The Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce would like to welcome guest blogger Rebecca Dutcher with RED66 Marketing.
A little over a year ago, my family relocated from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Terre Haute after my husband received a wonderful opportunity with Gartland Foundry. I have several years of experience at different marketing agencies, and after the move it didn’t take long for me to start mulling over the idea of starting my own business.
After the move, I looked for ways to meet other professionals in the area and quickly became involved at Launch Terre Haute. I also met with Katie (Shane) from the Chamber to learn more about businesses in the area. It was at Launch where I attended one of the first Start Up Ladies events and met some great women leaders here in town. The local cowork space, Launch, provided an open-concept workspace for professionals like me and is a great place for freelancers, independents, and the likes, to work collaboratively—something I really enjoyed so I could be around people and not just home with my dogs.
I continued to work remote for an agency in Grand Rapids, but after a few months splitting work time between Launch, my home office and the agency office Michigan, I was encouraged by friends and colleagues both in the GR area and here in Terre Haute to consider launching her own marketing firm.
With the support of Launch, and the partners who make time to meet with aspiring startups there, and clients in Michigan, I heeded their advice and launched my business, RED66 Marketing, last fall. A few months in, I now have an office within Launch Terre Haute, have grown the team to include a project coordinator and two ISU students as interns, as well as a great network for partner firms to help with graphic design and custom development. It’s been an exciting 6 months so far as we continue to expand the client base throughout Michigan and here in the Wabash Valley.
Named after my red hair and the jersey number I wore when I played football as a kid, RED66 focuses on digital marketing, but also offers a broad range of marketing agency services. Services include website design & development, social media strategy, and email marketing to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as well as brand identity development, messaging strategy and more. The firm develops marketing strategies around the websites of businesses, as the web is the hub of all marketing communications.
Sadly, there is a lot of pain when it comes to website development and website marketing. We’re in a day when anyone with a smidge of experience can start a web business. However, it takes a solid background in marketing to look at how clients can use the power of the web to impact their bottom line. Websites are not a set it and forget it type of marketing tactic.
One of the biggest things that I tell any business or anyone creating a website is that they need to focus on the foundation first. Often businesses think about what they want their website to look like and spend most of their time and budget there. However, in a day and age when consumers are searching for solutions or products and not necessarily by the business name, understanding how they search and setting your site up for success is the most important aspect. It’s kind of like building a house. You might have an idea of what you want it to look like, but you know you need to spend time creating blueprints, looking at how things go together and will all work together to support the house and your family for years to come. Websites are a lot like that.
Yes you can, and should, always make edits and updates to websites with new content, images, products and information your customers want and need. This often means having a content strategy. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming, but having a plan to keep your website fresh with relevant content is critical to make the most of that website investment. Often business owners and marketing teams get busy with the day to day and neglect websites and those strategies. That’s where RED66 Marketing comes in to help develop content calendars and hold clients accountable for content creation, or we do it for them to help building the web footprint.
While websites are just one of the many services RED66 Marketing offers, we know they are also one of the most important marketing tools available today. Once your foundation is in place, then you can begin to drive traffic to it from Facebook, Twitter, email marketing, print ads, even radio and direct mail. If you’d like more information about marketing services we provide, or to ask a question, I invite you to visit RED66marketing.com
