Jimmy Warren

Healthcare Marketing: Media Consumption has Shifted in Politics too!

For the two political conventions TV viewership was down and social media usage was up.

The recently completed Republican and Democratic political conventions revealed the dramatic changes occurring in media usage.   Television viewership plunged, depending on the night, from 25-40% from 2008.  And according to Nielsen the television audience was decisively older with very low number for viewers 18-34.  There were ten times more viewers 55 or older than 18-34.

But on the other hand, social networks and online saw a dramatic increase from the conventions just four years ago.  Several news organizations offered live streaming feeds online and both parities saw significant traffic on their respective YouTube channels.   The two conventions have also been one of the most talked about events of the year on Facebook.  But even there, the audience trended older.  Twitter was perhaps the biggest winner among social media options.  Where information is shared in increments of 140 words or less, Twitter only registered 365,000 tweets between the two conventions in 2008.  But this year the Republican convention alone drew 5 million tweets.  About 14,300 a minute during Romney’s acceptance speech, according to Beth Fouhy of the Associated Press.

These numbers just confirm what is obvious.  Media consumption is dramatically changing.  Now consumers are not tied to their living rooms and a TV set for news and information.  With laptops, tablets and smartphones, consumers can gather information wherever they are.  On demand.  Media consumption occurs anyplace online access is available.  And the information is often gathered by consumers in small increments of time and bits of information and not necessarily long format like a 3-4 hour convention coverage on television.

For healthcare marketers, it doesn’t tell us that traditional media is no longer effective, but that we must consider and explore other non-traditional mediums to be relevant and reach a broader audience.  And that is especially true if we want to reach the younger audience.  Only a few healthcare organizations have a marketing staff large enough to have a presence everywhere but every organization should be active in one or two.  Choose the one(s) that could be most effective for your brand and for which you can develop a good competency and consistent use and go for it. 

We might not have learned much from watching and listening to the conventions on whatever medium we used to consume them, but one thing we did confirm is that consumer media consumption is indeed shifting.  And we must embrace it.

Healthcare Marketing: Humanize Your Hospital’s Brand

Humanizing your brand by giving it a personality, making it personable and telling a narrative connects with consumers.

Every healthcare marketer tries to connect their brand with consumers.  It is an ongoing, endless task.  Of course we know that humanizing a brand improves connectivity.  And research supports it.

Emily Eldridge, writing for MarketingProfs cites research that demonstrates how human interaction affects attitudes and transactions.

Iris Bohnet and Bruno Frey conducted an economic research study in 1999 called “Social Distance and Other-Regarding Behavior in Dictator Games.” Two groups of students were recruited to participate in a series of social interactions in which members of the first group had to decide whether to share any portion of a sum of money—approximately $10—with a person in the second group.

When the first group knew nothing at all about those in the second group, participants offered, on average, only 26% of the money. When the moderators asked the second group to stand up—making them less anonymous to the first group—the offer increased to 39%. When the moderators shared personal information about those in the second group with those in the first, the average offer increased to 52%. And when members of the groups were introduced to one another, the average offer was 50%.

In other words, the greater the social distance, the less willing people were to hand over money.

This can teach a valuable lesson to hospital marketers.  If our brand is humanized, it connects better with consumers.  It’s important that our brand not be cold, inanimate, and without important human traits and characteristics.  Our brand should have a personality. It must be personable. It must make a human connection.

Eldridge refers to two examples of retailers who have a strong personal connection with consumers and how it positively impacts their brand reputation and gives it increased brand equity.  The first example is Apple.  Their retail stores are not a row of cashiers. Rather when you enter their stores, in addition to a strong visual connection to the brand, they have easily identifiable employees with mobile cashier platforms ready to interact and help customers.   They are knowledgeable and will explain the benefits of each product, help with your issues and even tell you personal stores about the products.

