BRILLIANT AND GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

I have found a brilliant and golden opportunity in my life and that is Aureate Marketing. I’ve vaguely mentioned Aureate Marketing in several of my past posts, but I haven’t fully gone into depth of my plans for it and today I will. I plan to be very open with my plans for this business to build trust between my business and their customers so they will know exactly what they are investing in and who they are putting their company’s trust upon. The official launch of Aureate Marketing will not occur until after I am completely done with college, but it has already begun a soft launch where it’s testing the water to see which businesses would be interested as well as some experience from a few volunteer projects that I will explain later down in this post. Click the read more button to read all about my amazing business plan!

*Disclaimer: All of these plans are subject to change, but this post will explain the base plan that is currently in place for the business. Future posts will be made to address any changes or updates.*

The idea for Aureate Marketing stemmed from my experience with the media subteam for Team 1720, PhyXTGears Robotics. I’ve written about Aureate Marketing in several of my blog posts, it’s definitely something that I am very interested and excited about building and launching (At the bottom of this post, you can find a list of previous blog posts that I have spoken about Aureate Marketing). In Muncie, Indiana there is a plethora of local businesses that are rich in opportunity. However, I’ve noticed that while these businesses offer wonderful services and amazing products, they don’t bring about as many customers as I know could be possible for them. One of the biggest reasons for this is that although the business provides an amazing service and product output, they do not have a marketing plan that is advertises themselves enough to generate a large fan base.
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Aureate Marketing will offer 5 main services: classes, account management, teaching materials, photography / photo shoot, and consultation. I think these 6 main services are essential to provide as a marketing company because they are the basics of marketing that most businesses struggle with. They are all essential parts to learn and to have in order to make a marketing plan. Classes are important to learn from and act upon because once they know the information it will be easier to gain a larger audience and fan base. Account management is important to have a hands on experience and visual representation of how to professionally grab an audience’s attention. Photo sessions are important to businesses for a multitude of different reasons such as employee head shots, team photos, events, and different advertising purposes. Material Design is important because you need to have a firm foundation of branding. Consultation is important to the business that get involved with Aureate Marketing in order to have a good sense of what parts of their marketing plan needs improvement so that a business can achieve its fullest potential.

Classes

​I have not fully planned the specific classes that will be taught yet but some of the ideas that I have for that so far is a basics to social media, flyer design, business on a budget, how to present a powerful speech, how to gain connections efficiently, how to professionally run social media, etc. I plan to have a basics to social media class where Aureate Marketing team members will teach others the basics of how to use different forms of social media accounts. Another class will be flyer design which will teach others how to make an eye catching flyer and which programs work best. There will also be a class of business on a budget where our team members will teach others the cheapest routes that we know to efficiently promote and advertise their business. Tune in for future posts and website updates for more information about these classes

PhyXTGears Robotics strategizing game plans for 2017 game Kick-off. Photo/Ashley Martin

Account Management

The Account Management service that Aureate Marketing will offer is a service where one or more of our team members will oversee a business’s social media accounts and occasionally post a few eye-catching posts for their business. After the time length of which the business will choose, of managing a business’s account, we will then start the process of fading out of managing their account by going from creating posts, to editing post, to then just watching the posts, and then finally to remove ourselves from their account(s).

Teaching Materials

The Teaching Materials that Aureate Marketing will provide is a multitude of different products that can be used by different businesses to teach their employees how to follow their marketing plan and the different suggestions and tools that we will provide them with upon purchase. That way businesses can take back materials to their employees so that they can use the materials to keep their marketing plans on track and to know how to efficiently keep their audience’s attention

Photo Session

The Photo Sessions that Aureate Marketing will provide is as simple as it sounds. The plan for Aureate Marketing photo sessions is to have a photo studio at our building as well as a portable photography studio. The photo sessions will be available for events, a specific social media post, and employee headshots. I love doing photography and you can see the different photo shoots that I have already done at: ​boundtoflyhigher.weebly.com/commissioned-art

Ashley Martin doing a senior picture photo shoot. Photo/Melissa Martin

Consultation

The Consultation service offered is to, work with each individual business that decides to work us, to find which service or products would be best for their business to invest in. The consultation will include watching their social media for 2 weeks. After watching their social media for 2 weeks, we will set up a meeting with their marketing department to find out what their marketing plan and goals are. In that meeting we will simply sit in, ask some questions and listen to what they are already implementing in their plan and goal. Then, our team will work out from what we learned, which services and / or products of ours would most efficiently help their business and put together a document full of tentative pricing, our own goals for their business, and what we found to be their strengths and weaknesses. Lastly, we will schedule another meeting with the business to discuss what we found to be their weaknesses and strengths and then present to them the services and / or products that we offer that we think would help them achieve the overall goals with the tentative pricing and let their company decide which parts of our ideas they choose to go with and set them up

