Spur Interactiv, a digital marketing and ad-tech agency in downtown Indianapolis, recently announced they were selected by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation to receive a $50,000 training grant and up to $350,000 in Economic Development for a Growing Economy (EDGE) tax credits.

The company was founded in January 2018 by brothers Alex and Reed Smith, two Hoosier natives with a history of marketing leadership in tech and tech-enabled companies throughout central Indiana. Alex, a graduate of Anderson University, was honored with a Tech 25 Award in 2016 for his work at SteadyServ as a VP of marketing. Reed is a graduate of Taylor University for both his undergrad and his MBA.

Spur Interactiv focuses on bringing their experience in digital marketing tools alongside sales enablement strategies to maximize the pipeline of sales or interest in a company. Using their resources, the company helps start-ups lift off, mid-size companies scale, and enterprise companies leverage powerful advertising technology.

“They’ve doubled our volume in a period of eight weeks,” said Bob Boehnlein, who led QuickPivot at the time of their work with Spur Interactiv. “One of the first problems I wanted them to solve was how we could get higher productivity with our BDRs. Through their coaching, technique and expertise, we could get more traction to meetings and appointments.”

This isn’t the first company the two brothers have gone into business on together. Spur Interactiv’s parent company Dariam Group, LLC has been around since 2013, and the brothers previously used the company to develop, scale and successfully exit another technology start-up in 2015. At the time it was sold, “Vendor2Member” was the hardware industry’s largest dropship directory.

Indy tech companies have been taking notice of Spur Interactiv and using the tools the company has mastered. Christine McDonnell, CEO of Codelicious, a Mira Award-winning startup that’s seen monumental growth since their launch in 2017, has already deployed Spur Interactiv’s resources in their business efforts. “We engaged with Spur Interactiv to be the front end of our sales process. We leverage them in a business development role to help us develop lead gen and fill our pipeline so we can bring leads in and close them.”

McDonnell shares that whether you are developing a process or have one already, Spur Interactiv acts as an extension of personnel. “Having feet on the street to do this part of the sales process has been immeasurably valuable as we build our team and our approach to market.”

Aside from engaging with tech companies, Spur Interactiv took their product to Senator Jack Sandlin, who represents District 36 in Johnson County. When Senator Sandlin was campaigning, he engaged with Reed to discuss how to redesign his image on the web. “He gave us good data that showed which way we should move,” said Senator Sandlin. “I was impressed with the tools they brought to the game.”

Senator Sandlin congratulates Spur Interactiv on receiving the IEDC grant.

The primary senate race was quite competitive, and Senator Sandlin realized he was going to be well outspent in advertising. To maximize his dollars, he turned to Reed for suggestions to get online and identify the people he needed to reach. “It’s a system that worked very well. We increased our turnout to vote, got the message out that we wanted, and ultimately we were successful because we won that race and went on to the general election.”

Alex and Reed are currently looking for new office space in downtown Indianapolis. With the new investment from the IEDC, they plan to hire 33 new employees over the next three years.