Tracey Hawkins of Kansas City, Missouri writes:
“I own a business that sells safety and security products–everything from pepper spray to door alarms, fire extinguishers and more. There is no clear leader in this field. I want to be the company known for safety and security products.
“I have a website but don’t get a lot of orders. However, I sell on Amazon.com and do quite well. My goal is to get more traffic to my website and sell more on my own. Safety and Security Source needs to be a recognized brand. I conduct free personal safety presentations and have become an expert for real estate agents and have products specifically for them. How would I also increase my seminar business to real estate companies throughout the United States?”
Web sites are more than bulletin boards they are “living” entities that must connect immediately with the visitor. Your site has a homemade image that doesn’t say “trust me” with all your safety needs. You need to make it easier to read and navigate. The color scheme needs to build confidence.
Sandi above hit it on the head but I’d like to add that you need to add articles and information that provides solutions, builds credibility, exudes confidence and keeps people coming back as their needs change.
The sister of safety is trust and you need to make that a priority in your presentation and advice.
For Real Estate Brokers, you may want to consider teaching a class that’s been approved for Continuing Education (CE). All R/E Brokers need education hours each year, and are looking for classes…particularly free ones! Since your business offers safety products, I’d imagine you could come up with a safety related topic that would not only appeal to brokers but also be eligible for CE. And if you offer a free lunch, you may end up getting more people than you can handle!
One of the reasons that you aren’t selling much from your website is because the website does not portray a company that the average person would buy from. The color scheme make it very hard to read and its not laid out in a way that is easy to navigate nor are there enough images on it. In order to get people to your site, they have to be able to find it. You do not have any meta tags in place for the search engines to locate the site.
If you would like some help in getting your site redesigned, I can help you.
But its all about the image and right now the image doesn’t sell!
Links links & more links. I would do the “if you link to mine I’ll link to yours”. Safety is an important issue. Try websites for authors of safety books, crime authors, crime sites, organizations, etc.
I agree about the Web site. It is not professional-looking (still a common problem with Web sites). I suggest you invest some money in a sophisticated redesign. We all know personal safety is an issue; I did not realize it was such an ‘on the job’ concern. Some information and tips about personal safety would be great, as long as they are not too frightening. There are some hints on your Real Estate Safety page; I would flesh some out into one of Joan Stewart’s famous ‘top ten tips on professional safety’ and send it to your local newspaper and real estate trade papers.
Seniors are interested in your specialties. Develop programs for area senior centers where you could leave print material. Work with the Area Agency on Aging and the senior coalition (if one exists) for tie-ins. Your advice would make an interesting 1/2-hour video for the public access channel, and the tape could be shown where seniors gather.
Hi Tracey,
First, I’ve spent over 16 years as an educator on emergency preparedness & disaster response – so I’ve seen lots of safety related sites. I agree that you will be well-served to totally redesign your website.
Next, there are very easy ways to get lots of exposure, have many organizations happily linking to you and giving 3rd party endorsements — with building relationships and increasing sales as the end goal.
Not sure what you are doing already to get web sales and I didn’t surf long on your site, so you may be doing some of these in some way.
– Offer some discount or freebie just for linking to you.
– Offer discounts/freebies/bonuses for referrals who become customers
– Pick a target market/develop a specialty – and then joint venture with an industry leader in a non-compete business. While there isn’t a clear national leader for the products you sell, there are several with market dominance in particular areas. They use strategic partnerships at a high level.
– Work with a non-profit to reach a specific under-served segment of your community. My nonprofit gets lots of coverage for our supporters because we’ve built up our capacity for media outreach and generating publicity. And I use and display their names and logos in hundreds of presentations as well as nationally televised broadcasts.
– In a past newsletter, Joan printed a list of suggestions I submitted about how to get APPROPRIATE (aka not exploitive) publicity related to emergencies and disasters. You have many opportunities to garner truly positive publicity by leveraging and partnering to make safety a reality.
– Not sure if you have at least one HIGH visibility client, but if you do, I’d leverage that partnership. I’m on the faculty of UC Berkeley Center for Infectious Disease Preparedness where I present on emergency preparedness for vulnerable populations (www.idready.org/webcast). That one relationship has been a huge springboard to audiences I would never have reached on my own.
Good luck with your efforts!
AMJ
nice article. Hope that info can help people who have read it. thx
The reason why you do better selling on amazon is probably the fact that people are much more ready to trust well-known and famous sites than other web sites. People are more careful today than ever and find it hard to put their trust into anything they’re not very, very sure it’s reliable. As for the pepper sprays and other security products, think that self defense and security market is a pretty good one. There’s money to be made there.