Currently the Aureate Marketing team is made up of 3 members, Asher Cougill (my boyfriend), Melissa Martin (my mother), and myself. Until Aureate Marketing is able to hold a financial stability, all team members are volunteers (as stated in the team handbook). Our team sees the potential in all local business who provide wonderful services and products. Muncie, Indiana has it’s faults, but it also has it’s beauties and wonderful opportunities and we plan to attempt to help all local businesses that we work with to achieve their full potential which requires a fully outlined and solid marketing plan set in place.

President

I am Ashley Martin, but for the sake of consistency with the rest of these short biographies, in this paragraph I will refer to myself in third person. Ashley is 19 years old, turning 20 on October 13th of this year. She graduated from Burris High School and is currently attending Ivy Tech Community College through their ASAP Program. The ASAP program condenses the degree in half the time so that she can earn her associate’s degree in 11 months instead of 2 years. She started Aureate Marketing because she sees so much potential in the local businesses of Muncie, but notices that there is a lack of community communication about local events and businesses. Aureate Marketing is a business that aims to solve that issue and market local events and businesses to a larger audience.

Vice-President

Asher Cougill is 20 years old and graduated from Cowan High School. He is currently working at No Limits AV where he is an audio visuals technician. Asher Cougill is the tentative Vice President (tentative because this role is meant for someone who will continuously stay in my life and while Asher has proven so far that he is committed to me, it won’t be until marriage which isn’t anytime soon that this position will be permanent instead of tentative). As tentative Vice President, Asher helps to help Ashley make business decisions, design flyers, and edit important documents such as this one

Consultant

​​Melissa Martin is a wonderful mother who had graduated from Wapahani High School. She currently holds one of the most important job titles, she is a stay-at-home mom. She is the consultant for the company which means that she helps Aureate Marketing by coming up with amazing ideas and plans. She also gives a better view into the business world for us by providing knowledge and her personal experience with different businesses since she has had more time and experience with that than I currently have.

Screenshot of Experience page from Aureate Marketing's website. Taken from: http://aureate-marketing.weebly.com/experience.html

So far, I’ve worked with 2 organizations / businesses voluntarily. There was no cost involved, but the experience is something that I wanted and needed in order to confirm that this career path is definitely something I want to pursue. I also need the experience to show to future businesses that this will not be the first time that I’ve helped out someone or a business and that they can trust my businesses to help their’s move forward with their marketing plan and gain a larger fan base.

Sometime during 2009, I became involved with the local FIRST Robotics team, Team 1720, PhyXTGears. PhyXTGears really sparked my love for photography, design, and marketing. I found that it really could bring the community together and have a lot of fun in the process! I was the Media/Marketing/Public Relations Student Leader for the team, and now I hold the title of Media/Marketing/Public Relations Student Mentor! I'm only a part time student mentor during my ASAP college, but after I earn my associate's degree, I plan to go back and work more with the team and teach the students all the skills and tricks that I know.

During this past month or so, I became an editor of the Marsh, Hartford City page now known as “Needler’s Fresh Market of Hartford City.” Since I’m not an employee or affiliated with the company at all other than through knowing an employee, I just watch the page and fix any grammatical errors, or write a creative caption for a picture or post to be more eye catching and appealing to their preferred audience. I also have my Aureate Marketing’s Facebook involved in several Facebook groups that I have set notifications to go to my account whenever “Marsh” or “Needler’s” is mentioned on a group so that I can act quickly upon a post and direct them to the closest available Marsh that is still open and in the process of being re-branded. I also try to push the audience growth for the company onto the local Facebook groups to bring in more followers.

Screenshot of Aureate Marketing's Twitter. Taken from: www.twitter.com/aureatemarketin

Screenshot of Aureate Marketing's Instagram. Taken from: www.instagram.com/aureatemarketing

​As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, I plan on continuing to post about Aureate Marketing and the changes and updates that occur over the years to keep an open line with the customers. What I gave here is just a small portion of the large ideas and goals that I have for my future business. I've already begun sharing about local events on all of the Aureate Marketing social media, so I encourage you to follow one or all today! You can find the links to them below. :)