Why Safety Is Such a Secure Business for You and Your Customers

 

Home and personal safety and security is big business worldwide, including on eBay, representing an immensely responsive niche market with plentiful sub-categories.  As a result, both on and off eBay, you’ll find traders specialising in safety and security products and services per se, and others targeting specific products and particular markets, such as pet security tags, kiddies’ jewellery with location monitoring devices, house alarm and fire detection devices, and much more besides.

 

Demand is usually high all year round for goods and services to protect loved ones and property, but the business can be competitive, though there are several ways to raise your profits above the norm and help you achieve a lion’s share of the business.  Very sadly, the most profitable ways tend to centre round actual tragedy and almost invariably represent a kind of Wake Up call to potential customers.

 

As a friend selling house and fire alarms tells me, there is a major problem confronting most people selling safety and security products, in that the business rarely works well just waiting for customers to call to buy your products.  This is especially so for firms working online only, without access to customers outside the internet.  In all cases, especially online, as on eBay, you really need to create awareness for your products and tell people what they stand to lose by not taking proper care of loved ones and property.

 

This is because most people don’t think tragedy will ever strike them, so they are blasé about life-saving equipment like home fire alarms and sandbags until fire strikes and people die or, as happened just recently, children go missing, pets are stolen, rivers overflow and destroy lives and property.

 

It’s a sad tale for the victims, sad for onlookers too, and while I’d never advocate making money from other people’s misery, I think there are countless business opportunities waiting here with a ready made captive audience, and advertisers as keen as mustard to market your product to millions of people, all in one go, completely free of charge.  Namely the media!

 

That friend mentioned earlier told me his very best selling times always came in the aftermath of local house fires that had claimed several lives, especially young children and adults.

 

‘You must take a pro-active approach to business’, he told me, ‘and you must always consider your role one of saving lives, not reacting to other people’s misery!

 

When tragedy strikes or problems appear that affect huge numbers of people, the press (and television and radio) goes on a rampage looking for news to keep their audience ratings high.  This is also the time when savvy marketers reach out for millions of pounds worth of free advertising for whatever products and services they have to relieve the problems of many thousands of people.  This free publicity is usually achieved by sending out product reviews or press releases highlighting the product concerned and inviting editors and broadcasters to get in touch for more information and preferably to interview the seller! 

 

There are many ways that firms already in business can enjoy a massive swell in orders based on free prime-time advertising to an audience of millions, and the concept works equally well no matter where you are based, on the high street for example, or online, possibly on eBay.  But, thankfully, you don’t have to wait for disaster to strike before you put these ideas into practice.  To show how effective this free advertising can be:

 

*  When the world went crazy about a young child going missing in Portugal a Cumbrian Internet company went on television to reveal a range of jewellery and accessories for children and pets, which not only looked good but also included tiny tracking devices linked to a central computer that could be accessed to reveal the exact location of the tracking device and the individual wearing it. This product has been around for many years, I interviewed the people myself long ago as part of an article I was writing about the security business.  I contacted them again today, to keep in touch, and to check how the television programme had affected their business.  The reply went something like ‘Snowed under’ and I learned the television people had contacted my friend, not vice versa, to air details of a product that might help stop other families falling victim to similar tragedy.

 

*  It must have felt like all his birthdays had come together when sudden strange events led to a Yorkshire man appearing on television and in newspaper and radio programmes all over northern England.  He was selling ‘sandbags’, the very thing hundreds of thousands of people were desperate to have to prevent rain and overflowing drains destroying their homes and business properties.  But these were not your typical sandbags, they weren’t heavy, they didn’t even contain sand, and they did not belong to the person called upon to demonstrate the product. 

 

Unlike your average sandbag, these could be stored in a tiny space and assembled in seconds to begin saving lives and property.  The product comprised flat bags with a thin bubble layer inside, a bit like padded bags used for posting delicate items.  Once immersed in water, though, or hit by heavy rain, chemicals caused the bubbles to swell and the bag to inflate to about the size of a pillow case but twice as deep and very sturdy.  The man was an import agent, working from home, his stock came from China, and these were just samples he had obtained to test market the product in the UK.  Sadly, all too late on this occasion for him to profit from a captive audience and mountains of free publicity.  Better luck next time!

 

And next time there will almost certainly be, because children going missing, family pets being kidnapped, drains and rivers overflowing, are not rare events.  They’re about as predictable as the sun rising and setting each day! 

 

And that’s what makes safety and security such a safe business to follow.