Apple is known for its sleek innovative products.  But they also carry a premium price.  But despite a higher price, they continue to increase market share.  One reason is because they have humanized the Apple brand.  They connect with the consumer.

Another example is an online brand.  How can you humanize an online brand?  Zappos.com places on its product pages videos of employees talking about why he or she likes the product.  The videos are not about product specs but people telling their stories about the product.  When Zappos launched the videos in 2009, their conversion rate increased from 6% to 30%.  They humanized the brand with narratives.

The lesson for healthcare marketers is that we must humanize our brand.  Make them personable.  It doesn’t matter how nice our hospital is or what kind of technology we have, we must connect on a personal level.  Maybe that comes by using patients, physicians, and staff members to tell their stories about the brand.  Making it real, and genuine and personable.  It provides an important and engaging brand narrative.

There are other ways to make that human connection.  We should always strive to find them and use them.  Our brand will become stronger as we close the gap of social distance.  As we humanize our brand.

Healthcare Marketing: 10 New Social Media Tips

Social media is not easy.  It’s not like traditional media.  It’s requires a new way of thinking.

Mashable interviewed OMD Word’s U.S. Director, Colin Sutton who offered his top 10 social media tips for brands.  Those tips are summarized here.

1.    Don’t Be An Island

Traditional and digital media should be coordinated into an integrated campaign.  If you are planning a social media campaign that’s not connected to the rest of your communications, marketing and media plans, then rethink it.

2.    It’s A Brave New World – Accept It

Don’t treat social media like traditional campaigns.  Social networks connect you with customers across multiple devices and media through two-way communications.

 3.    Listen Up  – And Not Just At The End Of the Campaign

What you hear is important.  It should impact planning, and execution.  It should dictate your marketing moves.

4.    Connect The Dots To Win

Content is king and media is amplification.  Make sure everyone is on the same page and working together.

5.    Goals Can Unite And Ignite Your Efforts

Identify the most desired social actions.  Agree on the goals and determine how you are going to measure them.

 6.    Benchmark Relentless

If there are past campaigns use the data to set benchmarks.  If it’s the first campaign compare against similar campaigns by competitors.

7.    Long-Term Value Is Paramount

Meaningful experiences drive long-term relationships and build advocacy.

8.    Understand All of the Social Channels You Are Targeting

Understand how each channel works and how customers live and breathe there.

 9.    Optimize Ruthlessly and Intelligently 

Collect data, understand it and optimize it.

10.    Think About Eyes, Minds and Wallet When You Are Evaluating Success

Success is more than the value of earned media.   It’s also about perception.  Consider the consumer’s minds and hearts when measuring perception.

Most healthcare marketers are still trying to learn how best to use social media, if at all.   With few exceptions, most don’t have a vast amount of social experience.  But we can minimize our mistakes and maximize our effectiveness by learning from others who have more experience.  That’s why these tips can be very valuable to healthcare marketers.

Healthcare Marketing: 5 Ways to Cultivate Your Hospital’s Brand with Social Media

Your brand must be an integral part of your social media strategy.

More healthcare marketers are adopting social media as a component of their marketing efforts.  But it must reflect our brand.  Social media provides the opportunity to humanize the brand and empower it. 

Heidi Cohen identified five tactics for using social media to cultivate a brand and expand its reach.  Her comments appeared in SmartBlog on Social Media.

1.    Give your brand a human voice (or other sounds) on social media.

A brand can be humanized by how it sounds.  Corporate speak doesn’t resonate with consumers. Instead, consider your brand’s language, accent and other noises.  Sound like a human.

2.    Enhance the visual signals associated wit your brand.

Carefully consider colors, images, icons, type and photographs to make sure they enhance your brand and communicate the brand’s personality.

3.    Tell your brand’s story.

Brands aren’t a collection of facts or products or services.  They’re about stories.  Stories of the company, employees and customers told in a human voice.  Give your brand a personality.  Create with stories.

