Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Davis.
Hi Rachel, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
As with many good things in life, creating Matchstick Social came suddenly and evolved quickly. In the early summer of 2013, my now business partner, Amber Ludeman, called me to join forces and it took about 15 seconds for me to agree. Within a few weeks, we were working 12-hour days from my kitchen, and a month or so later we opened the Matchstick Social office in the heart of downtown Charleston. Now, more than 8 years later, we are proud to be an award-winning digital marketing agency with 6 incredible full-time employees.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
The digital marketing industry is ever-changing so we’ve had to pivot and adjust along the way. When we first opened Matchstick Social’s doors, we had to talk clients into running advertising. Now, as you can all imagine, ads are an integral part of most clients’ marketing strategies. We believe in the crawl, walk, run approach which has really allowed us to scale our business and our clients’ scope throughout the last eight years. We adjust with the industry and allow the data to dictate our next move.
As you can imagine, the pandemic initially took a toll on our business, as well as many of our clients who were reluctant to spend marketing dollars during such uncertain times. Fortunately, over the last 8 or so months, nearly all of our clients are back online with milestone-making results. It’s no secret that social media usage and e-commerce is hotter than ever which has resulted in Matchstick’s growth as well. We’ve also been able to take on some new, remarkable clients this year which has led to a lot of exciting new opportunities for our marketing team.
Another struggle social media marketers faced this year is what the Matchstick team refers to as “The Great Equalizer,” also known as the iOS 14 update. This update limits user information exchanged with Facebook, prohibiting specific data collection and sharing. Much of our advertising and targeting strategy depends on pixel-based data collection that the majority of iPhone users opted out of having collected. As a result, we’ve been forced to get creative and think outside of the box to rectify reporting issues, targeting issues, and beyond.
As you know, we’re big fans of Matchstick Social. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Rachel Davis and Amber Ludeman wanted to bring the creativity, data science, and optimization processes usually reserved for global brands to businesses of every size. We always strive to be unparalleled when it comes to agency relationships, integrity, and transparency. We live by the golden rule and you’ll never have to wonder what we really think.
We provide end-to-end digital marketing solutions including day-to-day management, copywriting, graphic design, photography, advertising, optimization, community management, reporting & analytics. With Matchstick Social, it’s all taken care of.
We partner with your marketing team to define goals, develop target audiences, build a comprehensive digital strategy, implement analytics on your website, & report on sales/lead quality.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
The realm of social media is constantly changing and will continue to evolve over the next 5-10 years. Strategic brand and influencer partnerships will grow in relevance, video marketing, and bot technology will enhance strategy and automation capabilities for brands, and increased privacy and cyber security will attempt to rebuild trust with skeptical consumers and social media users.
Contact Info:
- Email: Rachel@matchsticksocial.com
- Website: https://matchsticksocial.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matchsticksocial/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matchsticksocial
Image Credits
Erin Turner
Mark McElroy
