When conducting an online factory tour, the title “○○ company online factory tour” comes to mind immediately. However, this makes the motivation to participate vague because there is no “theme”. If people with a wide range of motivations are gathered, it will be difficult to increase the satisfaction of the participants, and as a result, the atmosphere will be like a “social studies tour”.
When conducting an online factory tour, it is necessary to decide on a theme and announce it as “○○ company online factory tour-theme name-“.
Difference from social studies tour
When it comes to factory tours, I get the impression that children “see behind the scenes, which they can’t usually see,” like visiting a candy maker or the backside of an airport. Of course, it is good to accept local children online as a social studies tour.
However, when we want to utilize an online factory tour to connect to business negotiations, we distinguish that it does not just show behind the scenes such as “how this part is made” like a social studies tour. need to do it.
The purpose is to “show the strengths of the theme and leave a strong impression on the viewer.”
What you need to show during an online factory tour is your company’s strengths (features, differences from other companies, and the ability to solve customer issues). And leave a strong impression on the viewer in that field. This is the purpose of conducting an online factory tour for prospective customers.
The word “strength” is vague, but Kotler states:
1. Greatly contributes to the perception of customer benefits and is a source of competitive advantage
2. Wide range of applications and can be used in various markets
3. Difficult to imitate competitors
In addition, while core competence is considered as an area of expertise in specialized technical and production departments, “unique capabilities” are also cited as a source of competitive advantage. Capability is a concept that refers to excellence not only in technology but also in a wider range of business processes.
Capabilities will include “quick delivery,” which is one of the characteristics of small and medium-sized enterprises.
You can think of it as above, or I simply think of it as ” the ability to solve customer issues .” Especially in the case of BtoB companies, as long as the other party is a corporation, there are also customers beyond that. The company that is your customer must fulfill “responsibility” (quality, delivery time, cost, etc.) for that company’s customers.
In that process, we are faced with many challenges. How can your technology / service solve that problem? We believe that “ability to solve problems” has the characteristics and strengths of a company.
What constitutes a strength
In order to express our strengths, it is helpful to break down and think about “what makes our strengths”. Let us consider technical factors and management factors as the elements that make up our strengths. As an example, let’s consider the strength of heat treatment company M, which is to respond to heat treatment in a short delivery time.
By breaking down the technical factors and management factors, you can see what you should show and explain in the online factory tour. In the above case,
- All sales staff are heat treatment technicians, and by being able to give advice on technical issues from the meeting stage, quick delivery can be achieved.
- While showing the equipment, it is possible to respond to short delivery times by installing multiple small furnaces.
- While showing the traceability system, quality and delivery date are managed by centrally managing everything.
And so on. All information is assembled for the concept of “quick delivery” and provided to participants as information.
In this way, the purpose of the online factory tour for prospective customers is to present that the company’s strengths are “strengthening”. For that purpose, let’s break down our strengths into technical factors and management factors, and take an inventory of “what we have to convey”.
Online factory tour planning sheet download
The online factory tour planning sheet helps you break down your strengths into technical and management elements and consider what you will see in the actual factory tour.
- Verbalize your strengths
- Break down the factors of strength
- Verbalize the elements that make it possible, and consider what to show during the factory tour.
- Put them together in a catch phrase that expresses them in one word
It’s a good idea to provide this tagline to existing or prospective customers as a factory tour theme.
Attracting customers to an online factory tour
Once you have decided on a theme for your online factory tour, how do you recruit participants? You can notify companies with which you have a connection in the past by e-mail, use press releases, or notify on your website.
Your website plays an important role here. Once you have decided on a theme for your online factory tour, we will enrich the content on that theme on your website.
From that content, you will be able to apply for an online factory tour. Even if you publish information on the website, prospective customers will not gather immediately, so it would be good if you could hold regular online factory tours with a fixed theme, such as “once every three months,” and continuously attract customers from the website. ..
