All businesses invest a wealth of time, energy and money into creating a corporate identity.  From the design of business cards to the physical look of the offices themselves, business owners want their ventures to be seen in the best possible light.  However, if you were to take a survey of investors, shareholders and executives, they would most likely tell you that the single most important publication produced by any company is its annual report.  The annual report is not only merely the history and the future of the company, it’s a powerful tool that can be used to monitor your marketplace.  Including information about trends, risks, and opportunities in your industry will only strengthen the decisions you make for the coming year.  For a detailed study of the skeleton of an annual report, take a look at Understanding Corporate Annual Reports: A User’s Guide by Brian Stanko and Thomas  Zeller.

Of course, a document that lists a company’s financial performance and activities for the last year isn’t exactly the most enthralling thing to read.  Therefore, it’s imperative to make your annual report as appealing and stimulating as possible.  Your annual report should be attractive to your directors, shareholders, and to the public.  After all, this is the most important piece of communication you’ll produce for the year.  Engaging copy, strong visual design and easy-to-comprehend graphics will speak positive volumes for your company.  You know what you want to say, but how will you say it?  Where do you begin?  Call us.  We can help.

You want consumers to immediately think of your company when considering the products and services in your industry.  Just as cowboys brand cattle to claim ownership, you must brand your company.  In branding your company, you’re attempting to position your name above all the others in your field.  You must identify how consumers view you, how you want them to view you and what you want to communicate to them.  Take a look at this article about the most commonly made mistakes in creating a brand identity.

Branding your company may seem like a daunting task.  Since it involves all aspects of your enterprise, all divisions, the visual presentation of your brand, your communication (both internal and external) as well as your competition, you may feel a bit overwhelmed.  If you were concerned for your health, you’d visit a doctor—a professional who was trained to help you.  You want your company to live a long and healthy life.  Make an appointment with us and we’ll see that your brand identity thrives.

If you look in your desk right now, you’re sure to find a stash of brochures that you’ve saved over time.  A well-designed and expertly written brochure will almost always be saved.  Consider them tangible “favorites” in the Web browser we call life.  Speaking of the Internet, many businesses in the last few years have turned their noses up at the idea of a printed brochure.  But, why?  Any business needs physical material to represent their products and services.  Until we all have chips implanted in our brains so that we have a constant stream of all knowledge, there are countless times when the distribution of printed information is integral to the success of your business.  What makes brochures so important?  This article is an enlightening overview of the continued strength of the hearty brochure. 

Just as a well-produced brochure can enliven your business, a poorly-executed one can be murder.  Just because every desktop in every company has the capability of creating a brochure doesn’t mean that they should.  The experts at Rainmaker will happily guide you and help you create an outstanding brochure that is sure to be a long-time “favorite.”

Why does your company need a catalog?  That’s simple.  Because you want people to buy what you’re selling.  For as much as your customers rely on the Internet for information, they still want something to carry along with them to look at offline.  As is the case with all of your business communication, you want your catalog to be engaging, exciting and enticing.  The design of your catalog is crucial to its success.  Of course, there are guidelines in the creation of catalogs.  You could even call them commandments. 

Creating your own catalog can be a frightening prospect.  You know what you would want to see, and how you’d like to see it.  But, how can you be sure that your ideas mesh with those of your customers?  How do you know that what you’re viewing as the most important item on the page is actually the first thing that your customer sees?  That’s where another set of eyes comes in.  The skilled eyes at Rainmaker are always open.  We’re ready to help you produce not only the catalog of your dreams, but the catalog of your customers’ dreams.

You know your company’s strengths.  You believe in what you’re selling.  Now, how do you most effectively spread the word?  Your copy has to be precise and interesting.  Furthermore, your online writing needs to incorporate all of the keywords that you want search engines to find.  After all, you want your name to come up first.  Beanstalk Search Engine optimization suggests ten steps in content creation. 

