If you’re the only gas station, store or restaurant in a 25-mile radius, then you’re pretty much guaranteed to do a successful business.

But since most entrepreneurs aren’t lucky enough to have a captive market,  they have to work a little harder.

Obviously, any good business owner wants to have the best product at competitive prices. Unfortunately, that isn’t always enough.

For example, if you own a floral shop in a community with four or five other floral shops, what is going to make a customer choose you?

You can order the coolest new purses and gifts on the market to supplement your flowers, but if no one knows you carry them, will it make a difference?

That’s where a marketing and social media strategy agency like 618 Creative can help. Our job is to tell customers who you are, what you do and how you are different from your competitors.

Our number one goal is to make sure your store comes to mind first when anyone in your region has a need you can serve.

Marketing, after all, is all about perception. Here is a prime example: hedge apples.

Yes, those bumpy, weird-looking balls that fall freely from the trees and lay on the ground around your community.

Deemed pretty much useless for a century, people typically just let them rot. Some old-timers think they repel spiders.

Recently, one clever scientist teamed up with some marketing and branding folks to come up with a new use for hedge apples.

Now, he’s selling oil from this unappreciated fruit for $85 per half ounce!

That, friends, is the glory of science and creative marketing.