Category: Article

Brand Focused Appeal If your reputation in your market is sufficiently strong, you can consider communications content which focuses just on the name. In such cases your name, reputation or the set of values your brand image conveys is enough by itself to get your message across. On another page (Branding) we used the example of Mercedes Benz’s ‘Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz’ campaign. In a suite of TV ads, the company has a range of people – from all kinds of backgrounds – singing snatches of the well known song. Not a word about the features of the car, nothing about the famous Mercedes engineering, no safety message, nothing! The name says it all. Here’s another example – this full page ad runs in national magazines and costs many thousands of dollars per insertion, and it’s an ad which does not actually say anything, or does it? The idea is that it says everything! Perhaps it does say everything, more than a description of the features, the quality, the materials, the prestige, the comparisons with competitors. Everything you need to know is in the name. For this kind of appeal to work, you need to be confident, even arrogant, and you have to have the wherewithal to back it up – otherwise you look foolish! However, it is important to note that you don’t have to be a household name to do this. Artefact is a household name, but only in our own house, so far! In your niche market, or in your local area, you can do this too if your standing is such as to justify it. Brand appeal is really saying buy this product on the strength of the reputation of the vendor – you can’t go wrong! It takes time to earn the right to make that sort of appeal

In-House Creative teams Vs Outside Agency? Having an in-house designer or team does not necessarily contribute to faster, better or cheaper design production. It’s a myth to assume that having an in-house design team allows for faster production while saving costs. It can be true if you’re willing to budget a lot for hiring, pensions, PRSI etc. In almost all other cases, it’s can be costlier, slower and less creative to rely on in-house teams if you’re looking for to consistently deliver top drawer creativity and a better brand experience for your customer base. Staying on top of technology and software upgrades can be expensive too. On top of that, in-house design teams may not have as broad an experience of working with multiple brands or sectors day in and day out, which can limit the creativity of what they do for your business. In many cases their work can become stale and repetitive in a very short space of time, therefor deminishing your brand identity and client experience. If you want to get it right, you need a senior creative team, and that’s expensive if you set one up in-house. Bear in mind, I’m not talking about a team of one. One person may not have the years of agency experience and broad range of skills to call on, in order to deliver the highest quality output your brand deserves. This is merely wishful thinking and fails to factor in the whole dimensions of reality. Fact: no one can do it all alone, particularly to a consistently high level and innovative standard. On the plus side, you can hire an agency project by project, or even have them on a retainer. Both are within the control of your organisation to manage. With an internal staff, the costs are also fixed, but what if there is a lull in work? You are paying for someone who isn’t adding to your bottom line. On the other hand, a cutting edge creative agency taps into a continuous stream of fresh perspective and inspiration, which can only come from working with multiple brands and disciplines on a daily basis, backed with years of experience behind them. You get the depth of experience of the senior executives, which isn’t typical of an internal team/designers. Working with creative agencies such as Artefact Ltd, can save you from becoming another Copy-Paste or Me-Too organisation. Internal politics can also have a negative impact on the work in-house creatives produce. It is often the case that Artefact end up rescuing, fixing and improving work that had originally been done in-house, (often by juniors or inexperienced designers), bringing a fresh perspective that is not stifled by in-house politics. Hiring is costly and time-consuming and there’s no guarantee that the new hire doesn’t leave tomorrow. However, if you work with Artefact team, you don’t have to worry about letting people go because the business takes a sudden downturn or some other issue arises. You can quickly scale the engagement up or down with an agency. Also, by reducing the number of iterations to get the concept right, you save cost at the end — assuming you’re working with a competent agency – like Artefact Ltd. Agencies often work until the job gets done, where an internal team adheres to a standard work day and generally downs tools at 5pm sharp! . In fact it is usually the case that we are asked to take over or re-do a project from an in-house designer(s) because it simply was not professional enough or up to par. A hugh percentage of business owners and companies, do not fully appreciate the importance of projecting a top class, professional brand image, cohesively across multiple channels, but are happy to throw some marketing materials together in-house, often by junior or mid-weight designers. It is like asking an trainee doctor to do brain surgery – a very costly mistake! I wouldn’t risk it, would you? If you would like to discuss solutions, budgets, strategy etc to help your brand succeed consistently to its target audience, then please do the smart thing and.. contact Wil Lyons or one of the team TODAY on 01 832 5683 or  Txt/Mob: 086 2750662, or info@artefact.ie  

