Bold Creative PR Breakthroughs for Small Business Success with Lee Petts

In this episode of the Talk About Digital Podcast, host Mark A Preston welcomes PR and marketing expert Lee Petts to explore creative strategies that small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) can use to stand out, attract new customers, and grow their brand. Lee, founder of the PR and marketing agency 52M, shares his no-nonsense approach to PR, focusing on impactful and bold campaigns that deliver real results—without the hefty price tag.

For SMEs and small business owners, navigating the world of PR and marketing can often seem daunting, especially with limited budgets. Lee breaks down how businesses can embrace creativity and bold ideas to drive visibility and customer engagement, even when resources are tight.

Key Insights for SMEs and Small Business Owners:

• Why Bold PR Works: Lee explains why standing out in a crowded market requires more than just traditional marketing. He reveals how businesses can create campaigns that break the norm, attract attention, and stay memorable—crucial for any small business looking to grow on a budget.
• The Power of Creative Storytelling: Learn how SMEs can turn seemingly mundane aspects of their business into engaging, newsworthy stories. Lee explains how to flip the narrative and make your brand’s unique story work for you.
• Cost-Effective Campaigns: Lee shares real-life examples of highly successful campaigns that required minimal investment but generated significant returns. He highlights the importance of testing creative ideas on a small scale before committing more resources, ensuring you’re on the right track before going big.
• Harnessing Data and Creativity Together: While Lee is all about bold creativity, he explains how data-driven insights can guide creative decisions. By blending data with innovative ideas, businesses can strike the perfect balance between creativity and measurable outcomes.
• PR for Growth-Minded Businesses: Whether you’re an ambitious small business owner or running a charity, this episode offers practical advice on how to use PR as a growth tool. Lee emphasises that PR is not just for big corporations—small businesses can achieve remarkable results with the right approach.

What Will You Gain?

This episode provides actionable insights into how small businesses can start using creative PR and marketing strategies to build their brand, grow their customer base, and stay competitive in an ever-changing marketplace. From learning how to generate buzz around your business to understanding how to engage your audience with relevant, culturally timely content, you’ll walk away with practical tips to apply immediately.

Lee’s TAD Takeaway offers a piece of golden advice: make time for creative experimentation. Dedicate time each week to brainstorm bold ideas and test them out, even on a small scale. The more you flex your creative muscle, the stronger it becomes—and the more likely you’ll create campaigns that deliver significant results.

This is a must-listen episode for any SME or small business owner looking to revitalise their marketing and PR efforts. If you're ready to start thinking differently and push your business forward with innovative strategies, this episode will inspire and equip you to make it happen.

This podcast is produced by Voice It Podcast Agency
https://voiceitpodcastagency.co.uk

Transcript

[00:00:00] Mark A Preston: Welcome to Talk About Digital, the podcast for small and medium sized businesses looking to grow new customers through impactful, low cost digital marketing strategies. Have you invested in digital marketing with zero positive impact? If this sounds like you, then this Each week we provide actionable steps to move your business forward with our TAD Takeaway, helping you to harness your biggest asset, yourself, to achieve big impact with minimal investment.

[00:00:36] Stay tuned as we dive into the world of digital marketing, offering insights and advice that will transform your business. Let's get started. Welcome to this week's episode of the talk about digital podcast. And this week I'm super excited to welcome the founder of the PR and marketing agency with balls.

[00:00:59] He's a straight talking PR and marketing Marvin, and I wanted to invite him onto the talk about digital podcast as he is such a creative thinker. And I want to delve into the world of PR marketing for SMEs and small businesses. Please welcome. Lee Petz from 52M. Hi Lee. Hello. How are you? Very well. Thanks.

[00:01:21] Just saw the audience has a bit of an overview of who you are. Could you give us like a tour of who you are and, you know, your journey throughout the marketing and PR space? 

[00:01:33] Lee Petts: Yeah, sure. Um, so I run 52M. It's a full service agency. So there isn't really an awful lot that we don't cover one way, shape or form.

