Local digital ad agency to offer free industry training

Statwax LLC, a Fishers-based digital advertising firm, said it's offering free training classes to help close a skills gap its seeing in the local industry.

The company has launched Statwax Academy, a six-week program that aims to prepare professionals looking for certifications in Google Analytics and Google AdWords. Those certifications "jump out at employers looking for digital marketers," said Statwax Vice President Alyshia Kisor-Madlem, but those employers hardly see them.

"A lot of Statwax Academy is built out of some of the issues we encountered while hiring," Kisor-Madlem said. "We needed people, but people were lacking the skills we were looking for."

The program will run from Sept. 7 through Oct. 12. at the Forum Conference and Events Center from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Classes will be capped at 30 people.

It's free to take the Google certification exams, offered by Google parent Alphabet Inc., but training classes can cost hundreds of dollars.

Statwax said it wants to make that preparation free to enhance those particular skills in the local labor force, whether those people go to work for Statwax or not.

"If there's a good candidate, we would hope that they apply [at Statwax], but we also don't want people who have jobs that they're happy with to shy away from coming just because it's hosted by us," Kisor-Madlem. "We just want to educate … so that we can enrich this community within Indianapolis and Indiana."

Statwax spun out of marketing and public relations firm BlastMedia Inc. last summer. It focuses only on non-traditional advertising, including paid search ads, social media ads and internet radio ads.

It had four employees at inception, including founder Kelly Hendricks, but now has 15.