Website Design Grants Available in Ireland Do you have a great business idea but are not sure about how you can implement it? Perhaps you have a business idea or a new business and now need a website to give it an online presence. This can be carry a high price tag for those just starting up but luckily there are grants available for you: Local Enterprise Office – Online Trading Voucher and Social Welfare Technical Assistance and Training (TAT) grant where you can get for example up to €2,500 or 50% of the costs towards developing a website. We are the right company to help you transform your idea and have worked with the above grants before, thus understanding their process. There are 2 grants available: Local Enterprise Office – Online Trading Voucher and Social Welfare TAT Grant LEO Online Trading Voucher It’s simple, many Local Enterprise Offices in Ireland are rewarding qualifying businesses in their area a grant. The website design grants are for any business (with a requirement by some LEO’s that you should be 1 year in business and trading online, you can get around the online trading requirement by offering an option for customers to pay for your services via credit card on your website so it is not limited to just online shop). If awarded the grant, you have the potential to up to €2,500 to get you started or as much as 50% off the total cost of your website (net of VAT) – whichever is the lesser. Using the internet effectively can increase sales and reduce costs; the objective of this Website Development Assistance is to ensure micro businesses (with 10 or less employees) maximize their potential through the use of the internet, e-business and e-Commerce. As we know, the internet opens up the doors to a whole new set of customers which may be based in any part of the world. It permits the promotion of your services / products to a range of customers which was not possible in the past and this can be achieved at a minimum cost when done right. Micro businesses can use this modern medium to promote their services / products and also to sell them via this online channel. If your idea is to develop a product or service that will generate employment and even export services / products without displacing any current jobs in your area, you can apply for a grant with a larger monetary value. These grants take a lot more work to apply for and can be considerably slower to process. So for now, you may just want a website grant to get your website off the ground. So what should you do first? The qualifications necessary varies from LEO to LEO and also the time of the year. So, why don’t you just ask your Local Enterprise Office what they want? Be prepared to go to them weeks in advance, as sometimes applications are entertained only every two months as in some areas they are issued and completed in rounds and batches. To get things started, just make an application to your Local Enterprise Office before any work commences on your website. Who can apply? The online trading voucher is open to all businesses with ten or less employees, intends to trade online (provided that the business is located and operates within the area of an Enterprise Office) and whose website has a content management system that can be added to over time. Assistance will include domain registration and the first year’s annual hosting costs as well as online marketing (up to 30% can be spent on things like Google Adwords, PPC and SEO). Application Process You must first attend an information seminar organised by your Local Enterprise Office. You must then complete an application form which must be accompanied with three quotations for the development of the website and the reasons provided to support the chosen web designer, prior to commencement of site development and any payments made. Grants cannot be retrospective. Payment of Grant The grant will be paid once the following conditions are complied with: Website live and inspected Original invoices are submitted at time of claim Proof of payment is provided, which must be in the form of an original bank statement or an online statement that has been stamped by the bank The home page of the website acknowledges the source of funding and accredited in a prominent position. This shall include the European Union logo and your Local Enterprise Office logo The grant must be drawn and fully paid before the completion date as detailed in the Letter of Offer What the vouchers can be used for IT consultation Development or upgrade of an e-commerce website Implementing Online payments or booking system Purchase of Internet related software Purchase of online advertising (this purchase cannot make up any more than 30% of approved Voucher costs and can only be drawn down in one payment phase) Developing an app (or multiplatform webpages) Implementing a digital marketing strategy i.e. Social media marketing Consultation with ICT experts for early stage adopters of online strategy Training/skills development specifically to establish and manage an on-line trading activity Social Welfare Grants If you would like more information about grants available to you and your business or would like to discuss any of the points that you have read about here, please do not hesitate to contact us and we would be happy to help. The Technical Assistance and Training (TAT) fund is designed to help people who are in receipt of the Short-Term Back to Work Enterprise Allowance with certain costs involved in starting a business. You do not have an automatic entitlement to TAT but instead the assistance awarded from this fund must be approved by the jobs facilitator in your local social welfare office. Payments from the fund must be made directly to the provider of the service or in other words the company that you decide to help you

It’s time you hire Professional Website Management when… You are busy running your business and need your website to just work? You are frustrated by inconsistent and amateur website management from your in-house person, who is also juggling several other projects. You would like direct access to our team of designers, developers and digital marketing experts. You would like all this for one fixed monthly payment of just €479. (or avail of one of our basic plans from as little as €179) We understand you’ve probably tried running an in-house team (ouch! that’s expensive), we get that you’ve hired other web companies and that didn’t deliver and we know you used to have “this bloke” who looked after your web needs until he just disappeared. Perhaps it’s time to hire a professional and reliable team of Ireland based web experts. If you think about the job specification of the person you would need to employ to carry out all that’s involved with running a successful website it would need to cover….. Backend Management/Core Updates Web Programming Deep knowledge of web technologies Graphic design Business Analysis Copywriting Search Engine Optimisation Ability to see trends and react to them ……..and this is by no means an exhaustive list. Our dedicated Website Management Services provide all the required skills in one monthly recurring fee and helps you build your business while we look after your website. The service is fully proactive and every month we provide full reporting of what we have done and a hit list of activity/suggestions for the forthcoming month. Please call us on 01 8325683 or email info@webmanagement.ie to find out more. View our dedicated website for this service: https://webmanagement.ie/