[00:01:43] One thing we definitely don't do is TikTok stuff. Um, we're just not into that. Uh, that's really not our bag, but we, we pretty much do everything else. Uh, so traditional PR, uh, most of the things you could probably conceive of, uh, from a, a marketing perspective. But it's all very focused around deliverable campaigns that, you know, really get results.

[00:02:05] I think there is a danger and a tendency sometimes in our field, and I know we're going to talk about creativity in this podcast. I think sometimes there's a bit of a temptation to do creativity for the sake of creativity and people waste a lot of money on campaigns like that, which is, I think it's the, you know, the extreme end of the spectrum.

[00:02:25] Uh, so, you know, one end you've got hugely data driven and the other end you've got. Far too creative and looks great, but really doesn't achieve much. And we try and sit somewhere in the middle. Um, we haven't always done this, um, my, my background, actually, although I started out in, uh, in comms, I somehow ended up segueing off into the environmental field.

[00:02:47] Uh, when I started my business 22 years ago, it was a waste and environmental management company. But over time, it became clear to me that what we were doing in that business. involved an awful lot of in house type comms, very consultative, trying to engage audiences of, you know, three, 400 people in a, in a manufacturing setting, uh, to encourage them to be more sustainable and, and create less waste and use things more thriftily.

[00:03:15] Uh, and I, and I kept realizing over time that the bit that I enjoyed most about that. Uh, that role and what we did as a business was very much the, the communication side of it. And then it got to 2016 and I thought, do you know what? I'm not getting any younger. If I don't do something about this fairly soon, uh, I'll miss the boat.

[00:03:35] And I'd always wanted to, uh, to have my own agency. So in 2016, we pivoted and became the business that we are. 

[00:03:43] Mark A Preston: Wonderful. Well, I was going to say 2016 was my reversal of that. I sort of had the agency and I just had enough and I just wanted it to be me on my personal journey. But delving from that is as an industry, the PR and marketing industry, where do you think we are at the moment?

[00:04:06] Um, 

[00:04:07] Lee Petts: I think we're on, on the cusp of a bit of an altered, uh, an altered reality in some ways. So, you know, as I said in my intro there, we, we've got into a situation where, and you see it all the time in, uh, particularly in advertising where businesses are running ads with no real creative thought behind it.

[00:04:24] Um, so it literally is just about data points and what does, The feedback we get from Facebook tell us is working or isn't working. And I think somewhere along the way, we've kind of lost a bit of the, um, the creative spark you might have once seen in, you know, historic campaigns where the language that was used and the imagery that was used was really quite compelling, um, lots of psychology behind it still, but really quite clever.

[00:04:56] And we've, we've segued into this, this world where. We spend probably far too much time thinking about things through that prism of, of what data tells us, uh, will and won't work, uh, and not as much time on thinking about things from a creative perspective and putting the audience first and creating things that audiences will love.

[00:05:16] But I think we're at a stage as well, where with the advent of AI, we're going through another change again now. And it's, I think it's likely that we're going to see certainly in the short term. A lot of smaller businesses, um, try to replace the creative sector in, in one way or another, uh, with easily accessible, uh, and relatively cheap AI tools, thinking that that AI is doing the creative work for them, when it isn't really, it's people like us who are still doing the creative work, just the AI happens to be stealing it from us, um, because it's being trained somewhere, isn't it?

[00:05:55] Um, so I think that's kind of where we're, where we're getting to at the moment as a, as a space. Um, where that, where that takes us next is anybody's guess, I suppose. Um, I, uh, I personally think AI has a future in, in what we do. We'd be silly to try and ignore it and pretend it, you know, it's not going to, uh, to play a big role in, in the kind of work that we do.

[00:06:21] Um, which is, you know, pretty much what Kodak did when digital cameras came along. It assumed that everybody would carry on favoring, you know, film and clunky old SLRs. And when digital sort of took off and, and, uh, and they realized that it was a bit too late for them to jump on board. So it may be silly to, uh, to ignore the threat, but also the opportunities of AI.

