Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Maybe not the answer you are waiting for.
Unless i am wrong, the items sold on your site do not prevent anything but report behavior. Most probably your free literature is interesting but i was personally bored just reading the description before the download page. Also i would remove the cart on the homepage. It is the first thing you notice when the page has loaded.
Personal experience. Like many teenagers, i wanted to have my own bike. My parents first disagree but instead of going against my idea, took me a hospital specialized in road accidents. This has definitely changed my perception of things....

Here's what one scool did. https://www.redlineresistance.com/

"How to overcome the 'it won't happen to my child' attitude?" - Provide statistics. What's the chance that 16-year-old will get into an accident? Get injured? Die? A 17-year-old? 18-year-old? Since you're selling accident avoidance products, you need to tell me the same statistics for those that have purchased them. That will inform my ROI as a consumer.

Your business name is "off". Safe Teen Driving Club sounds like you're marketing to teens. This is clearly NOT what you're doing. Compare this to "Mothers Against Drunk Driving". Instead consider a name like "Parents For Safe Teen Driving".

Is your website getting poor traffic or traffic that doesn't convert. I'm guessing you're having conversion problems, because the site itself doesn't lead me through the education/sales process simply. Instead, the home page presents me too many options - some selling, some education, and WAY too much text for me to navigate.

A subtle issue I have - you're using a .org domain name yet you seem to be a .com company. I generally assume a .org is a 501(c)3
I wouldn't assume a .org would be trying to sell me a bunch of products. I would encourage you to have a 501(c)3 company that does the education and a for-profit that does the product sales. It would be much clearer what you're selling. I do see that your for-profit donates money to non-profits that support young people and their family.

You're not selling insurance. Most of the products you're selling force teens to be more responsible for their driving to avoid being "busted" (GPS devices, bumper stickers, and breathalyzers).
The teenSMART teaches education. The legal/roadside assistance is for in-case of a problem.

Together your products may give parents peace of mind. And that's how I'd package your offering: present the ROI of your products, testimonials from "satisfied" parents (from everything to major accidents), insurance executives, and highway patrol. Highlight the reality of an teen driving problem, its potential for injury/death, and show your solution to the problem.

This is a perfect example of a solution looking for a problem. Parents obviously don't have a pressing need for what you're selling. That's why it's so hard to get them to buy!

If you'd started by determining what parents think they need and what the priorities are, you might have learned that the whole idea you're pushing is low on their priority list ... and saved yourself a lot of time and effort (and money?).

Now you have two choices: You can stop trying to push water uphill (i.e., convince people they should want what you're selling), fold up your tent, and try something else; or you can see if you can be clever enough to fit what you're selling into a construct in which it will be the perfect solution for an important unmet need.

If you opt for the latter, you might consider starting the process with some solid consumer research that will quantify what your primary target audience believes, values, and is willing to spend money on. You might also find that there's a narrow sub-segment of the market that really does value what you do and would be a great target audience for you.

Allan

I have to declare that I have been affected by the road toll and this is an emotional subject for me.

I think the most fundamental issue you face is the fact that young people, especially males, do not have the intellectual capacity to foresee the likely consequences of their behaviour until they reach around 25 years or older.

Our anthropological origins built the development of fast reflexes into our genetic code - for example when we touch something very hot - to move away from it immediately to avoid a larger or more painful injury.

Driving is very different. Even up to the point of impact young drivers often fail to foresee the implications of what is about to unfold in front of them.

The problem is the system. We train young people, then give them a license. Some jurisdictions (where I live in Australia, for example) issues a probationary driving license for a limited period which entitles the holder to the privileges of a full license but allows less latitude in the event of a moving violation. Zero alcohol, passenger and curfew limits are other examples. But once that period is up, assuming the driver has not lost either their life or their license, it converts automatically to a full licence juts like the one held by a driver who has driven for 15-20 years.

What really needs to happen is retesting. Drivers, especially young drivers, should be retested every three to six months at first, and subsequently all drivers should be retested every so many years.

Look at the safety of airline travel and private flying and ask why so few pilots kill themselves and their passengers. It's because of the controls, self-regulation and testing for specific competencies that exist in the aviation business that don't have parallels in the world of driving. And the age profile of pilots in accidents doesn't correlate with drivers in automobile accidents. Some food for thought?

I realise none of this answers your question, i.e. what business are you really in? And I think the simple answer is that you're in the teen and young-driver automobile accident prevention business.

What you need to figure out is what is your primary business objective, and if that's stated as a purely commercial, i.e. financial outcome, then what precisely is your value proposition?

If you are an altruistic organisation then your objective is to reduce the young driver accident rate.

If you're a commercial organisation (which means your primary objective is to make money) then your value proposition has to be around parents perceiving that what they purchase from you is going to increase their child's probability of surviving their early driving career unharmed.

BTW I think your organisation's legal advice insurance product sends totally the wrong message. That's all about the driver doing something wrong and the hired lawyer getting them off any resulting charges. It's really the opposite of what you stand for and it should be either demoted within your product/service portfolio hierarchy or else deleted altogether. You should stand for accountability - and for educating people to realise their shortcomings due to inexperience.

Learning to drive responsibly is about accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Not about hiring the best lawyer to bend perceptions post-events to get you out of trouble.

You might be interested in this story about a young female driver who killed a cyclist - because she was sending a text message.

Young drivers don't know what they don't know. And one thing they don't know is that they are far less capable of dealing with distractions, e.g. passengers talking, the radio/CD player, and telephones. No driver should be talking on the telephone while driving - there are countless studies proving this is highly distracting. Even having a conversation with someone in the car can be distracting. It takes real maturity to shut those distractions out and concentrate. It takes wisdom, and gravitas, to ask for silence in the vehicle if conditions demand - which young drivers do not yet possess.

It seems to me your organisation should be focused on two things:

1. Changing legislation to provide a safer learning environment for the pre and post-drivers licence testing period of a driving career, which would obviously mean lobbying all state governments, a huge task.
2. Trying to teach parents of young drivers, and young drivers themselves, that they are the group with the highest probability of having an automobile accident and that the probability is that it will be their fault - because of their inexperience.

After reviewing those facts some parents might think it is safer to stop their kids driving until they are 30! (which of course, would be counterproductive, because they would STILL be inexperienced).

This page contains an analysis of age vs. accident rate which shows rates are highest for drivers aged 16 and decrease until age 25 where they remain low until the driver becomes 65. It's interesting that you have to get to age 75 until your probability of having an accident rises to that of a 17-year old! Again, regular testing at say five-year intervals would see those older, less judicious drivers losing their licences before they become a danger to others.

Your major problem is of course that young people think they are invincible, indestructible, and never wrong. And that earning the driver's license is documentary proof that they now know it all when it comes to road use.

They have to be shown the licence is merely a step on the way to learning far more about safe driving practices. And that it entitles the holder to certain privileges, but those privileges have to be earned and maintained, not by passing a short test in a moment of time, but through consistent responsible behaviour.

Perhaps all drivers education programs should involve a couple of weekends working in an ER to see what people look like as they come in after a vehicle smash. And a couple of days in the morgue looking at the beauty and potential that has been lost due to inexperience, inability to deal with distractions, and incapacity to see the likely consequences of poor, spur-of-the-moment decisions.

Hope this helps.

ChrisB