Content marketing involves creating and sharing content that attracts and interests your target audience. The goal is to create high quality content that your audience will find valuable. When done right, it can convert prospects to patients or clients.
If you’re thinking of using content to attract patients and clients, it’s a great decision. By providing your audience with useful and relevant content, they are more likely to engage with you, share the content with their family and friends, and return for more. Not only will it capture the attention of your target audience, it will also help you build your credibility and position yourself as an industry leader.
As compared to other sectors, the healthcare market has shown a slow adaption rate when it comes to content marketing. By implementing a content strategy now, you’ll have less competition in your industry and get ahead of your competition.
Here are 5 content marketing ideas for your practice.
Blogging for Health and Wellness Practices
There may be lots of content out there, but they will never be enough to satisfy our thirst for knowledge.
Blogs are a great way to share new and relevant information while attracting new visitors to your stie. But before you start putting your content strategy into action, it is important that you know your audience well. The more effort you put into understanding your audience, the better you’ll be able to cater to their needs.
Keep your audience in mind when writing your content. Capture their attention by choosing topics they actually want to read about. If you’re a pediatrician, you can use your blog to offer insightful advice to parents, establish relationships with your audience, and attract new patients.
Once your blog is up and running, you’ll be surprised at the opportunities it brings. Establish your authority as a thought leader and you’ll find your practice climbing to the top search results.
Interactive content for Medical Marketing
Content marketing doesn’t have to be a one-way conversation. Get your audience involved through interactive polls, quizzes, and challenges.
Let’s take UnitedHealthcare’s “We Dare You” campaign as an example. They were able to position themselves as a leading healthcare brand using this strategy. As part of their campaign, they provided their followers with quizzes and monthly challenges. The goal is to encourage people to make small changes and live healthier lives. Followers are then asked to share a photo of themselves performing that challenge.
“We Dare You” campaign received two silver awards – one for digital marketing and one for social media.
Patient spotlight series
Sharing patients’ stories and testimonials on your website is a great idea for the same reason Amazon user reviews are so powerful.
Unlike in retail industry, healthcare providers do not offer refund or “return services”. This is why patients conduct thorough research and read online reviews before booking an appointment with a healthcare provider. Without these reviews, you’ll be missing out on hundreds of new patients each year.
Make it easier for potential patients to choose you by shining a light on patient success stories. Patients trust other patients. And in success stories, you, your staff, and the facility are presented as capable. That’s what patients are looking for – a capable healthcare practitioner who can help them with their medical condition.
Video content in Healthcare Marketing
We don’t have to tell you how big video content is in today’s marketing world. People love videos. In fact, recent study shows that more than 500 million hours of videos are watched on Youtube every single day.
We believe that video would be an excellent marketing strategy for your health and wellness practice.
There is a wealth of video content ideas that you can explore – from sharing medical information to how-to videos.
If you’re a physical therapist, you can create a video series showing patients how to perform exercises at home. If you’re a yoga instructor, you can do some pose tutorials for different levels. Or talk about your personal experiences practicing yoga.
Infographics for Healthcare Data
People love information. But if you’re posting links to your blogs on social media, they might not even read them. Why? Because most people have a short attention span. They want to get the information they want without too much exerting too much effort. They want content that are easy to digest and understand. This is where infographics come in.
Infographics are more eye-catching than plain texts. They contain both photos and content, which naturally draw the eye. Infographics are also extremely shareable. Every click or share means more people seeing your content.
Overall, infographics are a fun, engaging medium that can generate a unique connection with your target market.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/5-Content-Marketing-Ideas-blog.png12602240Kathlyn Angeles-Timbolhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles-Timbol2020-08-19 14:22:382020-08-28 09:37:455 Content Marketing Ideas for Your Practice
Social media has become an integral part of many businesses’ marketing strategy. It helps you connect with your audience, increase awareness about your brand, and generate more business.
With so many social media platforms to manage and publish in, it’s important to have a plan and stay organized for what and when you’re going to share on each platform. Having a social media content calendar will make things a lot easier.
What is a social media content calendar?
A social media calendar is a document that is used to plan out and organize future content. It allows you to visualize how your marketing looks like in the coming weeks or months and tweak any scheduled posts as necessary.
Content calendars can come in several forms. It can be a spreadsheet, hand-written calendar or a software. The purpose of a social media calendar is to provide a framework for scheduling out when and which content will be published across different social media channels.
A content calendar do wonders for your business. Here are 5 reasons why you need a social media content calendar.
Save time
You need to post regularly for your business to benefit from social media. But we all know that managing multiple social media accounts can be challenging, not to mention time consuming.
The purpose of using a content calendar is to help you plan out content ahead of time and schedule posts across multiple channels at once. With an effective calendar, you can schedule content weeks or months ahead of time. You no longer have to worry about falling behind if you become too busy or if something comes up.
A content calendar will not only help alleviate some of the day-to-day stressors, but it can also help you reach your long-term business goals. Freeing up more time, you can now focus on more important aspects of the business.
Never forget important dates
Holidays and other important events offer excellent opportunities to create engaging content. With a hectic schedule, it can be easy for important dates to slip your mind. Missing important dates can represent a lost opportunity.
An organized calendar helps reduce the chaos of scrambling to post it on time. Taking note of future events, you’ll have enough time to create the best possible content for the occasion instead of just churning out content at the last minute.
Having a content calendar alleviates the fear of forgetting important dates. Plus, it ensures that your content is being published when your audience is active.
Plan and organize your social media marketing strategy
Providing your audience with relevant, informative, and entertaining content is the key to keep your audience engaged.
When posting on social media, you want it to be a mix of industry news, inspiring content, content from others, and your own content. Using a content calendar allows you to visualize your content strategy over time. You’ll have plenty of time to fill it with relevant topics that resonate with your audience.
Without effective planning, you may run the risk of posting a topic that you have already discussed a few weeks ago. A social media content calendar will help you keep things in check, so you can avoid such blunders.
Brainstorm ideas
Instead of making last-minute decisions about what types of content to publish, you’ll have the advantage of getting feedback from your team members.
Every piece of content start with ideas, and you’ll need a lot of them to fill your calendar. When you plan out your social media content in advance, teams from different departments can contribute ideas, make edits, and plan future content.
They can use their knowledge to fill the space with relevant content that is valuable to your audience. Hence, you can be sure that you’re putting out the best and most relevant content.
Turn chaos into harmony
Collaboration with team members often lead to fresh ideas and greater return on investment. However, it can also be tricky to pull off efficiently. It can be further complicated by remote work.
A social media content calendar is a great way to collaborate. It can serve as a communication tool for the whole team. This is where topics, ideas, contents, and dates are placed. It helps keep every member of the team on the same page and stay on track of publishing.
Having a central place for different teams across your organization to manage social media content allows for a much smoother implantation of your social media marketing agenda.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/5-Reasons-You-Need-a-Social-Media-Content-Calendar-1.png315560Kathlyn Angeles-Timbolhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngKathlyn Angeles-Timbol2020-06-10 10:20:512020-10-02 14:44:545 Reasons You Need a Social Media Content Calendar
Patient’s interest and behavior change during the holiday season. During this time of year, people are usually focused on shopping, office parties, and family gatherings. There may be a significant decrease in the number of patients, but that doesn’t mean that there’s less interest in health towards the rest of the year.
Stand out in marketing your practice and boost patient engagement with these holiday marketing tips.
“12 days” email series
“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is one of the most popular Christmas songs. During the holiday season, it is heard everywhere – TV commercials, shopping malls, school programs, and even church functions. Why not use it as an inspiration for your holiday email marketing campaign?
Email marketing is one of the best channels to help you stay top of mind and build a lasting relationship with your patients. During the holidays, it would be a great idea to create a “12 days” email series and send them to people on your email list.
You can create countdowns with a different daily message – remind people to book an appointment before the year ends, share healthy holiday recipes, and offer tips for staying healthy through the holidays.
Shine light on a worthy cause
The holiday season is the perfect time to focus on giving and gratitude. Aligning with a charitable cause will put your practice in a positive light and show your community what you value.
One of the best ways for you to get noticed this season is to turn the spotlight away from you and highlight a charity that you support. Participate in volunteer efforts that are relevant to your target patients. It helps you cast a wide net and position you as an expert.
Spread some holiday cheer by sponsoring a local charity event or a fundraiser. Encourage your audience to participate in the holiday giving campaign. You can offer a discount of a particular product or service in exchange for a gift donation. Your patients give back, needy kids get some gifts, and your practice gets more patients. It’s a win-win.
Hold a social media photo contest
Social media contests are great because they accomplish several marketing goals at once. When done properly and effectively, they can help you build a strong following, increase engagement, and really connect with your audience. With Christmas in the offing, it would be a great idea to run a contest that encapsulates this joyful festival.
If you’re a dentist, host a “show us your smile” photo contest with a holiday twist. Have participants submit pictures of their smiling kids on social media. Don’t forget to create a branded hashtag that you can use to collect all those photos.
The prize should be something that is relevant to your practice. For instance, you can offer free cleaning or teeth whitening.
By adding a bit of fun to your marketing campaign, you can convince your clients that they don’t have to dread a visit to your practice.
Film a holiday video
Humans are very visually oriented. Studies suggest that people find video content more interesting, more engaging, and more memorable as compared to other types of content.
Patients like healthcare providers who come across as gentle, kind, and human. Videos are a great way to show your human side and showcase your personality. The holidays are a great time to show off your holiday spirit and capture that cheer on video. You can create a short video to send your patients a warm, heartfelt message. If you are a pediatrician, you can dress up like Santa. Kids will love it.
Get creative and don’t forget to share your video on different social media channels.
Write holiday-related blog posts
This holiday season, you might want to share some tips and information that your audience would find valuable.
If you treat patients with diabetes, it is a good idea to provide tips on how to keep their weight and blood sugar levels under control during the holidays. If you’re a dermatologist, you can offer some skincare tips for winter or how to achieve healthy, glowing skin in time for their office party.
Since the majority of people check on their social media accounts on a daily basis, we highly recommend that you share them on your pages. Creating timely and relevant content increases the likelihood that your blog posts will be shared.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/5-Holiday-Marketing-Ideas-for-Your-Medical-Practice-social-media.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-12-16 18:24:112019-12-16 18:35:105 Holiday Marketing Ideas for Your Medical Practice
Healthcare is an ever-expanding, ultra-competitive marketplace. It can also be very technical and jargon-heavy, which can be off-putting to most people. To remain competitive in an ever-evolving industry, it is important to employ creative marketing tactics that cut through the clutter.
Take a look at these 6 successful healthcare marketing campaigns and start pondering how your company can leverage similar tactics.
Johnson & Johnson – Campaign for Nursing’s Future
Nurses are an incredibly dedicated group of professionals who tirelessly lend love and support to their patients. Unfortunately, in 2002, the U.S. faced the most profound shortage of nurses in history.
In response to reports of a dire shortage of nurses, Johnson & Johnson launched the “Campaign for Nursing’s Future”. It is a public awareness campaign that aims to encourage people to become nurses and nurse educators, as well as to retain nurses currently in the system.
The campaign not only helped increase the awareness of the value of the nursing profession, but it also gave nurses an opportunity to share their stories. 15 years after the campaign was launched, Johnson & Johnson profiled some of the nurses who benefited from this campaign.
Dana-Farber Brigham & Women’s Cancer Center – You Have Us Campaign
A cancer diagnosis can affect much more than the physical body. Dana-Farber Brigham & Women’s Cancer Center created a campaign to help empower patients who are dealing with cancer.
To encourage a more personal approach to cancer treatment, they created the slogan, “Right now you may have cancer. But what your cancer doesn’t know is – You Have Us.”
By sharing confidence-inspiring online videos and words of encouragement, the campaign made a tremendous impact on their audience.