[00:06:43] But I don't think it will ever fully do the job that, that, you know, um, the creative industries bring to, to their clients. 

[00:06:51] Mark A Preston: Well, it is your creativity around your campaigns that is the reason I wanted you on this podcast. You know, I've, I've been seeing your stuff and I thinking what, what must happen inside somebody's head to come up with that?

[00:07:06] It's so, I hate to word, use the word creative, but it takes some. Different thinking to come up with something like that, because it is so different and it sticks in your mind and it does connect with the audience and everything. And I'm just wondering, like, a lot of people struggle with what you're creating.

[00:07:27] So just talk to me about the spark you get when you're creating an idea. 

[00:07:33] Lee Petts: Um, I wish I could say that it's, um, you know, it's all planned and, you know, you can do it at will all of the time, doesn't tend to work like that. Certainly not for me. Uh, my creative bursts usually come when I'm doing something mundane.

[00:07:47] Uh, so I might be ironing kids school uniforms or I'm in the bathroom, walking the dog and I'm doing something. It's mindless in a way. And that's generally when I get my rushes of inspiration. And I think that's because. My, my brain specifically, if, if I can occupy the studious thinking part of the brain with something that distracts it like ironing, or, you know, doing something like that, uh, that I don't really have to concentrate on too much, but I can guide my focus that way.

[00:08:17] It frees up my creative, inventive brain to come up with ideas. And sometimes that's based on, uh, you know, a conscious idea to begin with that then gets the creative treatment kind of organically afterwards. A lot of it is, is very sort of time sensitive as well. Uh, if you look at some of the campaigns we've worked on recently, they've all been culturally relevant and very timely, uh, in that moment.

[00:08:44] So we run a campaign where we. mimicked Labour's election campaign, uh, for an estate agent and We positioned him as though he were a labor politician, uh, bidding for election glory. We stole lots of lines from labor, just twisted the meaning so that they were about a state agency rather than running the country.

[00:09:11] Um, and that was one where there'd been a bit of sort of conscious thought about, I wonder whether we could do something around the election campaign because People will be thinking about it. It will be newsworthy. Journalists will be covering these sorts of stories. Uh, so could we do something around that?

[00:09:29] And we, so we did. It actually started, we did, we did start with more of a sort of data driven angle. So we, we started with the election campaign for the estate agent, uh, from a data perspective, and we unearthed some, uh, some figures from land registry to give us a sense of. what happened to local house prices in his patch during the previous Labour government from 1997 through 2010, and then what had happened to those house prices under the Tory regime from 2010 onwards.

[00:10:05] Um, and we made up some nice graphs and we got a press release, uh, into local news, uh, positioning this estate agent as a sort of voice of authority type. Covering an issue that we thought would be, you know, quite relevant to people. It didn't take off the way we anticipated it would, if I'm being honest.

[00:10:23] And it surprised me that because everything we saw in the numbers suggested this, this, there's likely to be a topic that people would be interested in because the value of your property is, you know, usually very significant to you. And if there is a risk that that property value might plummet as a consequence of a governmental change or it could increase significantly, you could see how that might influence people to vote one way or another.

[00:10:46] And we also anticipated, if I'm being really honest, that it would create a bit of tension amongst people locally and that would drive people to the comments on news articles and social feeds. Uh, that didn't happen in the way we anticipated. So, I, my sense from that was people were just not as politically engaged this time around as perhaps they have been in the past.

[00:11:08] But it was while we were thinking about that and still in keeping with that whole, what can we do around the election, that we came up with this idea of let's, let's mimic an election campaign. Let's, let's present this estate agent as though he is a candidate and he's the candidate for prime minister.

[00:11:24] Um, and that idea actually came as I've just described in that sort of rush of inspiration. Um, Quite unexpectedly on a Tuesday, the week before the election, uh, was being held on the Friday, no, the Thursday. Uh, so we, we had less than a week to gain some traction with it and start creating content around it and pushing that message out there and, and, uh, and, and starting to entertain people with it, but it worked and, and it was great because we didn't really have to do an awful lot of thinking once we'd got it moving, because all we had to do day to day was look at what were the messages that day that Labour were pushing out.

