A ‘Homegrown’ endeavor

A new marketing business has come to town, and they’re keeping it local.

Reagan Brown, an Afton native, officially opened her collaborative marketing company Homegrown Creative Co. on June 2. Located online, Brown hopes to work with local business in Union County.

“I focus more on the term collaborative marketing agency now, or community marketing; community just kind of meaning smaller and more focused on small businesses versus a corporate one,” Brown said. “My passion is definitely helping small business owners, local entrepreneurs, especially in the rural communities. I’ve always been really passionate about helping small business owners and have eventually found my way to do that through marketing.”

Brown got her start in marketing as a student at the University of Northern Iowa. Working on campus with the Center of of Business Growth and Innovation, she realized small businesses had a need.

“I saw a big need for small businesses who needed help with social media marketing,” Brown said. “At the time, when I started freelancing, it was just social media marketing and then throughout college, I taught myself other marketing skills throughout my classes and mostly internships and jobs and freelancing throughout that time.”

Brown spent seven years freelancing, so she’s excited to have started her new business. Through Homegrown Creative, Brown will be helping businesses with social media management, website design and more.

“My big thing is brand strategy, so I want to help businesses, their marketing strategy, just to communicate their brand online in a way that represents them in an authentic way and really just gets their business out there more,” Brown said. “I think there’s a lot of really cool businesses in our community that people just don’t know about.”

Brown explained that, even if she couldn’t perform a specific skill, she knew people who could.

“I do help business owners as much as I can with what I offer, and I’m always learning new things, but I’m also really just wanting to help them,” Brown said. “If I’m not an expert in something, I’m super upfront about that. If I don’t know how to do that, if I don’t feel confident in doing that, then I connect them with someone who can do that.”

In addition to these services, Brown partners with The Roundhouse to offer free workshops for local business owners. The next workshop, which focuses on Instagram marketing, will be at 4:30 p.m. on June 29.

Those in need of marketing services are asked to go to thehomegrowncreative.com or email hello@thehomegrowncreative.com.

“Just thanking the community and the UCDA and The Roundhouse as well as the Chamber of Commerce and overall the Union County community for being welcoming and supportive since we launched Homegrown,” Brown said. ‘‘We’re just really excited to start this in our home community and help as many businesses as possible with their marketing.”