Today we’d like to introduce you to Feleceia Benton.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Feleceia. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
A little over 6-years ago, I found myself college educated, unemployed and looking for a job. After about 4-months of job searching, I was running out of cash and out of options. So, I just decided to start selling the thing that I knew how to do – graphic design. I reached out to my list of contacts and started offering my services. That’s where I began. The journey to now has been far from glamorous offering its educational discourse through the fire of trial and error. The more I learned about the business of marketing, the more I recognized how nuanced marketing processes must be for businesses and organizations of varying dynamics to survive in today’s cluttered economy.
Unfortunately, there’s no cookie-cutter way to market. And with the wave of the population flocking to social media to drive sales + marketing results, the business of selling a marketing agency in the traditional sense of the term is no longer sustainable. With this new cultural shift, we’ve been digging deep to research and understand the psychology of what makes people not only engage, but also become long-term brand fans. And we’re at the cusp of reshaping how we do marketing, particularly for small businesses in Southern Dallas County as well as communities.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
If you know someone for whom the road has been smooth, please tell them to call me. I wanna know how they did it.
When I was in school, both high school and college, *entrepreneurship* was not yet a thing. They just called people like me “doing too much,” or scatterbrained or unsure or doing the most. We weren’t yet known as the humans who were crazy enough to create the things that don’t yet exist or the ones who were daring enough to write our own stories.
We were just… busy… and different.
So — I was tossed into entrepreneurship unintentionally — or at least unintentionally by my own plans. Since I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t have any plans to actually do it.
No plans = a lot of twists, turns, confusion, frustration, no funding, etc. etc. etc…
Add to that combination a little girl named Zoe, my daughter, who’s been hanging onto her momma every step of the way since she was 2. But everyone has to learn, one way or another, whether that education comes in the form of a parent or a mentor or the great teacher called life – every entrepreneur, every human, has to learn.
My teacher has been life. It’s been rough, but it’s been worth it.
Please tell us about Zoe Communications Agency.
We offer some of the same tools as traditional marketing agencies – yes. Graphic design, social media marketing, event management + design, video marketing, etc. But what we pride ourselves on is the ability to create tangible, effective marketing strategy for small businesses and communities. We also create really dope events. More on that in a bit.
We’ve found that many organizations, particularly small business owners, don’t take the time to craft + execute + remain accountable to a marketing strategy. They often find themselves floating in the abyss of the unknown, trying to figure out how they are going to make ends meet, often well after it’s too late.
We know the feeling because we’ve been there. But, with the right messaging and timing and expectations, organizations can make decisions about how + where they market themselves and all but guarantee an outcome, long before the funk hits the fan. The thing that troubled me the most as a freelance graphic designer was that although I knew I was creating beautiful pieces of art, I didn’t know if the art I was making was generating results.
That drove me crazy.
Formulas + probability: although variables always come into play, we can at this point all but predict an outcome with a little thought power and some solid marketing strategy.
That’s what sets us apart. We’ve also created a couple of really cool events that are authentic to our brand. Our favorite is the Think Out, Be Light Fashion Show. We celebrate World Down Syndrome Day in honor of our namesake [and my kid], Zoe, who was born with a spare 21st chromosome and no fingers on her right hand. Kid’s got a mean right hook.
And because we believe in the girl bosses of the future, we’ve also launched the DFW 20 Under 20 Awards [dfw20under20.com], as well as the Becoming Her Conference [becomingherconference.com] that we premiered during SXSW in Austin this year.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
When I was a kid, I used to go to random business meetings with my dad. My dad was *really* an entrepreneur — waaaaaaaaaaaaaay before it was a thing. I had no idea what he was selling – it was always something new and different. But I knew I liked going.
I had a pair of blue glasses that he’d give to me when I was riding in the front seat with him. I’d tell him, “The sun is looking at me!” and out came those little blue glasses with the multi-colored hearts. He’d even let me skip school every once in a while to hang with him.
Guess my parents should have known then what was in store for them on down the line.
Contact Info:
- Website: teamzoecomm.com
- Phone: (682) 235-4963
- Email: fbenton@zoecreates.com
- Instagram: TeamZoeComm
- Facebook: TeamZoeComm
Image Credit:
Chichi Onyekanne
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