Where Is The Electronics Industry

The electronics industry has been in decline over the past decade due to a few reasons:

• Rising material costs
• Labour rates
• Offshore manufacture

As other countries (such as China, India and Mexico) have grown, their standards, quality and equipment have also grown. As business has declined here, the old equipment cannot afford to be upgraded or replaced, resulting in other countries having better quality and production facilities.

Many of the larger manufacturing companies (defense, automotive, rail, oil etc.) have moved manufacture overseas resulting in a steady decline year on year

Is There Anything Left

Despite a decline in business the nation still has pockets of work available, which can be tapped into.

The problem is that these pockets tend to be for smaller projects, smaller batch quantities of electronics subcontract work. This is fine for electronics companies that do short runs, but for most manufacturing companies it is the larger batch quantities that are needed (as they bring more profit).

For the larger companies (that deal with larger batch volumes) a very real problem exists – in that there is not the work available (and the few pieces of bit business that there are may well be already tied up with existing suppliers).

What Are The Choices

Electronic companies need to get aggressive with their marketing in order to pick up the remainder of electronics projects that exist.

Only be aggressively targeting prospects and pushing for meetings and quote opportunities can work be won. A case of he who shouts loudest is the one that is heard.

This can only be done by aggressive marketing:

• Researching prospects
• Contacting buyers
• Booking meetings
• Requesting quote opportunities
• Being competitive on price

The sales process does need to come in and come in aggressively. Many electronics companies have been complacent with their marketing over the last decade – hoping that customers will come knocking and offer work to them. This is unfortunately what happens in a booming industry when companies can pick and choose the clients they take on; but in today’s economy beggars cannot be choosers.

Historically a bit part of electronics marketing has been exhibitions and events; whereby electronics companies would showcase themselves and hope that business comes their way. However as the market has changed (and reduced) and more targeted approach is needed.

Best Marketing Advice

The best marketing advice to any electronics firm seeking new business in this economy would be the following:

• Research prospects – find out who you want to target based on their products
• Contact the prospects – this involved calling them up to chat/arrange a meeting
• Push for an opportunity to quote – try to get a piece of the work
• Ensure your pricing is good and give them a reason to place an order with you

This approach may seem aggressive, but assuming that your competitors are doing this approach you need to also in order to pick up the few pieces of work that remain.