Affiliate Chamber Spotlight: Indianola

Chamber Name

Indianola Chamber of Commerce

Elected leader for 2018 

Andy English, Chair

Professional Staff Leader of the Chamber 

Brenda Easter, President and CEO

Number of Members

290

What is the primary focus of your Chamber?

We are focused on exposing, connecting and helping our businesses grow. Simply put, we know that increasing foot traffic is critical for our local businesses and essential for making our community thrive. We continually develop and deploy strategies that promote economic prosperity for our businesses and quality of life for our community.

What’s a signature offering of your Chamber?

The Indianola Chamber’s Think Indianola First campaign is unique because we leverage the investment from our Members to manage consistent, intentional messaging to promote our local businesses and community. We’ve utilized social media, radio campaigns, newsprint, digital marketing and billboard advertising, to name a few, inviting residents and individuals from surrounding communities to #THINKINDIANOLAFIRST. What’s really exciting about this opportunity is that our Member Businesses can participate in any of these opportunities and gain the additional exposure that comes with it within a budget they can afford.

What is your Chamber’s biggest accomplishment in the past 12 months?  

Running a small business is one of the most difficult professions. Many of our business owners are CEO, CFO, marketing manager and all the way down to janitor. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the new tax laws, marketing strategies and ever-changing technology because they are busy running their businesses.

The Indianola Chamber has deployed a strategy to help keep it simple for our businesses.

We realize that not every business has the know-how or access to the professional talent needed to increase their digital footprint. So, the Chamber is offering Members access to individuals who provide the expertise that will increase the presence of each business in the global economy and equip Members with the tools needed to expand their web presence. The Chamber assistant, with the input from each business, will help expose and connect our businesses digitally to customers where they are — on the worldwide web!

Any initiative or project that you are looking forward to in 2018?

As we continue our work to expose, connect and help our businesses grow, we plan to launch a new website that will showcase Member Businesses and better highlight all the Indianola events and other assets that make Indianola the best place to live, play and own a business. We will also focus on revitalization and will be partnering with city and county officials to develop a strategy for revitalizing our downtown square.

Below are our not-to-miss summer events