The “You Have Us” campaign became successful because it built trust between the Cancer Center’s personnel and their target audience.
Dr. Sam Smith, Surgeon-in-Chief at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, shocked everyone with his claim that kids are more likely to get hurt, injured or die between Memorial Day and Labor Day.
The campaign’s purpose was to raise awareness of the dangerous time period between Memorial Day and Labor Day. They wanted to make sure that parents know the risks their children face during this season.
With the #100DeadliestDays, Arkansas Children’s Hospital provided a tip each day to help increase safety for kids and teens. They also shared some safety facts and other valuable information on their social media channels.
This campaign has been very successful and has received a lot of attention from the media and the public. It is memorable, worth sharing, and it also had the shock factor.
Many healthcare providers encourage their audience to adopt healthy habits, but UnitedHealthcare took it a step further by adding a social media element to their campaign.
The award-winning UnitedHealthcare Campaign, We Dare You, is a great example of a wellness campaign in action. Each month, there are new fun challenges and quizzes that are aimed at encouraging their followers to take the first step to a healthier lifestyle and then document it on social media.
The We Dare You Campaign is one of the most successful healthcare marketing campaigns, as it won 8 awards – 2 Healthcare Advertising Awards, 2 Hermes Awards, and an Aster Award.
When clinicians noticed that many women in Roanoke Valley were not getting mammograms, Carilion Clinic decided to launch the campaign, “YES MAMM, Say Yes to Your Annual Mammogram”. They also provided screening location throughout western Virginian.
The goal of this campaign is to raise awareness about breast cancer and the need for early detection. They used #YESMAMM to answer common questions about breast cancer from their audience. It also drove traffic to their website, where they urge women to make an appointment at one of their local labs.
#YESMAMM is a perfect example of the power of hashtags to start a movement. In fact, it is one of the most successful healthcare marketing campaigns. 8 years after the birth of the Yes Mamm campaign, Carilion Clinic is still getting kudos.
Nothing drives a message home like a well-told story. When they realized that patients wanted an outlet for telling their stories, New York Presbyterian Hospital harnessed the power of social media to share patients’ stories and connect with their target audience. They even created an entire video marketing strategy around this concept, and that’s something of a game-changer.
Patients’ stories and testimonies can trigger emotions of empathy. By showcasing raw stories on how doctors and nurses helped patients, the result is something even more potent than drugs: hope, trust, and peace of mind.
This marketing campaign creates a sensitive tone for patients while shining a positive light on the medical practitioners and the hospital’s reputation.
00:02 Amber Irwin: Hello. Welcome to Social Speak Network’s podcast, I am your host, Amber Irwin. Today, we’re gonna be covering six successful healthcare marketing campaigns that may be able to inspire you to create a new marketing campaign for your practice. The first one I wanna talk to you was about, is Johnson & Johnson. Back in 2002, there was actually a shortage of nurses. Nurses are one of the most dedicated professions out there. They work long shifts, they deal with a lot of people, and they always have the ups and downs of everyone else’s lives. So, when there was that shortage, Johnson & Johnson created this campaign for nursing’s future, so they wanted to create a group of professionals who tirelessly lend love and support to their patients and really wanted to give them that support that they needed, that the nurses were giving to everyone else.
01:13 AI: And so it really went public and people started becoming more and more aware of what Johnson & Johnson were doing in this campaign. And so now it’s become… Being able to educate nurses, give them a ton of different donations of where nurses are supporting the community. Really an educational platform, a community, that Johnson & Johnson has built for the nursing profession, to really be able to provide them value. So on here, you’ll see there’s personal stories, different ways that Johnson & Johnson’s caring and giving back to the community, where they’ve come from. And so this is a campaign that’s been on for a long time, 15 years, and which is amazing, for something to last and still going strong 15 years later. This is huge. And really, it’s because of their why. They saw a shortage in something. They saw an area where they can give back and be more than just a product company and really give back to their why, which was nurses and be able to provide a community for them. So that is huge.
02:36 AI: The next one I wanna talk to you guys about is the Dana-Farber/Brigham Women’s Cancer Center. What they have created here is really a slogan about; Right now, you may have cancer, but what your cancer doesn’t know is you have us. So it’s really about talking to the patient as an individual and helping them understand the journey and what they are going to need to overcome what is ahead of them. Cancer, that C word is a very scary thing, regardless of what type of cancer it is. So what they have been able to do is really play off of that relationship and that story and educating their patients on what’s gonna work best for them.
03:36 AI: So it’s to help them empower patients who are dealing with cancer and what does their future look like. So that slogan, right now, you may have cancer, but what your cancer doesn’t know is you have us. That shows the patient like they care about me. You can see on their home page, it’s, you have us. You’re not in this alone. We are here to help you every step of the way. And to me, that gives me the chill bumps, that really connects with, especially as a woman, so this connects with me. And so this campaign that they have created and the slogan, it’s so simple, “you have us” and those three words have gone viral with them, because this is people… They trust them, they’re creating that relationship with them, and so what they’ve been able to do is provide that support. So that’s a huge, just moment of, “Okay I’m not alone, I have this practice behind me, I can do this.” They’re empowering their patients and guiding them through this journey of having cancer. So that is amazing.
04:53 AI: The next one is an interesting blog. So the Arkansas Children’s Hospital wrote this blog, and it is 100 deadliest days for kids. Now this blog was published back in 2014 and the hashtag, #100DeadliestDays, this thing spread like wildfire, because just the title, 100 deadliest days for kids. Oh my goodness, what is it? So this was the doctor writing about. Now, through Labor Day, marks a time when kids are most likely to be injured. Whether that was a broken bone, they were sick, accidents happen, or worst-case scenario, they unfortunately had seen the most children’s deaths within this time frame.
05:48 AI: So, this was written in June of 2014. And this is something that the Arkansas Children’s Hospital has been able to incorporate into their digital marketing and something that they’re constantly sharing and reminding people, it gave a purpose to raise awareness to the dangerous time period of Memorial Day to Labor Day. They wanted to make sure that parents knew the risks and what children were facing within that time. You have to think, that’s obviously the summer, you’re traveling, sports, being outside. This is also, unfortunately, where you see kids being left in cars. This is where Arkansas Children’s Hospital really wanted to bring that information to their audience and let people be more aware of the summer season is a time you really pay attention to these safety tips and make sure that your children are okay.
06:56 AI: So, one thing that they could do each year is they could come in here and they could update this blog post. So it’s always showing new and you’ll see that a lot with… Especially with the digital marketing, Hubspot, CoSchedule, social media today. They’ll write a blog that was a few years old. And then they’ll say updated as of a certain date because this article was such a powerful piece for their digital marketing. I would just take it a step further and update it, make sure that the information is still correct. Maybe if there are stats in here, you wanna make sure that the stats are are still relevant to today’s date, but this campaign for them was a huge success on such a sad, touchy subject. So, education is really important for your digital marketing, and a blog post just like this can become its own digital marketing campaign.
08:00 AI: The next one is going to be United Healthcare, “We Dare You” campaign. And many health care providers encourage their audience to adopt healthy habits, but United Healthcare took it a step further by adding a social media element to their campaign. This was an award-winning campaign by the way. This is an example of wellness campaign in action. Each month, there were new fun challenges, quizzes that were aimed at encouraging their followers to take the first step to a healthier lifestyle and then document it on social media. So, one really cool thing about this campaign is when you tie in your social media and your audience, people love to show off what they’re doing and especially if you challenge them. Challenges are great for social media, especially in the health and wellness industry, because they wanna show you this is what I’m doing, this is how I’ve improved my life, this is my recipe, and this is how I’m staying active.
09:09 AI: And so the fact that they not only gave quizzes and create their own challenges, but then they wanted their audience to share with them. And so this was one of the most successful healthcare marketing campaigns. And it won eight awards, two Healthcare Advertising Awards, and that is just amazing, along with a few other awards, but this is something to really think outside the box. Now, this is a big company, United Healthcare is huge, we know that. But thinking of what your practice can do on a smaller scale. And we always say, it’s not the quantity of likes you have, it’s the quality. So if you have, let’s say 2000 likes, and of those 2000 likes, you’re getting between 600 and 800 people engaging on a monthly basis. That’s your loyal fan base. Take advantage of that loyal fan base and ask them to submit photos. Maybe you do a recipe competition, and you’re looking for the best Paleo recipe, the best Keto recipe, the best gluten-free recipe. Maybe within your practice you’re talking to your patients about these different types of a healthy lifestyle and you can tie in those conversations and those topics into your social media. So it marries the offline and the online together. So this was a great, great campaign. I love being able to see how many people were a part of it, all the awards that United Healthcare won, but it just makes you think, “Okay, let’s think outside the box.”
10:55 AI: The next one is the Caroline Clinic, and this was… They did a campaign that was all about #yesmamm, M-A-M-M. And this was all about their saying “Yes” to mammograms. So they wanted to make sure that women were taking care of their bodies, making sure that they were getting the annual mammograms or every three-year mammograms, based on what their doctor had said. They also provided screenings at that location throughout Western Virginia. So this is again something where they’re saying, “This is what we wanna help you with. Here’s how we’re gonna help you. This is what we believe in. This is what we want.” And so they had a pull-up their Facebook page. This was their campaign was this hashtag #yesmamm, M-A-M-M for mammograms. And the goal of the campaign was just really to raise awareness about breast cancer and the need for early detection, to educate their audience to really just understand how important it is for that preventative, for that checking and making sure that you are doing the right things and how to do the right things, et cetera. So this was a great campaign. I love being able to brand something that is to your target market that they can relate with. So that was huge. And it’s catchy, YesMamm. That’s what people wanna see.
12:43 AI: The last one is the New York Presbyterian Hospital. Their campaign was all about the patients and children’s stories. And nothing can sell a company better than patient testimonials. The stories behind the people that you serve, that you’ve helped. And that storytelling is such a big piece with digital marketing and marketing in general. This is why you see so many testimonials for info commercials. It’s those personal stories. It’s that, “Oh my gosh, I’m not alone. I dealt with that,” or “They’re just like me,” or “I’m not the only one,” whatever that is in our heads that’s playing. Being able to have patient stories is a huge piece of your digital marketing. And so what they’ve done is they’ve created a whole campaign showcasing raw stories on how the doctors and nurses had helped their patients, both adults and children. And the results… Something even more… What the patients were dealing with whether that was drugs, car accidents, sickness, they were able to tell their story, share how their experience was with New York Presbyterian Hospital, how the doctors help them and then what the result was. So because they came here, how was their life changed?
14:23 AI: And that’s the biggest thing, is they wanna know what’s that end goal and this shines such a positive light with their audience. And they actually had patients for adult stories and then also children stories. So they took it a step further to showcase what children are dealing with as well, and how they’ve been able to help them. So they have on their website to share your stories that will… Your experience. They wanna be able to shed that positive light and really be able to help other patients that are struggling with similar things. So, raw stories is just such an important piece and I wish that companies did more of this. And I know it’s something that’s… It’s a hard thing to do. One, you have to orchestrate that are you gonna… Is it gonna be a written testimonials or story? Is it gonna be video? And if it’s gonna be video, do people wanna be on a video? Do people wanna share their story? And so you have to be able to look at who your target market is. What your patients are going through? How has their life changed since they’ve been seeing you and being able to better their life?
15:49 AI: I feel like more and more people now are more willing to share their story to help others because they see the greater good. So as you’re putting together or thinking of these campaigns that you want to put together, think of these six examples. And be able to be able maybe pick and pull from different ones, different ideas that you’ve liked and really be able to look at your practice as a whole. And how are you helping your clients? What are they struggling with? What are their needs? And being able to put a campaign together for your digital marketing, to attract more people into your practice that you could help. Because at the end of the day that’s all why we’re in business because we wanna help more people. We wanna help the greater good. That’s our why, so how do we reach them? And that’s an amazing thing with digital marketing. There are so many different ways that we can do this.
