Emerge Tourism Awards

Emerge Marketing Solutions was awarded the ‘Outstanding Marketing Collaboration’ award and the ‘Outstanding Social Media Execution’ award for their work with Evolution of the Heartland at the 2024 Iowa Tourism Conference hosted by Travel Iowa on March 20th.

“It was quite an honor and surprise to receive these two awards from Travel Iowa,” said Emerge Marketing Solutions Owner & visionary leader behind Evolution of the Heartland. “We want to thank all the partners who have believed in us enough to invest in our cause and make this vision a reality for rural Iowa. We truly wouldn’t have been able to get this far without them. After attending this year’s Iowa Tourism conference, I recognize that we have arrived, rural Iowa!! There has never been a better time to showcase the evolution of the heartland.”

Emerge received the first award on behalf of the marketing collaborations between Travel Iowa; Iowa Farm Bureau (including Audubon, Shelby, & Carroll County Farm Bureau); Community Foundation of Southwest Iowa; Iowa commodity groups: Iowa Corn, Iowa Beef Industry Council, Iowa Pork Producers Association, Iowa Turkey Federation, and the Iowa Food & Family Project (Iowa Soybean Association); local community organizations: the City of Manning, Audubon County Economic Development & Tourism, Main Street Manning, Manning Hausbarn Heritage Park, Audubon County Fairgrounds, Nathaniel Hamlin Museum; various influencers: the Farm Babe, Michelle Miller, Darcy Maulsby, Olio in Iowa – Megan Bannister, Des Moines Parent – Erin Huiatt, and Ceara Kirkpatrick; and 15 private tour locations on local farms and agricultural businesses in the Manning, Audubon, Carroll, and Templeton area.

Evolution of the Heartland

“We wanted to create and implement an authentic agritourism experience that highlights rural Iowa in a way that no one has been able to effectively do before,” said Greving. “Our ultimate goal is to gain exposure for the evolving rural Iowa; change perceptions of rural life and agriculture; create awareness of opportunities to visit, play, work, and live in Iowa where there’s an exceptional quality of life; and ultimately inspire others to pursue the American dream right here in Iowa.”

Through multiple local and statewide strategic partnerships and sponsorships, the inaugural Evolution of the Heartland event was held on August 31, 2022, at the primary host site of the Manning Hausbarn Heritage Park. The second annual event was hosted by Manning/Audubon on August 3, 2023. With more than 90% of Iowa being comprised of rural communities, Greving emphasized the importance of this initiative going beyond one or two communities. So, the Emerge Marketing team is working to bring Evolution of the Heartland to more rural communities in Iowa and scale the experience statewide in the next five years.

Their vision to replicate the agritourism event across the state so that even more rural communities can benefit is already becoming a reality. This year, four Iowa communities will host an Evolution of the Heartland experience: DeWitt on July 25th, Stanton on September 12th, Coon Rapids on September 26th, and Manning on October 3rd. Registration for all events opens on May 1st and is limited to 50 people for each location. Registration will close three weeks before each event or when all spots have been reserved. Early bird registration features a $25 discount per person and ends June 1st. Participants can sign up to be notified when registration opens at www.evolutionoftheheartland.com.

Emerge Marketing Solutions

Emerge Marketing is a local marketing organization owned by Shelly Greving of Manning. Greving, along with her team, including Katie Lange (Sextro, originally from Manning), Claire Zaiger (Olsen, originally from Audubon), and Annie Greve (Carroll) work to revitalize rural Iowa and support communities, non-profits, and businesses that make up the fabric of Iowa’s small towns through a variety of marketing services including brand development, business consulting, digital marketing, fundraising, social media management, strategic planning, video production, website development, and more.

This marks the third year in a row that Emerge has received a Travel Iowa Award, specifically the Social Media Execution Award. In 2022 they won for their video series promoting rural Iowa communities, ‘Off the Beaten Path in Iowa’; in 2023 for their digital promotions for Wright County Fair, and now for their Evolution of the Heartland social media marketing efforts. Emerge has received additional awards on behalf of their clients in previous years, including: ‘Outstanding Niche Market Initiative’ for their Look Local First initiative with DeWitt Chamber & Development Company in 2017 and ‘Outstanding Promotional Material’ for their social media marketing for the Manning Hausbarn-Heritage Park in 2017.

