How Much to spend on Public Relations?  PR work can start out small and the budget my well involve more time than money.  To start your PR effort, a budget of $1,000 for your firs year will get the publicity wheels in motion.  Along with the budget, you need some way to quantify how effective your PR efforts have been.  Whenever you receive a new contact or project, you need a way of finding out if the person learned about your company as a result of your PR efforts or by some other means.  At the end of the year, you want to be able to refer to your records and see, for instance, that of the 30 new contacts received, 15 came from volunteering to repaint the lobby at the local hospital, and of those, five turned into contracts worth $40,000 that netted you $12,000 in gross profits.

Your Best PR

Once you have decided what resources you can devote to PR, scale your PR efforts to fit your resources.  If you don’t have much money, but can afford some time, volunteering is a very effective public relations strategy.  As mentioned, you can conduct seminars and become the local expert on paint colours, applications and technical tips.  They can take place just about anywhere there is space—a library, a paint dealers store, a school gym, or a church basement.  Here are some tips to get your seminars started successfully:

1)  Have the venue do the advertising.

The place you are conducting your seminar in has a vested interest in you getting aq good crowd.  If they do other seminars, they likely already have effective avenuse they use to annnounce them.

2)  Have Patience

You may only get one or two people to your first seminar as they sometimes require a bit of momentum to become popular.

3)  Make Adjustments

You will discover very quickly what works and what does not work to attract attention and draw crowds.  Start off with a plan and a highly visual presentation, but be ready to change it as you go.

4) Have  Your Company Material Available

Once the audience has seen your presentation, they will need a way to get a hold of you.

5) Dont Start Selling Too Early

Seminars are about relationship building.  If you start selling your services too soon, you will alienate your audience and send the wrong signal about yourself and your company.  At a seminar, take a here to help attitude; dont sell.

6)  Be Prepared

You can’t just go up there and talk.  Visual aids are important to an interesting seminar.  Audience participation is important too.  Bring sample boards, paint and brushes.  Make your presentation informative and fun.

Hiring A PR Professional

If you can budget a little more money towards PR, you should consider hiring a PR professional.  But who?  Like most industries, the PR world runs on relationships and a P’R professional with good relationships with the media outlets that matter to you is your best value.  When you have a new project you think is newsworth, or if you are doing something as a company that will send a positive message about you (like cleaning up that playground) you need someone who can get the story into the local newspaper.  If it is industry based, you want a PR professional who knows which industry media outlets go to your market.

More Marketing (For Your Painting Company In the Vancouver Area)

Beyond PR work, you can get the message out about your company through traditional channels like ads in local papers, radio spots, signage on-site and in neighbour hoods or listings on contractor websites.  The key thing to remember is that, according to marketing studies, it takes nine “impressions” (views of your logo, name, or message) on average for your company to register in the mind of the viewer.  Finding different means of getting those views and making sure the whole package is well-coordinated will make your marketing most effective.  Get some good professional advice before you spend too much money on marketing.

What if it Works?

This may be the most underrated question asked about a new marketing effort.  If you spend time and money working on a marketing campaign to get your company beyond referrals and you actually start to bring in more prospects, do you have the resources to handle them?  Are there enough hours in the day for you to meet all those prospects?  Do you have a way of qualifying all the prospects to reduce the time you spend on the weak ones?  Starting uup a marketing effort can be a lot like hitting the switch on your stucco sprayer….it will generate a lot of activity, and if you haven’t prepared for it, you’ll end up with a mess.  Here’s what you need to have in place before you flip the switch.

1) A Protocol for judging the quality of the phone-in prospects

Phone inquiries will increase, but you only want to visit those sites that have the same likelihood of becoming jobs as your referral customers.  You need a set of standard questions you use on every call that will help you discern how serious the caller is.

2) someone in your organization who can help you with sales calls.  Start training them now.

3)  A prepared supply chain.

You suppliers need to bump up your account limits.  You need to do an inventory of your tools, trucks and supplies.  Can they handle an increased workload?

4)  Cash.  Increased cash flow means more chances for gaps in the flow.  Those extra three guys you hired need to be paid whether you managed to collect from your new clients or not.

5)  Flexibility in your workforce.  You need subtrades  to fill gaps in your crew resources when the work starts to increase.

6)  Written Policies.  Whatever was verbally communicated within your company (”you can’t smoke on the jobsite”)..or known to you only..(I will always return phone calls within two hours)…must be committed to writing and made known to every one.   You are about to become a bigger company, which means it will take on a life of its own.  The only way to control that life is through writing down your vision for how the company should look, work and behave.

Rick Anderson

www.vancouversbestpainters.com

cell: 604-PAINTER

The best kind of marketing that goes beyond referrals (word-of-mouth) is public relations.  Public relations is essenttialy the work of getting exposure for yo9ur company…whether thats Vancouver’s Best Painters, 604-PAINTER or Vancouver Industrial Painting…by means other than paid advertising.  For instance, if you became the painting expert giving seminars to homeowners at the local paint supply store, that’s PR.  If you sent a press release to your local newspaper to announce that your company was going to partner with the city to fix up a run down play playground, that’s PR

Have A Budget

Companies new to PR, like Vancouver’s Best Painters make the mistake of thinking it won’t cost them anything.  Though it should cost you less than paid advertising, there will still be some cost involved, either in hiring a public relations firm or in the time and money it will take for you or one of your employess to conceive, produce and send out your PR material and conduct your PR events.

So, whilt it is true you have to have a budget for PR, don’t be discouraged.  The budget doesnt have to be big, and the return is usually much greater than the cost.  The important thing is to recognize that PR needs its own budget.

Rick Anderson

www.vancouversbestpainters.com

www.604painters.com

www.vancouverindustrialpainting.com

cell: 604-PAINTER