College senior Alexis Barth starts a marketing agency

CEDARVILLE, Ohio — Alexis Barth was searching six months ago.

The 2020 Kearney High School graduate and senior marketing major from Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio, was looking for unique and creative products as part of her marketing class.

She didn't just find the product; she created it.

Barth launched Real Marketing Services, a faith-based digital marketing agency.

Her passion for marketing began during her senior year of high school. She was guided in the direction of starting her own marketing agency by Dr. Kary Oberbrunner's encouragement and guidance in her classroom.

Oberbrunner, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the university, is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of more than a dozen books.

His entrepreneurship classes inspired Barth to take risks and become an entrepreneur. Oberbrunner's class assignments allowed Barth to explore different ideas.

“For one of our projects, we created a story brand, and we decided to create it for a fictional marketing agency,” Barth said.

The goal of this class is to end the semester with a viable product while encouraging students to thrive in the entrepreneurial world.

As she communicated her vision to her classmates and professors, the idea for a marketing agency in Bath began to take shape in her mind. She realized how many people needed a marketing agency focused on her faith.

“It occurred to me that maybe I could help people through marketing. I realized I could do this for my career,” Barth said.

“It was a little scary, but I decided to announce the launch of Real Marketing,” she said.

Currently, the agency focuses on marketing consulting, but Barth's plan is to make connections and hire more people, such as photographers, graphic designers and copywriters, to expand the company to a full service. The goal is to expand to more than one agency.

“The guest speakers in this class always say, 'You just have to start,' so I did that too. I've been working on different projects in different ways with some people,” Barto said. .

The daughter of Gary and Jenny Barth of Kearney, she believes starting a marketing company while in college could give her a competitive advantage after graduation.

“The classes I take provide practical content that can be applied to growing an agency,” Barth said. “I’m still studying and learning from amazing professors, so I’m able to directly apply what I’ve been taught.”

As she prepares to graduate this spring, she's growing more confident.

Cedarville is a Baptist university located in southwestern Ohio with an enrollment of 5,456 students. We are nationally recognized for our authentic Christian community, rigorous academic programs, and high graduation and retention rates.

“The fear of the unknown is the biggest challenge for me because I don't know what's going to happen or what it's going to be like in a few months,” Barth said. “But I have confidence in my creative ability to build relationships with clients and employees.”

That energy and determination also fueled her desire to learn to fly while still a teenager. When Barth was a child, her father, Gary, would take her family on vacations to places like Galveston and Cincinnati in his Cirrus SR22.

“There were clouds in the sky and we could see a lot of things from above. I thought it was great that my dad could do this,” she told Carney Hub four years ago.

By the time she was 14, her father started giving private flying lessons at Kearney Regional Airport. By December of her senior year at Kearny High School, she earned her pilot's license.

Well, there are no limits to her marketing career either. “Serving others through my creative energy allows me to strive for professional excellence,” she said.