We were lucky to catch up with Alexa Rae recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alexa, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

My company, Rae Creative Group, specializes in organic digital marketing and small business consulting. When I first started the company in college, it came out of an earnest passion for helping small businesses, because I had been surrounded by them for most of my life. The town I grew up in was full of them (my mom even owned a little boutique for a time), and I saw the roles they played in our neighborhood. There were family-owned restaurants, unique little boutiques, and even the local county theater that had been operating since the 1930s– each with its own inspiring creation story and beloved place in the heart of the neighborhood. I always admired the leaders behind these businesses because they took a risk by charting their own path and made a difference in the community, which inspired me to do the same someday.

Then as I started my company, took on more clients, and began to grow my team, I realized the impact I could make actually went beyond the small businesses I worked with– I could also make an impact by giving other creatives an opportunity to flourish. When I hired my first full-time team member, there were a lot of learning curves, but it was incredible to see the creativity just pour out of her, and it was simply because she had the opportunity. Ultimately, I think our success has been based on bringing those two things together: small businesses with great stories and creatives who truly care.

Alexa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Alexa Rae, I live in Philadelphia, I run a boutique marketing agency called Rae Creative Group, and I teach yoga on the side!

I got my first taste of real-world marketing while I was still in college at Drexel University in 2015, a little more than a year before I graduated. A friend’s family business was in a new, pivotal phase, diving into marketing their business for the first time, and brought me on to handle it from soup to nuts. It wasn’t too long after taking that project on that another small business approached me looking for a similar solution, so I thought, why not? As a double-major, double-minor student, I was no stranger to a busy schedule and just couldn’t resist taking on a new challenge (still can’t).

As graduation arrived, many of my peers were scrambling to get interviews and secure jobs before they walked and received their degrees. It was only at this time it dawned on me that I had already laid a foundation with my first two clients, so why not see where this could go? Though I didn’t have the name just yet, that’s when Rae Creative Group officially started!
Now, almost seven years later, I have a team managing our roster of small businesses and entrepreneurial clients. Each one of them is in its own niche, so we pride ourselves on our ability to learn, to become educated in their industries while internalizing and perfecting their voices so we can market their businesses in an authentic way.

We really specialize in building communities around our clients’ brands because small businesses thrive when they have a strong community for support! We hear a lot of talk about paid advertising in the marketing space, and it can be a great tool, but the reality is that while you can buy an audience and automate certain aspects of marketing, you can’t buy trust or automate personal connection. Impacts like these are difficult to spell out on a resume or list on a price sheet, but I genuinely feel it’s what separates our company from the rest.

But if there’s one thing I want potential clients or followers to know– it’s that the cobbler’s kids have no shoes. If you take a look at our social media pages, they’re pretty bare, but it’s because we pour all of our love and creative energy into our clients! Without them, we wouldn’t have a business, and they always come first.

I’m so proud of the people we’ve worked with, the relationships we’ve formed, the impacts we’ve made, and everything we’ve learned along the way. Going from managing a side gig in college to making this a full-time career hasn’t been without its challenges (and still isn’t), but it’s a choice I would make over and over again.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Coincidentally, my favorite marketing story is actually my first client, a leather craftsman who owns a repair studio specializing in luxury handbags. When he brought me in to take over his company’s marketing, they were B2B and had been exclusive to a single account for 25 years. Their goal was to start working directly with consumers, but there were a few major hangups.

First, they couldn’t have a walk-in storefront due to security and confidentiality concerns, so customers would have to mail their items directly to the location instead of dropping them off in person.

Second, even though they had a 25-year history in the business, they couldn’t speak to it publicly based on agreements they had made with their previous account. To consumers, they were a faceless business with a blank resume and no social media presence.

Last, the people who would be their customers were quite particular about the care of their handbags– which is fair since they cost anywhere from $5K to sometimes over $100K– so my client knew this would require a lot of communication and reassurance.

So my challenge? Convince people to ship their expensive handbags to a place they couldn’t visit, to a craftsman they’ve never met, and trust they’ll come back in better condition than when they were sent.

Seven years and hundreds of thousands of handbags later, they have clients all over the world and are a household name when it comes to luxury repair and restoration. The owner of the business has become somewhat of a celebrity in his niche. Customers are always amazed that he’s the one answering the phone when they call, and they love to chat with him. He has international customers who consistently choose him over their local repair shops, and many of his customers have bonded on social media just over the fact that they love his work! In the very beginning, I’m not sure I could have imagined we would land here, but we’ve built an incredible digital community that spans the globe, and it still blows my mind.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

When it comes to building an audience on social media, make sure you focus on the “presence” part! Social media should be like having a conversation with your followers, but if you’re only posting and not interacting, you are completely missing out on the other side of the exchange. Make sure you’re responding to every comment on your posts, to all of your DMs, and set aside some time every day (even if it’s just 5-10 minutes) to truly engage with your community on social. Like their posts, react to their Stories, and leave thoughtful comments that let your audience know you’re listening.

There was a trend for a while where people tried to automate this type of interaction with third-party apps, but we saw it fail over and over. These apps would spam-like posts across Instagram (often getting the account suspended) and leave comments with handfuls of emojis that lacked any meaning or generic “This is awesome!” type comments that just weren’t relevant at all to what the user posted. More than once, we’ve seen comments like “Love this!” on vulnerable posts where the user was talking about a difficult situation, like a loved one who had passed– it’s completely inappropriate and a firm signal to others that you’re not actually paying attention.

Like I said before, you can’t automate personal connection; there’s just no replacement. Social media often gets a bad rap, but we’ve proven it can be a force for building communities and bringing people together. When you show up authentically and engage as much as you post, good things will happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: raecreativegroup.com