AUGUSTA — If there’s a chance to network, Nancy Marshall seizes it. And if there’s a challenge, she’s up for it.

For instance, to win a contract working with Northern Outdoors, she told company officials that if they hired her firm, she would become a Maine Guide, and she did.

More recently, Marshall, 54, has been doing work with BikeMaine and has committed to participating in next year’s weeklong ride, a longer ride than the Trek Across Maine, which she did for several years.

“I do these things because I feel to do PR it’s really important to immerse yourself,” Marshall said in a recent interview in her office on Western Avenue in Augusta.

For her continuing success in growing Nancy Marshall Communications from its inception in 1991 to today, she will receive the President’s Award from the Kennebec Valley Chamber of Commerce at the banquet Jan. 23 at the Augusta Civic Center.

Marshall employs a dozen people and provides marketing and communications services in the areas of tourism, education and health care. Currently CEO of her firm, she specializes in personal branding strategies. “I help people uncover what their personal brand is and help design a way to promote it on social media,” she said.

Advertisement

She offers strategic marketing plans under the trademark of “The Marshall Plans,” laying out a road map for the next one to three years for a firm and providing ways to measure success.

“One of the keys to success is simple perseverance and tenacity,” she said.

Marshall has witnessed big changes in the public relations field. Formerly most information about businesses and organizations came through the media, but now those same businesses and organizations can reach targeted audiences directly through the Internet and social media.

“I think social media was invented for me,” she said. “It’s social and I am social.”

Marshall said she’s found great opportunities through social media but says she also wants that face-to-face connection.

Marshall is a graduate of Colby College and of Thomas College. She began her communications career at WCBB-TV, Channel 10, in 1983, moved on to Sugarloaf in 1984 and then started her own public relations firm in 1991.

Advertisement

Her firm held the marketing contract for 20 years with the Maine Office of Tourism and has contracts with a number of clients, including the Maine Beer & Wine Distributors Association, Maine Children’s Home for Little Wanderers, MaineGeneral and numerous others.

She’s a familiar figure to members of the Kennebec Valley Chamber as well.

Chamber member Delta Ambulance contracted with Nancy Marshall Communications and learned how to promote its accomplishments to the public.

“Working with her has been interesting,” said Bill McKenna, Delta’s director of community relations. “Tim Beals and I have been with Delta for 30 years, and they’re finding things that we should be telling people. It’s a different viewpoint..”

The firm redesigned Delta Ambulance’s website for mobile devices, worked on its Facebook presence, updated literature and provided customer service training for the crews.

“It’s great to have somebody to bounce something off of,” McKenna said.

Nancy Marshall works outside Maine as well. She has written a book, “PR Works,” which comes out in January and will be sold through Amazon.com.

 


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.