4.    Develop and incorporate a culture into your brand.

A unique corporate culture is important to community building.  Create a special language, actions and attributes to set your brand apart from the competition.

5.    Brand your employees.

Brands need real people to represent their organization.  It provides a human face.  It builds trust and sincerity. Brand employees and let employees project the brand.

Social media can be very useful to hospital marketers.  And it’s important to let your brand shine through in those social media efforts.  Social media is a unique opportunity to humanize your brand, to create a brand personality and to connect your brand to your consumers.

 

 

Healthcare Marketing: Biggest Challenge Keeping the Pace

The changing and fracturing of the media landscape is the biggest challenge and the greatest opportunity for marketers.

In a poll of marketers, 41% named the growth of marketing channels and devices as their biggest challenge.  Other challenges that top the list are customer collaboration and influence, financial constraints and ROI accountability.  These were findings of IBM in a survey of marketing professionals, The State of Marketing 2012.

The continued fracturing of the media landscape makes it increasingly difficult to reach consumers in large numbers.  Integration of marketing and information technology are now required over a multitude of channels.

The same report indicated that marketers are turning their attention to mobile.  Mobile is viewed as the next big opportunity as a larger share of the population own and is dependent on mobile phone devices.

Traditional media is not dead.  But marketing effectiveness in the future will include the integration of campaigns over across numerous channels  – especially mobile and social.

Healthcare marketers that I know share the same challenges and concerns indicated in the survey.  It is more difficult to reach a mass audience. And to truly have effective reach in the future there will have to be integration over both traditional and non-traditional mediums.  Social media will have to be included and mobile websites, applications, email and messaging will increasing become important.

There will continue to be great challenges for healthcare marketers.  But also great opportunities.

Healthcare Marketing: Google Buys Into Newspaper Advertising

Google buys a newspaper ad to show why newspaper ads don’t work

In a most interesting irony, Google bought an ad in the Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper to advertise its search-advertising business, which is in direct competition with newspaper advertising.  The point was to show that newspaper advertising doesn’t work.  Well if that’s true, why make your point in a newspaper ad?

Lauren Indvik posted the ad on mashable.com after it was tweeted by reporter Steve Ladurantaye with the caption, “An ad for Google ads in today’s Globe demonstrates the value of print ads, yes?”

The ad asks, “You know who needs a haircut?  People searching for a haircut.”  And then adds, “Maybe that’s why ads on Google work.”

What an ingenious marketing approach!  Reach newspaper readers to convince them newspaper advertising doesn’t work.  But if Google really thinks newspaper advertising doesn’t work why waste money trying to make their point there?  And even more amusing, they included a promotional offer in the ad.

So what does this have to do with hospital advertising?  Not much really.  It’s just ironic and funny.  And proves that sometimes as hard as marketers try to make a point, their strategies end up making the opposite point altogether.  Sometimes unintended consequences can doom even the most creative and unique ideas.

 

Healthcare Marketing: Yesterday’s SEO Strategies No Longer Effective

Google’s algorithm changes place more emphasis on social engagement rather than technology and tricks.

For years, healthcare marketers have tried to understand the basics of Google’s search engines and their algorithms.  How does it work?  How can we optimize search results for our brand?  How can we get higher organic placement than our competitors?  A lot of work and effort has gone into this endeavor.  Many marketers have paid specialists large sums of money to try to manipulate the system in favor of their brand.

But recent Google updates, code-named Panda and Penguin, have placed the emphasis squarely on quality content, originality and overall user experience.    Veronica Fielding, CEO of Digital Brand Expressions, writing for Fast Company outlined some of the changes and stated “the updates contained very clear messages for marketers: stop focusing on technology and tricks and start focusing on people.  If your website appeals to people, it will appeal to Google’s algorithms too.”

As Fielding points out, the search engines place value in other things in addition to the website.  There is now an emphasis on what’s happening in social media channels.  There is an increased importance on social conversations.  And social activity influences how the brand is viewed and how their website should rank.

