Local marketer brings businesses closer online
By Guy Chapman – Navarro County Gazette
In any “normal” year, the process of starting a new business is challenging. Starting a business during a pandemic, however, takes on a new level of determination.
For H2M Strategies founder Dani Boulware, she saw an opportunity in the “new normal” to help local businesses strategize a better way to reach customers online.
Meeting in-person with Boulware, she is quick to exhibit a personable and attentive attitude. Having recently transitioned out of the Corsicana Education Foundation, a fundraising umbrella for the Corsicana Independent School District, she looked for employment opportunities in the metroplex before deciding she could help more people by using her experience locally.
“I thought ‘You know what? Why can’t I do what I would do for a bigger company for not only myself but for our community,'” Boulware said. “So that prompted me to do it here locally. I felt like there was a need and a demand.”
In July of 2020, Boulware launched her digital marketing agency, H2M Strategies. Designed to cater to the needs of small to medium size businesses, Boulware and her team help build a better online presence through a digital and direct marketing approach.
During Corsicana’s own “shelter in place” initiative, local business quickly found the best way to reach their regular customers was through their phones and laptops, as businesses evolved to more of a digital model. While the concept of full-service digital marketing is still a new and unexplored concept for Corsicana, Boulware recognizes how websites and social media have become more crucial than ever serving an audience increasingly asked to “stay home.”
“A lot of people had a presence on social media to an extent, but not like they should have during that time during all the changes that the world was going through,” Boulware said. “I opened H2M during COVID not really knowing how that would look for being in my position opening a new business. I wanted to help businesses through this time, and it has been not only great to them, but for H2M as well.”
“It has just been amazing to see the growth they’ve seen, but to also grow during that time.”
Boulware’s background includes over fourteen years of experience in communications, event planning, nonprofit management, and public relations. The difference now is she and her team work from home, telecommuting new ideas to help businesses and their brands survive and thrive.
The marketer initially started with offering clients social media support.
“We’re all addicted to our phones,” she laughed. “We’re all searching Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. I’m trying to teach the businesses to embrace change and evolve. We have to keep up with the times. We have to keep up with our target audiences.”
Boulware expanded her services to include website and graphic design, strengthening brand awareness, establishing a digital presence, social media and e-mail marketing management, and event marketing. H2M’s services have supporters everything from bloggers and influencers, to estheticians, roofers, and lawyers.
“They’re all fun and they’re all unique in their own little ways because they’re all so different,” Boulware said of her clients. “We love working with great people.”
Boulware has found the experience of focusing on the positive and the good of social media “rewarding,” having been given the opportunity to share personal stories about a business as much as talking about their product.
“Marketing is all about perception,” Boulware said. “If there is a business out there doing more marketing than you, they may not be as successful or have better products or services, but they are visible, and they have a great marketing strategy, and so people perceive them to be better.”
“You may have twenty-five different businesses doing the same thing, but if you see one more than the other, you see their reputation’s good, you see them on social media, you see a billboard, you get a postcard… when you need that product or service, who are you gonna call?”
While she is firmly community minded, Boulware plans to expand her services to reach more clients throughout Texas and beyond. For her, she sees H2M’s possibilities as endless.
When not attempting to “take on the world,” she is a mother of three active children, who she enjoys spending time with.
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