16:45 AI: So, if you need help and you are just struggling with creating a good campaign or wanna run some ideas past us, please head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com. Schedule a free 30-minute consultation. We love to be able to brainstorm ideas and figure out what’s the best route for you and your practice and be able to provide that feedback. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a listening ear on, “This is what our practice is thinking, does it make sense? Do you think it would work?” So again, Social Speak Network, free consultation, and until next time, please subscribe on iTunes or on Podbean. Have a great day.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/6-Successful-Healthcare-Marketing-Campaigns-You-Need-to-See-Blog.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-09-10 08:00:252019-09-06 13:10:106 Successful Healthcare Marketing Campaigns You Need to See
In today’s podcast, we talk about how Instagram and Pinterest play an important role in your digital marketing strategy.
Some people may overlook these two platforms thinking either they are for a younger crowd or their target market is not using these platforms, but that’s not true. Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms and Pinterest is being used as a visual search engine, it’s just like Google but all pictures!
I highlight the following points:
Tips & Tricks to utilize Instagram to it’s fullest potential
How to Upload videos to Instagram and Pinterest
Tools to help maximize your Pinterest efforts
00:00 Speaker 1: Hello. Welcome to the Social Speak Network Podcast. I am your host Amber Irwin, and in today’s episode, we are gonna be covering tips four and five, which were Instagram and Pinterest. And I wanted to go over these two together because they really compliment each other in your digital marketing strategy. So, I wanted to show you a tool that we use for Instagram and Pinterest, and really when you’re figuring out that strategy with each of them. So, let’s talk about Instagram first. Instagram is… Instagram and Pinterest are both visual… So with Instagram, links do not work in your content, the only link that you have in your profile is in your bio. There’s a couple of tools like Linktree, that link will be in the bottom, that you use, which is a free tool that allows people to click on to that. So I think ours is Linktree/Social Speak. And, we have multiple links on that platform, so we have a link to our website, to our blog, to our YouTube, to maybe…
01:12 S1: We have different offers up there. So Linktree’s a great free tool to use to be able to have multiple links in your bio. Because otherwise you’re always saying ‘link in bio’, and you have to make sure you’re changing that out. But if someone’s looking through your Instagram account and you’re talking about one product but that link’s not there anymore, it gets a little confusing. So using a tool like Linktree and having a link to different products or services or blogs you’re talking about is a good idea. With Instagram… There’s a couple of different aspects of Instagram that I want to talk about. First is consistency. Just your news feed and with this is… You’re going through and these are just normal posts that are being put up. So this is just as you scroll through your news feed, these are your normal posts, square images that you’re putting up.
02:09 S1: A couple of added benefits to Instagram that you really wanna take advantage of is Instagram stories and Instagram TV. So when you’re doing a video on your feed as just like a normal post, that video can only be one minute long. When you’re doing Instagram stories, those videos are a 15-second long. So, Instagram TV (IGTV) can be 10 minutes, so take advantage of that space. You’re gonna have a different audience on Instagram compared to Facebook or… If you’re using Twitter or LinkedIn. A lot of our clients get a better response from Instagram than they do Facebook, just a different crowd, different algorithms as well. So with your Instagram account, you wanna make sure you have that strategy. And our tip one was creating that strategy. So, in that strategy, you should have put together, what are those topics you wanna talk about? What videos do you want to do? And, it gets a little tricky with Instagram because you can do your videos horizontal, just make sure you’re in the middle of the screen because if you’re talking like this then… So make sure you’re just in the center of the screen when you’re doing them.
03:33 S1: Vertical videos work the best on Instagram, so sometimes you are recording for dual purposes, so sometimes I’ll set my phone on my computer vertically and record from my phone and my computer, and then the one that’s on my computer, I upload to YouTube and Facebook, the one that I’m using on my phone, I upload to Instagram. So it just kind of depends, you gotta figure out what works best for you. But taking advantage of Instagram stories… And… Hey, we are the first ones to say, “We were really good at doing Instagram stories for a while and then we stopped, and we were seeing… That’s where a lot of those kinds of behind the scenes, the real-time information is great with Instagram stories; it really allows your audience to see who you are as a person and as a company. It’s great if you did an Instagram take over.
04:29 S1: So maybe you have a different employee each week or maybe a couple of times per week, take that Instagram account over, do some behind the scenes, talk about who they are, what their expertise is; just a fun way to really just let your followers know who you guys are as a company. So that’s a great way to use Instagram stories. They only see it for 24 hours, so if you don’t highlight that Instagram story, it’s poof! It’s gone in 24 hours. So a lot of people will use this Instagram stories area as event promotion or specials like, “Only for 24 hours, we’re gonna have this special. So when this video’s gone off Instagram, that special no longer exists. Get in with your membership today, get in with this exclusive offer.” So people love Instagram stories for that. And when you highlight them, if you go to an account and you see these circle icons, these are highlighted stories.
05:32 S1: And you can have different themes. So based on what you do, if you’re a wellness center and you do chiropractic massage, maybe you do holistic medicine, or naturopathic medicine, these will be different so called boards. And you can highlight different stories at any time. So, once you create these boards… Or these… I’m gonna call ’em boards. Once you create these boards, we have one for core values, for business tips, Instagram story tips, just tips for you. So as we do different stories, I can highlight them to go back to these different boards. And so, it kinda helps people know what it is we do. And especially in that coaching space, it’s important for people to know maybe you have a personal life. Maybe if you’re a wellness coach, you have exercises, eating guides or eating tips, whatever that is. So take advantage of that for your audience to kinda go and get those resources.
06:39 S1: So you have your news feed, you have Instagram stories and you have your Instagram TV. So using all of these pieces allows your audience to really engage with you, and the key to this is just being consistent. So whether you’re posting every single day, three times a week, four times a week, figuring out that schedule. And then with Instagram, direct messaging is really a big thing, so people are commenting or asking questions, making sure you’re responding to them within 24 hours. Have your notifications on or have the team you’re working with make sure that they’re checking those notifications and those messages. Sometimes you’ll get ones that are spam, and you know they’re spam, but other times people are just asking questions. You can use an app called Repost, and this allows you to re-post content from other accounts giving them credit; so that if you’re running out of ideas of, “Okay, what should I be talking about?” then you can use Repost, and it’s just like sharing an article on Facebook, but you’re sharing that post from their account.
07:54 S1: So with Instagram and Pinterest, as I said, they’re both visual, so the biggest thing is making sure that people know what they’re looking at so each image is clear, if you’re having content on it, and let them know what the post is the about. And so moving into Pinterest, being able to utilize the images that you have on Instagram on Pinterest as well. So cool fact with Pinterest, you can upload square images, you can upload the vertical images and videos to Pinterest. Think of Pinterest less as social media and more as a visual search engine. I think it was 65% of women search Pinterest for their needs, whether it’s medical, home, DIY; that is their search engine, that’s their Google. And I say, “Yes because I’m always on Pinterest searching for something, whether it’s content ideas, social media tips, home tips with activities with my daughter, wellness tips as far as we used to do to make our own soap, how do you do that, essential oils, whatever it is, Pinterest, you can find everything on there.
09:17 S1: So Pinterest is that visual search engine. And I want to talk to you about a tool we use that’s called Tailwind, and I’ll put a link to this below, but Tailwind… And I wanna show this to you… Tailwind is a really cool tool that we use. It is a paid tool; this is one tool that we do pay for, it’s $14.99 a month, but this allows us to schedule Pins to Pinterest. And what it allows us to do is with Pinterest, you wanna make sure that you are… You always have Pins going out, anywhere from three to eight to 10 a day; you definitely want that rotation continuing. And so with Tailwind, it will actually monitor to know how many posts you should have each day; some days based on our traffic, based on our audience, we have more than other days. And so the weekends, the beginning of the week are a lot heavier, for us, than the end of the week. And so Tailwind creates this process for you and different times.
10:41 S1: So Pinterest, again, it’s like a Google machine, so people are on there in the morning, they’re on there late at night. And so Tailwind calculates when your audience is on Pinterest, and they schedule those Pins to go out, which is super-cool. The other thing that I love with Tailwind and Pinterest is if you’re blogging, you write this awesome blog, you create your images, you pin it to your board, you put it on your social media, but then what? Like you’re writing a blog each month, but each blog is good to repurpose content; you can create what’s called these Smart Loops, and this… What does is you tell Tailwind what images you want to be… Like we have 230 active Loops right now, which means we have a ton of different images, all from our blog, that will continue to be posted, and that they’re posted to different boards, so they’re always being reused because we’re always gaining new followers.
11:53 S1: So with Pinterest, it’s not necessarily about growing your followers to thousands and thousands like it is with Facebook and Instagram, but it’s more about creating that content that people want to share, and the end goal with Pinterest is really to increase that website traffic, that’s the key, is that website traffic. And by using a tool like this, it allows you to see what are the most popular Pins, what are people clicking on, what are they liking, who’s re-pinning what, so it allows you to really dive into those analytics. And so using Tailwind is a great tool, and it keeps us organized. This is… We do this once a week, and then Pinterest is done; you’re already making those images for your blog, and so if you have… If you’re doing lead generation, and you have a content upgrade, you wanna make sure that you’re creating those images around that; so this is just a good way to be able to help you take your Pinterest account to the next level.
13:05 S1: The other thing why I like talking about Instagram and Pinterest with this is a couple of things; with Tailwind, you can link your Instagram account to Tailwind. So if you’re really, really good at posting to Instagram… We have some clients that are posting every single day, and that’s valuable content. You can click Schedule from Instagram, it’s gonna link to your Instagram account, and it’s gonna pull up all of the posts. So this makes it easy to make sure that all that amazing content that you’re putting on to Instagram also can be shared to your Pinterest account with the right boards and making sure that audience sees it as well. So it’s so easy, all you have to do is click Schedule, you pick the board that you want it to go to, and bada-bing, bada-boom, you’re done.
14:08 S1: This is why I really like Instagram and Pinterest together because they do complement each other. That content that you are sharing to Instagram can easily be shared to Pinterest. So, being able to use a tool like Tailwind, and I will put a link in the description with that so you can see that as well, but having a strategy for each of those is really important and then being able to track your analytics with where that traffic’s coming from. So you gotta think of it like this, with Instagram and Facebook it really is… Let’s just stick with Instagram and Pinterest. Instagram is really about getting the engagement, getting the likes, getting the comments, getting the [14:55] ____ messages, and building those relationships. You may not get a lot of website traffic from Instagram because of how the platform is made. You can’t share an article on there and have a link in the content, and people can’t click through to that.
15:13 S1: As I said in the beginning, you have Linktree where you could say, “link in bio.” They click on that and then go to that blog post. You’re not using Instagram for website traffic; you’re using Instagram to build those relationships. Pinterest, you’re using to drive that traffic to your website. You want people to see your blogs. You want people to click on to them. You want them if you have a website that has product on there, whether it’s digital product or physical product, you wanna be pinning all of those images with the right description, with the link back to that page to Pinterest because as people are searching, especially in the health and wellness industries, because if people are searching for essential oils for better sleep, kids’ fever, or whatever it may be, and you have a line and you keep pinning, this is a resource so people are able to click on it, buy it. I’ve bought so many things off of Pinterest because I follow this person; I look at what they’re pinning. I go to their website. I cyberstalk them. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what we do.
