OT? : Finding those "hidden" customers.

How do you guys find customers who need design work or assembly, etc., for in-house products. You know, when the electronics is hidden in the final product?

I'm just starting out, and the business that I'm generating from web articles and newsgroup postings is small but significant. Moreover since I'm targeting my website articles and most of my newsgroup postings to things I want to do, I'm able to steer the direction that the inquiries go to some extent.

Takes a lot more work than the word of mouth business but I don't have enough of that, yet.

"word of mouth" is all that works.

...Jim Thompson

We get a lot of action from the Web, specifically Google searches. The problem is to load your web site with enough specific and uncommon keywords/metatags that people find you on the first page or so. That's easy for us, as we can do "picosecond delay" and stuff like that. It's much more difficult if all you can offer is "electronic assembly" or something (that search evokes, in fact, 10.2 million hits.) So the trick is to narrow it down.

For general-purpose electronic assembly, I'd recommend looking up potential customers in your region and calling on them, maybe offer to do a small batch for free or something. Word of mouth takes a while to build momentum.

John

"John Larkin" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

We have good customers for our assembly business, and do get some word of mouth. We just put up our new building and added capacity, so I am looking to add some more customers is why I ask.

I like servicing the low volume niche. As an engineer, its fun to see the new stuff, the clever stuff, etc. I like the pace of the small company, not the long drawn out snail's pace of the giant ones where I worked after college.