Marketing safety
By the late George Robotham
Make no bones about it, safety is a product that has to be marketed in ways similar to the ways the products your organisation produces are marketed.
A good OHS section on your organisations web site will help. It is best to treat everybody you interact with as customers whether they be internal or external.
Marketing goals
- Increased activity through creating an interest in my products
- Increased awareness of OHS though visits to the web site
- Get more repeat customers
- Raise safety professional profile
- Launch new products
- Increase client recommendations
- Improve relationships with customers
- Be a credible source of best practice information on Safety for employees
Marketing tips
- Have a Unique Selling Proposition
- Say thank you to customers
- Always give something of value free
- Give customers What’s In It For Me from their perspective
- Give them an offer they cannot refuse
- Show the customer how the product will benefit them
- Keep in contact with old customers much easier to sell to than getting new customers
- Have a call to action
- Always treat the customer like a King or Queen-If you do not your competitors will
- People buy benefits but want to know features
- Word of mouth from satisfied customers is the best advertising, if they are happy they may tell one person, if they are not they will tell 20
- Send regular e-mail updates
- Ask for referrals and put on web site, reward customers for referrals
- Have a regular newsletter to clients and make available through subscription on the web site
- Promotional flyer, biros, note pads, stubby coolers, business cards to hand out at activities
- Consider cost / benefits of setting up promotional booth at safety conferences ,quite expensive but a lot of exposure to safety decision makers, have a trade show discount, big bottle of scotch for prize for putting business card in the bucket, need booth advertising, tv, video & computer
- Enter awards in my industry, lots of free publicity if I win
- Publish papers / speak at conferences
- Put standard learning packages on web site and promote
- Get competitor intelligence
- Need to develop a time frame for implementation