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Episode 19 - Leveraging your ISO Certification for Marketing
Episode 19 – Leveraging your ISO Certification for Marketing
Episode 19 – Leveraging your ISO Certification for Marketing
In this episode of “The Quality Hub,” host Xavier Francis interviews Lori Engle, VP of Marketing at Core Business Solutions, about how to market ISO certifications. They discuss the importance of ISO certifications in differentiating businesses in the marketplace and building customer trust. Lori highlights the benefits of ISO certifications, such as improved supply chain reliability and customer satisfaction, and others.
Episode 19 Key Content
Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening to the Quality Hub chatting with ISO experts. I’m your host, Xavier Francis, and I’m here with Lori Engle, vice president of marketing for Core Business Solutions. So glad you could be with us today, Lori.
Thank you for having me, Xavier.
Today’s show is entitled Marketing is a Race with No Finish line and we will look at marketing your ISO certifications. But before we do, we’d love to hear a little bit about Lori, her experiences, and her journey in the world of marketing. Can you share with us a little bit about yourself?
Sure. Well, I’ve been in marketing for longer than I’d like to admit. About 30 or so years.
How’s that possible?
I don’t know. I don’t know. Time goes fast. That’s all I have to say. Over that time, I had an opportunity to work in the pharmaceutical industry, telecommunications, and food industries. I was also with an ad agency for about ten years, and I’ve done some international work and worked with a few family-owned businesses like Core Business Solutions, been with CORE now for about eight years. I started in traditional marketing and advertising. Over the past ten years have focused primarily on digital marketing and advertising and websites.
Yeah, it’s changed, I’m sure, over that year. Well, that is a lot of experience for sure. And we are so glad that you’ve taken some time today to meet with us and be part of our podcast. So today we’re talking about how a company can market themselves with their ISO certification or certifications. How do you see that a business can differentiate itself in the marketplace through its ISO certifications?
Businesses today, more than ever, really need a reliable partner for their supply chain, and promoting their ISO 9001 certification or even working toward that compliance demonstrates the commitment to your customers that you care about customer satisfaction. That you care about quality and continuous improvement. And that can help differentiate yourself.
Yeah, I mean, since COVID, I know that supply chains are just all over the place. It doesn’t even seem to matter what market you’re in and having a partner with a quality management system in place can help. You know, show that that’s important, that you care about what you’re getting out to your customers.
Oh, for sure. You know, COVID certainly disrupted the supply chain, and the supply chain still has not recovered. To gain contracts or get into other product lines, customers need the extra assurance that the quality is going to be there for them. And so having a QMS in place is certainly helpful for that.
Absolutely. So continuing back on, you know, what else can help differentiate yourself in the marketplace?
Well, one of the things you can do is talk about how you ISO certified to prospective clients and the benefits they receive from your organization, implementing a quality management system.
What are some of those?
Well, there are many. On-time delivery is super important for order fulfillment, making sure that you deliver orders that are complete so that their production can continue without disruption, have fewer errors, and have more reliable products and services.
The quality, the quality in the quality, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And especially if you’re a service organization, you know, errors, it’s important to reduce that.
Yeah, it’s probably going to cost you money after.
Right, Right. And then, of course, reducing lead times saves your organization money. And sometimes those savings can be passed on to your customers. Whatever benefits you’re creating from your QMS and continuous improvement are benefits to your customers. And then ultimately, you’re Net Promoter Score, which is how happy your customers are, it’s a measurement of that. If they’re willing to refer you to another customer that is the highest form of praise and customer satisfaction that you can have.
That word of mouth.
Right, right, right. So the higher your net promoter score, the higher your level of customer satisfaction, which is the ultimate goal of an ISO 9001 quality management system.
So really helping a potential customer, and understanding the benefits of being ISO certified can set you apart.
Definitely. There are several ways to differentiate yourself from your competition and you can include your company’s commitment to quality messaging and your email nurture campaigns to prospective customers. A lot of companies are realizing that when they have prospects in their pipeline they can’t just leave them stagnant and not have extra touches without the salespeople reaching out to them so they can develop email campaigns that reach out to them that educate them and things like that. Why not talk about your commitment to quality?
Oh my goodness. Yeah. That’s what they can expect from you because of it.
Exactly. Exactly. Ways that your organization has improved benefits that they receive from that. You can also write articles about your ISO 9001 certification including case studies on how you’ve improved your processes.
That’s impressive. I mean, you have somebody that you say, Hey, look, since we’ve implemented and become 9001 certified this percentage is how much we’ve grown, how much your quality has gotten better, better customer scores.
Sure you can. You can include statistics on how you save money. And then that’s been passed on to your customers. And all of that that you’re doing on your website helps your search engine optimization. So when customers are searching for a vendor for a particular product or service, your name would pop up sooner than say, someone else. The other thing is that you can gain a new ISO standard to diversify your customer profile. For instance, say you’re in the oil and gas industry and it’s slow. You could add ISO 13485 medical device certification and it will help you recession-proof your business. We’ve seen many customers do that when markets shift and change and it helps them. It helps them survive during tough times.
