Manufacturing New Market Share

Oneda Corporation is a third-generation family-owned contract precision metal stamping manufacturer based in Columbus, Georgia. The company, founded in 1989, is a subsidiary of Japan-based Oneda Electric Corp., with 67 employees at the Columbus location, which primarily serves the automotive and heating and air conditioning industries.

These days in the United States businesses are all but invisible without a website and social media presence. Leaders at Oneda Corporation knew that they needed to increase the company’s online presence and reputation in order to continue to expand the business. They had worked with the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP) at Georgia Tech, part of the MEP National Network™, and the Southeastern Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (SETAAC) on other projects and learned that GaMEP now offered marketing services to its manufacturing clients. 

Michael Brooks, Oneda’s manager of marketing, customer service, and logistics, seized the opportunity to work with Katie Takacs, the group manager for marketing at GaMEP, to help develop and implement a strategic marketing plan. Takacs worked with Oneda to develop this plan, including goals, tactics to meet the goals, and a system to track progress on the plan. 

As the plan took shape, GaMEP added other services including implementation, strategizing about email and social media, writing content for those platforms, and redesigning the website. The project also entailed writing a tip sheet to generate leads, writing customer success stories, and training Brooks on the development of content, so that he could manage it.

Brooks, an engineer, recognized the importance of a strong, relevant social media presence, and knew he needed help to create it. “If you're not on social media, and you're not keeping up with that, you will lose your audience,” Brooks said. “The audience now is younger and more savvy. They turn to your website and look at your social postings to determine if the content meets what they are looking for. Then they determine if they sense a business relationship before they even contact you”

Within the company the website has been so well received that parent company, Oneda Electric Corp., is now working to upgrade its own site. Following the launch of the website and revamped LinkedIn page, GaMEP identified 100 companies and purchasing managers in eight states that could be potential new customers for the company and created a three-step lead generation campaign to reach them.

Outside of marketing, Oneda has also engaged the GaMEP team on additional projects including an energy assessment analysis that led to a decrease in energy consumption by the company.