“No matter what marketing, advertising or promotions you do, if your company or website can’t be found online, you will miss the opportunity to do business.” So says Andrea Farr, co-owner and official ‘geek translator’ of Nashville Geek, a technology and web design firm specializing in interactive services that help develop your online presence. With years of project management and creative production experience, Andrea, alongside co-owner and husband Scott Farr, utilizes her experience in marketing and advertising, website development, social media and search engine optimization (SEO) to provide strategic online marketing solutions for clients ranging from non-profits to attorneys, and everything in between.
Sharkman Manny Puig
Andrea, a native of Southern Illinois, grew up in a log cabin, surrounded by the support and guidance of three generations of entrepreneurs –all lumberjacks! A risk taker by nature, one of her first experiences with online marketing came from an unlikely place, the ocean. Fresh off a taping of Shark Week for the Discovery Channel, Manny “Sharkman” Puig and extreme cameraman Mark Rackley signed her on to start and manage their company distributing hours of footage from their extreme ocean adventures. It wasn’t long before Andrea was selling this footage to major networks all over the world, all from a tiny office in her Franklin home. It was then that Andrea realized the power of creating a message and making it viral. So began her journey into online marketing.
Now that she’d gotten her feet wet, so to say, Andrea wanted more. She landed a job in a local agency tasked with building out their entire interactive department. After working there a few years, she noticed a change in the client temperature. They no longer felt the need to pick a larger firm when the same talent and a more personalized experience was available with smaller shops. Clients were seeking partners, not account managers, who would take the time to dissect their message and communicate it to the right people on the right online channels. Taking her cues for the marketplace, she branched out on her own and dared the impossible, to become a business owner in a very hot industry, especially in the Nashville area.
Despite competition, Andrea was confident in Nashville Geek and herself. She prides herself on her uncanny ability to take the complexity of building websites – the HTML code and PHP script, the talk of keywords and organic search – and translating it into concepts that her clients can understand. Her efforts to involve and educate clients during the process are uncommon and have helped grow the business primarily on referrals.
In business almost two years now, Andrea attributes her passion for what she does and the decision to work with the right people early on to the rapid success of Nashville Geek.
To new business owners, she has this advice to share, “as you get going, be sensitive to partnerships – be it employees, vendors, or clients – that aren’t a good fit and move on…guilt free.”
Connect with Andrea Farr, Owner, Nashville Geek
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By: Jacqueline Hayes, Owner of Crayons & Marketers, LLC