Brands can no longer depend on optimizing their website to catch Google’s attention.  Now a brand must be having conversations, going where people are and engaging them.  This is what the Google search engines like.

As healthcare marketers we have been lead into the social media arena so we can have meaningful conversations and build relationships.  As if that reason alone is not enough incentive, now such activity also affects how we are found and ranked by search engines.  That means there are several new strategies for improving our organic search ranking.  And they involve social media.  Now there are even more reasons to utilize social media in our marketing efforts.

1.    Facebook

Rather than just having a Facebook page, for search results it’s important to engage consumers.  Information on our Facebook page should be relevant and interesting.  There should be dynamite conversations between your brand and consumers.  This requires quality content.

2.    Twitter

Tweet about topics of interest.  Not just trying to push our hospital or health organization but providing useful and helpful information.  The kind that will be re-tweeted.

3.    YouTube

Upload shareable videos onto your YouTube site.  Again, videos that are useful.  Vides that will be watched and shared.  Note also that Google owns YouTube.  Enough said.

4.    LinkedIn

A brand profile with recommendations and referrals is a strong component of brand optimization on the web.  Company pages are now public and feature status updates.

5.    Other social media options.

Other popular social media options are helpful too.  Pinterest, Google+ and other sites will contribute to brand optimization.

“All this social media activity works to create engagement around the brand by what has always mattered to search engines most: people,” added Fielding.

So when we ask how we can improve search results for our brand, with the changes by Google, we must provide quality content, but in a way and in venues that will lead to relevant conversations and consumer engagement.

Healthcare Marketing: 6 Recommendations for a Social Media Policy

The National Labor Relations Board issues guidelines for social media in the workplace. 

The NLRB may not be the ultimate authority on social media for healthcare marketers but their recommendations can be very helpful.  After reviewing social media policies of businesses, they discovered that many businesses were risking infringing on employee free speech and labor rights and issued guidelines and recommendations.

Mikal Belicove reported some of the agency’s findings in an article for Entrepreneur.  Here are six recommendations that should guide a hospital’s social media policy.

1.    Know and follow the rules. 

Employees should be encouraged to read and understand the social media policy.  The policy should clearly indicate what is not appropriate and what will not be tolerated in regard to the use of social media.

2.    Be respectful.

The policy should state that employees are expected to be “fair and courteous to fellow associates, customers, members, suppliers or people who work on behalf of the employer.”

3.    Be honest and accurate.

Never post anything based on rumor or assumption.  Make sure all posts are accurate and true.

4.    Post only appropriate and respectful content

Always be respectful and maintain confidentiality.  Never represent yourself as a company spokesperson or speak for the company unless specifically authorized.

5.    Use social media at work for only work related activities.

Don’t use company equipment and time for personal messaging.

6.    Don’t engage the press.

Don’t speak to the press or engage the press in any social media activity without prior approval.

Certainly this is not an exhaustive list for a social media policy but it’s helpful in regard to what’s permissible without restricting employees’ work-related rights.

Healthcare Marketing: Social Media… “Take my advice.”

The number one piece of advice offered by marketers about social media is “Build relationships.”

As healthcare marketers continue to engage consumers with social media, it’s always good to heed the advice of others.   Regina Wood conducted an online poll on LinkedIn of 300 marketers and asked what’s the most important piece of advice they had for social media.  The results were published in Healthcare Communication News.

The results were:

  • Build relationships with your followers (57 percent)
  • Have a personality (20 percent)
  • You can’t control your message (7 percent)
  • Have a crisis plan in place (6 percent)
  • Other (9 percent)

And some other pieces of helpful advice the respondents shared:

1. “If you don’t have anything valuable and positive to say, don’t.”

2. “You can never take it back!”

3. “Be consistent—don’t just tweet or post for a couple of days and then decide it doesn’t work for you!”

