Have you considered hiring tradespeople from interstate, or even overseas for your next big project? If so this article is for you! Hiring local tradies is often in your best interest; let's look at the top three reasons why below.
-
You Can Make Use Word of Mouth to Hire the Best Tradespeople
When you use a local tradesperson, the advantage you have is that you likely already knew a bit about them before you hired them. This knowledge WON’T have been based on slick marketing slogans or online reviews from people you’ve never met (who may or may not be friends of the business owner!) Instead this knowledge will’ve come from your sister, your best friend, your neighbour or your hairdresser; people who have no vested interests in the tradesperson’s business, people you can trust to give you an honest assessment of the quality of their services.
About 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising?* When you opt for a local tradie, you can rely on this most highly trusted source of information to steer you towards the best quality tradespeople in your community.
-
You can Keep them Accountable
If you are planning to invest big dollars building your dream home or renovating an existing property, you’ll be very keen to ensure that the tradies you’ve hired do a good job that’s on time and on budget. While most tradespeople will work hard to do the right thing by you, there are always a few dodgy operators who can cause you a lot of grief, and keeping such tradespeople accountable can be very challenging when they live interstate! All you can do is leave phone messages, to which they may or may not respond.
However, when your tradies live locally, if you can’t reach them by phone or email, you always have the option of visiting their place of business or, leaning on friends or family who know the tradesperson personally, to get a response.
-
You get that Feel-Good Glow
Hiring local tradespeople is not only good for you, it’s also good for your community. Hiring local tradespeople will almost always mean you are supporting small businesses and that means you are:
- Helping to support local jobs - on average 27 cents out of every dollar you spend with a local small business goes towards paying local employees
- Keeping money in your community (this money cycles through the local economy, helping many businesses in turn)
- Supporting the growth of local small businesses - a diverse mix of healthy small businesses creates a vibrant and unique community
- Supporting local charities - small businesses invest on average 3 cents of every dollar earned into local charities, schools and sponsorship programs
- You are even doing your bit to help reduce carbon emissions! While plenty of factors determine whether a business can be considered environmentally friendly, it stands to reason that a local tradie will use less fuel getting to and from your worksite than a remote tradesperson. Your local tradie wil also rely heavily on local suppliers for parts and equipment, rather than shipping parts in, helping to reduce transport emissions further
References:
*According to a Nielsen ‘Global Trust in Advertising’ report 2012