[00:12:00] as part of its campaign and then riffing on those and as I say, you know, twisting them slightly so that it fit the estate agency narrative. So if you think about the, the election campaign from labor, which is all about, um, you know, being the change candidates, um, and something different from the Tories, we twisted that into an estate agency, um, context by saying, it's all about Uh, coming to the end of your sole agency period with an estates agent that hasn't managed to sell your property yet.

[00:12:30] Um, you know, why not consider changing to an estates agent that has a totally different approach and can do things differently for you. So that was the logic behind that whole narrative. And when Labour were pushing out messages like, you know, don't vote for another five years of Tory chaos or Tory sleaze or whatever it was.

[00:12:50] Our pitch was when it comes to the end of your sole agency agreement, you know, don't vote for another 16 weeks of no sales and no viewings. And we just let it build kind of organically around that as the campaign wore on. Uh, and I think the best bit then was getting the estate agent outside number 10, Winkley square, um, to deliver a, uh, you know, a victory speech as though he were the new prime minister.

[00:13:15] Done in a very prime ministerial fashion with a little wave at the end when they turn around to walk through the door of number 10. Um, and that one video was seen something like 29, 000 times within about three days, uh, you know, in a fairly condensed local audience. So while it's not viral in the, in the same way that, you know, you see some other viral, uh, social posts that, you know, hit millions of views for an estate agent with a.

[00:13:40] Uh, a Facebook following in the low thousands to be getting 29, 000 views on that video was, you know, Pretty, you know, pretty impressive. Uh, and and the visibility that that's given him now in his markets is uh is outstanding You know 

[00:13:55] Mark A Preston: what? I'm a big believer. It's not all about the numbers. I mean, there's no point having 100, 000 views if only two percent of those is is The audience you want to attract, you know, and I think as a, as an industry sort of being, you know, everything's data, more numbers, the bigger numbers is the graph going up, but I think we need to strip it all right back to real marketing, real PR, you know, and like this audience listening to this podcast now, they are SMEs and small business owners, and, you know, they don't have like a a massive budget to pump towards an idea that might work or might not.

[00:14:42] So for the audience listening, what sort of things can they be thinking about when it comes to PR marketing for their business? 

[00:14:53] Lee Petts: Okay, so I think there is, there's a lot that small businesses can do and small charities on a relative shoestring. And it does help to understand how you can use data in doing that still to make some.

[00:15:07] Useful decisions. Um, you know, the example I've just given you there with the estate agent, you know, watching what's going on in, in the public realm in, in, you know, in the news cycle, uh, and, and looking for opportunities to jump on things that might be topical because somebody else is already interested in that.

[00:15:26] Um, and you can ride that, um, to some extent yourself, um, we, we, we come up with all kinds of crazy ideas. I mean, we've got, you know, we've got clients that literally described as being bonkers because of, you know, some of the ideas that we put to them, you know, we've, we've got our own at the moment, our campaign, I, I mentioned earlier about our, our stress balls that we're sending out to people, branded stress balls.

[00:15:48] Uh, and that's where this whole, um, descriptors come from about being the agency with balls, because what we recognize is that for these things to work. You need to stand out. You need to get noticed. And that means you have to run campaigns that are, you know, often quite bold and different. Because bold and different gets you noticed.

[00:16:05] So we start with that first. The way our human brains evolved tens of thousands of years ago hasn't changed. In recent times, so there are large parts of our our daily lives that are controlled by a fairly prehistoric arrangement of brain centers, and originally the purpose of those brain centers was to keep humans alive.

[00:16:30] And it did that by making sure that we constantly stayed in tune with our local environment scanning for threats continuously and recording what we encountered. Uh, and storing those experiences in a way that would enable us to reference back to them very rapidly if we encountered a similar situation again.

[00:16:51] Okay. So it was, if you think about it in, in those kind of hunter gatherer terms, you're out hunting for the day with your spear and you hear a bush rustle nearby. Uh, your brain would have been tuned into that sound because it would have been out of place. It would have been different. It would have been obvious.