But, text on a page isn’t enough.  “Content Creation” doesn’t simply refer to your copy.  This is a much larger category than ever before.  Your content includes your graphics, video, animation, and audio.  Creating content for a website is more like producing a film than ever before.  Each element has to be perfect, easily found, exciting and powerful.  Just as a film needs a director, you might need help in your content creation.  At Rainmaker, we’re ready for “action.”

With consumers more inundated with information than ever before, it’s all the more important to stand out from the crowd.  In this race, it’s not necessarily the first one to the finish line who wins; it’s the one who takes the most interesting and attractive route.  But, how do you win that race to the top?  Your business needs to rely on creative concepts to spread your message.  The Encyclopedia of Creativity uses the example of the “Milk Moustache” advertising campaigns as an excellent use of a creative concept.  Who hasn’t heard “Got Milk?”  It’s such a simple, and yet, effective message.

Your creative concepts need to be fluid inasmuch as they’ll need to be able to neatly crossover into a variety of media.  You print advertising, you online advertising and even your physical presence should reflect your creative concept.  At Rainmaker, creativity is our business.  We’re here to guide you through your creative journey.

Have you noticed that we’re all overwhelmed with information lately?  We know what everyone else is doing at all times of the day.  Very often, it’s difficult to sort through all of the data which bombards us constantly.  As business owners, we want to communicate our corporate message.  It’s our goal for people to know what we’re doing.  So, how do we get the attention of our customers when they’re trying to wade through hundreds of other messages?

For as much as we rely on digital information which is readily available to anyone at anytime, there’s still a need for direct mailing.  With direct mailing, you know that you’re targeting people who are interested in what you have to say.  It’s a much more personal way of spreading your message.  For a very thorough study of direct mail campaigns, check out this article.  Sure, they may throw it away, but not before they touch it and, at least, look at it.  That’s more recognition than you’d get with a quickly sent Tweet which is lost amongst dozens of others.  We can assist you with all aspects of your direct mail campaign from concept and design to managing the mailing list.  Let us help you reach out to your customers.

About thirty years ago, cartoons about “the future” showed us scenes of people reading newspapers which were equipped with moving pictures.  The idea seemed so outlandish and ridiculous.  But, that’s what the Internet has given to us—the ability to add video to everything that we do.  Let’s face it, we’re a society that prefers to watch and be told than to have to figure things out for ourselves.  Aside from the entertainment value of video, it’s one of the chief methods of informing and instructing that’s available to us.

Last year, over 10.7 billion videos were streamed online.  SysComm International recently explored the growing importance of online video in advertising.  Another great advantage to video is that it can be posted on your Web page, your blog, or even sent in an email.  The problem, however, is finding pre-existing videos which meet your needs.  Creating your own e-videos is more necessary than ever.  Still, that’s a task for which most offices aren’t outfitted.  One call to Rainmaker can put you on the path toward video production.

Traditional Marketing, which we’ll refer to as “Outbound Marketing,” involved your efforts to actively search for customers.  You would throw fistfuls of informational pebbles into the air and hope that one of them landed on the right noggin.  “Inbound Marketing” takes a different approach.  With this newer idea, customers are finding you because they’re interested, because you’re offering them something that they want.  For a comparison of Outbound versus Inbound Marketing, this blog entry from HubSpot is quite helpful.

Speaking of blogs, they’re an excellent Inbound Marketing tool.  For that matter, so are Facebook, Twitter, and a variety of other “Social Media” sites.  By utilizing these tools, you’re creating an attractive presence for yourself—one that will draw customers to you.  Instead of trying to hook the fish, the fish are swimming to the boat.  But, that can be a big boat to navigate on your own.  We’ve made it one of our missions to stay abreast of all of the trends and upcoming opportunities with Social Media and Inbound Marketing.  We’d love to share what we’ve discovered with you.

With one glance, your logo says exactly who you are as a company.  The color, the shape, the design, the font—they all should represent your company’s values.  After all, your logo is the centerpiece of your branding efforts.  It’s your snapshot for the world.  It’s your own personal character in the business alphabet.