DOES E MARKETING WORK ? E zines using your database Yes it’s the easy, effective, and affordable way to keep your customers and potential customers coming back !  There are millions of people using it around the world and there is a proven format that hundreds of Irish use successfully in Ireland. The key to success are simple; It must be attractive, professional-looking and regular to build strong customer relationships. It’s better and more effective than regular email. Social Media From Twitter to Facebook, to Google + toYou Tube, to Foursquare and more, social media use is the hottest thing in marketing. But does it really work? Brands and businesses are certainly moving this way which makes sense — that’s where the people are ! Figuring out just how much social media marketing returns on investment of time and money, however, is harder to do. A recent analysis by Facebook’s marketing company Pagemodo revealed the following; Sixty-four percent of business owners say social media marketing is a promising tactic and they believe it provides returns — but they aren’t willing to go all in with it just yet and favour a more cautious approach. Another 20% are more bullish on its potential, according to the same study, while just 6% are hardcore skeptics. How do marketers and entrepreneurs measure whether social media will pay pay off ? Most do so by measuring the accumulation of friends, likes, followers and other online connections. Thirty-nine percent look at shares of brand content, while 35% measure actual leads from social media. Just 18% measure success by overall brand awareness and favourability as gauged by consumer surveys. The key to success • Know your target audience. • Send them something that is relevant and appealing. • Do it gradually. • Be be prepared to stop if it is not working (unless of course you are a major brand). • If you are a major brand build a community and keep in touch. Should your company use e marketing now? The internet demographic is changing. In the past it was just teenagers and 20-somethings. But this is changing quickly. For every year that goes by, consumers are becoming more comfortable with integrating web-surfing into their daily routines. More consumers are watching television online which means less couch-potatoes and more internet-potatoes. What does this mean for brand awareness? It means that it’s just not enough anymore to barrage the traditional marketing channels to trigger buying impulses from consumers.  If one looks at Nike as a brand. It is treating the Internet the same way they are treating the rest of their marketing plan. As a company it sells its products to consumers through a broad distribution chain and over the next 10 years they must develop a diverse body of Internet marketing campaigns that pivot on well designed product-centric sites, not company-centric ones. Can a leading brand be wrong ?   Fergal Maher MBS in Marketing, FMIIGrad, Dip. in Strategic Marketing                                 Managing Director Strategic Marketing Consultants Limited Rathangan Co. Kildare www.strategic-ireland.com

Strategic Planning/Objective Setting If you were to read a book about business strategy or strategic planning, more likely than not marketing would be seen as a subset or element of business planning. So why does Artefact go the other way, and why bring it into the Strategic Marketing Model after the brand development process? The answer to that is that it is best to conceive of a business entirely as an exercise in marketing. No business is just about making – there’s no point in making unless you plan to market what you make. Equally, nobody will give much thought to marketing without first having some ideas about what he/she is capable of bringing to market. So the general process goes something like this: * There’s a market for hand-knitted sweaters* I can knit sweaters* I’ll develop some designs I think might sell* I’ll put a business plan in place Now that might not be the textbook way, but it’s the way things develop for most people, so this is a good time to think about business planning. Let’s run through the essential things you need to know, but first let’s consider exactly why it is essential to know them. Why Planning is Important Your plan is your blueprint. By typing it out you force yourself to express in a way that should make sense to you and other people what may be an internalised and not necessarily well thought through business idea. You will normally have a general objective in mind (eg. make a lot of money selling that new software program you’ve written). Clearly, you have to get specific, so you might need to write specific objectives like ‘develop, package and sell 500 copies at €100 within 6 months’. That’s better. You will normally have a number of specific objectives, some of them operational, some of them marketing, some of them financial. Now you are really getting down to what has to be done. You also begin to see what is realistic. You also begin to see the need for some strategies – like, I’ll need to produce regular upgrades because the applications with which you use this software keep advancing. And since there’s competition out there, you may need to think about tactics. Your objectives, strategies and tactics can also be further informed if you take the trouble of doing a SWOT analysis. That means trying to fully: * Analyse your Strengths, so as to build on them* Analyse your Weaknesses, so as to address them* Analyse your Opportunities, so as to grasp them* Analyse