[00:17:10] Um, And your brain would make a very quick determination. Have we encountered this before? And if so, what was the outcome? Now, if the previous outcome was, uh, a saber tooth tiger was in that bush, he jumped out and, and, you know, tore my leg off, well, then you instant instinct in those situations is going to be to run.

[00:17:32] Likewise, if the previous time that happened, uh, it was a mammoth hiding in the bush and you remember, actually, I stuck my spear in it and that was dinner then for the, uh, the next three weeks, you You would like to stick your spear in the bush again, because, or why wouldn't you? It weren't last time. Um, and so that, that's how our, those parts of the brain developed, and that's their purpose, and we still rely on those today.

[00:17:55] But in terms of marketing, um, and, and PR, there's a lot we can do to appeal to those parts of the brain. even now. So given that their day to day status is to scan for things that look different, and then to remember those things that look different, if you can build communications campaigns around those very premises of make it look different, it'll get noticed.

[00:18:22] And if it gets noticed because it's different, it'll get remembered. Then you're halfway in, in many, in many senses, to moving somebody from, basic awareness of you as an organization to, you know, stepping closer and closer towards the tilt because they feel like they know you now because you stood out to them and, and they've remembered that you stood out to them.

[00:18:45] And to do that, you have to be different. And that means being bold and being bold can come in all kinds of different guises. But if you can be visually different, if you can appear in, in locations that kind of out of context for people, so, you know, they come across you in an unexpected place or in an unexpected way, again, they're more likely to notice you and then remember you.

[00:19:09] And you can do a lot with that as well with humor. So, we know, again, from a psychological perspective, when we encounter things that make us laugh, we store that as well in a slightly different way. Uh, so anything that affects us emotionally gets stored in a different way. Uh, if we can make somebody smile or make somebody laugh a little bit with our comms, then again, not only are they being noticed and, and, um, you know, being more likely to be remembered, um, the.

[00:19:39] Tapping that sort of emotional, um, connection does something else for us as well. So if we make them smile and if we make them laugh with our bold campaigns that have stood out and, and the making is more memorable as well, because we've triggered that positive associate at that positive emotion, uh, in them, that then creates a positive association between that organization and the person viewing that content.

[00:20:03] So the, I think the underlying message there for smaller businesses is to experiment with things. that other people are not doing around you. Don't, don't do things that just blend in with, with everybody else because you will not get noticed in that sense. Um, you've got to do something that, that acts as a kind of beacon really, and, and, and just makes you stand out from those in your, in your space, your rivals, um, and, and all of the other clutter out there on the internet, uh, and social media that's, you know, uh, desperate for people's attention.

[00:20:37] So do something like that. Try and try and come up with things that are different, likely to be noticeable, likely to be memorable. Try and tap into humor, particularly, uh, to create those positive brand associations, and then test that with small stuff doesn't have to be an enormous, gigantic, expensive campaign.

[00:20:59] Um, you know, the one we've talked about there with the estate agent. There was hardly any cost associated with that at all, really, um, to, uh, to get that moving and, and achieve what that did in terms of visibility and all the things I've just talked about there in terms of being noticed and becoming memorable.

[00:21:15] Um, but then do you test it? So although we, we lean into the creative side of things, um, an awful lot, we do also test to see how do we think this is going to play and is it worth investing in? As a concept to make it travel further. So one of the things that we do is we'll run a really low budget advertising campaign on Facebook.

[00:21:42] Um, we, we create it as an awareness campaign and we optimize it for brand awareness, so not reach, uh, the brand awareness objective. And what that allows us to then do is Facebook will report back to us on those campaigns, a measure called estimated ad recall lift, which is Facebook's internal measure of how likely is it that somebody is going to remember this ad within a couple of days of seeing it.

[00:22:14] We use that to test what creative resonates with people, because if you can run ads on that On Facebook to a reasonable audience. Um, using those campaign objectives and optimizing in that way, it very quickly tells you which of these pieces of creative are resonating with people most. Because if it's something that they are going to remember, then that tells us.

