3 Essential Strategies for Effective Workshop Management

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Workshop owners and managers can be artisans, craftspersons or skilled tradespersons who have dedicated years to their area of expertise; however, they often find that starting their own business requires business skills they may not have cultivated. Here are a few tips to help your workshop be successful.

Make a Plan To Launch Your Business

In art, craft, or trade, working to become excellent at what you do is the goal. But being the best does not ensure your business success. Most great artists are unknown in their lifetime, and some of the greatest inventors of all time have been lost to the pages of history. If you want your workshop to succeed, you need to make a plan.

The Small Business Administration outlines some common tasks to complete to launch your business:

Conduct market and comparative analyses.
Decide how to structure your business: sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC or corporation.
Calculate your startup costs and choose funding options such as SBA loans, crowdfunding, investors or a combination of them all.
Choose and register your business name.
Secure necessary licenses, permits and insurance policies.

Invest in Workshop Software

Once your workshop is open, managing it well is the next challenge. You need to manage production, customer relations, invoicing, shipping and marketing. By far, the simplest way to manage these needs is with sophisticated workshop management software like Powder Coat 360.

This cloud-based and secure software allows you to increase productivity, reduce costs and maximize profit by centralizing business processes such as these:

Making proposals, taking orders and tracking projects
Generating invoices and accepting payments
Maintaining inventory and making shipments
Managing and communicating with customers

Embrace Digital Marketing

Entrepreneur.com states that a solid marketing plan is essential to success. Using a professional digital marketing team is a smart expenditure for any business, but that may be out of reach until your workshop is established. While your new business likely lacks a robust marketing budget, you can still take advantage of a wide variety of low-cost digital marketing techniques that will help drive customers to your door.

Website Design

You don’t have to pay a lot of money for a good website when you’re just starting out. There are many inexpensive or free website builders online that will help you build a site that customers will love. Here are a few qualities of a great business website that you should include on yours:

Functional and easy to use
Mobile compatible
A landing page with a clear description of your business and services
Overt calls to action that funnel visitors to a purchase
Frequent use of infographics and videos
Install analytics tools to track how effective your site is

Business Blog

If your business has a website, that website should include a blog. Blogs offer potential customers valuable information, educational opportunities, entertainment or commentary. They should not be overtly promotional, but a well-written blog that is updated frequently, will drive customers to your site, build your customer base and create customer loyalty.

Email Marketing

Email marketing has been around for a long time, but when done well it is effective, personal, low-cost and offers the best return on investment of all digital marketing strategies. There are many ways to use email to build and cultivate customer relationships.

Send new customers a welcome email and reminders of products and services they have shown interest in.
Start a monthly newsletter to keep customers apprised of what is happening with your business.
Send special offers and discounts to draw new customers back to your website or to create add-on value for existing customers.
Make customers aware of the launch of new products or services.
Make your customers feel seen and recognized with personalized messages on special occasions.

These simple digital marketing strategies are powerful tools for building customer loyalty.

Give Your Workshop a Strategic Edge

A small business takes time, effort and planning, and all that goes double for a workshop. Not only must you excel at what you do, but you must also manage your business well. If you plan to turn your passion and skill into a business by opening your own workshop, you need to look beyond your expertise and adopt some business strategies. Educating yourself on the basics of setting up and launching a small business, streamlining operations with workshop management software and creating customer relationships through simple digital marketing strategies gives you the edge over the majority of new workshop owners and lays the ground for future success.