: We can give you 24 hour turnaround on Swiss Turning jobs, guaranteed to meet your specs, and allow you to make a margin with your customer.

Your market offer

If you’ve been successful in identifying your niche you need to turn that into a statement like the compelling (unrefusable) market offer statement above.  Your goal here is to come up with something unique, that only you can provide (or that many shops can’t).  THIS is how you’re going to jump out from the “me too” crowd.

Why You Need to Do This NOW

Technology has a way of consolidating power.  Think about Amazon.  They figured out a way to streamline the online buying experience and within a decade, the standalone privately owned e-commerce store was a thing of the past (largely).  Technology is advancing faster at this moment in time than it has in the history of the world.  This means that we all have a small window of opportunity before we get knocked out of the marketplace.  I’m not being dramatic here.  Machine shops that I talk to every day are feeling the effects of maladaptation to technology.  Sure they got away with it for a while, but tech is progressing too fast now and their lifespan will be short if they don’t adapt fast.  In my humble opinion, I’d recommend the following steps (all of which weCreate will help you with):

1. Aggressively gain market share and boost profits through the unrefusable market offer, and the marketing techniques I’m going to discuss in a moment
2. Re-invest profits into lean processes and automation equipment, so you can compete in the coming years.
3. Obtain certifications, and break into the “bigger fish” markets
4. Develop your own product line.  This gets you closer to the money.

What’s the most effective Lead Generation Strategy for Machine Shop?

If you understand the value you bring to the market (this is how you constructed your market offer), then you are operating off of the assumption that there are people looking for that value.  If that assumption is correct, then there are people “googling” or searching online for someone who has that offer.  We see the data from hundreds of past customers.  We know what people are Googling.  Here are some examples:

• “Precision Machine Shop” – Over 1000 searches every month.

• “Precision Machining” – Over 2000 searches every month

• “Machine shop near me” – Varies by market, but likely near 10 searches per day in any market

• “ISO Certified Machine Shops” – Thousands of searches per year

• “AS9100 Certified Machine Shops” – Thousands of searches per year

There exist thousands of queries like the ones above which real people are searching for, and the companies that show up at the top of search are the ones who get the RFQ.  If you are able to understand the queries that would apply most to your value proposition, then you’ve taken a big first step towards growth.  The process I’m describing here is called: Search Engine Optimization.  I’m sure you’ve heard it before, and you probably get emails regularly offering SEO services.  SEO is the process I recommend to 100% of the machine shops I talk to, because getting ranked at the top of search for the keywords your ideal customer is searching for, is the absolute best way to get leads consistently without investing huge dollar amounts.

Comparison of SEO, PPC, and Outside Sales

Key Statistics:

1. SEO Close Rate: Leads from SEO have a close rate of 14.6%, significantly higher than methods like PPC (2.0%) and outside sales (1.7%).¹
2. ROI: SEO delivers an average ROI of 400%, compared to 200% for PPC and 130% for outside sales.¹ ²
3. Cost Efficiency: Businesses save up to 400% on ad spending with SEO while maintaining lead generation effectiveness.¹
4. Buyer Behavior: 57% of B2B marketers claim SEO is their most effective digital marketing initiative.¹
5. PPC Impact: PPC campaigns provide immediate visibility but require ongoing investment, with an average ROI of 200%.²

Graphic Explanation:

The attached graphic compares the effectiveness of SEO, PPC, and outside sales by plotting:

• Close Rate (%) as orange bars.
• ROI (%) as a white line with markers.

This dual-axis chart highlights the superior performance of SEO in both close rate and ROI, making it clear why SEO is a critical strategy for machine shops and manufacturing businesses. The visual emphasizes that while PPC and outside sales have their place, they trail behind in terms of cost-effectiveness and lead conversion.

Simplifying your Vendor Search (what you need to look for):

1. The best indicator of a good vendor is one that can clearly describe to you how the process works, how they will customize it for you, and how well it worked for other companies they’ve worked with.
2. The biggest consideration here is that manufacturing is a sector in which the person marketing really needs to understand manufacturing to some degree.  A big part of SEO is writing content, and no legitimate buyer is going to respect content that doesn’t convey your processes or terminology accurately.
3. Understand which service you are hiring for.  In the end, you’re hiring someone to generate leads for you.  If you know that, you want a service that doesn’t require a ton of your time, and one that will continue to deliver results over the long term.  If SEO is done by a seasoned expert, then the work they do in 12 months will continue to deliver results for 3 -5 years.  The majority of other marketing or lead generation techniques will not produce results after the campaign is completed.  For example, Pay-Per-Click Advertising is a technique that allows you to bid on keywords to show up at the top of Google search.  You are paying for clicks in this scenario, as opposed to ranking naturally as you do with SEO.  If you quit paying for clicks, you quit getting  clicks.  I’m sure you can apply this logic to a variety of other possible lead generation techniques.

Realistic Expectations:

What can you realistically expect from a vendor offering lead generation services? First, it’s important to realize that marketing your shop is no more optional than having a lathe or a mill.  If you have very low overhead, and revenue expectations below $1M/ year, then the minimum you need to spend to achieve and maintain that (with SEO) is $16K split out over a 12-16 month term.  There is no shortcut, and there is no vendor that can do what needs to be done for less.   If your revenue expectations are much higher than that, then geographic reach and ranking for more services requires more effort.  In these cases you will expect to spend 30 – 50k.  REMEMBER, this is investment which you can consider a 1 time investment even though it’s broken out over a period, and that investment has a long-term ROI.  This is AMAZING, and there are no other lead generation options that work the same way.   

How confident am I that it will work? Let’s just say that we currently offer these services to some shops at no upfront cost if they have all of the right tracking, fulfillment, and machinery in place through a pay-for-performance contract. Even if you aren’t in a place where we start with this, we can look at it down the road. I’m 100% confident it will work for you and am happy to have a short call to assess your situation and show you what we’ve done for other machine shops.

References

[1] https://seoprofy.com/blog/seo-statistics/

[2] https://www.sixthcitymarketing.com/ppc-stats/