16:31 S1: So, using Pinterest to the fullest potential is huge. And the other piece with Pinterest is using it as a resource for your audience. And what I mean by that is you’re gonna have multiple boards for your business, so you’re gonna have a business account, you’re gonna have your… Like for us, we have email marketing tips, Facebook marketing tips. You’re gonna have all these different boards, and thinking of those boards as keywords, what are people searching for, and how can you use them as a resource for your current audience? So I always like to use Home Depot, for instance, has a really good Pinterest account because they have backyard ideas, bathroom lighting trends, bathroom project ideas. So, they make this a resource for their audience. And I love that because if I’m always going there, it’s a trusted source, I wanna be able to go and see, “Okay, what can I use to redo this as a DIY?” They’re putting this resource here for me to look at and then all I have to do is click on that, “Oh, and they have it in store. Oh, that’s so cool.”
17:58 S1: So if you are a wellness practice, you wanna create your boards based along your services, but then also think of, what are your clients asking you, what are their needs, what are they searching for, and how can you create a board that is a resource for them? And that content that’s on those boards doesn’t have to be all original content. The content that’s on our boards, we did not write all of that content or make all those images. A lot, I would say 70% of our pins, are re-pins. So we have sources like CoSchedule, HubSpot, a couple of other sources that we love, that we get all of our information from that we wanna share. So having those sources that you’re already maybe sharing on Facebook or you’re going to for your own information, see if they have a Pinterest account, start re-pinning their stuff. So that’s really what Pinterest is about, is that sharing platform.
19:03 S1: So, I hope that in this podcast, that made sense with the Instagram and Pinterest, how they work together and how they really tie in to your overall strategy because they’re both really important to have, and that’s why we focused a lot on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for our clients because I really think that you’re being able to touch all areas of where your audiences are at online. So, if you need help with identifying what these strategies are or how to use Pinterest or Instagram for your business, please let us know, schedule your free 30-minute consultation today; we would love to help you discuss that strategy, those ideas and get you Instagramming and Pinteresting right away because I know once you start doing it, you’re gonna be able to see the results and be able to utilize them as tools for your practice. So, if you have questions, let us know. Please remember to subscribe on either Podbean or iTunes for our podcast. We have a weekly podcast to help you organize your digital marketing life. Until next time, we will see you guys later, and remember, head over to socialspeaknetwork.com and schedule your free consultation today. Have a great day.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/How-to-use-Instagram-and-Pinterest-for-your-Wellness-Practice.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-09-03 08:00:152019-08-22 19:48:43How to use Instagram and Pinterest for your Wellness Practice
As doctors, you tell patients all the time that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Although we often use this axiom when referring to health, we believe that it also applies to your marketing strategy.
Knowing how to market health care services is important, even if you’re happy with your current patient volume. With so much information available online, patients no longer feel the need to visit clinics or hospitals near them. They can easily switch health care providers anytime. The last thing you want is to find out your patient database is nearly empty.
You are not guaranteed to keep up your patient volume forever. Having a planned medical marketing strategy will help keep your brand at the forefront of people’s mind.
Here are some tips on how to market health care services and grow your practice.
Referral marketing
Doctors and other medical practitioners aren’t entirely clueless on how to market health care services. In fact, many of you have been using this marketing strategy for years.
In order to make referral marketing work for you, you have to unleash your inner extrovert and put yourself out there. Make sure you get some face time with physicians, massage therapists, yoga instructors, health coaches, naturopathic doctors etc. These people can be great resources for referrals.
Professional referrals are based squarely on sound relationships. Patients, health care professionals and their staff will only refer someone they trust – someone they feel is the best. You have to make them feel comfortable about you – both as a health practitioner and as a person.
Referral marketing is not just about getting more people through the door. Rather, it’s an ongoing process of finding, attracting, and retaining patients.
Establish or enhance your social media presence
Social media marketing requires a lot of time and effort, and we know that time is something you may not have in abundance. But the benefits of social media are simply too great to ignore.
Advertising your practice on social media can help new patients find you with less effort on your part. It also allows you to connect with other professionals and your patients.
Devote the time to make daily updates and postings. Publish content your audience would be interested to read. Share some tips to educate patients. Share relevant information about your field of knowledge. By educating your audience, they will see you as a helpful doctor who is invested in keeping them healthy.
You don’t have to manually post all your social media content. There are lots of tools out there that will automate your social media publishing and scheduling.
Focus on branding
When we think of a brand, big companies such as Coca-Cola and Apple often comes to mind. As a medical practitioner, you can’t create your brand, can you? Of course, you can!
A brand’s identity is how a business wants to be perceived by its audience or customers. It is how you are currently perceived as a medical practitioner.
Having a strong brand allows you to build a positive image that makes people expect a certain level of quality from you. It helps people trust you and makes them want to work with you. Ultimately, branding can help increase referrals and expand your practice.
Professional website
Today, more and more people are using the internet to research treatments and find health care practitioners of all kinds. They’d want to learn more about you before making an appointment.
If you don’t have a website, then you’re seriously limiting your visibility online. It will be difficult for potential patients to learn about you and your practice. This puts you at a disadvantage.
Having an up-to-date professional website allows you to represent your brand the way you want it to be. Plus, it allows you to easily communicate with potential and existing patients about new services and offerings. Ultimately, it reduces the amount of time your staff spends on the phone by providing basic information and answers to commonly asked questions.
Final thoughts
For decades, medical professionals have gotten by without spending time and money in marketing and advertising their practices. Living in the digital age, having no online presence is simply not an option.
The internet has changed how people experience health care. They would turn to the internet to research health-related topics and treatments, and even shop around for health care practitioners. If you know how to market health care services, then you’ll find that there are lots of opportunities to grow your practice and reach new patients.
The Social Speak Network Podcast recently went into more detail about digital marketing for health care services, as well.
Top 10 Tips to Increase your Digital Marketing Presence in the Health & Wellness Industry
In this podcast episode, Social Speak Network co-founders discuss 10 Tips to Increase your Digital Marketing Presence in the Health & Wellness Industry. Over the upcoming weeks, we will be diving into each of these in more detail.
1) Social Media Strategy
2) Facebook Ads
3) Facebook Groups
4) Instagram
5) Pinterest
6) Blogging
7) Lead Generation
8) Videos
9) Podcast
10) Email Marketing
Watch the Episode
Read the Digital Marketing for Health Care Services Podcast Transcript
00:01 Caitlin McDonald: Hello and welcome to the Social Speak Network podcast. I’m one of your hosts today, Caitlin McDonald, and we’re also joined by Amber Irwin.
00:10 Amber Irwin: Hello everyone.
00:12 CM: In this episode, we’re gonna be talking a lot about tips to increase your digital marketing presence in the health and wellness industry. So we work with a lot of different businesses and organizations in health and wellness ranging from Pediatric centers to massage therapists, nutritionists. And they’re always asking, how can we increase our digital marketing, how can we increase our exposure online, so that we’re reaching the right target market? So today, we’re gonna be going through the top 10 tips to increase your digital marketing presence. And then over the course of the next few months, we’re gonna be diving into each of these more specifically. So either Amber and myself, will be really focusing on one of the tips moving forward, and this episode really is designed to be an overarching strategy, that kind of paints the picture for the next few months.
01:07 AI: Exactly. So let’s dive into the first thing that will help you have a clear direction of where you’re going. And that is having that strategy, whether it is just a social media strategy or a digital marketing strategy, again, with that overarching picture of What do you need to do? So, having a content calendar. With social media, and really, digital marketing as a whole it’s… Consistency is key, and if you don’t have that content calendar and that organization of what you need to do and what you need to prepare for, it’s easy to forget about it and not do it. So having a calendar, knowing how many times to post with social media is really important, because sometimes… The other day, we had somebody say, Gosh, three times a week seems like a lot. I think it should just be one time a week and we’re like “No.”
01:58 AI: So knowing your audience, whether that’s every day, maybe it’s just during the week or maybe your audience is on social media more during the weekends, so knowing your audience and knowing when to post and then also what platforms to use. So we’re gonna be talking a little bit about Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, but there’s also Twitter and LinkedIn. So knowing where your audience is playing is really important, so Caitlin, why don’t you talk to us a little bit about the Facebook ads and Facebook groups.
02:27 CM: Perfect. So Facebook is one of those networks that we all wanna forget that it’s there, but we can’t forget that it’s there. [chuckle] And over time, it’s been more and more important to have an actual advertising spend. So you’re not only paying somebody just to manage the account and post the three times or more per week, you also then have to spend money on Facebook in order for those posts to be seen. And so over time, these ads have gotten more and more complex as well, so it used to be that you could just click and boost a post, and now what you have to really dive in and create an ad that’s specific for one segment of your market versus another.
03:14 CM: So let’s say you have some services that are more tailored towards women, or moms, or another section that’s more tailored towards baby boomers or children. You need to create different ads and different audiences for each of those so that you’re really speaking towards the networks they are. Now, in terms of the budget for Facebook ads, really this depends on your service. I think the most important thing here is to pay attention to those key performance indicators. So how much is each lead costing you? How many leads are then converting to schedule a follow-up appointment? And of those follow-up appointments, how many folks are then coming in for secondary services, sending referrals and things like that? So we currently have ads running for some companies where the cost per lead is $20-$30, we have other ones where it’s less than a dollar, closer to 50 cents per lead.
04:16 CM: And these are converting at the same ratio of lead to then signing up for services. However, the person who’s paying $30 per lead is completely fine with that cost, because their service is more money in general. Then there’s the next part of Facebook groups. Now Facebook groups are a great way to find your target audience, in communities that are already formed and it’s also a great way to create a community around your own services or offerings. So, we recommend joining groups and so this could be the admin on your account or the business owner. Maybe someone on the Board of Directors, joining groups on Facebook that align with your target market’s interests and posting on there, commenting, sharing articles that you’re writing and everything like that. And then also having a group that you manage for your own organization that just provides a little bit more information. So that your target audience can continue learning and building that trust with you and you building the trust with them so that when it’s time to come on in for that next appointment, they know where to turn. Amber, do you wanna dive in now to some of those other social media networks?
05:39 AI: Yeah. So let’s talk about Instagram first. So, Instagram is… A lot of people, this… Instagram’s a little overwhelming, I think. People don’t necessarily understand it or they’re… And most of the time, it’s just images and videos. You can’t put a link in the content. You could put links in your stories if you have over 10,000 followers. And below in the comments, I will put down a free tool. That’s called Linktree and that allows you to have multiple links within your profile, within your bio area there. So you have a link to your blog, you have a link to maybe a special offer, your YouTube channel, etcetera. So I’ll put that in the comments below. But Instagram stories are really important to make sure you are doing… And these are fun for… Maybe it’s a tip of the day, behind the scenes, introducing a new practitioner.
06:34 AI: These are just quick 15 second clips, or you can do images too. And they only see it for 24 hours. So this is a great way, if you are… If you have an event, if you are having a special on products, maybe it’s a blowout sale on just inventory you have in the office. This is a great way to just have those stories be more like your VIP area. You can track the analytics on those, so it lets you know how many people watched each story and who those people were. So then another step is follow up with them with a private message of saying “Hey, I saw you liked our story. Are you interested in our products? Or if you have any questions, let us know.” So it’s really about building that relationship.
07:16 AI: Instagram TV is really important. These are for your videos that are anything over a minute, because remember, on your News Feed, your videos can be one minute long. And on Instagram TV, they can be up to 10 minutes long. So taking advantage of that. And what Instagram TV has started to do is any time you upload a video to Instagram TV, it now gives a one-minute clip on your News Feed. So before, we would upload a video and then create a post about it, and now Instagram does that automatically for you. So you can have a cover photo in that, you can have a title and a description and put, “Hey, check us out.” What’s that call to action? So, “Sign up today on our website, check us out on YouTube.” So it’s important to make sure that you’re using all of the bells and whistles that Instagram has for you.
