The Power of PR (Public Relations)

 Andy
Wrong. The truth is you can systemize your business, hire great staff, get your marketing right, and nail your repeat customer strategy. Then you’ll be jet setting off yourself in no time at all.

Ange
Hmm. So simple, right? Oh goodness. Hey, look, that’s why we made this podcast for you so that you can learn how to systemize the higher market and work with customers all so that you can build up a great trade business and be able to take a holiday just like Andy has. Anyway, anything you guys need to know about a trade business, we’ve literally got you covered. And if you’ve got a specific question, then remember to email us at podcast@lifestyletradie.com.au.

 Andy
The tradie toolbox got absolutely flooded while I was away. So a big shout out to you all who submitted questions and make sure you check your inbox because we’ve sent you a little something special.

Ange
All right, Andy, what’s today’s topic?

 Andy
All right. The question comes from a New South Wales tradie. What is public relations PR? My wife wants to start using it in our marketing, but I don’t understand what it actually is.

Ange
Okay, so let me answer that. What is PR anyway? To start, I’m actually not surprised that trade business owners aren’t too sure what PR is or how they can actually use it to their advantage in their trade business. PR stands for Public Relations. It’s basically a marketing strategy, which is usually free. I betcha that pricked up your ears, right?

 Andy
Yep, I’m definitely listening.

Ange
Okay. So PR is an exchange of value, and what I mean by that is when you think about media outlets like newspapers, radio stations, magazines, they all need consistent newsworthy stories to basically fill their quotas. So often they’re willing to give you free editorial space if you have a good hook or a story to share as a business. So basically, you give them a good story and your business gets promoted for free. Sounds good. Right?

 Andy
So to give you an example, say you are scrolling through social media and you see that news.com has an article with the headline, Colgate is Building Community Playgrounds made out of recycled toothbrushes. What this live unveiling right now, there’s a high chance that I will pay for this article of media exposure. But it’s been seen by thousands of people.

Ange
Yeah, exactly. So the brand, Colgate, is doing something they know that news outlets would want to report on because it hits the three pillars of being newsworthy. Those three pillars are one, drama and interest, like they’ve talked about recycled playgrounds and that’s pretty cool.

 Andy
Yeah, definitely.

Ange
Two proximity and relevance. Cuz everyone loves stories that help their local community.

 Andy
Mm-hmm.

Ange
And three, timing. The story just happened. It’s current news promoting you to watch the unveiling. Now,

 Andy
I better heap if you just said, ah, PR a big fat. Nope. It sounds too hard. It sounds too time consuming. We aren’t journalists. We aren’t celebrities. We have no experience with this sort of thing. So I’m just gonna stay clear of this. But that’s just not the right attitude. We can do this and we should be integrating PR into our marketing strategies if the big brands can do it. So can we.

Ange
And remember, the best part of PR is that for the most part, it’s free. It costs you literally nothing. And you could end up reaching hundreds if not thousands of people in your local area. You know how much you spent on marketing. So imagine if you implemented some PR, you could potentially cut that marketing budget in half.

 Andy
It uses the other half to buy a dirt bike, a jet ski , or maybe it’s even signing bonuses to attract new tradies, which maybe that’s a bit more practical to spend your money on.

Ange
Totally. And I vote practical.

 Andy
I bet you do.

Ange
But before we can start spending money, you’ve gotta understand what PR is and how to implement it into your marketing strategy. So stick with us here while we break it down for you.

 Andy
Okay, so let’s break down. How can trade business owners harness PR to promote their business? Firstly, you need a hook or a story. You know, for example, on a recent plumbing job, you know, you could have saved a kitten from a drain pipe. You know, that’s not, you go put a kitten down there yourselves and make the story up like this has actually gotta happen. Right? Or you teach underprivileged youth how to do basic home repairs at the local community center. You know these are called hooks because they hooked the reader into wanting to hear more about your story.

Ange
Yeah. A good PR story is usually what we call feel good. It’s not about how much money you made as a business, it’s not about how many employees you have. It’s about highlighting a moment where you as a business went over and above and had positive results.

 Andy
Yeah, so one example of PR, I remember when we did this, we wrote a press release to the local regional papers when I won Entrepreneur of the Year at the Small Business Champions Award. And guess what? It really, really worked. And one more example for PR is if you could get your team of say, 10 or 12 tradies. And I know a couple of companies had done this in the past, and what they did is they all went down to the blood bank. And they all got there, got all their blood taken, and that took about two or three hours out of their day, which you know, was a bit of time, but they got some incredible professional photos. They got the journalist on site and you know, they’re not gonna do that just as an everyday story. But when the blood banks are running dry and they really, they’re calling arms and getting everyone get down there ASAP, you bring your business and your team, and I know people have had good credibility about that. So it doesn’t have to be this huge story, it’s just you’re just gonna find the angle. And if you find the right angle, it’s definitely worth it.