your Threats, so as to defend against them The exercise in setting objectives, strategies and tactics means nothing unless you translate them into specific action plans and then implement these actions. So having a plan brings visionary ideas down to earth, exposing flaws and suggesting fixes, bringing realism and breaking nebulous grand plans down into actionable bite-size chunks. It gives you a starting place and a sequence to follow. It focuses your effort and prevents you from being distracted and blown off course by every new thing that comes along. A business without a plan is like a boat without a rudder. But don’t be a slave to your plan either. The plan is there to serve you, not the other way around. It should be flexible and you should be able to change and update it in the light of experience and in response to the changing environment General Objectives You may choose to set one or a few general objectives. Some like to begin with a Mission Statement. There’s not a lot of difference. What we are talking about is the most broadly stated description of what your business wants to achieve and how. By stating – “Our mission is to make and sell the world’s most advanced professional website analysis software to corporations everywhere” – already you have put some boundaries on what you are about so if Amazon wants you to be an affiliate, you’ll probably say no thanks – that would distract us from what we are about! You could break the mission statement down into a few general objectives. That would be most likely relevant where you are in a few distinct product/market situations, so you would have a general objective for your tax computation software and another for your Alaskan dog sled tour operation (speaking of which – only the lead dog gets to see what’s coming up next, so try to be a leader in whatever you do!) Specific Objectives To get towards an actionable plan, you will want to break your general objectives into a number of specific objectives. Specific objectives should be statements about the key things you want to achieve, You could group these under a few key headings such as * development objectives (eg. have an upgrade for product X ready for market within 12 months)* administration/operational objectives (e.g. install new accounting system by year end)* sales and marketing objectives (20 new customers per month, €100,000 sales by December 31)* financial objectives ( €50,000 profit this year and 20% growth for each succeeding year) Try to be comprehensive. It is highly unlikely that you would have only one or two objectives under each heading. Strategies/tactics Objectives come before strategies. Objectives are about what you want to do; strategies are about how you are going to go about it. While you could skip straight from objectives to action plans, it’s often a good idea to spend some time thinking about strategies. Some environmental analysis, competitor analysis, SWOT analysis and the like means that rather than charging right in, you think about the best route to take. So give it some thought, but don’t get stuck in the mire. Paralysis by analysis is a danger and often people use endless analysis as an excuse not to do anything. Action Plans These are the nuts and bolts of the plan. They are detailed statements of exactly what actions you are going to

How do you react when your customer does you the favour of complaining? The favour? Why not, it’s a marketing opportunity. A positive attitude to dealing with complaints shows that you are listening to your customers’ views, prepared to learn from mistakes and determined to improve your service. Like all businesses that want to be successful, you would prefer not to have complaints since they are telling you that something is wrong. But if something is wrong, it’s better to know and have the opportunity to get it right. And no matter how good your business there will sometimes be a problem. How you deal with that situation – how you react to a complaint says a great deal more about you and your attitude to your customers than all the smiles you can muster when making the sale in the first place. It’s easy to be pleasant and attentive when everything is going well. It’s not easy for customers to complain. Most bad service persists because they are so slow to do it. Sure there is always a minority of cranks who’ll complain about anything but for most people it’s uncomfortable. In a restaurant, you probably often just put up with a steak that is not cooked just right rather than make a fuss, and if you do decide to send it back you feel apologetic about it, almost as if it was your fault! Instead of staying mad people are really grateful when, instead of making a big deal about it, you act quickly and willingly to solve a problem, replace a faulty item, produce a better steak or whatever. When you receive complaints, then, do you treat the information as valuable feedback? Free market research, what can be wrong with that? Although focussing a little on complaints here, this page is really about all feedback you receive, positive or negative. As your business grows, it’s a good idea to have a complaints/feedback system in place. Here are some of the things your system should be. Go through this checklist and examine your conscience – are there any respects in which you are failing to maximise the marketing opportunity that resides in effectively handling complaints and feedback. A complaints/feedback system should be: * Genuinely committed to.This means that you formalise, write down and make available to customers your policy on dealing with complaints, making it clear that you accept the right of customers to give feedback and if necessary make complaints, asking for their help to enable you to provide a better product/service. That is so empowering for a customer, and so good for your business. * Accessible.It should be clear and easy to access and use. No bureaucracy, complicated forms, passing the problem around from one to another. Make it your policy that the first one to hear a complaint owns it and is responsible for getting it dealt with. * Effective and Fair.Sometimes it may not be clear who is at fault. So have a clear and fair investigation process for such cases. Since there’s no point in making a facility to complain available unless you can then effectively deal with the issues, so you need to resource the system adequately. People with responsibility to resolve complaints must have the authority and the means to do so. * Geared to learning.Recording, categorising and regularly reviewing the feedback received and putting in place the necessary measures to address the issues raised is crucial. The point of a complaints/feedback system is twofold – to give a professional customer service, and to learn how to give an even better one in the future. Here are ten tips for dealing with complaints we found on a UK Cabinet Office Website on ‘SERVICE FIRST, the new charter programme’ : 1. Keep it simple – avoid long forms 2. Use the phone more – don’t automatically send a letter 3. Find out straight away what the person complaining wants you to do about the problem 4. For less serious complaints, a quick apology is better than a long letter. 