Public Safety Insights Newsletter: How to Market Your Agency’s Value

Public Safety Insight:	To win support from your community, you consistently must demonstrate your value in ways they can appreciate.

In a world characterized by complexity and continuous change, one of the most critical challenges facing public safety professionals is how to educate your stakeholders about what you need to keep your community safe, healthy, and economically viable. Whether you call this effort marketing, branding, or creating a positive image, it requires you to do things differently than you have in the past. You must be proactive instead of reactive, focus on results instead of on activities, and "connect the dots" between your actions and their impact on public safety. As contrary to your culture as this may sound, if you don’t blow your own horn, there won’t be any music. And if that’s the case, your employees and your community will suffer needlessly.

For public safety professionals, marketing means educating the public and decision-makers about the role they must play so that your agency can be most effective in keeping the community safe, healthy, and economically viable. The well-being of the people you serve depends on your ability to appeal to their enlightened self-interest – i.e., to show them clearly and consistently what’s in it for them to allocate the resources and take the actions necessary for you to achieve your mission. Marketing can help you demonstrate the great value your agency provides. Here’s a seven-step plan that will enable you to do that effectively:

1. Mindset: focus your approach
2. Message: identify who and what
3. Methods: identify practices and protocols
4. Map: develop a plan
5. Manage: implement the plan
6. Measure: assess progress and achievement
7. Maintain: replenish and refresh the plan

Why is it in your agency’s best interest to develop and implement a marketing plan? Because while people want and need the value you provide, few members of the public know what it takes to create and maintain a safe, healthy, and economically viable environment. Unless you educate them by consistently and clearly connecting the dots between your actions and the community’s level of public safety, they cannot make informed decisions about their quality of life. As a result, public safety professionals must take on the role of educator. Developing and implementing a marketing plan can help you fulfill the responsibilities of that role effectively.

If you’d like to learn more about the marketing plan outlined above, you may be interested in reading my special report, The 7 Ms of Marketing: How to Communicate Your Agency’s Value. To find other articles and resources that may be of value to you, I invite you to visit my web site at www.PublicSafetyInsights.net.

Last call! I will be conducting an IAFC-sponsored webinar on February 12th called "How to Write a Compelling Annual Report." Click here to obtain the details and register on the IAFC website.

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©2015 Pat Lynch | Public Safety Insights