Why Small Businesses Matter
Shop small, do big things for your community
Why Small Businesses Matter puts a spotlight on the local merchants who donate their time, talent, goods, and services for the betterment of our community. The shop local movement spreads virally as local businesses who are “tagged” have the opportunity to share their story!
You're IT Katnip Marketing!
Four questions with Ed Katz, founder of Katnip Marketing.
Why did you start your business?
I opened Katnip Marketing in Westport in 2008, immediately after selling my half of an ad agency I co-founded in the Hartford area and spent 15 years building. While I certainly preferred being in Westport over the Hartford area, my goal for the business was to devote more time to working with clients and helping them refine and more effectively communicate their messages and grow their businesses- instead of spending so much of my time on managing the business and the staff.
At Katnip Marketing, I have been much better able to focus on the needs of our clients.
What is your best-selling product/service?
Clearly, there are two: Digital and Social Media and also Public Relations. The social media component consists of actually creating and managing the social media accounts for several clients as well as, in most cases, running digital ads for them- on social media as well as across the internet- often using geofencing to just target very specific geographic areas.
The public relations work ranges from positioning clients as Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in their fields to getting media coverage for their stories and press releases to crisis communications and, more recently, recruitment advertising- for businesses struggling to find qualified employees to fill their openings.
Our digital team is Google, Yelp and Bing certified and only 3% of the agencies in the country can say that.
Have you "reimagined" your small business?
In some ways, yes- primarily because a sizable portion of Katnip Marketing clients were in the arts, entertainment, and event categories and, when COVID hit, those businesses stopped operating.
Fortunately, we have been able to increase our work with healthcare, nonprofits, book authors, and professional service companies that were not shut down by COVID- but that still needed to effectively communicate about their businesses to their audiences. In fact, COVID made it more important than ever that they get their messages heard- and seen- through all the clutter. And we have been helping clients do just that.
We were even able to get a lot of local TV news coverage for a nonprofit client's Zoom events during the pandemic- not an easy task- but we did that several times and the client loved it!
Ed would like to nominate Gold's Deli - "Why not? They were there even before I moved to Westport- which was back in 1991!"
Visit Katnip Marketing online here, and make sure to check out their Facebook and Twitter pages as well!
HamletHub thanks Fairfield County Bank for making our Why Small Businesses Matter series possible!