Marketing to Military Families

When you're marketing your goods and services to the personnel of your local Air Force, Army, or Navel base and their families, your first task is to arrange an introductory meeting with the Community Liaison Officer or Liaison Office of the base or installation.

In that meeting, ask lots of questions and let the Community Liaison Officer do all the talking: you need to know what they need in terms of goods and services, what they don't need, what's permitted by Air Force, Army, or Naval code, and what's off limits.

Once the Community Liaison Officer knows what you're offering, that person will pass your outline of services to the Base Commander. It will be the Base Commander who decides what you can or cannot do on the base (if you're trading or selling on US Government property), or what you can do for his or her base personnel.

When you set foot on any military base, suddenly, you're not in Kansas any more. On any military installation the regular rules of the civilian world do not apply, and on the base, the Base Commander calls the shots.

You might also want to contact the the USO - http://www.uso.org/ - to see what they advise or need.

It's unlikely you'll be permitted to advertise directly on the base in question and it's important that you understand this. But there are probably a good number of on-base magazines or newspapers that you CAN advertise in. Referrals also work well for retail and eatery outlets near military bases. Get a member of the base (with valid ID) to sign up, and when they bring a buddy who also has valid ID, that person eats free, or for half price, or each person gets free coffee and pie, or whatever incentive you want to use to bring in that business.

Remember, any incentive or offer you present must be low cost enough to you so that its expense is offset by the total value of the transaction and repeat business it brings you, and the value to the customer of that offer must be high enough in perceived value to make it worth their while giving you their custom.

As with all marketing, marketing to military families is about creating and building relationships that last.

Get this right and you'll build a reputation for taking care of people. This way, your marketing money works doubly or triply hard because your customers become evangelists on your behalf.

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