Transforming Your Business Through PR with Kyle Parks

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:37hey there welcome to this week's episode of epic entrepreneurs this week we're having a chat with kyle parks of parks pr so welcome to the show kyle thanks bill thanks for having me yeah it's great to have you so tell us a little bit about your business well parks pr is a solo public relations practice that I run out of Asheville, North Carolina and the Tampa Bay area of Florida. And I work with a lot of different kinds of organizations, everything from for-profit companies to nonprofits. And I like to say that I help an organization get visibility, but also just as important, I enhance their credibility.

1:18So if you look up someone or a company or a nonprofit company to do business with, nonprofit to give money to, you're going to want to see right away online and also talking to people around town, is the organization credible? Do they do a good job? Do they say what they're going to do? And also, are they up to date on trends? And that's where my work comes in, too, where I use trends to talk about through my clients on their... have my clients talk about that. And that shows that they are up to speed on the latest on everything. Yeah, that's awesome. PR is pretty widespread. What does that mean?

2:09What all does it encompass? I think a lot of people are confused about what PR actually is. Agreed. I think for many, many years, up to about maybe 20 years ago, public relations was simply seen as media relations, where you worked with the news media to get stories and to help influence that process. But as the media has shrunk, which we've seen happen in Asheville, we've seen in Tampa Bay, we've seen everywhere, it's more and more important not only to keep working with the news media, but also to work with all the different channels at your disposal as an organization, whether it's social media, whether it's e-newsletters, whether it's different ways to reach your key audiences.

2:53So a smart public relations firm doesn't just have like a menu like McDonald's. A smart PR firm is going to understand your organization, what your value proposition is. And then you talk about, OK, how are we going to reach the people that we want to reach with that value proposition? And it could be any or all of those channels. And some of my clients will never get news coverage, and some will. So the idea that a PR firm is going to come in and go, here's these eight things I'm going to do for you and prescribe it that way, I would argue is not as impactful for your organization as saying, let's look at your organization, come up with a custom plan for your organization.

3:34But it all comes back to what is going to lead to an organization reaching the people that they want to reach. In some cases, it's going to be millions of people, and in some cases, it may be 3 ,000 people. So it just depends on the organization. Yeah, so it seems to me it's a little bit like a menu that you'd go in. You got all these probably hundreds of things you could do for people, but depending on what their goals are, you'd want to establish that. So what's the process? A client comes to you. What happens? Basically, I do a discovery call. sometimes a couple discovery calls. I ask a ton of questions.

4:15I was a journalist formally in my career, which helps me, I think. And I try to get inside the head of not only what the organization wants to accomplish, but also what does that audience want to learn about? Like, for instance, I'm working with an outfit right now that does student housing development around the country, and their audience wants to know, how do you get student housing developments to work? How do you find financing? So in that case, I try to plug into what that audience is thinking and wondering about. And then that helps me start to say, okay, how am I going to reach that audience?

4:52It may be a specific trade industry magazine that reaches student housing readers. It may be the email newsletter to a very targeted list. It's also maybe LinkedIn, which is really helpful to business to business customers. And also just doing announcements that are meaningful and not just a news release that has a lot of exclamation points. I don't do that. But it's more of a news release that's written like a news story that also includes a lot of context. And in reading about the news involving that organization, you learn about that organization. But that's just one example of many, I could tell you, where that's going to be a specific use of my time.

5:33That is, it doesn't do me, doesn't do the client any good if I just say, I'm going to write five news releases every three months, and I'm going to do this, that, and the other, then that in itself may not get you where you want to go. So what I'm trying to do is I do my plans is say what percentage of my time is going to be in each area and making sure that what I'm doing is the most impactful for them. Yeah, I love that. So one of the, I guess it's not really a secret, But one of the things that's cool about me getting to do this is I get to ask people you. I get to learn. So I get to learn from experts just like you.

6:12So I want to talk a little bit about B2B. So B2B versus B2C. Talk about that. And then what's your approach there? Well, B2C, this is basic. But B2C is going to be more of a blast with a wide range of all kinds of things reaching as many people as possible. But I would argue even with B2C, most outfits would not have the money. Everybody's not Coca-Cola or whatever that they have unlimited, not unlimited, but a huge ad budget. So even for B2C, you've got to think geography. You've got to think about what kind of outlets would reach the folks that you want to reach. One of my clients here in Asheville, we are trying to reach homebuyers.