[00:22:41] That's the kind of thing that is getting noticed. And he's doing something to that audience that makes them keep it in mind somewhere. So, we run a small scale trial. Have a look at what that data from Facebook tells us about the different creative choices. Uh, to find which one resonates most. And we can judge that because it's the one that has the highest estimated ad recall lift, or IRL, and the lowest cost per IRL.

[00:23:10] Uh, and then once we've tested it through that platform, we then say, Okay, out of these few different variants, That's the one that seems to resonate. So now that's the one that we will go out and push as a campaign that bit harder. So then you, then you've got that nice crossover between, it's not all about being creative and trying to be bold and different and stand out.

[00:23:29] It's doing that, but in a slightly measured way as well, by looking at data and using tools like Facebook to, uh, to assist with that. 

[00:23:36] Mark A Preston: Yeah. So, so it's coming up with a concept, literally testing that concept, using a low level paid advertising to prove the concept, then once we've proven the concept, we can run with it.

[00:23:52] Lee Petts: It's like a scientific experiment in a sense. Um, so you, you, you know, your creative and your content really is, is like a scientific hypothesis. And, and you then test that to destruction and either it proves it right or it proves it wrong. And if it's right, then. You can advance it and you can turn that into a bigger, you know, potentially multifaceted campaign.

[00:24:15] But my point centrally is as well, these things don't have to be big budget. You know, I think there's a tendency to assume that this kind of stuff and, and running successful campaigns. That get results has to cost a lot of money. And it's, it's something that only bigger businesses can achieve. And that's just not the case.

[00:24:34] There's an awful lot that smaller businesses can do with fairly limited budgets, as long as they can apply some creative thinking to what they're attempting to do. 

[00:24:44] Mark A Preston: Yeah. Well, I've been going into businesses for many, many years and training the teams and, and every time we touch upon. PR, my side of marketing, um, it's like a brick walls in front of me.

[00:24:59] We don't have any story. We're not doing anything different. We just do what, in fact, the exact words I usually hear is we just do what we do. You know? So for them, sorts of businesses who are, who are in that mindset that there's, there is nothing different about them. They just doing the day to day. How can they start thinking about using PR?

[00:25:24] Lee Petts: Okay. Um, before I answer that question, let me just answer it in a slightly, um, indirect way, which is to just say that alone, that, that, what you just described there could itself be the foundation of a campaign. So, a business that thinks of itself like that could quite easily conceive, I can see how you could quite easily conceive of a campaign where that's what you do.

[00:25:51] You put the entire focus on the fact that you are no different, um, and that, but then it becomes about how you position that. Okay. Um, and, and it's, it's purely by going out there and doing that, that you would then actually create a point of difference because no one else is going to do that. So if you were, if your, if your whole strategy was, I'm just going to tell everybody that I'm no different to anybody else.

[00:26:13] Yeah. That straight away makes you different to everybody else because nobody else is going to do that. Why would they, you know, and it reminds me of a, um, a campaign we've seen. From the Norwegian tourist body. Um, and they basically did a little film about Oslo to promote. The city is a, as a destination and they filmed a resident, um, in various locations around Oslo, kind of talking it down or that's how it's portrayed.

[00:26:41] But actually what they're really doing is quite cleverly talking it up. So one of his comments that he makes is, um, is it really a city? Is it even a city? Is it really, can we really call it a city? Um, feels a bit more like a village really. And then he leads from that. into saying, you know, you can be walking around the corner one day and you bump into the prime minister, you know, and the next day you might walk around the corner and you bump into the king, you know, it's that small.

[00:27:09] And so what they're really trying to do is with the positioning is flip the narrative completely. So portray it one way to make it watchable, but have that undertone of actually what we're really doing is talking it up. And we, we did very, we did the same ourselves this very week with our, uh, the little video we put out after our, uh, failure to win in the beavers.

