Why You Still Need to Learn Police Marketing!

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Still struggling to attract Police Officer applicants to your agency?  Tired of blowing your recruiting budget on great sounding but useless products all of these outside companies keep pitching you?  Are you finally ready to change your police recruiting forever?  🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️

Let me remind you of the solution...keep reading! 👀

Hey everyone, it’s Tom Sye your Police Marketing FTO, and this week, I’m bringing back a lesson.  That’s right…a little over a year ago, thirteen months to be exact, I published a MFC Newsletter explaining why you really needed to learn police marketing.  For those of you who listened, enough time has passed that you’re starting to see some nice results by now…I’ve heard from many of you.  For those of you who weren’t ready yet at the time or maybe hadn’t found me until recently, let me ask you a question… 👇

Thinking back over that same past year…where are you now at with your recruiting?  In the same spot?  Maybe just a little bit better or worse?  How much money have you given some outside company to be right back where you were when you started trying to fix things? 🤔

Look, I’m not here to beat you up, I’m just passionate about you winning with recruiting and need to jolt your system into realizing there is no quick fix to your problems, and police recruiting has no end date, no matter what that salesperson promises you or tells you about another agency’s results. 🚫

The simple fact of the matter is you are one simple retirement, resignation, or someone making a stupid decision away from having another one.  You are one city council, county or state board meeting away from getting more positions you need to staff, and you are within three to five years of your very first Generation Z employees starting to consider hopping to another job. 👋 

So, what’s the solution?

Just like it was last year, learn police marketing so you can stay on top of things, ensure the consistency and integrity of your messaging, and not have to rely on an outside company who has far more interest in filling their pockets than your vacancies.  💪

What is Police Marketing?

Quite simply, it’s taking your traditional police recruiting efforts and moving them online.  It’s meeting your applicants where they are at...building a relationship with them...and showing them that people like them, work for you. 🙌

The best part...you don’t need a fancy marketing degree, the latest and greatest digital equipment, or the need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to pull this off.  You can do all of this on your own, for next to nothing, when you take just a little bit of time to learn how to do it! 🤯

Here are three great reminders of why you need to be doing this yourself...

1. This problem is still never going away

Again, there is no end date to police recruiting.  If you haven’t looked ahead to see how many officers are either currently eligible or eligible to retire in the next five to ten years...you really need to do that.  Like, as soon as you finish reading this newsletter. 💨 

Those numbers aren’t if’s...they’re when’s!  It’s happening and you have to have a plan on how you’re going to replace them.  Oh...that’s in addition to the vacancies you already have. ➕    

You never had to realize this problem before because you always had plenty of applicants coming to you without even trying. 🤷‍♂️

I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news but…those days are over and they’re not coming back.  Job fairs, out of state recruiting trips, and Facebook ads aren’t going to get the job done.  Your applicants are hanging out on social media…like all the time.  Who do you want interacting with them?  A trusted member of your agency or a representative from an outside company? 😳

2.  It’s still super cost effective

In today’s fiscally uncertain world, how much longer do you think you’re going to be able to pay an outside company to deliver little or no results?  This is especially intensified if you’re an agency who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and still have a ton of vacancies. 📉

When you learn to do it yourself, those costs go bye-bye, because effective police marketing doesn’t cost you a thing.  Every major social media platform in the world is free to use. 😎

And the biggest advantage?  You, not the company you hired, you get to learn exactly what worked and more importantly what didn’t work so you can avoid making the same mistake over and over and pivot to something that actually helps attract more applicants to your agency.  🚀

3.  No one still can market your agency better than you

If you’re looking to use the same cookie cutter website or advertising design, the same lame messaging that they use for every agency they cut a deal with, or to have your social media account constantly jumping on the same trends that audiences tire of quickly, then by all means, have someone else do things for you. 🙄

Look, police work is police work no matter where you go, but everyone does things just a little bit different.  So, if you’re looking to showcase your agency as the unique and special place that it is, no one knows those differences better than you.  No one cares about the future of your agency more than you.   And no one is going to put in more genuine effort to be successful than you will for yourself.  💯

Listen, I know this seems like such a foreign concept.  It’s new, I get it…but just like once upon a time how there was no such thing as a SWAT team, motor unit, K9, Real Time Crime Center, homeless outreach teams, or coming soon…drone units, you one day won’t be able to think of a police agency who doesn’t have police marketing in place. 💭

The time is right now, and you need to dedicate resources within your department to handle the recruiting demand of the future in the form of Police Marketing.  And it’s not as hard as you think either.  You just need someone to show you how to do it. 🏫

You ready to learn?  Study all the free resources available on website at forcopstraining.com/guides. 

If you want to accelerate the process, my Road to Better Recruiting online super course is enrolling right now.  I’ll teach everything you need to know to help get you started in police marketing and will be there for you with my online support group where I’m constantly providing more information and answering all of your questions along the way. 🫶

Check it out by visiting forcopstraining.com/rtbr and take control of your police recruiting. 

Want to see our profession get stronger as a whole?  Give this newsletter a like or share it with a friend at another agency so they can learn too.  Remember, it’s going to take all of us to change the future of police recruiting. 🤝

Have more questions about police recruiting, marketing, or anything else you're struggling with? Don't hesitate to reach out...I’m always here to help. 🙏

Until next week my Police Marketing Squad, happy recruiting! 😃

Tom

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👋 I’m Tom Sye, your Police Marketing FTO. I founded ‘For Cops’ Training to teach Police Departments how to attract more qualified candidates through the same tried and tested methods I’ve used for the past ten years at my own department to keep up with turnover and stay ahead of vacancies.

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