Ange
And press releases are actually super easy to write. You just need to include a few things. So, for instance, ours included a headline with our local suburb name so that we were highly relevant to the area. We included a professional photo so that they didn’t need to come and take a new image, and there was a good story about a local tradesman, Andy, winning a huge prestigious award. And the timing was really critical to provide to the media contacts because this event had literally just happened the night before and they ran it 24 hours later.

 Andy
And we also did this as well for one of our Lifestyle Tradie members, and we saw some incredible results for them doing this PR work. You know, they were a building company and they’d just won an award for the Master Builders Association for Best House Edition. We rushed a press release with some amazing professional photos with a hook about the business. You know, the owner, not only the owner. Betty had five girls under the age, I think at the age of 14, you know, so, and it was just one of those PR press releases that was picked up immediately by the Saturday Telegraph, who ran a story on the front cover of a home insert magazine. They interviewed him using his business name and the feature story, talked about his family, and talked about how he was a Northern Beaches company and what he’d been able to achieve.

Ange
Yeah, that exposure would’ve cost him tens of thousands if he’d actually paid for it.

 Andy
Mm-hmm.

Ange
It included his company name. The fact that he was based on the northern beaches, it gave him huge accolades to include on his website. Now the idea is the next time a local Beach’s customer is thinking of building a house as a really good chance that this trade business will stay top of mind and trust has already been built before they’ve even picked up the phone.

 Andy
Amazing. Right? Everyone knows that building trust is the number one thing that gets customers over the line. So if you can run a story like this and build trust with hundreds of readers, and all you have to do is write a little Word doc and send a few emails, it’s crazy, right? Get out and do it.

Ange
By having these news stories or magazine articles on your website, you are gonna build credibility with potential buyers so much faster because they’re gonna be so impressed that this reputable news outlet has actually worked with you and covered your story. So if your story’s played on radio, for instance, you can often ask for the sound bite of the interview too, or the story being talked about, and you can upload that on your website.

 Andy
Yeah, that’s right. And we got the sound bite when we were on radio just recently as well. You know, I think what holds a lot of tradies back from this kind of marketing is they feel a bit foreign to it all or a bit reserved because they think it’s just for bigger companies. But this is a high level marketing strategy. However, when done right can have an amazing impact in your business. Reputation in your local community and it puts you one step ahead of any of the competition out there.

Ange
Absolutely, it does. Okay, so let’s have a conversation about how you might write a press release.

 Andy
Yeah, so if you’re gonna write a press release, you have to figure out your story based on something you’ve done recently, like maybe in the last two weeks. You know, journalists absolutely love new stories, not old hat things that happened a long time ago. You know, you might have to wait until something happens, but, when it does, you are armed and ready to hit the ground running with your PR story.

Ange
Yes. So we use a basic template, so it is really easy to put this together. So the first step is with your business letterhead, write up an overview of the story. So the overview could cover or should cover what actually happened, how you were involved, where it happened. You need to include a high quality photo, maybe a video, and any other relevant media, and it’s likely that the journalists themselves will write a final story. So as long as your press release is clear and concise and is highly engaging, you’ll have them totally hooked. You are giving them the basic overview just to get them interested.

 Andy
Yes, the headline in your email is absolutely critical, so make sure the subject of your email relates to your story. For instance, you know, local tradie saves kitten drain, local trade business, upskilling use. Once it’s drawn up, save as a PDF and start sending.

Ange
Yeah, start with your local media outlets. So better chances to gain exposure is in your local paper versus any national ones. And it’s really easy to find the emails on their home sites or any of the newspapers or magazines in your area. I highly suggest looking at some of the sections and hunting for the journalists by name. And it’s often in that business section or maybe the home renovation section of the paper. One might bite and literally run with your story. And often when one media outlet picks up your story, others potentially do two. And you know what guys? When you’ve sent out that press release to the editors directly, don’t think that they’re some big scary editor and that you can’t pick up the phone and attempt to call them, telling them that you’ve sent them the PDF or sent them a story. Because you know what? They’re literally just people too. They’re just trying to do their job and hit a deadline, and you’re actually doing them a favor. What’s great about this is once you make a connection with that editor, then they start to contact you for last minute stories because they know that you’re media savvy. And once you’ve made these connections with these journalists or these editors, you have this opportunity to ask them, well, what stories are of interest to you for this local community? Because now you are armed with knowledge and you can actually go and seek out these topics and deliver exactly the PR stories with photos that they would like.

