Working with creatives is one of the killer perks of running a digital marketing agency. When I connected with Amy Miller on a #314Together Facebook Group for St. Louis residents, we immediately got along. We quickly hatched a plan to work in-trade for our services - a large, botanical-inspired mural in-trade for digital marketing consultation & story-telling.
Amy Miller works as a freelance artist, custom frame maker, and surrealist painter from her home in Dutchtown. She previously owned & operated a boutique framing shop in Clayton, and now wanted help reaching more art clients in St. Louis and beyond. For her business, Miller Art Creative, we started with a general marketing plan and new brand story that we'll use to tell her story and connect with her audience online. This story needed to go hand-in-hand with the art that Amy paints. Check out one of her latest art pieces below.... such talent!
Working in trade, I didn't want to limit our impact based on budget available for marketing projects, so I started the process with some of the most high-impact digital marketing action items you can do as a small business:
Claim, manage & optimize your Google My Business account.
Review your current digital presence and online profiles for your business.
Navigate through your own website carefully; try to put yourself in a new clients shoes!
Write a compelling story for your business that focuses on your customer's needs first.
Connect with your audience on social - even if you don't enjoy it, your business needs it.
And finally, work to get your company's story published online!
The story-telling aspect is what we started working on first, for Miller Art Creative. We needed a clear, easy to understand story for Amy's business because she works on a variety of creative projects for her clients. Those services needed to be woven together to tell her audience what her capabilities are as an artist, and how to connect with her for a concept rendering, sketch, or estimate. We then took that story and published versions of it online! Now her audience has a clear understanding of Amy's business, no matter how they end up finding her.
We then performed keyword research to gain a better sense of the ways customers are searching for the services that she offers online. Next we set-up a simple marketing plan that Amy can manage on her own for both her website and other digital accounts she's active on. Next, we'll be working through a redesign of her website to guide her online visitors on a user-experience that leads to sales.
Together, we managed to complete a significant number of improvements to the company's digital reputation in just a month, and I'll be enjoying the custom mural she painted in my living room each day I'm at home! As a marketing consultant, I love having the flexibility to take on unique projects like this for the St. Louis small business community. It's been my favorite digital marketing project to work on this year!
- Sally Evans
Marketing Consultant & Owner, Hot House Digital