5. Give personal and specific replies – a standard reply will only make things worse 6. Follow the ‘mother’ principle – treat people as you’d like your mother to be treated 7. Don’t pass the buck. If you do need to refer a customer to someone else, make sure you give the customer full details 8. be clear what remedies you can offer 9. Let your customers know about improvements made as a result of their complaints 10. And remember – more complaints can be good news! it shows that your customers trust you to take them seriously If you have any complaints about Artefact Ltd, I would be happy to hear them! Wil LyonsManaging DirectorArtefact Ltdwil@artefact.ie

Why spec work doesn’t work? Most professional designers prefer not to work on spec (unless they are desperate for work 🙂 They feel their portfolio should speak for itself. Times are tough. Good work is hard to come by. A prospect calls. They’re interested in working with you, but first they want you to come up with a design or two. No pay, of course, but that may come later. We feel that being asked by a client to commit our people, time are resources to develop designs – what is essentially free work, is unethical and time-wasting for all parties. Any agencies who do this generally do not put their best people on the job, and often leave it to inexperienced juniors or those who are often on a work-experience. We wouldn’t dream of asking a lawyer or a builder to work speculatively. We know what the answer would be! It’s the same reason we do not generally enter government tenders for work (which are generally unfair to smaller agencies), but rather provide proposals and quotations. Free pitching is not the best way to choose a design firm. The process keeps designers from client and forces them to make significant guesses at the requisite diagnosis and prescription that precedes design, and it eliminates real collaboration. It trades a likelihood of a positive outcome (x) for a greater number of far lower likelihoods (5(.2x)). It feels like risk dilution but is not. In agreeing to free pitch, the design agency gives up far more than their ideas; he sacrifices the ability to do their best work. The thinking that brings value to design is not something that is easily delivered in a free pitch. Getting to it requires an investment on the part of the client, and a willingness to let the consultant lead the engagement. Clients simply cannot invest with two, three or twelve firms at once, and if they haven’t paid fairly, they’re not really committed to the process. Being a good designer is not enough to ensure business success. The most effective designers are also effective consultants. What separates them from the rest is the thinking that precedes and wraps the design, their ability to lead the engagement, to mitigate risk for the client and to consistently lead the client to high-quality outcomes. Better clients pay a significant premium for this and always will. Design uncoupled from these advisory services is a product that is approaching commodity status. Sometimes people just need something designed. Quickly, cheaply, nicely. In a market overflowing with sellers, buyers will get this need met but our experience is that ‘often the cheapest purchase costs the most in the long term’. There is no mass defection of good clients with decent budgets who value what expert design and brand consultation can do for their sales. These are the smart ones who are usually at the top of their game. When a client requests spec creative, he/she does should know that the very best likely will not participate. Clients do not need to be saved from themselves by designers on the free pitching issue. Clients might chose to seek better ways to hire a design firm, and designers might seek to better understand how their decisions contribute to the free pitching problem. Procurement professionals should be discouraged by the professional associations that accredit them from asking any vendor for free products or services as a means of hiring evaluation. The procurement profession can have a positive role to play instead of furthering the commoditisation of the product they are buying and driving unnecessary costs into the process. They possess the power to lead clients and forge progress on this issue. That same company would probably never dream of asking a lawyer to write them a contract for free. Designers are professionals, just like a lawyer. It takes time to design a logo, a Website, a brochure, and designers deserve to be paid for their time. Design time disappears into a black hole. Since there’s no contract setting boundaries, client wants to get it “just right” and can demand virtually unlimited revisions, for free! In the meantime, designer could be spending those extra hours marketing their business and making real money. While substantial progress is possible, there is no happy ending for everybody. Market forces will prevail. Design firms will be pushed out of business. Designers will be forced into other careers if unenlightened clients continue to ask for speculative work – often when they already know who they are going to work with before they ask for the pitch from a number of agencies. The smarter, better firms (like Artefact) will rise above and let the others squabble while we continue to win projects without free pitching.