“I am so grateful to our talented Emerge team who have worked tirelessly to showcase our rural communities and take our digital marketing efforts to new levels,” expressed Greving. “So, if you are a visionary leader and passionate about your rural community, reach out to us. Agritourism is one of Iowa’s priority areas that was highlighted at the conference, and there has never been a better time for our small towns to shine. I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for our rural communities.”

To learn more about Evolution of the Heartland or Emerge Marketing Solutions, contact Shelly Greving at (712) 292-6875 or shelly@em3rgemarketing.com.

 

The Emerge Business Model – Subcontractors vs Employees

Emerge team members

When I first started Emerge Marketing Solutions, I knew I wanted to utilize a different business model than typical marketing agencies. Priorities for my entrepreneurial journey included:

  1. The flexibility to raise my children and support my family.
  2. Empower women to keep their creative juices flowing whether they have worked their way into management and no longer do the hands-on creative work, want to earn extra money, are taking a leave of absence from the workforce to raise their kids, or simply want a creative outlet.
  3. Provide the strategic and creative marketing services rural businesses, organizations, and communities needed to elevate themselves in the marketplace.
  4. Live and work in rural Iowa, having a successful career charting my own destiny.

Emerge team membersI quickly decided that having a network of subcontractors rather than employees would enable me to start faster, adapt to client needs more efficiently, and allow for the greatest success in starting up the business. Additional advantages of utilizing subcontractors versus employees included:

Cost Efficiency

Subcontractors are typically responsible for their own taxes, insurance, and benefits, which reduced the overhead costs for our company. This made it more cost-effective to work with subcontractors, especially for short-term or project-based work.

Flexibility

I could hire subcontractors on a project-by-project basis, allowing me to scale our workforce up or down as needed. This allowed flexibility for the subcontractor so they could work on projects when they had time and availability and take time off when they were busy.

Specialized Expertise

Each one of our subcontractors have specific expertise or skills in a particular area, such as video production, graphic design, creative writing, or website development, which is valuable for the variety of projects we work on. I was able to tap into their expertise without having to hire a full-time employee for each specific area.

Reduced Administrative Burden

As a small, start-up business, this allowed me to spend less time managing employees (such as administrative tasks including payroll, taxes, benefits, and HR responsibilities) and more time working for our clients. Subcontractors handled these aspects themselves, relieving the company of some administrative burdens.

Geographic Flexibility

Since I had a network of talented creatives from across the state and country, this allowed me to work with them despite their geographic locations. I had also recently moved to a new location in which I didn’t know anyone, so I wasn’t limited to the talent pool in our rural, local area.

Scalability

Subcontractors can be easily added or removed from projects as needed, making it easier for me to scale our operations without having the long-term commitment of hiring permanent employees.

So, with that I set out to engage with many of the creative professionals I had met and worked with over the course of my career.  I enjoyed reconnecting with these professionals and being able to keep in touch with them to hear how their lives and careers were going as well as talk about our vision for the future with Emerge.

What started out as two subcontractors working nights and weekends approximately 10-20 hours per month quickly became five subs and eventually 10 subs. I found out very quickly that I needed to implement effective processes that would streamline the need to send emails or have phone conversations every night about projects we needed support on as well as activate the right people at the right time to do the services we needed so that I wasn’t spending most of my time ‘doing’ instead of ‘leading.’

After year one, we implemented the use of the Asana Project Management system which was a life and time saver. It keeps our team connected, allows all communication for projects to flow through succinct project tasks, and allows everyone involved in various projects or serving a variety of clients to be up to date at any time with the status of projects.

A critical element in the effective implementation of the subcontractor model was that I had built trust and rapport with these professionals, was able to communicate effectively on each project’s needs and client’s vision, and had implemented systems to effectively keep everyone on the same page with project status.

While I never thought I would have employees, as our workload increased and client needs increased, so did our administrative needs. I realized that I needed a full-time employee available to work during the daytime hours. Katie, our first Emerge employee, was hired in January 2020. While her expertise was video production, and that added a new element to our service line, what quickly evolved was her ability to be a project manager.

Today, Emerge now employs two full-time employees providing project management, creative writing, video production, media management, and graphic design services (among many other tasks as assigned), as well as two part-time employees who oversee the administrative duties such as accounting/billing/accounts receivable, sales, and event planning. We also consistently have 3-5 subcontractors working on projects monthly, however our subcontractor needs have waned for the short-term while we effectively scale the business. I anticipate that when project managers are fully-trained and client work-loads increase we will reengage our subcontractor network more fully, making the most use of talented creative professionals across the state and country.