08:06 AI: The more you use… So, on Instagram stories, the more if you are doing like a mention, if you’re doing a gift, a hashtag, a sticker, the things that they already have there for you, they like that. And so, you show up more in the algorithm. It’s kind of silly, but they love it, so do it. And then obviously, the hashtags for Instagram. So make sure you’re doing your research. The one thing I love about Instagram is if you type in a hashtag, it’s gonna tell you… Like, if you search for a hashtag, it’s gonna tell you how many people are talking about that hashtag. And then you can also follow that hashtag and see everyone that’s mentioning it. So, it’s good just for that research.
08:47 AI: Competitors, what are they talking about? What posts are they putting up? What engagement are they getting? And then for you to be able to create content for your audience and see what people are wanting to know about. And don’t always use the same hashtags. ‘Cause a lotta times, you’ll see the exact same hashtags in the exact same order on every single post. Do not do that. You’ll see formatting where it’s the post, three dots, and then hashtags. You can have, we usually say, between five and 10 hashtags per post. And then in the comments, if you do a first comment, you could have up to 30 hashtags. So hashtags play an important role in Instagram.
09:28 AI: So from Instagram, I wanna move into Pinterest, because Pinterest… These are both very visual platforms. And Pinterest, I really think of Pinterest as more of a visual Google. This is really where, if your target market is women, mothers, you have to be on Pinterest because this is where we’re finding our information. Whether it is, is this normal? To home remedies, to stretches, to work outs, to… Whatever it is to home interior design. This is where women are finding the majority of their information. So Pinterest, use it as a resource for your clients.
10:08 AI: If you look at, I’m just gonna throw out Home Depot. I think Farmer’s Insurance does a great job. They organize their boards as resources for their audience. So they have home gardening tips, they have like organic plants. They have all these boards that their audience really wants to know about. And so, using Pinterest as a resource for your clients helps build that value and that relationship. The other thing Pinterest is great for is building traffic back to your website. So, Caitlin’s gonna be talking a little bit about the logging and lead generation. And Pinterest is a great way to build that audience back to… Or that traffic back to your website and creating the right images.
10:52 AI: So again, in the comments below, I will put a really cool tool. Secret, a tool that we use for our clients and it makes Pinterest… It’s amazing. It really helps drive the traffic to your site, it helps you organize and schedule your pins, and it gives you suggestions based on your search history of what you should do. So Pinterest, it’s… I think that it’s something that is just a really great way… If your clients are asking a question and you have what we call power partners or a list of people that you recommend, you can pin from them too. So you can just have a board that says, “Resources” or “Referral partners,” and start pinning from their website to that board. So it gives your audience one place to go, it makes it easy and it’s, again, driving that traffic back to your website and your power partner’s website. So, that is Pinterest for ya.
11:49 CM: Awesome. And Amber mentioned this, but Pinterest really is like a search engine, which brings us to blogging and search engine optimization. And so starting… I guess this isn’t one of the points that we’re really diving into specifically, but I do wanna bring it up. One thing that’s important to remember with search engine optimization, is that there are a lot of other places that your website can be found or your organization can be found besides just your website. So yes, you want your website URL to show up and be kind of in the top 10 results on Google, however you can have your Pinterest boards and your pins show up in Google. You can have your YouTube content, we’re gonna get into videos, but you can have your YouTube content show up in the top 10 points of Google, your directory listings.
12:42 CM: All of these things really work together to help boost your website, but also just boost your overall brand presence online. So really keep that in mind as you’re working on search engine optimization, that it’s not just about doing one thing, it’s about doing a little bit of everything in a very smart way. [chuckle]
13:06 CM: So let’s jump into blogging. Blogging is one of our favorite tactics when it comes to boosting your presence in digital marketing and in the digital world. And basically, what this means is creating a well-written article and publishing it on your website. Long gone are the days where you can only write a post of 350 or 750 words. These articles should be a lot longer, meaning, between 1500 and 5000 words, and there are tools to figure out what’s the best length for a specific topic. And they should include lots of different types of media such as videos, Pinterest pins, little snippets of text that are easy for somebody to click and tweet. And so, you wanna make it as easy as possible for this blog post to then be shared to different networks.
14:05 CM: So our typical process for writing a blog or an article includes starting with that keyword research. So here, we like to focus on what are the main things that people are looking for if they want to come in and book an appointment with one of your specialists or physicians? So what are the top concerns that they have? What are the symptoms they have? What are the main questions that they have? From here, you can research what people are actually searching for online. And there are a few ways to do this. One of the easiest is just pulling up Google and starting to type in whatever that topic is, and Google will actually put in there related search terms, they are the phrases that people are really using. And so that’s a great thing to put into Google, or excuse me, into your blog post.
15:00 CM: Then, after you have kind of the idea of what that topic should really be… And as I’m doing the podcast episode specifically about this, we’ll talk about some of those tools that our company uses for it. [chuckle] But we won’t get into that now, because I could go on and on about that. But the next thing that you do after you have that basis of the keyword research is actually creating a blog outline. When I create a blog outline, sometimes, I’m already up to 500 or 750 words, and I haven’t written in an ounce of content. All I have are the headers and the sub-headers and a couple of little bullet points under each of them. So it makes writing a longer blog post a lot easier in the long run.
15:43 CM: After this, it really, as we mentioned is about formatting it and then sharing it. And so one of the good ways to share it is to have some sort of call to action in there as well, and so this brings us into the lead generation part of your website presence and digital marketing. And so, for lead generation, we always recommend having some sort of content upgrade or offer that you’re promoting, and so each of the blog posts that you write can then include a little snippet about that content upgrade or call to action, as a way to entice people to take the next step about learning more about your business and organization. For this lead generation piece, we always recommend having really valuable free information or free content that somebody can then gain access to. This could be a resource library that’s just for your subscribers, or it could be something like booking a free consultation as well.
16:46 CM: Both of those work tremendously well in health and wellness. And then, in order to actually collect the names and email addresses, we recommend setting up a landing page, and you can do this just on, let’s say, a WordPress website or a tool like LeadPages or somewhere else, where you collect their name, email address and sometimes phone number, you can play around with kind of conversion rates there, have them download or gain access to whatever it is, and then sign them up for your email newsletter. So we’ll jump into email newsletter later. But we brought up video a couple of times, I [chuckle].. With blogging and social media and everything. So, Amber, do you wanna jump into videos?
17:30 AI: Yeah. So I love that blogging is growing into this so much more than just contact. In a blog, like Caitlin said, you’re gonna have a lead magnet, you’re gonna have an image, you’re gonna have that Pinterest image, so you can pin that back to Pinterest, and you’re gonna have videos. So I… You’re really touching every type of learning, whether they’re kinesthetic, visual, audio. Because with videos, people, and a lot of times, people will watch videos without the sound, so captions are really important, because whether they’re at work or they’re just in a place where they can’t hear, their kids are running around… Whatever it is. So videos are a great way to really allow your audience to get to know who you are.
18:16 AI: And these videos can be on… Again, it goes back to that content calendar that you’re gonna be putting in place the first step. Because, maybe you have a tip of the day in your blog post, whether you have it broken out in different sections, you could have a video for each section, so it just maybe goes into a little bit further detail or showing them how to do something so they can read it and they can see it. And they can put it together based on how they need to. Maybe it’s recipes are really great for videos. So videos are just such an important piece of your digital marketing. And there’s a few things that you’re gonna do with these videos once you have them. Obviously, you’re gonna upload them to YouTube, and when you have them onto YouTube, there’s… And I’ll get in more like Caitlin said… As you go into these videos more in detail, we’ll give you all the tools that we use.
19:05 AI: But with YouTube, you’re gonna wanna create playlists and there’s a lot of little things that you could do with your videos to make sure that they’re getting seen more. So, YouTube is gonna be your hub. From that, you could put them into your blog post, you can upload them to Facebook into these groups that you’re gonna be a part of, but then also onto Instagram TV. So a couple of tips when you’re doing videos. When you’re doing an Instagram TV video, have your phone vertical. When you’re doing a… Most of the time, if I’m recording a video for YouTube, I’ll just have it from my computer or turn your phone horizontal. So it doesn’t matter, even if you do a video vertical for YouTube, YouTube… There’s no more black bars, they have the image back there, so it looks really good, but having these videos on all of your platforms is really important because, again, it just… It brings that name to face and you’re able to answer questions. A lot of times what we see with pediatricians, they will get questions, they’ll take notes of weekly questions that they’re getting from their patients and then at the end of the week, they’ll do maybe an FAQ Friday and they’ll answer some of these questions that the parents had or they’ll talk about a topic.
20:23 AI: So again, it’s listening to what your audience is looking for and asking for and doing those videos around their needs. And this is, again, where those Facebook groups come in, because you can do videos just for that group, based on those questions that are coming in, so you can get really intimate with your clients and then you have ones that are just for YouTube that anyone can view. So, videos are really important, and again going with the videos, taking it a little bit further with podcasts. So Caitlin, let’s talk a little bit about podcasts before we kind of wrap it up with the email marketing piece. Podcasts are hot right now, but everyone wants to do one. What are, how do you start your own podcast and what are a few tips people should know?
21:12 CM: Yeah. So with podcasts, the process is a lot easier than you might think. There are hundreds, maybe not hundreds, but there are a handful of free podcast, kind of hosting companies, or ones where it just costs under $10 per month to sign up for it. We use Podbean. There are a bunch of other ones. With Podbean, we also can hook it up to iTunes. So our podcast is on iTunes. And it’s something that, as long as you’re being consistent, it just provides that extra little piece of personality behind your organization. So, it’s a great place to take the content that you’re sharing in those videos and turn it into a podcast episode.
22:00 CM: It’s also a great way to interview people. So let’s say, you have 10 physicians on staff, go through and interview each of them on anything from kind of giving a little bit of a personal background to who’s in your practice through to their specialities. If you’re an health and wellness coach, reach out to other health and wellness coaches who might have a slightly different perspective and having this podcast and being the interviewer automatically positions you as an expert and also gives you a great ideas for what to do for your own practice if you ever are stuck finding clients, let’s say, or with… Maybe one regimen isn’t working for a client, you always… It always works.
22:45 CM: So tap into the knowledge of the people that you’re interviewing, and see what else they recommend, any other solutions that they recommend kind of turning to. So it’s a really fun, easy way just to have a different piece of media that you can share on your website, and then it also provides a great basis for blog posts. So, [chuckle] you do the podcast episode, you record it for YouTube, you upload it to Podbean or wherever, to iTunes, so then you can share that, you can share the video and then you’d make a transcription of it using one of the many softwares that are available online and you have a full blog post kind of without doing any work that then goes on your website, helps with that search engine optimization and provides a different type of content to share online as well. So podcasts are hot, they’re one of… It’s one of the growing, quickest growing avenues online for marketing your business and practice. So I say jump on the bandwagon, give it a shot.
23:55 AI: Exactly, and then once you have your blogs and your podcast, then that kinda comes into that email marketing piece. And email marketing kinda plays two roles in your digital marketing because you’re gonna have, whether you have weekly updates. We do a weekly digital marketing email or a monthly newsletter and so I’ll talk a little bit about those monthly newsletters and weekly emails, and then, Caitlin’s gonna talk a little bit about how that email marketing plays a role in your lead generation with the automation piece. So when you have and again, everything comes down to consistency. So when you are creating all this content, you can kind of see how it’s this little spider web and how everything connects, but your website is your hub of where everything lands and so, your whole goal is to have everyone, have all these resources back to your website. So email marketing, whether these are patients, people you’ve met at events, people that signed up for your lead generation, you wanna make sure that now you are communicating with them, whether that is weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, it doesn’t matter, as long as you pick what you’re gonna do and commit to it.