Should I Publish an Annual Report?Annual reports are not only beneficial to large, publicly traded corporations. Armed with an understanding of what an annual report can accomplish, small businesses stand to gain similar benefits by publishing annual reports of their own. As a small business owner, you may be wondering if you should publish an annual report for your business like the ones publicly traded corporations are required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to publish. You’ve likely seen them before: elegantly designed annual reports produced by major public corporations that contain financial information and interesting stories about people and events pertinent to the corporations and their industries. Annual reports are not, however, beneficial only to large, publicly traded corporations. Armed with an understanding of what an annual report can accomplish, small businesses stand to gain similar benefits by publishing annual reports of their own. The Purpose of Annual ReportsWhile publicly traded corporations are required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to publish an annual report, small businesses also may benefit from the practice of publishing an annual report. In addition to regulatory compliance, other reasons for publishing such a report include: Overview of recent financial performance. An annual report provides readers with a look at your business’s financial performance in the past year.Marketing and promotional use. A small business annual report can double as a marketing and promotional vehicle for your business, effectively reaching prospective customers as well as potential investors and creditors.Management strategy and goal setting. The business annual report lets owners and management take a step back and see the past year in a big picture perspective. This can provide invaluable information to assist in evaluating current strategies and formulating future goals.Building trust. Whether it’s prospective customers, suppliers, or employees—or potential creditors, or investors—a professionally designed annual report containing relevant and quality content has the ability to build the trust necessary to attract potential stakeholders to your business. What to Include in an Annual ReportSo you’ve decided you’re going to take your small business to the next level and put together an annual report. Should the annual report you publish contain the same type of information presented in the annual reports of much larger companies? And what are some common components of annual reports? Because the small business annual report is looking to gain the same benefits from publishing an annual report that publicly traded corporations do, one strategy for putting together a compelling annual report for your business is to examine the annual reports published by larger corporations. While there are certain components that are common to most annual reports, such as the presence of key financial statements, other components will vary from report to report. Here are some ideas to get you started: Financial statements. In order to provide annual report readers with key information about a business’s financial performance in the past year, annual reports include basic financial statements, such as a balance sheet, an income statement, and a cash flow statement. These financial reports help to give readers the data necessary to gauge the financial health and performance of your business. This is particularly important if your business is looking to obtain credit or attract investors.Recent business accomplishments. Annuals reports often highlight recent goals and milestones achieved by your business. Whether it’s reaching a distribution goal or attaining a marketing target, providing this kind of information in your annual report makes your business more appealing to current and potential stakeholders alike.Features about your people. The annual report is also a good place to shine a spotlight on the people working within your business. Stories about awards won by employees—and even positive human interest stories about key personnel—can help to enhance the overall picture of your business that an annual report provides to its readers.Creating an annual report also will provide a useful record of the growth and development of your small business over time. In addition to raising your company’s overall professionalism, an annual report can provide valuable insights not only to you but also to all of your business’s constituents: customers, investors, and employees alike. Whether your small business is producing an annual report for state compliance (where required) or you’re considering a more comprehensive form of annual reporting, involve appropriate financial and marketing professionals early in the process. You also use our service to assist with creating compliance-related documents, to give you greater peace of mind.