Midwest Marketing for Midwest Businesses.

The story

Why I started Heartland.

Some of my closest friends operate equipment, live on jobsites and haul trailers full of equipment from one job site to the next. I’ve spent years working alongside contractors and home service owners, and they’re still my favorite people to work with. They show up early, they do the job right, and they put their name on every bit of it.

So it always bothered me to watch how the marketing world treated them. National agencies would roll into town, sign them to long contracts, and hand back content that could have belonged to any business in any city: stock footage, generic posts, and a monthly report full of numbers that never turned into phone calls. When the results didn’t come, the answer was always to give it more time. These were people who had built real businesses on their reputation, and they were getting a fraction of the effort they put into their own work.

I knew I could do better for them because I’d seen what marketing looks like when it’s done right. Before Heartland, I spent years in executive marketing, including serving as CMO of a large mortgage company, where I learned how ads, follow-up, and numbers have to work together to produce real revenue. I’d also spent years behind a camera doing photography and video.  In 2021, I put those two sides together and started Heartland Creative Agency to be the marketing department local contractors never had.  We write the scripts, shoot the footage, edit the ads, run the campaigns, and build the system that follows up with every lead, so you can stay focused on the work.

That’s also why I run things the way I do. When you work with Heartland, you work with me, and the person who builds your strategy is the same person making sure it gets done. We don't require long term contracts that so many agencies push, because I’d rather earn your business than trap it. And I’ll always give it to you straight. If an ad isn’t pulling its weight, I’ll tell you, and if something needs to be re-shot, we’ll re-shoot it. At the end of the day, Facebook likes don’t pay your crew. Booked jobs do, and that’s what we’re here to deliver.

I’m not going anywhere, either. My family and I live in Bettendorf.  I coach football at Pleasant Valley. You won’t be a ticket number in some national agency’s queue. You’ll be working with someone you might run into at the ball field or at the grocery store on a Saturday.

If you do great work and you’re tired of waiting on referrals to fill your schedule, let’s talk.

– Phil Dodds, Founder