Gears, Fears, and Aspirations

Hey everyone, my name is Ashley Martin! I am the creator of Aureate Marketing, a local marketing business on a mission to strengthen the marketing of businesses located in Muncie, Indiana. I recently graduated from Burris Laboratory School and am currently enrolled in Ivy Tech Community College’s ASAP program.

It has now been five months since the creation of Aureate Marketing! Aureate Marketing is a business that I am in the process of creating. It is of course, a marketing business, but it is specifically aimed towards local businesses in Delaware County ~ Muncie, Indiana to be more specific.

The name Aureate Marketing was chosen for two reasons, the first one being that it has the same initials of my name. The second reason is that “aureate” means “of a golden color or brilliance” and that is exactly the type of marketing I want to give to the businesses that hire me, brilliant and golden quality marketing.

I was in the middle of my senior year at Burris Laboratory School when I decided to create Aureate Marketing. My main reasoning for creating it was because I was involved in a FIRST Robotics team, Team 1720 PhyXTGears. I was the Student Leader of the media sub-team and I absolutely loved it. I was able to take pictures at fast paced competitions and then present them on the team’s social media.

Managing the team’s social media was not the only thing I did on the team, but it was definitely one of my favorite parts, so much so that I decided that I wanted to go into a career of it. While I was on the team, I was able to meet so many of local Muncie business owners, I even had conversations with Mayor Dennis Tyler on Twitter!

When meeting with local business owners, I received wonderful feedback about my marketing skills from my posts on social media. Receiving all of this wonderful feedback was amazing, but it made me wonder what the marketing of the businesses in town looked like, so I researched and looked at somewhere around 30 different businesses (local and not) and their marketing and internet appearance.

​What I found was that many local businesses have not yet mastered making a powerful internet appearance. While it was very obvious that they had attempted to present themselves well and had some wonderful ideas, there was still a lot that I knew they could improve on. So the idea to create my own marketing business began to form.

I began creating Aureate marketing by first creating a name and then establishing an internet appearance. I created several different logo designs and asked for feedback from some close artistic friends and finally settled on the current design. I created a business email and created an account on several widely used and popular social media outlets. I have begun to write a business plan as well as creating personalized letter headers and footers as well as a newsletter template.

This business could do well or horribly and I am officially in college at Ivy Tech Community College enrolled the the business ASAP program specifically to own my own marketing business.The Ivy Tech ASAP program is fast-paced program where students are able to earn their associate’s degree in 11 months rather than 2 years. There are 3 different cohorts within the ASAP program. There is the education cohort, liberal arts cohort, and the business cohort. I currently am in the business cohort to get my business degree, once I transfer (hopefully to Ball State University) I plan continue studying business, but also ad on a minor in marketing, telecommunications, or graphic design.

A business degree can be very transferable to many other job opportunities, but it is still nerve wracking that I am finally in college earning a degree that will define me to future jobs by the degree I have and my skill set that I have in that degree. There is a large amount of local businesses in Muncie and having a successful local business is a hit or miss due to the fact that there are so many other businesses similar to each other out there.

There are a lot of things that I still have to work out about Aureate Marketing before I officially launch it. Although I am worried, I am also really excited to see how it all plays out. With less than 10 tweets on Twitter, I already have gained over 107 followers full of random people, local businesses, and other marketing businesses and it really excites me that although I have not even officially launched the business, there is already a good sized following group. I plan to do well and succeed in creating a successful business.

Team 1720, PhyXTGears has significantly formed who I am today. It provided me an outlet to express myself, learn and improve on a wide range of skills and I am forever grateful for the opportunity. PhyXTGears has taught me many things about business, like how to put together a business plan and working with someone else’s schedule. It has also taught me how to run social media, speak in public, and pitch my ideas to potential customers in a professional manner.

​My ambitious dream to own a marketing business called Aureate Marketing is already forming and paving its own path in the world. It has already caught the attention of several local businesses in Muncie. I have so many ideas on how to begin my business and present it to the local businesses in a fun and interest grabbing way. I am terrified and excited for it all at the same time. I have a strong foundation and education in how marketing works and am continuing to build onto that strong foundation. I have millions of opportunities ahead of me, the business that I’m wanting to create will have a constantly growing and learning foundation through new advances in technology and new trends on the internet and I can not wait to begin.