Right? If you diversify and you can have more than one thing you’re you’re providing, these are some really good points, things that can set your company apart from others. And what are some effective strategies for promoting? And you talked a little bit about email on your website, but what are some effective strategies for promoting your ISO certification to potential clients or customers?
Yeah. So as far as promotion goes, one of the first things that you should do is post your current ISO 9001 certification on the wall or in the main office reception area for visitors to see. So right off the bat, when they first come to your facility, they say for, you know, a walk-through or something like that, they see your commitment to quality. The other thing that you can do is publish a press release on your ISO certification achievement and the benefits that your customers will receive from your quality management system implementation.
And, you know, not to cut you off, but we were talking with Suzanne Weber Smakto who helps with employee engagement and we succeeded. Not only promoting a but you’re hey, we’re telling everybody what we did and your employees can feel good about that, too.
Oh, absolutely. You see better performance from the ground up, you know, from your line workers and from people that are on the phones. If you’re in the service industry, whatever is going on, you see more employee engagement and a commitment to continual improvement. You know, if you implement it properly, you can see morale improve as well. Another thing you can do is send out an email announcing your certification achievement. And you can send this to prospects or new customers that were not aware that you had achieved your certification. And again, like I said, you could you can include it in your email, and nurture campaigns to prospective customers. If you want to go the extra mile, you can create a video and the video can talk about the benefits of ISO 9001 for your customers.
That’s something we do for our customers, isn’t it?
Yes. Yes. If you’re a Core customer, we create that. It’s a complimentary service that we offer to all our customers. The last thing you can do is you can create a quality page or a certifications page on your website that’s dedicated to all the benefits that your customers receive because of your commitment to quality things that you’re doing. Attach the actual certificate and you know link it and have it there. So it’s a reality, you know, to people that when they’re exploring and trying to learn about you as a supplier.
So really make sure it’s prominently displayed in most or any contact points you have with potential customers. So what are some best practices for incorporating ISO certifications in your company’s overall marketing strategy?
With the best practices, there are a lot of different ways it could be handled. You can you can use it on company letterhead. You can create a logo that goes with your branding. Just don’t use the ISO dot org logo.
So they don’t want you to do that.
Right, right, right. You can use it on the company website about us page quality page on your home page. You can include it in your email signatures. One of the things that I recommend, however, if you’re going to have an elaborate email signature, is to use an email generator. It’s something fairly new that’s being used so that if people say are using various devices or are using light mode or dark mode on their devices, it will display properly.
The other thing that can happen is if you just attach, say, an ISO 9001 logo certification symbol in your email and you don’t have it within a particular image area or use a generator. What can happen is it can be gigantic. So some person might open it up and it would be like, you know, take up your whole screen or something.
Well, we’ve all been there when we open an email and it’s like, Oh my gosh, what is that?? Just this big icon that you’re seeing.
Exactly. So if you’re gonna include it in your email, a signature is just a best practice would be to use an email generator to be safe and make sure the quality of your signature is great for everyone to experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing is that you can use it on marketing materials. Now, customers want to hear this. They want to put it on everything. We’re going to talk about that in a little bit, but I recommend that you put it on only your corporate communications and not on product and service pages or brochures, only a specific brochure that would talk about your various certifications or your commitment to quality, things like that, or a corporate brochure or I would be recommended.
You want to have it in specific places, not all over the place, even though you want to tell everybody about it. What are some of the common mistakes businesses make when they are marketing those ISO certifications and how can they avoid them?
Some organizations get so excited about their achievement, which is wonderful because it is a big achievement. They want to put their ISO 9001 logo on absolutely everything, even their forklift.
Yeah. Now that’s funny. Yeah, they found the forklift was more efficient, productive, and engaged when they put the sticker on it.
No, it was so funny because I guess they had people, you know, visiting their warehouses and things like that and they wanted to promote their ISO 9001 certification and they thought these are like moving billboards. Like, we’ll just put the logo on the forklifts. But the problem is that what they’re implying is that their forklift is ISO 9001 certified. And anything like that is misleading.
Oh, that is misleading.
You can’t do that. Yeah. So other things that they have to stay away from is that ISO dot org has a page on their website that talks about logo use and who can use it. So basically it’s it’s proprietary to their organization. So what you should use is the logo that is provided by your registrar so they will provide a logo that is actually whatever your registration mark is, whether it’s ISO 9001 or ISO 27001, whatever the standard is that you’ve achieved. But then they’ll also include their registrar’s mark with it. And so that can be used. However, like I said, it doesn’t always go with your branding and it doesn’t always look nice. And there’s like 15 million colors. So sometimes it’s nicer to just create your logo and that’s fine.
And if you have somebody in-house that does graphics they can probably do something like that.
