The only thing both adequate and necessary for business success

The Seven Steps of Marketing is customers.

Marketing is all the things you do to procure a potential
customer, and to prepare the way for a sale to be made.
“At its most general level, ‘marketing’ is the presentation of a proposition in the way in
which it is most likely to be accepted. Whether it is the packaging of a brand of cat
food or the election manifesto of a political party, marketing is distinguished from
other business activities by the way it takes the customer’s point of view and looks
back.”
(Tim Ambler, Marketing from Advertising to Zen )

In an ideal world, we do a little thinking before we start communicating. We

think about ourselves and our audiences, then consider our respective needs
and desires, and plan our communications accordingly.
Step One: Your Given Circumstances – Who you are, what you want, what you have,
what you are able to do, what you are willing to do. To successfully plan a journey,
you must clearly know where you begin, and where you want to end.

Step Two: Identify & Understand Your Audience – Who are your potential “customers”
(or audience with which you want to communicate). Consider your audience, your
customers: What are their needs and desires?

Step Three: Create Your Story or Product – To satisfy the needs and desires of your
audience. If you know and understand your audience, you can create (or reposition)
your story or product to make it necessary and satisfying. This is your natural story –
one that respects both you and your audience.

In the real world, unfortunately, too little thinking goes on before we start
communicating. The first three steps are blithely passed over and we take
premature (inappropriate, ineffective) action.
Step Four: Show and Tell – Decide how to show and tell the desirability of your story
or product, using as many of the senses as possible and appropriate. Here are the
fundamental principles of your marketing communications, your storytelling
approach (advertising, packaging, media relations, and the like).

Step Five: Customize Your Offering – Adjust your “Show and Tell” fundamentals to
account for variables and opportunities. Various and changing circumstances require
that you be flexible. Here are the implementation details for your communications
efforts.

Step Six: Check the Target – “The meaning of your communication is the response you
get,” (Anné Linden, Mindworks ). Pay attention to how your story is received. Savvy
marketers figure out how to test their stories before telling them to the world.

Step Seven: Follow-Up – Did everybody get what they need, when they needed it? Is
additional effort or information needed? What next?
 “True places are not found on maps,” wrote Herman Melville. So Rainmaker
Marketing goes beyond maps to help find those true places and tell their story.
Rainmaker Marketing is Rusty Eddy and David Hance. We know that good marketing
is really just good storytelling … Rainmaker extracts your elemental story, the story
that imbues your product with richness, magic and desirability. Our special focus is
your unique essence of place. Then we help tell your story to customers, prospective
customers and the media in order to attract attention.
Helping Tell Your Story
Local and national events, municipalities, artisan food producers, wineries,
community organizations, historic and tourist sites, cultural arts groups…we can
distill your essence of place and determine how to tell your story most effectively. And
we can understand and identify the audiences that will be most receptive to hearing
about you.

We have decades of experience in developing and telling the stories of special people,
places, and products. Based in rural Northern California, we have first-hand,
personal experience in promoting the appeal of less-well-known places (we happily
work with the well-known, too). Our no-nonsense, jargon-free approach to business
can help attract the attention you, your company and your product deserve.

Rainmaker services include:

Marketing Books … Quick reads with
9 Business & Marketing Planning
lots of ideas to get you thinking about
9 Audience Identification your business:
ƒ Customer Relations
ƒ Public Relations The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
by Al Ries and Jack Trout
ƒ Media Relations
9 Story Development Guerilla Marketing
9 Creative Development by Jay Conrad Levinson
9 Copywriting There are hundreds of other books on
9 Presentations marketing, but these two are
9 Advertising accessible and practical

Rainmaker Marketing LLC

175 E. Church Street
Ukiah, CA 95482

Telephone ........... (707) 462-7196

Fax ....................... (707) 462-7823
Email ................... Rainmaker@pacific.net
Web..................... www.RainMarket.com