[00:27:29] When we, when we talked about, well, why, why do we think we didn't win? We actually gave lots of things that should have made it, you know, should have made us win and talked up some of the results that we get, but as though that was a sort of, you know, a failure in a way, so we, we were flipping the narrative and that can work really quite well as a campaign, uh, and any business could do that literally just by saying we're no different to anybody else, you know, and there you go, you can have that one free by the way, anybody that's listening, uh, so I would, I would take that away as one thing.

[00:27:59] When it comes to storytelling with PR, and it's slightly different if we're thinking about this through the lens of traditional PR, where we're hoping to get stories told in mainstream media, not to get clicks, not to get traffic and backlinks, which is more the objective that we see with digital PR.

[00:28:21] When it's more, when we're doing traditional PR, it's more about the narrative that we create, the impression that we want to create, building the reputation around the business, uh, all of which becomes additive because we know when somebody starts to become aware of you as a business and they, you know, one of the first things they might do is go and do an internet search and have a look at who you are and, uh, what your credentials are.

[00:28:44] If they encounter lots of positive news stories about you in, in the first few pages of Google's results, um, then. There's a positive glow created around what you do, because you're not saying those things. It's an independent news outlet that's saying those good things about you. So, so it's, it's worth doing in that sense.

[00:29:03] And it's very much part of the sort of long term brand building side of, um, of the comms function. But you do have to have real stories, uh, these days, you know, because if you approach journalists with stories that are, uh, Weak, uh, and that they don't think are likely to be appropriate or of interest to their audience, then they won't fly.

[00:29:28] So it is important to have, um, you know, a real story, but most businesses will have. a real story, possibly once or twice a year for a smaller business, maybe four times a year for a, you know, a slightly bigger, small business. There is almost always something that you can talk about. Uh, and there is almost always going to be an audience that will be interested in that.

[00:29:52] So then, then it becomes about the objective. What are we trying to do with it? And that's about Portraying the organization so that people see it the way you want them to, uh, which is why we want to sort of create this golden glow around ourselves. So when we show up in search results, there are lots of nice positive news stories about us there.

[00:30:09] It doesn't always have to be about, you know, we've just invented this new thing and it's going to revolutionize this industry or, you know, we've just, um, you know, we just won this massive contract and it means we can now recruit 3 million people or, you know, it doesn't have to be like that. There are lots of things businesses do.

[00:30:27] Particularly around the sort of human interest that make good stories on that. There will be media outlets out there that are interested in them. So if you've done something around. Well being, for instance, in your organization, there are HR publications out there with online versions that will be interested potentially in the stories of what you've been doing in the well being space in your organization, because that fits that HR audience.

[00:30:55] Now, you might think, well, We don't really want to reach an audience of people in HR because, you know, that's not our audience. Uh, and that's, that's fair comment, but if the objective is just about creating positive news stories about your organization with name mentions and, and, uh, and, and so on, then it, that then becomes kind of irrelevant.

[00:31:15] It's the coverage that matters. Um, the, you know, the reputational capital that that then helps your business to create. And when you start to then think about it that way, you can start to see how you could have lots of stories that you probably didn't really think of as stories before, but when you, when you look at it in this way, you think, ah, okay, yeah, I can see how that could make a story for that particular audience.

[00:31:39] And although we may not be interested in reaching that audience specifically, that's not the objective. The objective is lots of positive news coverage out there that enhances. The image of our brand. 

[00:31:51] Mark A Preston: Well, you've talked about so much over this podcast and I don't know about the audience, but my brain's like a cog going a hundred mile an hour.

[00:32:01] We all the different ideas and it only takes a little snippet of what you said. To trigger something in someone's brain. And if it's done it in my brain, I'm sure it's done it in the audience's brain. But with the talk about digital podcast, we always end with a tad takeaway, a piece of actionable value that small businesses can actually action into their business to create positivity.

[00:32:32] So with that in mind, what is your one tad takeaway? 

[00:32:37] Lee Petts: Crikey. We should prepare me for this in advance. I might, I might've had a better one. I think I'd have to say all in all, it's don't be afraid of. I mean, actually in actual fact, carve out time and space purposefully for experimentation. I think that is, is a really sort of key takeaway.