25:09 AI: So the worst is you get an email. I signed up for something, I’m so excited. I get that intro email, I love it and then I’m like, “I haven’t heard anything from them. What’s going on?” So making sure that you have that plan and you know what they’re talking about. So again, your newsletters are gonna be more content that’s just for them. So again, this can be a video that’s maybe just an FAQ video. Asking people to join your Facebook group, giving them tips, maybe it’s finding other articles of resources that you have approved that you want to send out to your audience. So, really, it’s tips giving a lot of value, that’s where people… You’re gonna keep them reading. And then at the end you would have your links to your blogs, you would have your links to your social media, but really come up with original content for your newsletter. So Caitlin, how does email marketing play a role with lead generation?
26:07 CM: Yeah, absolutely. So with lead generation, and as Amber just mentioned, somebody is really excited. They just signed up for whatever resource or free consultation that you decided to offer as that content upgrade, and now you need to make sure they know who your organization is and that they… So, know, like and trust you. And so, email marketing and creating automated email campaigns for that first two weeks of your relationship with this new prospect is really important. And so, we recommend not only having that weekly or monthly newsletter, but also having an automated email campaign that every new subscriber’s signed up to. And so with this, you’re trying to be educational, you’re trying to provide even more content that’s gonna benefit this prospect. And then, over time throughout those first two weeks, you can introduce some of your services, you can have a video in there, interviewing one of your physicians or the person that this individual might see.
27:19 CM: And your goal really is to get them to trust you enough, to want to sign up for one of your paid services, or come on and schedule that initial meeting with you. Because, just because somebody signed up for the email list doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily ready to take that next step. So having this email marketing is something that’s really easy to create and have play in the background, and continue building that trust so that you don’t have to sit there and email or call every single new sign up. So, it really helps with getting people to know, like, and trust your brand.
27:55 AI: Yeah, I love it. So as we said, over the past following weeks… Or upcoming weeks, we are gonna be going into more detailed tips and tricks on each one of these points, so you have a better understanding of how it can work for your business and why it’s so important to your digital marketing strategy, because really, it seems like a lot, but they all flow together. So you can’t just do one piece without doing another piece, so we’re gonna show you why and how to do each of these. Until next time, we will see you guys later, if you have any questions, comments, please let us know and we look forward to chatting with you on our next podcast.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Podcast-Youtube-Image-amber-and-caitlin-1.png7201280Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2019-07-24 17:22:552019-09-06 13:36:19How to Market Health Care Services Plus the Top 10 Tips for Digital Marketing in Health Care
In today’s world of digital marketing, it is important to stand out from the crowd and really be able to provide your audience value.
Today, we will be discussing the importance of utilizing content upgrades for your business.
These are FREE downloads and added benefits to your blogs that your audience wants.
How it works:
This shows your audience that you are an expert in your industry, by providing valuable content on a topic your audience is already looking for. You are able to connect with them and start building trust with them. It’s about the – Know, Like, Trust factor.
By utilizing Content Upgrades it allows you to grow your email list. Having a strong email list to market to is like gold. This happens because in order for your audience to receive their free content upgrade they need to enter in their name and email. Another key factor to using Content Upgrades is you are able to understand your audience more and really know what they are looking for so you can write more content for them.
Once you have their email address you can remarket to them with future items similar to your content upgrade, this is called the nurturing process, building the trust with them so they will want to do business with you.
So, let’s take this one step at a time and go through the process of what a content upgrade can be and then how to create one.
Content upgrades are the free downloads that you sign up for in exchange for your name and email address. The content upgrades can be a variety of things.
One key place you can look to start thinking of what your content upgrade should be is your FAQ section on your website. This FAQ section gets a TON of SEO benefits from Google, so looking at what your top questions are or event turning those FAQ into a content upgrade.
Here are a few examples of content upgrades.
These upgrades can come in many shapes and forms, but typically include:
Tools and Resources List
Secret Podcast Episode
Checklist of the steps taken in the blog
Regular Checklist
Additional Related Content
Downloadable PSD files or other design assets
One Month Free of your product or membership site
A Printable
Swipe Copy (people love swipe copy, FYI, this is used more for affiliates, content they can copy and paste to promote your product or program)
Transcripts for Audio or Video Recordings
Worksheets to support a blog post
eBook
Case Study
Interactive handout
Video series
You can also think outside the box and include:
15-minute phone calls
Strategy reviews
Free sessions
Etc.
The goal of these upgrades is to increase the number of subscribers on your email list.
All of these items can be used to grab the attention of your target audience. You are creating a valuable piece of content that your audience wants, they then give you their name and email to download this content upgrade.
Now, that you have an idea of WHAT a content upgrade is, it’s time to start planning what you should be creating for yours.
We have a worksheet for you to go along with this blog and to be able to jot down your ideas. Please download your free copy now to continue with this blog. (See how we are using a content upgrade?!?!)
It’s very important to be clear about what you are going to create, and understand that you will have multiple content upgrades. You may do a content upgrade for each blog post, or each service you offer.
For example, if you are a nutritionist and work with clients one on one, you may write a blog and your content upgrade would be a grocery checklist or a food substitute checklist that your audience can download for free then they learn to trust you. Then if you have another blog or maybe even promoting your coaching services you may have a 3-part video series as your content upgrade to help your audience know, like, and trust you along with giving them valuable information within the video series.
Now, that you have figured out your topic and then format you want to create your content upgrade on, it’s time for the fun part!
How to Create Your Content Upgrade
To create your content, you could have a:
PDF: These are great for workbooks, checklists, Guides, etc. Simple tools like Word, Pages, Google Drive Slides, or PowerPoint are all easy to save as PDF’s.
Email Course: These don’t even require PDF’s. In an email course, you are sending valuable information over the course of a few days. This makes it so the recipient isn’t overwhelmed by information and sees your name pop up more frequently. MailChimp allows for automated email sequences, which is a great free way to share this content.
Free consultation: All you need here is your phone. You can use Calendly.com to set time blocks that you are available for consultations to reduce the back and forth.
As subscribers are added to your email list, it is important that you are tagging these individuals with what they were interested in. For us, for example, someone who is interested in information on how to manage their Facebook, won’t be interested in information designed in educating other social media managers. We want to make sure any future emails we send to our list align with the topics they initially were interested in.
Let’s dive a little deeper and talk about how to create each of these things.
1. Use Google Docs or Word to put your thoughts on paper or screen
I love using Google docs because it is a live document and you can use it from any device, it is also great if you have a team that will be working on this project together.
Don’t worry about fonts, colors, visual appeal at this point. It is just about getting the words on the paper at this point.
You can add images and change font later once you have the content complete. Sometimes, I worry too much about the visual appeal at the beginning that I lose focus on the value of the content.
2. Time for the Creative Part – Creating your Cover
Graphics are very important to your content upgrade, they are the main thing that drives the attention of your viewers. We use an awesome tool called Canva, this is where we create the cover image, you can use the 8.5×11
They have Free themes you can edit, add your own font, brand colors, images where you can do one of two things here, you can just create your cover
3. Creating Your Google Doc into PDF
If you choose to use Canva just to create your Cover image then you would download that image to your computer, then head over to your Google Docs and insert that image on the first page.
Then you will want to make sure you have a footer with your contact info:
Company Name
Website
Email Address
Logo
Check to make sure you have the images in the correct areas, the fonts you want and the right brand colors. If you do not have the correct brand color number you can use this FREE Chrome extension ColorPick Eye Dropper, this works to pull the correct color number that then you can add to Google Docs and Canva.
Once that is complete you can go to File > Download As > PDF
Save it to your computer. This saves it in an 8.5×11 PDF.
4. Adding the PDF to your website
You want that PDF to have a URL so you can add it to your sign-up form within MailChimp or Lead Pages.
You can upload this PDF to your WordPress website into the media area, this gives you the URL so you can hyperlink the download within your welcome messages in your sign-up form. We love to use MailChimp because it is free and very simple to use.
5. Bringing it all together
Now, you have everything created and ready to start having people sign up, right?
It’s time to create your landing page and your form so people can start signing up to get your free content upgrade.
Like we said in step 4, we use MailChimp because it is simple and easy to use.
There are other options like using your website or LeadPages as well. In the video below it walks you through the MailChimp process.
Wrapping it all up
I hope from this blog you are able to see the big picture behind these content upgrades/free downloads. There are so many different ways you can tie these into your marketing. One thing I love about content upgrades is it gives that extra oomph to your blogs. I love the creative process of creating a content upgrade.
Have fun with this process and maybe create 2-3 to start and see which one performs better!
Social media networks and search engines can change their algorithms without warning. Email marketing is currently (and historically) the most effective way to continue building trust with prospects, increase recurring revenue, and see an ROI from other marketing efforts. The Social Speak Email Marketing team works with your strategist to build content upgrades, welcome series, and newsletters to stay top of mind.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/How-to-Use-a-Content-Upgrade-to-Grow-Your-Business-and-Email-List-1.png800800Amber Irwinhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngAmber Irwin2019-04-12 15:05:152019-04-12 15:05:15How to Use a Content Upgrade to Grow Your Business and Email List
Farotech is a comprehensive, growth-driven digital marketing agency that implements a systematic approach to lead generation, nurturing and conversion by utilizing scalable web design, cutting edge inbound strategies, and creative video development.
In this interview with CEO and founder, Chris Carr, we focused on inbound marketing, web design, and video marketing for the healthcare industry. We covered:
How Inbound Marketing, Web design, and video for large orthopedic brands relate to short-term and long-term strategic marketing decisions.
Current trends for wellness practices with SEO marketing in 2019.
Tactics that were expected to perform well or had a lot of hype, but failed to take hold in 2018.
The effect of video on digital marketing for healthcare.
The top 3 things that a wellness center should be doing online to see a return from their SEM efforts.
The top strategy that should be followed, but often marketing teams get wrong.
Marketing strategies Farotech is currently testing that many other agencies aren’t implementing for their clients.
Please be sure to subscribe to the Social Speak Podcast for more interviews with experts in digital marketing for health and wellness businesses. To learn more about Farotech, click here.
I had a blast during this interview with Chris, and was blown away by how in depth and actionable the information was that we discussed. Some key takeaways included:
Don’t just change your website if you think it can work better to reach the KPIs you’ve identified for your practice. Install software to create Heatmaps. These heatmaps show how prospects are engaging with your site and allow you to test different layouts and understand how design effects conversions. [6:50]
Dive deep into your buyer personas or patient personas. Your goal is to create content that creates an emotional connection about how their life can be after they come into your practice. Cast a wide net, but also tap into individual niches. [14:23] and [27:01]
Though you will benefit from a professional video on your homepage, lower cost, authentic videos for asset pages or pages that answer commonly asked questions about your specialties. These can then be repurposed for a variety of uses. [16:45]
Dive into both Local and Traditional SEO tactics. First consider the commonly used, but less competitive keywords to grow your domain authority, then progress to the more competitive keywords when writing your blog content. Additionally, create and follow an editorial calendar to be more Proactive in your marketing rather than reactive. [32:11]
Hiring a scalable team of specialists can be less expensive that hiring employees in house. [3:18]
Transcript of Podcast Episode with Chris Carr
Hello and welcome to the newest social speak podcast episode. My name’s Caitlin McDonald and I am one of the co-founders at Social Speak Network and today we are joined by Chris Carr, the owner and founder of Farotech, a Gold Star HubSpot partner. Farotech, is a comprehensive growth-driven, digital marketing agency that implements a systematic approach to lead generation, nurturing, and conversion by utilizing scalable web design cutting-edge inbound strategy, web design, and creative video development. So, let’s give Chris a warm welcome as he joins us on this podcast episode.
Caitlin McDonald: Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.
Chris Carr: Yeah, thank you, thank you for having me.
CM: To kick this off, tell us a little bit about your background in digital marketing.