Right. And one of the things, if you are a core customer, we’re happy to create something for you if you do not have those capabilities.
That’s great. We do try to help everybody once we get them certified.
Yeah. The so the other thing that you have to be cautious about is not putting the logo on product packaging, product marketing materials, or service materials. So like I said before, anything that would mislead the customer to think that that particular cardboard box would be ISO certified.
Right, Right. Because there are there are certain things that are ISO-certified. And you don’t want to imply that this particular item that you’re selling or whatever is ISO certified you as the company are also certified.
Correct. It’s it’s organization-wide. It’s not for an individual, It’s not for a particular product or service. It’s it’s just for the organization within the scope of your certification. Okay. So the other thing is that companies sometimes stop marketing their certification. So when they first get it, they’re all excited about it and they let the word out, but then they just kind of let it fade away.
Right. It’s not new and shiny, so,
Right. But you know what? Every year your organization works on continuous improvement. It makes the company better. So you should continue to promote this as a benefit to your customers.
Absolutely. Well, and because now you’re likely going to be getting new customers. So why not promote it to them or the potential of them or a new customer?
Right. Absolutely. And don’t let it expire. Some organizations, they get busy or their quality manager leaves or something or the person that was their management wrap, the person that manages their ISO system left the company and it’s like, well, they just kind of let it go and
They kind of let it lapse and,
And yeah, if they let it expire, they can certainly come back to us for help restarting a program or something. But, but don’t let it expire. That’s just, that’s just a shame and it’s a waste of all that effort for all that time that you were working on. The other thing is they don’t update their website. So some companies are so small, they don’t they don’t have websites. I mean, we work with some organizations that are two or three customers large, which is fine. But if you do have a website, keep it updated. Make sure that when the certificate changes you have the most current certificate on there. Make sure you include the most current certificate in your marketing materials, your most current certification link, and things like that because your certificate is good for three years, there’s no point in having an expired certificate. On your marketing links and things like that.
Once you’re certified after those three years, do you get a different certification?
You do.
Could it have a different symbol as well?
It could I mean you could say you switch registrars.
There we go.
You know, we’ve done that where we try not to use a registrar where we have a business conflict. There needs to be a lot of impartiality between ISO 9001 consultants and their registrars. So for certain reasons, we’ve had to switch registrars. And so because of that, we had to repost new certificates to our website. But the other thing that people do is they just don’t market their certification at all. They think it’s no big deal. They’re in the quality department, they’re not in the marketing and sales department. You know, they just don’t do anything with it, which is a big opportunity that’s lost.
Yeah, and you are missing your opportunity there.
So don’t take your certification for granted.
Right. It is a differentiator. And I believe Scott Dawson said previously in one of their podcast that in some spaces if a potential client doesn’t see that you’re certified, it could even be a negative thing since they may be expecting you to be certified or at least compliant because all of their the people that they’re looking for work with are.
Sure. Absolutely. It’s very true. Certain markets, especially in the government space, expect to require you to be ISO 9001 certified to do business. They may ask that you hold other certifications such as ISO 14001, 45001, and 27001 to do business. And if you’re in the international space, it’s very important, you know, certain certifications say 14001 environmental in the United States, it’s not required as much. But over in Europe, it’s a big deal. Like you better be ISO 14001 certified.
So you potentially miss getting a client, a new customer, maybe even a big one, because you fail to put your ISO certification on your website. If somebody is looking for a vendor. Do you happen to have a story of a company that’s had their ISO certification help their business take off?
I do. There’s one organization in particular that first got its ISO 9001 certification because the supply chain expected it.
So they needed to get it if they wanted to keep going.
It was a customer requirement, but then they added ISO 27001 for the information security management system. And they added that to prove that they were committed to cybersecurity because they wanted to get into the cybersecurity marketplace. They wanted to show that they were protecting their customer data and they were able to grow their business by 20% by just adding that certification and diversifying their customer base.
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Wow. That’s incredible. 20%. That’s it. Just adding one other standard to what they’re doing, that’s great. Well, it does show how ISO standards taking seriously can lead to the growth of your bottom line. This has been helpful, Lori and I want to thank you for being here and I know our listeners can take a lot away from this. I mean, from an ISO standpoint, it gives you a lot of pointers of where you need to focus and what you shouldn’t be doing as well, maybe by using certain logos and things. Appreciate you being here.
Oh, it was great to be here, Xavier. If anyone has any questions, happy to reach out to us through our website. Be happy to, answer those inquiries. You can just,
And that’s www dot the core solution dot com.
Yeah, we’re happy to help any small businesses that are trying to market there.
That’s great. Appreciate it.
Yeah. It’s been a privilege. Thanks, Xavier.
Thank you. And thanks to all of you who are listening to the quality Hub today. We hope you have enjoyed it and maybe have some new ideas to help you with your business if you haven’t already. Please subscribe to the Quality Hub on your favorite podcast app so you can catch the next episode when it drops. Thanks so much and have a great day.