6:57And we are talking about, okay, what's the age range? What are the radio stations that that age range listens to? So even for B2C, you want to be targeted. Now for B2B, it's all about targeting because your targeting is going to be tighter. So in other words, if I am working with an organization that sells a certain service, excuse me, I'm going to want to try to – There's two ways to spend advertising and sponsorship and money for public relations and marketing agencies. You can either spend money and just blast, or you can spend part of your money to take the time and research to understand how to target.

7:40And I would always argue to spend your money more wisely. So for B2B, I think it's really important to do that targeting work and figure out where's your audience? What are they listening to? What are they watching? What are they reading? yeah it seems it seems like that there's a lot even in b2b there's a lot of ways to invest your marketing dollars so what in your in your mind i mean you know what's percentage should be pr and what percentage should be other um i hate to say it depends on the client of course But what I would say on that is that you get what you pay for in PR or marketing. You know, sometimes I'll get a comment saying, well, we could do that with an intern.

8:28Obviously, today's conversation also often touches on AI. Certainly, AI or an intern could crank out volume in terms of written material, but it's probably not going to be impactful for your audience. certainly I have found that AI is a great research tool it's a great starter kit but the idea that AI is going to speak to your target audience in a way that's going to encourage them to take action and to trust your client we're just not there yet I don't know five years from now who knows but right now I think it's important that you have actual experienced people doing that so for me the idea that you can do a PR program for hundreds of dollars or just a few thousand dollars a year.

9:15If you have goals that are meaningful, it's going to take a larger budget than that. So I think it's also important that you don't do marketing and PR in silos. I often partner with either in-house marketing people or external marketing agencies that are working with my client. And that's really important because both sides of that equation need to work together for a real effective program because marketing should be about getting attention in a meaningful way. So the messaging should match, but also then PR program comes in and goes, okay, people are finding us. They're checking you out on the internet.

10:00They're asking people in the industry, that's where the PR comes in, which should help the marketing program work more effectively. But I would say, certainly in some industries, a marketing budget can be one, two, up to 5 % of budget. It's always good to think about what are your competitors doing, and you can't necessarily find out what they're spending. But there are industry standards often where you can say, okay, we should be determining a certain percentage of our revenues to spend on marketing. And the other big thing is just not to turn the spigot on and off. This is a long, long-held issue where, oh, our sales are down a bit.

10:47We better cut marketing down. Well, as you can imagine, that's the worst thing you can do. And also consistency. Even if you don't of the budget to do a ton of stuff every month. If you're targeted and smart and you're having that repetition, then you're going to get there that way too. But again, turning it on and off just to me makes no sense. No. So what I heard was that PR is just a part of marketing. And so it needs to be part of the overall plan. Yeah, actually. I know that my former company in Florida, our company was named communications as opposed to public relations. I think in some cases, to our point earlier about explaining what public relations is, I think communications is really important to use that term.

11:39Although when I had one of my corporate communications jobs, I used to have people in the company call me thinking I could fix the phone system, which I was like, that's not my job. Not your job. No, no, it's communications. So, and then consistency, you were talking about consistency and how, how there, but let's talk about communication a minute. So we have a saying that communication is the response you get. So how do you adjust communications along the way to, um, to adjust the response, I guess? Yeah, I think adjusting the response really ties back to, we talked a minute ago about tying into trends and also understanding what the pain points for a potential customer are.

12:24What's the problem I'm trying to solve? Or, you know, what's the opportunity that I want to try to capitalize on? For instance, if you talk about a nonprofit, adjusting the response may involve we are sending out a lot of information with, let's say, a nonprofit works both, say, in food insecurity but also in housing. Well, maybe there's obviously going to be needs in both areas, but maybe we're getting more response from a fundraising point of view to talk about housing. so goes back to really being targeted where you can't talk about everything effectively so i would argue you want to mention let's say housing is where you're really seeing the response that's and also at the same time you're seeing more progress because you're getting more fundraising which helps drive that part of the program you know i would say certainly don't leave out the other things you do but figure out one thing to talk about as a main point and then And that's going to adjust the response in the way that you want.

