How to Market Personal Security Products?

So, I lost my job with my local police department 2 months ago (wasn't the right fit) and have been looking for another position elsewhere since then, particularly in sales and marketing (want to learn as much as I can so I can apply it to my own business). I’ve ultimately decided that I being a “cop” (I was in a training program to become one) is not something that I would be very good at and feel that I can contribute to society and my community a lot more by selling crime prevention products.


I have had an online business selling non-lethal personal protection products since October of last year. Problem is, I pretty much spent all of my money trying to have a web site designed and on other things. Totally wasted it all (yay for my first entrepreneurial experience). I am at the point where I completely just want to get out into my community and market my products. I have done far too much thinking and have taken little action since the inception of my business. Now I think it’s time to change that. This is honestly something I want to do full-time, but considering that I have no personal cash flow at the moment…not applying for jobs is not an option.


Now that I FINALLY have a car, I can easily get around town to meet with people. My plan right now is to get car magnets made for my car so that I can advertise on the road. The next step is determining which markets to approach and how. My main markets are single women, college students, and the elderly. Locations to target would be apartment complexes, college campuses, and retirement homes. Because I have a relationship with my local police department, I was thinking of trying to market stun gun flashlights (I don’t believe there is a departmental policy restriction on the type of flashlights one can carry on-duty) to police officers as well.


I live near the University of Minnesota, which has a HUGE number of students. My issue is…how would I market to them without having to pay? Could I get a marketing club to distribute flyers or something? Maybe speak with a representative of the Women’s Group on campus? There are also a few smaller community colleges around as well. This would probably be my best place to target, but I’m worried about advertising costs (I barely have any funds at the moment to do any large campaigns).


One idea that I thought of is canvassing in neighborhoods that experience high levels of crime, like robbery. Our police department provides crime mapping data every week for each respective precinct (representing each section of the city), showing all the types of crimes committed and where. A direct mail campaign would work, but this would be too expensive. I would like to experiment and see if taking a personal door-to-door approach might work well or not.



I had flyers designed quite a while ago and had plans on going to businesses and posting them on bulletin boards. I had them posted in about 6 businesses, but that was months ago. The problem I see with just posting flyers is that it seems too passive of a marketing strategy. Should I be handing these out (mind you, these are high quality and expensive; was $100 for just 200) to people or should I write up a simpler flyer, print it out in black/white and hand them out? What about when canvassing?





Here is my website:


www.srselfdefense.com


I have several products that I still need to add (and remove the wholesale section), but I feel that I need to just leave that alone for now and just GO OUT and start talking to people. That has been my main problem…too much thinking, little action. My idea was to go the ecommerce route, but I feel that utilizing my website via offline marketing would be much better and bring in sales a lot quicker that doing SEO and writing articles.


Here are some marketing plans that one of my suppliers recommended for his distributors, which I’d like to take advantage of:

1. Set up route of gun stores, pawn shops, and independent hardware stores! (go offer to sell stores some my products)
2. Fundraising (using products to raise money for churches, civic groups, etc.
3. Become an internet marketing mogul! (ecommerce, secondary plan)
4. Business-Business (secondary plan, for surveillance products mainly)

So if you were me, what kind of step-by-step process would you take with this (this is where I’m struggling, because I don’t have a business plan or anything)? And especially with little to no capital (or a job at the moment, for that matter)? Crime prevention is my ultimate passion. THIS is how I want to help people; not by being a cop, but by being a provider to people in my community. This is what I want to dedicate my life to. I just need help getting things off the ground.


THANK YOU!!