Finding the right strategy
Guiding Light Marketing lights the way for networking
MARSHALL — For decades, networking has been a viable means to success whatever field you are in. Many businesses pay big bucks for image consultants, efficiency experts and various forms of advertising. But which avenue of exposure is best for your business?
Working with the right kind of consultant can connect you with the right kind of promotion, according to Ben Wiener, ower/manager of Guiding Light marketing. Making the right connections for clients is its mission.
Wiener takes the personal approach.
“We get to know our clients’ businesses better than they do, so that we can recommend the best campaign to meet their needs and stay within their budget,” Wiener said.
Guiding Light Marketing, established in 2015, is a natural extension of the services he offers his clients at Midwest United Insurance at 200 S. O’Connell Street in Marshall.
Wiener is aware that today’s marketing strategies require a plethora of multi-media/social media touchpoints in order to reach the right markets. He and his independent partners help find those avenues and use them to their clients’ advantages.
“You have to have a vision for it,” Wiener said. “Bring in good people. Our staff is the best. I give them direction and let them run with it.”
Each contracted laborer has his/her own specialty field and can give each client the best service in that field on a client by client basis.
“There is one core designer that does 95 percent of our work, one photographer, one web designer,” Wiener said.
Wiener coordinates a team of about a half dozen freelancers.
Guiding Light Marketing provides digital billboard advertising, web design, social media, consulting, photography, print material, promotional items and strategic networking.
“If there’s something specific we don’t do,” Wiener said, “we will try to help them find the right people that do.”
No two businesses are alike, he said. There is a lot more to marketing than one may think.
“It’s important to find the right strategy and be very intentional about what we’re trying to accomplish. Every business has a different budget and we work with all of them,” he said.
Having attended Southwest Minnesota State University for economics, finance and marketing, Wiener eventually went into the insurance business with his father, Darrel Wiener, but was still looking for more avenues to give back to his hometown.
Having been born and raised in Marshall, Wiener is concerned about the success of his community.
In 2015, Guiding Light Marketing erected the large digital billboard outside his office, along Minnesota Highway 23, just south of the East College Drive intersection.
“It’s like the gateway to Marshall,” Wiener said of the location.
Not only can clients purchase advertising on the digital billboard, but nonprofits like Hope Harbor and area churches can also get featured on it. In fact, Wiener takes the opportunity to put inspirational messages on the board whenever he has a slot available.
Wiener is the president of Hope Harbor board of directors, with whom he meets once a month. The organization for the support of teenage girls is located in the house in which Wiener grew up. His mother, Karen Wiener, and Claudia Stenson founded House of Hope, now called Hope Harbor.
“My parents were shining examples for me on how to treat other people and how to give back to the community,” Wiener said. “I was also blessed to have great mentors like Brian Knochenmus and his family.”
Wiener also said the name of his marketing company came from a painting a relative created as a wedding present for him and his wife, Leah. The painting is of the bridal couple standing on the beach facing the ocean and a cliffside where the sun is rising, its corona forming the shape of a cross. The couple’s shadow casts the shape of a heart on the beach behind them.
“The painting is called, ‘Guiding Light,'” Wiener said. “It’s important to me to have an eternal perspective, to get the big picture. It’s helped me in business, with staff, in the community and, of course, in church.”
During his college years, Wiener said, he found his identity in his accomplishments. When his accomplishments were gone, he was lost until he found himself in Christ. Since then, Wiener’s personal mission has been and is to have a positive impact on the community in a personal way. Guiding Light Marketing helps him do that.