13:30And also, I like to, there's a couple of things, Mark, this is really marketing speak too, where a couple of things I like to talk about. One is, if you're raising money or you're trying to get business, you will learn as much or more from the people who don't sign up for your service or don't give you money. it's important for the people who are on the front lines talking to those potential customers or donors okay so tell me why you're you decided not to support or tell me why you decided i'm talking non-profit right now why did you decide to give us you know three hundred dollars and not five thousand and you know in a lot of cases it might be a personal issue or in a business it might be our budget for the year whatever but by getting to those answers that's how you can learn to adjust your communications to get the response you want because you're learning why people are saying no.

14:27So is there an easy way to do that? No.

14:33Yeah, I didn't know. You know, you could, you could, you could, you know, I think regular surveys are helpful. Yeah. But I'm generalizing here, but a lot of companies, you know, have, let's say you have, I'm going to business to business here, you've got 10 major customers, okay? So I would advocate for taking the time to talk to your sales managers and have them do phone calls with those folks once a quarter and not just sending out some online survey. They could also do both. But I'd want to learn, let's say those 10 customers are 70 % of your business, I want to get in the brains of those 10 customers, you know, and nothing against the smaller fish, but basically it's going to take some personal interaction because, you know, I'm sure you're like this too.

15:26You get an online survey, even if it's somebody, you know, and you work with, it's going to be hard to do more than just check the blanks. And, you know, a lot of these surveys go, tell us about this and write something in. In my experience, you'll get a hundred surveys back and like three people did that. So, um, that's where you have to leverage your personal relationships to get meaningful responses. Yeah. It's a bit like reviews, huh? Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Cause reviews, it's like, there's a big difference between sending out a follow-up email every time you make a sale or something, and that will get you this much response, but you know, not a whole lot, but then if you have a system where you have, And of course, this takes time.

16:09But if you can have a system where you have recalling three or four or five people a week and asking them to do it, that's obviously going to help. Getting reviews is very tough. As you know, getting negative reviews is not a problem because people are always motivated if they're frustrated. or we have this, really this thing happening for a number of years now where there's a certain percentage of the population that thinks if they do a negative review, they're going to get something in return, whether it's a discount on their next purchase or a refund or whatever. I'm not counting those folks because there's not a whole lot you can do there.

16:47But to get positive reviews is always a challenge. And you just have to just, it's got to be a consistent program where you're just consistently reaching out to people and asking. Yeah. Yeah. I like to, I mean, the bottom line is you just need to go talk to people, you know, whatever that looks like. You got to actually get, you got to actually have a conversation with people to find out what's going on in their head and how it's working. Right. And then make it easy for them. Send them a link to do it, you know, and say, talk to them and say, I'm going to send you an email with a link and you can click the link and do it.

17:18You got to make it as easy as you can for them. And also, you know, don't assume they're going to remember to do it. And just don't call them every four days, but have a list where you're like, okay, we talked to them last month. They didn't do it. Let's reach out to them again. Yeah. Well, I think, and even in lieu of reviews, I mean, I think there's more information to be, I mean, the really savvy, large marketing agencies are going to go talk to people. I mean, they might do it individually. They might do it with surveys. They might hire somebody to survey companies to do it. They might have focus groups, whatever it is, but they're actually going to talk to people and find out what's actually happening so that they can adjust their strategies.

18:01I do advocate, it's easier. I always like to joke that it's easy for me to advocate for a company to spend more money, but basically it's going to be a lot more effective if someone from the company does it versus a third party. Because you probably had the same experience. Even if I'm asked by a third party, even if it's a product or service that I really loved, I'm going to be more motivated, probably, if it's somebody from the company that's calling me. It's going to break through spam better on the phone calls, all that good stuff. So just having, that's a really good, you know, that's a good intern job for a really, really sharp intern.

18:38They got to be good on the phone. They got to be good on their feet, but, or a lower level person at your company. And I would argue that's going to come back to you many fold yeah yeah absolutely well uh man there's a lot there's a lot more there's a lot more to uh unpack a lot of a lot of more of the onion we need to peel but let me uh let me wrap it up with this let me ask you what do you and some people said how much time do you have but the question i usually ask is like what do you wish you had known that you know now. And my business? Yeah, about business or life or anything, really. But yeah, so yeah.