Sometimes, you’re too close to your own company to create your own logo.  When you’re embedded in a venture and all of its details, it’s hard to look at it with a clean and clear mind.  There’s a lot to consider when designing your logo, and you’ve got to be sure to represent everything about your company in one simple, easily-comprehended image.  It’s like chipping away at a hunk of marble to reveal a gorgeous statue.  We can help you sift through the dust to uncover the logo that best suits you.

You want to reach people who will be interested in your business and what you’ve got to say, and you want to do it when they’re relaxed enough to be receptive to your message.  The tried-and-true magazine ad is still one of the best ways to reach your target audience. 

Magazines offer you an open door into the homes and offices of the people you most want to reach.  They also offer you a wealth of layout options and give your business the slick look that you want.  Sometimes navigating your way into a magazine ad can be difficult.  We’re experts at it.  Let us show you the map which will lead you to that open door.

Your marketing plan is your roadmap for the next one to five years.  It’s your list of marketing objectives, initiatives and goals.  It tells you where you want to go, how you want to get there and how much you want to spend along the way.  Creating your marketing plan is your opportunity to review your resources, measure what you’ve already done, size up the competition and look to the future.  This planning process is an exciting time.  Still, even for corporations with huge marketing departments, it’s a tiring and difficult task filled with ups and downs.

We’d like to be your partner on the marketing plan teeter-totter.  We can help you balance your past performance with your upcoming goals to create a sound marketing plan that you can easily communicate with your customers—both internal and external.

Philanthropic organizations, non-profit groups, public broadcasting and educational facilities are among the main entities that require membership support for survival.  The contributions of members and the membership dues that are paid to these groups are the primary funds that keep them functional.  Developing a solid, engaging membership campaign is sometimes the only path toward success for these helpful institutions.  

At Rainmaker, we’ve assisted dozens of organizations in crafting successful membership campaigns which have enabled a variety of services to continue.  We’d like to help you help your community.

First of all, what is SEO and how is it organic?  No, it’s not a 1970’s era funk band.  SEO refers to Search Engine Optimization.  Great.  So, what does that mean?  That means that the search engines that you use to look up information, “crawl” websites (think of a spider on a web, hopping from strand to strand) to find relevant information that matches the data for which a search has been entered.  What makes it organic?  In terms of SEO, a website is “organic” when it naturally offers valuable information.  This comes from good, creative content creation.  “Artificial” SEO involves forcing links to a website that aren’t really deserved.  Let’s face it, when we’re searching for something and we are presented with a link to a website that claims to have what we want, but doesn’t really, how likely are we to return?  Not very likely.  Organic SEO makes your websites search friendly and honest thereby ensuring that your visitors will be back for more and that new visitors will find you easily.  To learn more about “Organic SEO,” this article from Search Engine Guidehas a neat explanation.

There’s more to it than just having good content, however.  You also have to consider how your website is built.  Skilled coders can include keywords and important data in the code for your site that will remain even after the content has changed.  We can walk you through the many options that you have and make your search for Search Engine Optimization faster and more efficient.

How many of you dread trade shows?  Does the very thought bring images of standing behind a plastic-draped folding table in a crowded hotel ballroom?  That doesn’t have to be the outcome.  In fact, trade show appearances can be some of the most valuable marketing in your arsenal.  The two keys to a successful trade show are effective planning and the ability to stimulate your customers.   

By being seen by your target audience and by showing up your competitors, you can make a huge, positive impression.  We know all the tips and tricks to make sure your trade show experience is a successful one.

Anyone can put up a website these days.  Tools are available to all of us which make the creation of a page almost fool-proof.  But, does that mean that it’s a good page?  Will your page attract your target audience?  Does it truly communicate your message?  Can it offer something to potential customers?  Will search engines recognize it? Is it something people will want to share with their friends and coworkers?  A bad website is worse than having no site at all. 

Just having a website doesn’t necessarily equal success.  You’ve got to think of your site as a living, breathing thing that must grow and evolve.  You can’t let it get stale and die.  Our proven track record in creating outstanding websites makes Rainmaker an excellent choice to help you conceive, nurture and grow your digital presence.