CC: Well, I started Farotech in 2001, so it’s been nearly 18 years and we started out just as web development company. It was just myself and then, eventually one other individual. Now we have about 50 people working for our agency and we service companies throughout the United States in healthcare who are business to business, business to consumer, you name it. We started about 18 years ago, it started out as a web development company. And then the natural progression would be “Hey you know what, you guys create a really great website but nobody can find it.” And so we went from a web development company to really getting into SEO. And then the next progression after that was, “Hey, you create really great websites. I’m on the first page of Google, but for some reason my phone isn’t ringing, my email is not blowing up, what do I do about that?” And so we spent the latter half of the last 18 years really, talking about conversion science.
Hitting traffic at the wrong part of the buyers turning they’re not going to convert. So it was really important for us to solve the actual problem that they had not just give them marketing ease or marketing answers because that’s easy to do. The sales are down. I’m like, “Yeah but I got… Yeah, 100 Facebook likes.
CM: Right exactly, those vanity metrics aren’t going to cut it anymore.
CM: Your business, Farotech, focuses on inbound marketing, web design, and video for large orthopedic brands. Can you describe how the three of these relate to short-term and long-term strategic marketing decisions?
CC: Sure, well let me share my screen.
One of the things we try to do is, we try to really affect the hiring decision and reason why I’m saying that is that the average orthopedics practice usually might have one person who’s in charge of marketing. And when you see on the slide here, you can see my computer, correct? [3:18]
Marketing is moving extremely fast. The expectations have never been higher. Most marketing directors expect their health practice to be on the first page of Google. They expect it to be a thought leader. They expect you to have a social presence, you name it … Basically, the list goes on and on and usually what happens is orthopedics go and they hire a marketing professional or CMO or something like that, and we call that person, it’s a HubSpot term, but they call a Marketing Mary a Marketing Mary wakes up one day and realizes that all of this stuff is more than a one-person job. And so they need support.
And so what happens is, is that Mary usually finds a content writer and then they maybe tap on the shoulders of a social media vendor or something like that. All the PowerPoints and all design stuff still needs to be created. So maybe they might have a project manager doing that.
Then you have a web designer and basically you’ve stressed your web guy and everything has to look pretty with graphic design, what happens is you wake up one day and you got a lot of money going out the door. We sort of got the niche is we do what’s got a team-based solution and the team-based solution allows your marketing person to still stay in place, but we become your team behind that marketing person.
And so what happens here is with the really large or small practices need to scale, but they don’t want to hire five people to do so. So what they do is, is they hire an organization like ours that is scalable and we’re able to do all the things that they don’t have time to do.
A lot of times we bring our expertise and our approach to it, but sometimes it’s just that we have the time that they don’t have.
How does it affect the short-term, in the long term? Well, the short term is, is that we try to implement a strategy, but the long term is that we hope to be your solution to scaling your marketing team.
CM: Great, great. So providing those the quick positions that need to be filled, but also long-term growth of the team when the organization is growing as well.
CC: Yeah and then they like it because if they don’t like their writer, we can deal with it.
CM: Well let’s jump into trends. What current trends are you seeing for the health industry with inbound marketing in 2019?
Current Digital Marketing Trends for Orthopedics Practices in 2019
CC: There are a lot of trends and one of the things that I wanted to talk about is fighting the trends first and then adopting the trend second.
So usually what happens here is, let’s pretend like it a website company or a decision to basically take on a marketing campaign.
Usually what happens is that if you see you on the bottom left corner, you go and you create a really great website, right? [6:50]
Website Evolution for Orthopedics Clinics
And then what happens is, is that a lot of Orthopedic practices get really busy, and then they don’t continually evolve their website. And so a couple of years later if someone’s like, “Oh well, you know what, we really need to create a new website” and they do. Maybe two to five years later. They create another website in another website. But if you were really ask some hard questions, like What did you learn from website number one that made you decide that you needed website, number two, what about site number three?
And usually what happens is that they don’t really have a clean answer they just know that it has to be better than it is now, and obviously graphic design ages with time.
It’s pretty funny. I can look at a website and think oh look 2007. What our view is that every time you change that website or that campaign, it’s like reinventing the wheel.
But if you can basically be in a scenario, like you’re seeing here, you can develop a system and a foundation. If you look at the orange line, we recommend that orthopedic practice develop a strong foundation and then make micro adjustments along the way. learning and learning and learning and learning. And so, let me show you how we do some of that continual adjustment.
CM: And just for everybody listening to the podcast I will create a link that goes directly to this place of the video so you can see that graphic as well, so that will be down in the description. [8:20]
CC: So usually what happens here? So I go and I built that website. It’s the foundation, right?
I usually recommend that orthopedic practices put on heat mapping. This is about one of my clients, but this is their old website. You’ll notice that one of their critical buttons had no… Basically, no high balls on it. Or basically people’s mouse proofs as were going there, and they spent a tremendous amount of money and effort on these videos, but the people go into that, so they had to make adjustments, on the website and they did. Other things that I got graded on is how many appointments could I get for this organization?
You notice 15% of the audience. Did they scroll down far enough?
We do the same testing and mobile.
You look at all the clicks that they’re going to do, of a variety of different filters such as search terms. What part of the country or how long are they take to click? So the ore in a new drip marketing is going to be better to know it at 6 O’clock at night or 10 AM on a Tuesday morning.
We look at every KPI that they do, and we basically try to make adjustments on each of the smaller goals too.
We look at mouse movements to find out what parts of the website are confusing. We look at your forms to figure out why people aren’t converting.
We look at pages that aren’t converting and try to create attribution pages, and then later on, we’re going talk about video, but I’ll talk a little bit about it.
What we try to do is as we try to look at videos and we have a scale to figure out our videos too long or people dropping off at certain points.
So when you know all this usability data about your website essentially what you’re able to do is you’re able to create basically a system that if you imagine it’s like a spear you’re making this spear sharper and sharper.
Heatmaps help your practice to understand how you health center website helps you reach your digital marketing KPIs.
CM: That makes sense that absolutely makes sense. So creating new heat maps is actually something that any website can have on them. There are different apps out there, different softwares and programs out there that your team has access to and can just install a code on your website so you can start gaining traction and insights into how people are actually acting and reacting to your own website.
And so Chris, thank you so much for bringing that up. It’s so important, rather than having a new person, a new marketing director come in and say “we need a new website,” really think clearly about what those goals are and see how your websites currently performing compared to those goals. because you might be surprised that the thing that you think everybody’s clicking on not getting a single click.
CC: Yep, we’ve adjusted words on the home page and a five to 10% up-tick. Honestly, sometimes we did it by accident” on for measuring and so we’re like, “Okay good.”
CM: Exactly. And it might not work the same way the next time, but for that one center it works great.
So, you brought up video, so let’s jump into a video. Can you tell us how video effects, digital marketing and what you’re seeing with video right now?
Video Marketing for your Health Clinic
CC: Sure, well, I think the first thing you want to probably say we are using the word orthopedic practice but if you’re a healthcare and let’s just say it’s interchangeable, but I’m going to keep using that word.
So they were on a level playing field. Essentially, what you’re kind of doing here is, is that in terms of video, you need to realize that each practice is unique. So a lot of times it comes down to the quality of care, the quality of outcomes, the resources as the technology provided all that stuff. But at the end of the day if I tore my ACL I need my ACL fixed that. So one of the things that’s going to be really important is that you are not only your home page, but also your specialty pages really trying to display differentiation.
And so, we do this in a couple different ways. The first thing we want to be able to do a video is you need to know the way the audience thinks.
And what I mean by that is that there are different parts of your buyer’s journey, such as the beginning stages, you are in the awareness stage, and then later on, as the pain lingers on or you’re really in a spot where it’s critical, you’re in the decision level stage.
What we try to do from a video perspective is a video that’s neutral to each of those stages, but that explains how you’re different from other practices. Very simply – as simple as we can.
Use simple videos for your digital marketing – our attention span is only 7 seconds.
There’s this running joke that I tell our beat to death is that the average goldfish has an eight-second attention span and the average human has a Seven second attention span.
Essentially… we’re losing to gold fish.
So what that means is that it’s really important when they come to your website that you give them the information they need as quickly as possible, and in different formats, because some people are readers, some people are video watchers.
I personally am a video watcher, I don’t know what it is, but one of the other things that video gives you the power to do is, in my opinion, if you were to say what is in marketing is a race to emotion.
And earlier I can get you involved in that process, the more likely I’m going to get you to convert. So of course, they want to get their ACL fixed, that video is going to say, “Do you want to dance at your daughter’s wedding?”
It doesn’t matter why you’re here, what you want to be able to do is life beyond treatment.
So we try to create videos that are going to do that, but we use the technology in a really cool way as well. The first thing we do is we use a technology like this to find out how long videos should be. [14:23]
You’ll see that on the top right-hand side, you’ll see that this graph is dragging down to the right. Alright, you’ve seen the video over to the left. But through critical calls to action, whether it’s at the beginning of the video, the end of the video or even 15 seconds into the interview, I’m able to collect people’s information into our database, so we could drip market to them.
What’s really cool about this is I’m able to find out who’s watching my videos by name. So if you have these two case studies here you have Oliver, who watched 98% of the video.
Utilize drip marketing and remarketing to individuals based on how much of your video they watch
So if you’re going to talk about treatment options at the end of the video, Oliver knows the full story, now, 10 Bailey as you can see here an OR and she’s wrong a couple of times but he’s only watched 59% of the video.
So what our system will do is is that when Tim leaves the website, we’re going to be able to deliver emails about features and benefits and cost of progression in testimonials, things like that.
Yeah, there’s going to be this blanket statement. I do need to make early and so I do. You’ll get comments and crazy stuff, but I… Obviously, HIPAA does apply. So make sure that you’re getting counsel on how you communicate. We’re well versed in this but just know that we know, that heaters, not only to you but also to us as your agency, yes, is that an important thing to point out? You need to make sure that you are HIPAA-compliant with everything that you’re doing when it comes to collecting names and email addresses and re-marketing to them. But this is pretty incredible that you can even tailor that follow-up series based on how far they’ve watched that video.
CC: Look at kind of explain a little bit more on video.
So let’s say a patient is your site map in the buyer’s journey that I explained before using an ad, you’re going to have awareness, consideration, little content and decision level content.
We do something and lead core in which basically means we give visitors a certain level of points for every time that they come to our website, and they embrace it. Engage with marketing. So, what we’re able to do is we’re able to… We’re able to find ways where individuals come to our website and so they go to our hand and wrist page, assuming they’ve got a cookie on their computer, when they leave, the website and email automatically gets kicked out to them and that email we’ll have a video in it, that’s 30… 60 or 90 seconds long.
So what we’re trying to do is get video in the hands of as many people as possible, and if they haven’t gone deep enough into our website to get the critical assets, we create a system that if you’re not going to come down so we’re going to get it to you.
One other factor that I would say here is we also to try to develop these asset pages. [16:45]
What asset pages are, are all the most frequently asked questions or common objections about a certain treatment, area or something like that, but they’re all on one page. But what happens, this is the one they click on that answer that question we have a video that plays for them that is maybe 60 or 90 seconds long. What we’re doing is we’re giving them quick and simple information in a format that is digestible. Because it’s a video format I can use that asset on my website, I can use it in my social media, I can use it in my drip marketing, I can use it in apps, you name.
So the more video assets that I can create sort of the better scenario, that is a better outcome, I can have.
CM: And so, I’m going to stop you right there. So one thing that we hear time and time again, is to re-purpose content so video Chris is describing that video is such a great asset to have in your database because you can use it over and over again, you can use it on the website to answer question, social media, email marketing, and apps, really all of all of the different channels that you could be marketing on video fits in there. So thank you for bringing that up. Is so important to reiterate that don’t spend your energy trying to recreate something new for every single channel, you use the same thing that you’ve already created.
CC: That’s right, yeah.
