Contributed by BBDC
The Box Butte Development Corporation hosted its first Marketing Lunch & Learn on June 29th at the BBDC office. Rural Fellow interns, Marissa Lindemann and Ritu Jadwani, shared some marketing tips for local businesses during this session. Lindemann emphasized the importance of visual design, including using free online tools like Canva to create posters and digital infographics. She is a broadcast journalism major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and focused on the importance of storytelling when marketing your business.
She shared that visual and personal stories drive businesses because the customer wants to know who the person is behind the brand. Ritu Jadwani is a doctoral student in merchandising at UNL, and she has a small business, Namaste NYC, to support the local crafts and textiles.
This helps generate employment opportunities for physically disabled women in India. She highlighted offline marketing strategies like businesses collaborating with other businesses that have similar values to increase both businesses’ customer base. For online strategies, she stressed on the importance of creating a Google My Business page for all businesses to have visibility on Google. She also said businesses should choose the right social media channel according to their audience engagement and demographics. The Lunch & Learn was well attended by small business owners based in Alliance and Hemingford.