19:17I think I wish I'd known the power of relationships in terms of always making new relationships. I think as I've been the communications agency business now for, oh gosh about 15 years and you tend to get your foot off the gas on business development and making new relationships when you get really busy and i think this is classic for anybody whether you're in a company non-profit or whatever and i think um just understanding that you cannot take your foot off the gas because situations change like for instance for a company you never know if your biggest customer is going to get bought out and they change the contract and cancel it, even though you're doing a great job.

20:09Or in the agency world, same thing with clients. So I think understanding that continuing business development, but doing it in a way where I think if you're good at it, I think it's really important to know that you're not acting overly salesy as you make new relationships and you're actually listening as you talk to people and that you're building a real personal relationship, which I started my business a year ago and changed and started doing clients both in North Carolina and Florida. And what I found up here in North Carolina was I made a lot of really good professional friends, I would call them, and not just people I would say, let me tell you about my business in case you know of anybody who might need me.

21:00But I've had business come to me because I'm not doing that hard sell. But I've also been very consistent about it. And all of us, there's going to be days or weeks where you're like, you've got so much to do. I don't have time for this. But just taking that time, I think, is something I wish I'd understood more earlier. But I'm really trying to embrace that now. So what's your preferred method of building those relationships? Is it phone or networking or how are you doing it? I think networking, but I would argue that networking through getting involved in the community, the business community and the broader community.

21:40Here in Asheville, I've gotten involved in the Asheville Chamber. I'm a member of the Asheville Rotary Club. I've gotten involved with the Asheville Symphony and I'm on the board of Blue Ridge Public Radio. and those are all causes. I count the chamber as a cause because a cause is to support business. But those are all things that I really strongly believe in. And down in Florida, there's a nonprofit that's about to put me on their board and I've been involved with a number of things down there for years. But this is stuff I like to do. I feel like in my own way, I'm trying to help those organizations, but then I meet people that can help the business.

22:23Now, certainly are there also other times when I get a business card at a chamber event or something one of my clients is doing. I'm going to reach out to them directly, of course, because they fit a potential client category. But I have found doing the other is really, I think it's also more fun, honestly, where you don't feel like you just, oh, I got to go to this event and go hand out my business card. And I think that comes across. It's like when you meet someone and you're not asking for anything, you're just getting to know each other. I'm also doing the Leadership Asheville program right now, 40 people.

22:56And, you know, I could tell you right now, I don't think there's anyone in that group that's like, oh, my gosh, they're going to be a client next week. But, you know, those connections, you know how it works. Somebody asks around town who does good public relations in Tampa, St. Pete or Asheville. You know, I want them to be thinking about me. Yeah, sure. No, I like it. Community involvement, it's a great way to do it. If you're bent that way, if that's who you are. That's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. I think you have to be bent a certain way, I mean, to join boards and to join. I would agree. I think I see some clients and people and companies I know try to put a square in a round hole on that.

23:36And if it's someone who just has no real interest in doing it and they just really are not good at talking to people and they get a bunch of anxiety walking into a room, find other ways for them to get involved. They might be able to help a nonprofit with some of their books if it's a financial type person. But really understanding as a company, I think it's great when a company says, okay, our six top people, we're going to look for ways to get involved. But when I get in the middle of that, I'm like, okay, let's not just start slotting people in. And let's think about what are they interested in and what are they willing to do and what are they going to be happy to do?

24:18Yeah, and I like it. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a it's an underutilized thing. But if it's something you would do anyway, that's what I say. If it's something you would do anyway, then do it. Yeah, if you like whatever you like to do, do that because you'll meet people wherever you are. I mean, I remember when the kids were little, I coached soccer and I got clients because I coach soccer. Right. You know, so it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't make, you know, whatever it is you're involved in, be involved in it. So I think that's awesome. So, hey, look, this has been fun. This has been a great thing and I've learned a lot.

24:55And I think there's a lot here for a lot of people. So thanks for being on. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Hey, and until next time, all the best.

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