By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
A new business has opened in the area which aims to help small businesses in Mesquite and Moapa Valley maximize their digital online marketing. Mesquite Branding and Design Co. was open earlier this year in Mesquite by husband and wife team Dustin and Jessica Berg.
Mesquite Branding is a full service advertising agency geared toward serving small business clients. The Bergs offer branding and logo design, print design and marketing, photography, 360 tours production, drone photography coverage and more.
But where the company really excels is in its website design offerings and in social media marketing.
“We have found that there is a need to help small businesses in rural communities,” said Dustin Berg in an interview with The Progress last week. “A lot of times small business owners are busy and their businesses haven’t quite caught up to the technology that is out there. They don’t know about how they could be marketing differently and more effectively with the internet. That is where we like to help.”
Berg grew up in Yakima, Washington. He attended the Perry Technical Institute after high school, earning a certificate in Visual Communications.
He then took a job in graphic design at Liberty Bottle Works in Yakima. Within six years he had worked up to the position of Creative Director of Marketing, the #2 position in the department.
While he was still working at Liberty, Dustin and his wife Jessica began a side business doing advertising and marketing work for small businesses in the Yakima area. That side business, which they called Yakima Branding, quickly became a full-time job for both of them. In 2018, Dustin left his other job to devote his attention to their own ad agency.
Yakima Branding experienced rapid growth and marked success. The company was voted the Best Ad Agency in Yakima for 2019 and 2020 in the Best of Yakima Contest held by the Yakima Herald Republic newspaper.
“There were some other ad firms there in Yakima that were definitely bigger than us,” Dustin said. “But I think that we kind of set ourselves apart as offering a bigger bang for the buck, especially for small businesses.”
Yakima Branding was recently acquired by a larger firm based in Silicon Valley. And the Bergs, seeking a change of scenery, set their sites on Mesquite, Nevada.
“We have a few business opportunities in mind that we feel are ideal for this particular market,” Dustin said. “Mesquite Branding is just one of them. We are still working on the others.”
Dustin emphasized how important that Jessica has been in the success of their branding businesses. “Both as a life partner and as a business partner for Mesquite Branding, she has a vital role,” he said. “We make a good team and cover a large scope of offerings between the two of us.”
Since opening Mesquite Branding in January of this year, Dustin said the greatest need he has heard expressed by local small business owners has been in the area of website support.
“It is a lot about how to drive traffic to people’s websites,” Dustin said. “A business might have a website but just because you have a website doesn’t mean that people are going to find you. I’ve been able to get people that are buried somewhere on page five or six of the search results moved up to appear in the top few results.”
In the realm of all new business startups, Mesquite Branding is uniquely positioned to help in developing a strong brand. Dustin said that he spends time with clients to get that branding just right for their businesses.
“We help the business identify the target market and determine what would speak best to their customers and best represent their mission statement,” Dustin said. “Then we make sure that messaging stays consistent throughout.”
Dustin said he is mindful that there are a range of options for these services going from hiring a major, high-priced ad agency all the way to bidding small graphics and design jobs out over the internet at a discount.
“The real difference that we offer is that we are local and we are here to consult with you,” Dustin said.
“We can meet in person and come to a real understanding about you and your business. You don’t know what you are getting when you work with people online that you don’t know.”
Dustin added that Mesquite Branding keeps it’s pricing fairly reasonable, given all that they offer.
“It isn’t the lowest like you might find online somewhere,” he said. “But it is also not the highest by any means, like you’d get if you called up an agency in Las Vegas. We are designed with local small business in mind to meet those specific needs.”
Dustin said that his firm in Yakima experienced good success with its clients, even in the worst days of the pandemic last year.
“We had a few restaurant clients we worked with regularly,” he said. “They seemed to get through things a lot better during the shutdown because we already had a system set up where they could effectively communicate with their customers.”
“For a lot of their competitors, the customers didn’t even know whether they were open,” Dustin added. “They didn’t know whether they could order from them online and how to do so. But for our clients, we had it already set up so that they could do quick pivots to function through the crisis, and get the word out to their customers each step of the way. It really helped out a lot.”
Dustin said that most of the work in the Mesquite Branding business is done by himself and Jessica in house. But they do have subcontractors and other partners who can offer additional specialized support wherever needed.
“We may also be hiring directly in the future as things grow,” he said. “So people with experience in the field who are looking for work can get ahold of me and we can talk. It never hurts to have more connections.”
More information about Mesquite Branding is available at www.mesquitebranding.com or they can be reached by phone at 725-225-5806.
