Nancy Dibert

What is your biggest success so far?

We’ve been very fortunate to have many successes so far with the business. I would say that what I find the most satisfying is that employment with Epic Marketing has allowed our employees to collectively purchase seven homes. For a small company, that’s a lot! I couldn’t be more proud of our team and the effort they put forth day in and day out. We’re more than associates – we’re family. Seeing them build a future and be able to purchase homes has been a great joy for me. I’m certainly grateful for the successes we’ve had with landing great clients, contracts, and industry awards; however, the personal success that Epic has brought to our employees means more to me.

What is the biggest challenge in your industry? What are you doing to deal with that?

The budget – the dreaded marketing budget – that’s the biggest challenge for marketers, whether in-house or at an agency. Sometimes it’s difficult for clients to realize that setting a reasonable budget for marketing activities is as important as the budget for insurance, equipment, or anything else. What’s worse, when the economy starts to falter, marketing can be one of the first cuts. It’s exactly at that time that marketing is even more vital to the longevity of a company.

When we are approached by a potential new client, one of my first questions is to ask about the project budget. I usually get a response along the lines of asking us to give our best estimate. This doesn’t work out too well. I then explain to the potential client that we work with clients that have a variety of budgets – everything from $500 a month to $600,000 a year, and that it would behoove them to give us as much guidance on what they were thinking as possible. We certainly don’t want to come back with a barebones quote with minimum impact when they had planned to spend a significant amount – or, conversely, quote them a package with all the bells and whistles when they really only wanted something economical. Once we get over the budget issues, things go well. There’s a perception that agencies will try to sell a client on the most expensive and labor heavy option there is. At Epic, we don’t operate like that. We’ve found that working with our clients as collaborators to save as much expense as possible while getting the most advertising bang for the buck is a winning combination.

What advice would you give to a business owner starting out in your industry that you wish you would have known going in?

I would advise anyone looking to start a business to surround themselves with the best team they can assemble. This isn’t just for employees, but also includes attorneys, accountants, bankers, and other support organizations. Not only do you need to have each of these important team members on speed dial, you need to have a relationship with them. That’s where networking comes in nicely. When I call my attorney, he knows who I am, what my business is, and what our objectives are. That familiarity is priceless during a crisis (and there will be a crisis at some point).

What don’t most people realize about you or your company?

Most people don’t realize that, for the most part, our employees work remotely and live all across the U.S. Working digitally has its challenges, but it also comes with lots of perks. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I do travel almost weekly to be on-site for clients, but the majority of my time is spent working from home. We now have a print shop with full offset and digital print capabilities. That was a big decision for us to move into that arena mainly because we’ve spent so many years working digitally. In our home office, we also have a full-fledged production room, along with a professional sound booth for doing commercials, voiceovers, jingles, etc. We made those investments to support the business and to keep the costs down while providing new services to our clients.