With a declining number of smokers accessing SSS over recent years and budgets under pressure, finding cost effective ways to promote local support to smokers is increasingly important.
In 2015 Fresh embarked on a scoping exercise with local stop smoking services to explore whether all potential marketing tools to communicate with smokers were being used most effectively. From these round tables, we produced a marketing toolkit for local services, acknowledging marketing is not a silver bullet but can help maximise opportunities and harness peaks in motivation to quit, as well as adapting to the emerging use of ecigs as a quitting tool.
This report built on some of the insight developed by regional tobacco offices working with Department of Health on a programme of work in 2010 supporting services with sales-led marketing tactics and engaging effectively with lost leads. We all now work in a very different landscape, where evidence around mass media campaigns continues to grow as a means to keep downward pressure on smoking prevalence, but increasingly this is only affordable at regional and national levels.
This session will explore some of the discussions that shaped the report, as well as recommendations and opportunities. With dwindling budgets, marketing is not always seen as a priority, but raising awareness, establishing a good reputation and ensuring local populations are aware of the support out there are still important facets of building a successful business or service in the digital age.