4. “Use social media for professional purposes only. Keep personal specifics to a minimum so you’re never embarrassed by anything on internet.”

5. “Good manners will serve you well in your interactions.”

6. “If your post has any potential to embarrass you at all—no matter how infinitesimal—it will; the Internet is forever.”

7. “Set a time limit.”

8. “Don’t venture out until you’ve tidied your room. In other words, your company website needs to be in good enough shape so that when you’re out there drumming up attention for yourself on social media and people come looking, your site gives them a reason to stay.”

All of these are handy pieces of advice.  Let the wise take notice.

Healthcare Marketing: Five More Social Media Mistakes

Social media mistakes damage reputations and brands.  Learn from the mistakes of others.

Although not specifically directed to healthcare and hospital marketers, an article written by A.J Ghergich, CEO of Authority Domains, and appearing in SmartBlogs from SmartBrief offers some very helpful comments about mistakes brands involved in social media should avoid.  The article is repeated here in its entirety.

Imagine you built up a vast social media following — but because of one small oversight, your reputation started to crumble right before your eyes. Sadly, this scenario is not that farfetched, because some businesses leap into the social media arena without understanding how to maintain a relationship with their customers while avoiding some obvious pitfalls.

By studying some mistakes by other companies that have resulted in negative exposure, you can learn how your business can avoid a similar fate. Here are five easy-to-avoid mistakes.

  • Being crass about current events. Last year, designer Kenneth Cole used the publicity of an international crisis in Cairo to post about his products. He even used the hashtag #Cairo to try to build buzz and reach others who were searching for tweets on the crisis. The reaction was so strong that you won’t find Kenneth Cole’s old Twitter account anymore. It has been replaced. Reacting to current events can be plus for your brand, but consider how some people might react if it looks like you’re trying to capitalize on a very serious situation. Be respectful and tread lightly when talking about current events. Take a minute to put yourself in another person’s shoes and ask how your post could be perceived. It’s possible that if Kenneth Cole had taken a few extra minutes to think through his tweet, he may have decided not to publish it.
  • Getting too personal. Be careful when posting personal content, whether or not you feel it is valuable. Your customers consider your social accounts the face of your brand. Bob Parsons, Go Daddy founder, posted a video of his trip to Zimbabwe on his blog. In the video, Parsons told the audience how he kills elephants because they damage crops, which endangers the lives of the starving locals. After Parsons published the video, the media outlets ran with the story, and some customers boycotted Go Daddy and its services. Though Parsons explained the story in more detail, the damage had already been done. Regardless of whether Parsons was doing a good deed, this type of personal content is not appropriate for customers. Occasional personal content is effective for creating connections with your customers, but keep it light and don’t antagonize people.
  • Being spammy. Resist the temptation to capitalize on the popularity of another company to promote your products. Habitat UK tried to take advantage of the trending topics #Apple, #iPhone and others to acquire some traffic. Unfortunately, the strategy backfired because the tweets had nothing to do with Apple computers or any of its products. Tweeters posted negative messages to Habitat UK’s account, complaining about its “spammy” behavior. Your customers are not stupid. They know when you are trying to manipulate the system. Stay genuine, and don’t piggyback on other companies’ successes. It will only make you look desperate.
  • Putting your account in the wrong hands. The people who tweet or posts on your company’s behalf have the fate of your company’s image in their hands. What they post could potentially damage your reputation. Invest enough resources into finding the right people who will put their opinions aside and prioritize the integrity of your company. Ensure your social media managers understand the essence of your company culture and how you want your brand portrayed.
  • Pretending your mistake didn’t happen. If you ever make a mistake, own up to it and apologize. Your customers will respect you for admitting your mistakes and you can save your brand from any negative backlash. People forgive transparent mistakes much more than they excuse complete denial.

Like all marketers, those in healthcare would be wise to learn from the types of mistakes mentioned and not repeat them.