Louisville marketing firm opens Indianapolis office

Leap, a Louisville-based digital marketing firm, announced this week is has opened an office in downtown Indianapolis and is planning major growth here.

The firm currently has about 25 employees in Louisville and another 25 in Cincinnati and agency officials think the company’s presence could be at least that big here within a few years.

Leap CEO Daniel Knapp called the expansion to Indianapolis “a natural progression for us as an agency.”

Leap hired 30-year-old Ryan Smith to lead its local office. Smith was president and chief strategy officer for Indianapolis-based digital marketing Raidious LLC from 2010-2016. Before joining Raidious, Smith, an Indianapolis native, was a marketer for several IndyCar teams and drivers.

Smith is currently Leap’s sole employee working out of the firm’s local office in the Stutz building. He said the agency, formerly known as Leapfrog International, is looking to add five employees in the coming months and more throughout 2017.

“Leap has been looking at Indianapolis as a growth market for a long time,” Smith said. “Now we have big plans for Indianapolis. We are looking to grow there in a big way.

“I think Leap will be one of the largest digital agencies in Indianapolis,” Smith added. “We plan to add a significant number of associates here in the next couple of years.”

Already, Leap has signed deals with WellPoint, Samtec, Indianapolis Colts, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and UnitedStatesofIndiana.com, a maker of Indiana-themed clothing.

Leap’s Indianapolis office will focus on what Smith calls “amplification” of social media messages. 

“It’s all about taking a message and getting it in front of the right people at the right time,” Smith said.

Within the last few years, Facebook has changed its format, requiring companies to pay to have posts with sales pitches in them to be pushed out or placed high on their time line. That has given rise to companies like Leap that specialize in maximizing exposure from those types of payments.

“There is so much good [digital] content because everyone has figured out how to create it,” Smith said. “Our job is to go out and cut through the clutter to get to the target market.” 

Leap works with clients “big and small,” Smith said, adding that clients can spend as little as $1,500 to $2,000 a month to amplify their message. Leap will seek to work directly with area businesses as well as other advertising and marketing firms, Smith added

While Leap’s Indianapolis office will focus on social media amplification—the Leapamp division that handles that will be headquartered here—the firm also offers other types of marketing and advertising services.

Leapamp joins two other specialized divisions within the Leap family, including Jump, which focuses on small business marketing and Leapframe, a video production group.

Leap is entering a competitive landscape here. In addition to Raidious, there are a handful of established firms that offer digital marketing services including The Basement, Borshoff, Bradley and Montgomery, and Fat Atom among others.

Smith is confident Leap will carve out a niche here.

“We’ve set out to build a unique approach that will help brands and [ad] agencies alike reach new audiences,” Smith said. “There’s a lot of great creative coming out of this market. Our ultimate goal as a business is to amplify that incredible creative coming out of agencies and brand teams. If we prove we can do that, I know there’s a place for us here, and more than that, a great opportunity for growth.”