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

1. Increased activity through creating an interest in my products
2. Increased awareness of OHS though visits to the web site
3. Get more repeat customers
4. Raise safety professional profile
5. Launch new products
6. Increase client recommendations
7. Improve relationships with customers
8. Be a credible source of best practice information on Safety for employees

Marketing tips

1. Have a Unique Selling Proposition
2. Say thank you to customers
3. Always give something of value free
4. Give customers What’s In It For Me from their perspective
5. Give them an offer they cannot refuse
6. Show the customer how the product will benefit them
7. Keep in contact with old customers much easier to sell to than getting new customers
8. Have a call to action
9. Always treat the customer like a King or Queen-If you do not your competitors will
10. People buy benefits but want to know features
11. 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
12. Send regular e-mail updates
13. Ask for referrals and put on web site, reward customers for referrals
14. Have a regular newsletter to clients and make available through subscription on the web site
15. Promotional flyer, biros, note pads, stubby coolers, business cards to hand out at activities
16. 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
17. Enter awards in my industry, lots of free publicity if I win
18. Publish papers / speak at conferences
19. Put standard learning packages on web site and promote
20. Get competitor intelligence
21. Need to develop a time frame for implementation