Working from home drives success for Stratham marketing firm

STRATHAM – As large tech companies including Yahoo are making headlines for curtailing telecommuting for employees, one small New Hampshire company is embracing it. Steve Casey founded Rain Advertising & Interactive in 2001. The marketing firm provides the resources its clients need to drive in new leads, including advertising, public relations, social media, search engine optimization and the Web.

As the company continued to grow, so did space needs and overhead costs. “I was paying for space and having to pass along that cost to our clients instead of paying for talent to help meet their needs,” he said. “Clients only came to our office at the outset of their working relationship with the agency.”

So he made the decision to sell the office space in 2010, giving his four full-time employees the option to work from home. “Whatever did not serve the client’s success was cut,” Casey said. “Smart people that create effective solutions are what they want, not a central office space.”

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Rain Project Manager Catherine Palm says the virtual business model makes her more accountable to the company, not less. “The model makes me much more willing to put in the extra effort when needed because Rain has given me the flexibility in my work and home life,” Palm said. “Because of the flexibility I am more loyal to the company. Honestly, why would I leave?” In addition to his four full-time staff, Casey hires many “perma-lancers,” professionals freelancing in a wide range of specialties that are given steady work. “This model makes sure the right skills are applied to the right problem. Everyone gets to do what they like to do, and our clients get the full range of necessary marketing solutions,” Casey said.

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Casey said a decision to allow employees to telecommute should not necessarily be about whether it is good for employees, but whether it is better for clients.

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Read the full article at the Union Leader’s website

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You’ll get more attention after our free inbound lead generation audit.Four experts. This audit takes 15 minutes of your time to kick off, then four experts from branding, SEO, social media, and web development will spend fours hours taking a deep dive into your current systems and processes. We’ll provide free research into social media communities, SEO analysis, and offer site and messaging observations that will improve your inbound lead flow. The final report will supply free marketing ideas, a list of relevant social media communities, and website/SEO suggestions.

Step 1. Download an Audit Example [PDF]

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Rain is purpose built to cost-effectively solve the inbound marketing, social media, and SEO needs of technology and B2B companies.

To grow inbound leads, your company needs the high-level visibility social media, content marketing, and SEO provide. And the truth is, inbound marketing is a lot of work! Busy companies continuously face the same challenges when trying to deploy social media campaigns and marketing activities:

• No budget to hire experienced staff for these projects
• Lack of time or expertise to do it yourself
• Inability to keep up with ever-changing technology and trends
• You don’t even know where to start

Rain is a flexible, cost-effective answer. We’re the on-demand marketing department you need to execute your tactical suggestions so your team can focus on strategic thinking, creating your message, and maintaining client relations. Rain marketing services and bundled plans are designed to help you:

• Monitor your brand’s influence on the web, in social networks, and in the blogosphere
• Manage your brand’s online reputation
• Engage with targeted online communities to attract new clients and nurture existing customers
• Use social media to boost your PR activities and extend your online reach
• Fill web and live events and book meetings using social networking and online business networking
• Grow the reach of your brand through social media placement, fans, followers, and word of mouth
  

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To qualified candidates, we’re offering 10 free hours of free expertise. Based on your situation, we’ll present you a set of recommendations to improve your social media strategy, acquire more visibility and thus more clients. And with the remaining time, we can implement some, or all, of the ideas you agree with. In the end, you will have recommendations for an inbound lead generation system, get a taste of both our consulting and execution capabilities and have a better understand of how social media can bring in customers.

Programs we offer:

• Develop a Blog, communities, media list
• One blog post with distribution
• Social amplification of an existing release
• Event recruiting and amplification
• LinkedIn sales programs
• Custom programs

There is no obligation or assumptions, just a good faith offer to share what we can do.

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We can build your social network presence, create and distribute content around your business and develop your online reputation through social media optimization. Social media marketing programs can create additional sales channels to new customers. We meet and engage prospects on your behalf on LinkedIN, or manage your Twitter and Facebook accounts to increase awareness and interest while gaining you new customers online. Our social media management solutions manage online interactions consistently and efficiently.

You will:

• consistently connect with your customers
• increase your customer base
• build your online and offline reputation
• generate interest around your business
• connect with professionals in your domain area
• become a sought-after subject matter expert

Social media management provides:

• social media consulting
• social media strategy
• social media optimization
• Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN management and marketing
• website linking
• periodical status reports

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Branding is about instant likeability. The average Web user forms an opinion of your company after only 4 seconds on your website. You need to know your core values and core competencies, and then be able to articulate them quickly and execute on them consistently. And branding is not an individual execution, but the overarching messages and values — based on audience insights — that allow all your executions to perform better. As part of our integrated branding services we can help you discover your brand messaging and clearly define who you are in terms of product or services, customers and competition.

Our branding services will help you:

• clearly articulate your dominant strategic advantage
• develop your brand awareness
• increase your visibility as a subject matter expert
• create a style sheet of wording, imagery, use of color, type style and design

We provide:

• brand positioning strategy
• brand messaging
• branding strategies
• logo and corporate design

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Our extensive tradeshow expertise will help you promote traffic to your booth, while looking great at the event. We create everything from banner stands to the graphic theme for 20X20 and 40X40 booths.

Our tradeshow service will help you:

• get people to your booth with preshow mailers and emails
• generate interest on the floor around your booth and business
• look your best at the event

We provide:

• pre- and post-show promotional campaigns
• development and design of message, graphics, and other visuals
• ideas for show give-aways and after hour promotions
• online advertising through social media networks, direct emailing and banner ads.
• post-show campaigns

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Our email campaigns provide relevant, personalized messages to your customers and prospects. Meanwhile our conversion methodology calls for a landing page optimization process to ensure your visitors are finding what they came for to your website and your collecting the lead.

Our services will help you:

• optimize online advertising spend
• increase your customer base
• optimize your market reach
• increase the traffic of your website

We provide:

• email campaign strategy and consulting
• email campaign planning and scheduling
• targeted email campaign management
• post campaign measurement and analysis
• copywriting and design
• landing page evaluation
• landing page optimization

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