Today we’d like to introduce you to Leah Hadsell and Jessica VanLaningham.
Leah and Jessica, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
We started Tangram Sky out of a passion for small businesses. Managing big budgets isn’t what gets us excited…we love helping small biz owners discover what is really possible if they harness the power of digital marketing. It can literally change everything! The two of us met working at another ad agency, where we really clicked. We started talking about how hard it was to turn small companies away, because they didn’t have a high dollar budget. We knew we could help them. So we set out on a mission to deliberately focus on small companies, and help them cultivate the online identity they’ve always wanted.
We place a lot of emphasis on client education and full transparency. That has definitely driven our success and through referrals our client base has grown significantly! We are proud to now service clients in five states.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Being entrepreneurs has been more challenging than we expected, but also more rewarding than any job either of us has ever had. At the end of the day, we love feeling good about the work that we do. Every struggle has been a learning experience, and one we wouldn’t trade for anything.
The funny thing is how well we work together even though we are really different. I (Leah) love to network, get in front of people, and take on every new opportunity we can! Jessica has to help me learn that there’s more to life than work. And Jess is amazing at paying attention to all the little details; and I help her step back on occasion to see the big picture. Our clients get the benefit!
We are continually finding and testing our limits – both on and offline. We run distance races together and have discovered that running makes a fantastic metaphor for business! You keep building and growing, training for new goals, but you have to be careful to do it gradually. Each new project gives us the opportunity to refine our skills. We’ve analyze every project, asking ourselves “what could we have done better?” and “what was our greatest success with this project?” before we move on. That process helps us get better and better at serving our clients more efficiently.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Tangram Sky Interactive – what should we know?
Tangram Sky is an interesting name, right? Let us tell you about it: our logo is a seven-piece Chinese puzzle called a tangram. They fit together in a square, but can be taken apart to make other pictures. We like to think of our business like that puzzle: we take the pieces of your digital marketing apart and put them back together again in a way that makes sense and communicates something actionable. We serve small businesses across all kinds of industries including everything from the auto industry, to finance and insurance, schools and nonprofits, manufacturing, beauty and retail, and law firms. It’s exciting to learn about so many different industries!
Our purpose is to help small businesses build and manage their online presence. What does that really mean? Well, we want business owners to feel like their customers or clients have an amazing experience whether they’re calling, talking to a team member in person, or on their website. It is possible to convey your culture and your message in a digital format. To accomplish that objective, we build and optimize websites, manage social media, run paid campaigns, and help businesses really understand how their users perceive and interact with them online.
What really sets us apart in this industry of digital marketing is our communication and transparency. Understanding “Google-speak” can be really difficult. (Impressions? CTR? Vlog? SEO? PPC? So many acronyms!) We do our best to break down exactly what it is that a client is paying for and what the benefit will be to them. Then we carry that one step further in our reporting structure. Instead of giving our customers a data dump, we provide detailed summaries with next steps. We hear again and again that this kind of interpretation of data is incredibly helpful and translates into measurable business growth.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
We owe our families and clients a huge “thank you!” A few of our clients who took a chance on us in the beginning have been so faithful and are with us to this day. Our jobs are the best and it’s all because of you. We can’t thank you enough!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tangramsky.com
- Email: Leah@tangramsky.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TangramSky/
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