 Andy
So what happens next? Well, not only will we get your face in the paper and your business for free, but you can now link the article on your homepage of your website as seen on Channel seven News as heard on KISS FM.

Ange
Yeah, and if you are keen to cut your marketing budget in half and generate some awesome word of mouth for your trade business, then PR is absolutely something you should add to your marketing mix.

 Andy
Okay, let’s hit it. It’s the first new segment of season five.

Ange
Yes, and today’s new story is crazy. Before I dive into it, Andy, let me ask you this. How much do you trust your staff?

 Andy
Well, a hundred percent. I only hire people I trust and I know that are good people. For the most part, my businesses run with little to no involvement from me. I’m not there day to day, so I’ve got to trust that they are gonna do the right thing and have the right intentions.

Ange
Yeah, right. It’s true, but nobody would hire staff that they don’t trust. We wanna see the good in all of our employees. That’s why today’s new story is such a shock for business owners.

 Andy
All right. All right. Come on. Spit it out. What has happened? I can see you’ve got something to say.

Ange
I’m bursting. So, well in Darwin. Jake’s steel and welding company has taken an employee to court for allegedly stealing almost $90,000 from them.

 Andy
Wow. $90,000. How the hell did she manage to get that much money out of a trade business without anybody noticing?

Ange
Well, it wasn’t all at once.

 Andy
Right.

Ange
But according to this ABC News, the employer was given access to the company bank account and was asked to take on the responsibility for managing the financial affairs of the business. Then over four years, she pocketed $88,273 from the business until they actually noticed.

 Andy
Wow. That is crazy. You know, think of any employee that’s been with you for that long? You’ve had great rapport. Heck, they’ve probably even been over to your house for a beer and hung out with your family? And then imagine them doing something like that. As business owners that is a dust dead set, heartbreaking. Right? Many people cut and change jobs after just a few years, so the ones that stick around for four years plus are usually the absolute good ones.

Ange
Yeah. Well, I guess they know why she was sticking around now, right?

 Andy
Well, she was banging the money in the door, baby, but how did they catch her?

Ange
Well, the article by the ABC said the fraud was discovered after an unauthorized expense was identified on a credit card that was issued to her. And what’s worse? She was the only person with access to the company’s financial management software.

 Andy
Baboong. I still can’t believe it, though she’s got away with it for four years.

Ange
Yeah. Amazing. Right? For some 90K is a lot of money, but is it worth seven years of your life?

 Andy
Hell no. I mean, look at business owners. I always say you’ve got to know your numbers and honestly, my heart goes out to this company going through this, it would’ve made it impossible to trust anyone else again.

Ange
Right. We’ve all heard the horror stories of accountants skimming the fat and pocketing your hard-earned profits. Nobody wants to think about it happening to them, but it does. That’s why my advice is to have a bookkeeper and an accountant from two different firms, and that way they’re essentially kept accountable by each other. And if something isn’t quite right, you’ve got a much higher chance of finding out sooner rather than later.

 Andy
As the business owner, you are the last line of defense. But we all know how it goes. You are already struggling with burnout and the last thing you want to do is sit down and go through everything line by line. So we just tend to trust the other people to do the right thing, which 90% of the time probably works out fine. But when it’s your business on the line, you’ve gotta be all in.

Ange
Yeah, exactly. And if you’re in that situation, then you, more than anybody else, need to get some safeguards in place to make sure everything’s running correctly. Scammers can be tricky. So for instance, you might think you’re looking at an invoice for Reese for 2K of materials, but they can change the bank details and suddenly you are paying it into a completely different account for a non-professional that can be super hard to see when you’re auditing.

 Andy
You’re dead, right? I always say you don’t know what you don’t know, and there are people out there who will try and take advantage of that. It’s really a sad truth and news stories like this should act as a reminder to us all that none of us are immune to scammers of any kind.

Ange
Yes, and the silver lining of this story is that they did notice something was wrong and the businesses followed the right steps to rectify the situation. So the issue is still going through the Northern Territory Supreme Court, but we wish the business owner the best of luck.

 Andy
Yeah, it must be costing their businesses shitload in legal fees too. So hopefully they get that all back. It’s a hell of a lot of effort to recoup money stolen from you. So seriously, every trade business owner out there listening, take the lesson here on board and safeguard your business finances ASAP.

Ange
That’s all for the news today.

 Andy
PR is absolutely something a trade business, new or old should consider. Wait until you have a good hook or story to share, then jump on it ASAP.

Ange
And don’t forget. If you need a hand, then email us at podcast@lifestyletradie.com.au or head to our website, www.lifestyletradie.com.au.

 Andy
Right. Well, I think this has been a great way to kick off season five. Thanks for listening guys.

Ange
Absolutely. Feels great to be back. Catch you next week.