[00:32:58] We don't generally do that enough. I don't think in businesses. I mean, we do because it's in our nature, it's, it's part and parcel of what we're all about. But most businesses get so focused on. Daily grind of it all. Um, that there is no time or place or discussions around things that might, you know, might create that sort of creative, uh, creative spark.

[00:33:24] Um, so I, I think that would be my takeaway. Actually, purposefully make time, create space for experimentation and embrace the fact that it isn't always going to work, you know, so embrace failure. Within that make space for that as well. Just that set, not everything you come up with will take off. The more you give yourself that opportunity as a business to step away from the day job and think about creative campaigns, In a, in a, in a sort of purposeful way, in a mindful way, almost with dedicated time to come up with ideas and brainstorm things.

[00:34:10] Uh, if you're a sole trader, you know, have a time in the week when you set some time aside, just to down tools and think about this kind of stuff, because the more you do it, the creative mind is a bit like a muscle, the more you exercise it, the better it gets. If you're not giving yourself time and space to do the experimentation, It's, it's, it's always going to be flabby.

[00:34:31] Um, you know, it'd be like me, uh, or flab, no abs. Um, so make time for, for experimentation. Don't be afraid to fail with it. Um, you know, accept that failure is part of the learning curve and you'll come back stronger and you'll, you'll have a better idea with a better chance of success next time, or do test it as well in the, you know, with the, uh, the, you know, in the manner that I've described earlier with things like.

[00:34:57] Inexpensive Facebook ads to bring the sort of data driven element back into the fold and pair that then with the sort of creative thought process. 

[00:35:06] Mark A Preston: What an amazing Ted Takeaway that was. And all I can think about now is running a campaign for, for, for, for no abs, just flab. Yeah. So if there are any, uh, if there are 

[00:35:21] Lee Petts: any personal trainers out there that, uh, that want to make that line, please feel free.

[00:35:25] Mark A Preston: Brilliant. So to, to end the podcast, could you give us, um, an overview of what conversations you'd like to have with people who, you know, what sort of things you, you want to achieve and where can people find you? 

[00:35:41] Lee Petts: Okay. So we are particularly interested in ambitious businesses and charities that want to be bigger and achieve more.

[00:35:51] So those are the criteria that we set for the organizations that we work with. Uh, and we say ambitious and, and, and, you know, uh, hungry for growth because the kinds of things that we do aren't always for the faint hearted. They aren't always for the steady eddies that are quite happy with where they are.

[00:36:11] Um, we're particularly geared to, uh, to helping organizations achieve their growth ambitions by being bold. Um, so if you're an ambitious small business or a charity that wants to be bigger and do more, then, uh, we're, we're interested in the conversation. We don't have any particular sector preference anymore.

[00:36:31] Uh, we did once we don't anymore. So that's not a barrier for us. You can reach us online. Um, we're all over social media, our handles and our web address are all the same. Uh, so we are all the W's. 52 m.com. I, I will spell that for you because we did make a mistake with the brand there once, uh, and we changed from using five two m, uh, as three digits that were dead easy to spelling out the word 50 and then putting two m at the end.

[00:36:59] And it looks great as a brand, but when you try and tell everybody what your web address is, it, it's, um, it's a bit more difficult. So it's www.fiftytwom.com. Uh, and as I say, we're all over social media, uh, and we post pretty regularly on, uh, on most channels, particularly LinkedIn these days. 

[00:37:16] Mark A Preston: Wonderful.

[00:37:16] Well, Lee, many thanks for your time. And I'm sure, well, I'm not sure. I know the audience will receive massive value from it. Thank you for tuning in to the talk about digital podcast. Remember every small step you take brings you closer to your business goals. If you found today's episode helpful, subscribe to our podcast and sign up to your free 12 week tab customer growth course at www.

[00:37:44] podcast. com. TalkAboutDigital. co. uk to receive even more customer generating tips and insights. Until next time, keep harnessing your strengths and making actionable, impactful moves in your digital marketing journey. See you soon.