Huntsville Business Journal Interviews Ellen Didier on Success in Business, Marketing

Red Sage Founder and President Ellen Didier is featured in April’s installment of the Huntsville Business Journal.  The “Sitdown with Success” series spotlights local entrepreneurs who describe their successes and failures, with tips for upcoming business owners.  In the article, Didier discusses the Huntsville marketing landscape and how Red Sage has grown through the years.

Didier founded Red Sage Communications, Inc. in 2006.  The Huntsville-area marketing company is headquartered in Decatur, Alabama.  The award-winning, full-service marketing and creative communications agency has a client base spanning 13 states across the Southeast.  Red Sage prides itself on providing strategic, results-oriented solutions for government entities, corporations, small businesses, communities, and organizations of all sizes.

Here’s a short excerpt from the Huntsville Business Journal’s published article.  To read the full interview, click here.

What about your company, Red Sage Communications, are you most proud?

I think our ability to survive in the midst of such disruptive change in the advertising and marketing industry since I started Red Sage in 2006 is what makes me most proud.

I’m completely self-taught. When I started Red Sage, we didn’t have smartphones or social media. I didn’t know how to use Photoshop, InDesign or Quark. We had websites, but WordPress and open source software wasn’t around; content management systems were just starting to come out, but they were still evolving. My biggest startup-cost was a $28,000 piece of software I had to throw away three years later.

Just look at how much marketing has changed, and it is a huge change. In that conversation you have social media. I started using social media in 2008-09 and I was on the earlier end of adoption. I had both a MySpace and Facebook account, but at the time, there was no way of determining which one would win out. It wound up being Facebook.

It took me forever to figure out how to monetize social media and make it an additional revenue stream. It kept getting more complex and for a long time, we just trained clients how to use it. Because it changes all the time – Linked-In for instance just completely revamped all their tools – it’s really crazy.

Also, in that conversation are online rankings and customer reviews. People are able to post and say things about your brand. That means marketing is no longer a push, but a two-way conversation.