We recently connected with Stefon Ikner and have shared our conversation below.

Stefon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I have a degree in business marketing from Delaware State University, and the reason I start off by saying that because my major started off in accounting. A professor at my university said I always had a creative approach to issues and always seen a solution in a problem. My professor introduced me to marketing and immediately I fell in love, with both aspects of marketing business to consumer and business to business and on top of that I’ve always had a entrepreneur spirit. My first business was in elementary school selling bootleg Sega Dreamcast video games at the age of 9 and 10. Fast-forward to 2018 where I created my first LLC and company which was a online beauty store, which ultimately was not successful which is the reason I sold it. However, the advertising and marketing of the business did so well I knew my calling should be in the field of digital marketing. Throughout my recent years, I’ve gave real life advice and help to smaller business owners, or those starting up a business, and the advice came from my experience with my company and knowledge of digital marketing. I seen the success my advice and knowledge brought to their business I realized I should create my own agency. Case and point, a colleague of mine at the time own a restaurant and needed some assistants with marketing, I assisted him with advice and help on things and eventually he offered to hire me as the restaurants marketing consultant. From that moment, I was inclined to officially form my digital marketing agency. Two years later now I have a growing business, successful clients and a great partnership with yelp.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I want folks to know that I work from the heart and creative side of the brain, creativity stems from being optimistic and I’m a firm believer in that. Marketing was introduced to me in college and after college, I got involved with politics and during the campaigning, I had to interact with smaller businesses, and I constantly seen the struggle that smaller businesses had with their marketing. I was able to help some local businesses with minor marketing endeavors, and from there, I realize that I personally had a grasp of digital marketing and applying it to businesses and in particular smaller local businesses. My digital marketing agency focus on increasing brand exposure and aligning businesses with the proper outreach channel to reach their target consumer. Smaller business owners or anyone who launches a business usually do it because they are good at either providing a service or selling a product but however, they usually do not understand the operation side of marketing and how to reaching consumers. That’s where I come into play and aid business owners, and achieving their goals, by reaching a larger consumer market. My agency achieves this through various means such as SEO, email marketing and setting up their online presence such as Google or Yelp. Having a proper online presence allows a business to be found, its no coincidence when you talk about cats or food and you start seeing ads for cats and food, that’s digital marketing. I love that my agency focus on local businesses, when we help a local business, that have a positive impact on the community by creating more jobs and keeping the dollar circulating in the town. My agency latest achievement is the partnership with Yelp, this allows us to give that competitive advantage to local businesses at the fraction of the cost they would pay for traditional marketing. That’s what’s great about Ikner Consultant Group, we really help local business grow by offering digital marketing at affordable prices and provide top tier digital marketing for businesses who are looking to scale up.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Started out funding my business from the income I had from my 9 to 5 and savings.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The best source of new clients are referrals and second to that are organic conversations. For example a roofing company was installing a roof in my neighborhood and I happened to do a basic search of their business and couldnt find anything. I then walked over to them and ask if the owner is around and surly he was. I then demonstrated how I couldnt find his company and wish to know how their business is doing based on reviews. He responded by saying he didn’t know how to do that marketing stuff and cant afford to pay for it, I ask what was the budget he have aside for marketing and what price was he previously quoted at for marketing? He responded by saying he never did a budget and he did some marketing on Facebook “Meta” and didnt see any results so he now think it was a waste of time. After a few minutes of looking through his Facebook business and other online presence I showed him the mistakes and took it a step further and gave some advice on how he should do his marketing and from there he asked if I would handle his marketing needs.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.iknergroup.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iknerconsultantgroup?igsh=NmJhMzM5YzR5dnp0&utm_source=qr
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ikner-consultant-group/

Image Credits

All images were taken by me or my team and own all