I think one of the reasons why we always say that is because the research and the original writing is the most expensive part of the journey. So why do you keep repeating the most expensive parts when you’d rather be really solid on one critical area and then be in a scenario you’ve created great content that I can scale rather than just constantly… We use a phrase here we call “making the no nuts.
We were in a spot in 2015-2016 when the Google hadn’t totally grabbed a hold of quality versus quantity, we were at a spot as a company, we were putting out about a thousand content pieces a month.
And what I mean by that is that Don’t do what I did. My point is focus on great content.
CM: Okay, so were there any tactics that were expected to perform well or had a lot of hype but failed to take hold in 2018?
CC: Yeah, and nobody’s going to like this, but social media.
So if you were to check out some of the largest orthopedic brand in the States a ton of money goes into social media. [20:24]
This is a Forbes article and this talks about the… And if you’ll notice right here and he calls it the reach Apocalypse. A Jason was on to something. And it’s something that we’ve experienced essentially, what it means is, is that we go and we really try really, really hard to get Facebook likes or things like that, right?
The reality is, is that Facebook is a publicly traded company. And so let me read this one line here.
It says basically, organic reach. Which you’d think I’ve got a 1000 people to like my page everything I post a thousand people are going to see it. And you are in for a wild ride here. You would be lucky if it’s like 11% of the people seeing the content.
Organic Reach on Facebook Moves Inversely to Facebook’s Stock Price
I’ll read this. As organic reach dropped from approximately 12 to 6% (and now often at 1%) Facebook’s stock moved from nearly $50 to nearly $70, adding billions of dollars in marketing capitalization.
What does that mean? Facebook wins when they show your audience less of your materials.
The result is go on Facebook, go on social media, we’ll get your content to your audience. You just have to pay them to do it.
So all these companies, all these practices go, we have to get really big and social media.
Well, for what? Unless you’re willing to pay for social media, you’re not going to see results. Now, you absolutely have to do it, but you do not bet the farm on it.
I’d much rather my double my energy on SEO, paper advertising, content marketing, establishing yourself as a thought leader, PR, all that stuff, rather than resting all my hopes and dreams on social media.
CM: It’s one of those things that you still have to be on social media, but just don’t think it’s going to change your practice.
CC: This is the approach that we use [23:22].
Alright, so we believe for all practices that you need to know who your buyers are inside and out – your ideal buyer patient personas, then you want to be able to do a thing we call usability conversion notes. It was all that heat mapping stuff didn’t show – How are your clients resonating?
SEO, content strategy, lead nurturing, which most practices do not have. And I can talk about that social media, but only if you were on the pay-to-play, then you still do it but you just don’t do it nearly as hard. Have a really firm grasp on your analytics and your data.
Some value –added services, I usually call this video, and pay per click advertising budget provides it, yes, what you’ll notice here, as I’ve mentioned, almost everything in the marketing circle, if you believe in silver bullet marketing that says, “You know what, I’m just one SEO campaign away from it,” you’re wrong, you need the whole thing.
So if you were to make a cake and you just… I don’t know, I’m not a baker .. focus on one ingredient, but everything else was horrible. It’s going to taste terrible.
Yes, but we do it all the time, in marketing, because it’s sort of a path of least resistance type of stuff.
Don’t rely on just one marketing effort to grow your orthopeadic practice
CM: Yeah, and you hear of that one case where just focusing on email marketing transformed the practice, that’s one case, it’s not everybody. So maybe you’re going to find that one email sequence or the one way that you can use email to really transform your practice and I do believe email can transform your practice, but at the same point, you’re going to have to do all this other digital marketing to see what combination works for you in your own business.
CC: I would I couldn’t see it any better.
CM: Okay, so what are the top three things that medical centers, orthopedic Centers, should be doing online to see return from their digital marketing?
I think you kind of just nailed it on the head with this description right here, but are there three bullet points, things that marketing team should be focusing on?
CC: Yes, I… Let me show one [25:35] and then I’ll talk about two.
Obviously with orthopedics, you’re going to have a wide net, right, you’re going to… Let’s say, daily, you have multiple specialties at your organization, so that’s hips and joints, and spines, and other stuff like that. You want to cast as wide a net, as many patients as possible it.
And as many patients as possible to your practice, but other things that you want to be able to do is you want to be able to find niches within or communities within your group and get really solid with those communities. So there’s one of the large orthopedic practices is low kid in Philadelphia, one of our clients, one of the things that they do is that they find these sub-groups of these niches and they communicate right to the heart of that niche. They’ll do that with a number of different things. What they do is they create marketing materials directly to that niche.
So, right, not only do that, they also so market to the influencers. Because in behind a man with the pain, there’s a wife who’s tired of her in about.
Narrow down your audience to niches and then work to build influencer relationships and created tailored messaging that fits their buyer journey
So what happens here is that what we try to do and we recommend you do, would you probably won’t because it takes time, is is that you literally sit down and you have a really hard… A really deep dive into who are your buyer personas? [27:01]
Left hand side, we want to ask were really great questions about who are it patient personas, and I want to be able to find out is how do the answers to these critical questions change from one patient persona to the next patient persona.
Because what you don’t want to do is have a one-size-fits-all marketing plan. If I have a torn ACL, I don’t want to hear about your spine center.
I start hearing about knee pain and my conversion rates are going to go way up.
We want to basically find niches in communities and we want to market to them about the things that matter to them, most rather than just blanket. Due statement marketing that we hope that resonates with all.
CM: So do you feel as though it’s best to take your time, just go through all of these different patient personas, and then choose the one that you feel is that lowest hanging create all the resources for that and then slowly create all the other resources. If you don’t have the time or the budget to have a team like yours jump in and create everything at once.
CC: Well, obviously, you want to make sure that your foundation is good. So I talked about the wide net. Don’t go in unless you have the wide net.
Let’s pretend like you do have the wide net, what I would probably try to do is try to find organizations that would fit multiple buyer personas.
And what I mean by that is, let’s say hypothetically, I’m just going to use a random scenario here. Say I want to market specifically to roofers with bad knees or climbing a ladder. It’s a tough job.
A lot of individuals who have torn their ACL or hurt their knee really bad they get treatment, from a Northrop practice. So, you’re communicating to roofers and you’ve got them for needs. What’s great about… Well, not great, but let me rephrase this a tendency that also happens, this is that once they get their new fix their hips next. Same with baby boomers. Same thing with student athletes, or athletes.
So that the… Yeah, so if I market to a niche of baseball players because I’ve got a really great shoulder department, that’s a really great idea.
CM: So what are the next two things that you recommend?
CC: Obviously, we talked about video. What I would recommend you do is have a really strong home page video, but the other videos that you do well, it might feel like you’ve really lowered the bar. I would rather have a lot of content, even shot with an iPhone right that is very authentic.
Then you saving up all year long to create a 1000 videos over and over and over again, so you can buy a 20 microphone from Amazon, you connect it with an iPad, your iPhone. What I even recommend again, is there’s 15 the disease gambles so you don’t have shaky hands-on I but what I do is, is that I would just have these candid interviews with doctors in your practice or physicians.
Start to talk about just issues better in relevant at the time or tendencies that they say, “You know what, let’s say Lindsay Vohn, she takes a nose dive at the Olympics, right?”
Get a doctor, and says, “You know what, looks like your knees really banged up it’s like, “Well let me tell you, this is something the tendencies that we see with skiers because your feet are clamped in it. torques and then it’s the first thing to give because it’s a, it’s a pliable it’s plantings, like that. go a long way in a in…
So we talked about buyer personas, know your ideas, we talked about video. And then the other thing I would probably say that you would need to do is that you want to be good at two forms of SEO.
One is local SEO with your pin packs and your maps and then the other one is more organic SEO, and let me give you a real quick, I’ll give you my hand pitch on SEO real quick. [32:11]
Alright, I usually… What happens here is that if I’m a knee specialist I need to be found locally with these local impacts, and then I also want to be found organically.
Understand the difference between Local SEO and Traditional SEO
Now what happens is is that there’s a different science for local SEO than there is for traditional SEO, so if you’re going to work with a vendor make sure that they know the difference.
Okay, so, so when I’m talking about… obviously you want to be in a scenario where you’re getting the best keywords.
These are the keywords that everybody wants. Everybody’s going to type in to find your services.
The problem is, is you’re probably not the only orthopedic practice in town and there’s also national providers or at least real providers that have much deeper pockets than you, so they’re going to try to gobble up the sky screeners. These are the really big key words, right?
Yes, so what we recommend is to try to get found on the first page of Google for a number of other keywords, keywords that have really high visibility but with less competition, and what we’re able to do is that you’re able to reach a tipping point.
So if I’ve gotten clients on the first page of Google for hundreds of keywords, I’m increasing what’s called my domain authority. And then once your domain authority, reaches a certain level, you’ve essentially to earn the right to be heard in the eyes of Google.
That means is you can actually go after some of these skyscrapers later on because you’ve sort of earn that klout.
Other things you need to know is if there’s algorithm changes, and if you cheat to try to get to the top, you’re going to wake up one day and you’re going to see something like this.
CM: Now, when you are focusing on as is this in addition to the site structure, are you creating content that’s tailored directly towards those long-tail keywords that aren’t those big skyscrapers, but kind of those lower-tier ones that’s right, some longer-tail keywords are sort of the smaller buildings.
CC: Yeah, I so what happens here is, is that when you start to go after a lot of keywords here, I blocked out the name of this client, but when they found us, I basically they were promised around a 25% increase in the number of keywords on the first page of Google.
We’re able to increase that to 247%. It translates to traffic.
Yeah, no work word. You do the better to where you do it. Basically, it works.
So, this organization just their blog alone, we were able to get them to increase in entrances by 856% or 63000 people were reading their blog to now over 607,000.
I might say, “Well how do I know that’s even quality traffic? Well, I increase their pages by 639%, so people were staying on online 700% or 600% longer. What we believe is the more educated consumer usually converts.
CM: Yes, now with this, I can hear a lot of Marketing Directors seeing these numbers and saying, “Oh my gosh, there’s no way that I can do that.” Can you give us a perspective of how many new pieces of content you created for this organization?
Utilize Editorial Calendars to remain Pro-Active rather than Re-Active with your Inbound Marketing Efforts
CC: Yeah, now this was over three year. The first year, I was the mill. We do about three blogs a week. Those are all SEO optimized blogs, and stuff like that.
We write everything in collaborative documents.
Everything should be connected to an editorial calendar.
You would know, what’s going out in the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, a year or whatever it is. So you are proactive rather than reactive.
One of the major problems I see what practices they start out, they can get all fired up to get into marketing and then fires happen and then you look at their blog and it’s like the last blog was in 2017.
No, it just gets away from you. But if you live and die by an editorial calendar, you’re going to create content.
But what’s great about the content that you produce, is that a lot of companies will have technology that will allow you to optimize for a certain keyword and, you’re probably not going to have the in-house, but vendors basically marketing companies will say with technology like this that I’ll say, “you know what, before this contents even published Live to the web, I can see the rating here is poor. I can see that the readability is below the target, and just even the number of words on the page is less than the 840 where Target wooly using two out of the 20 keywords that need to be used.”
If I loaded this I published this piece of content I should have no hope that it’s going to be the competition, right? So this software is going to basically look at the top 10 results and it’s going to say, “You know what, you’re going to have to be critical adjustments.” It’s better to know this early rather then publish and pray.
CM: Yes, and that is one of the reasons why that editorial calendar is so important is that you can write that blog a month two months, however long before it needs to be published so that you have the time and you’re not feeling that “time Prince before you click Publish to actually look at these stats and everything, to say. Oh, you know what, if I just click publish, it’s not going to do anything for my business correct, yeah, right. So what is the top strategy that should be followed? But often, marketing teams get wrong?
CC: They try to do it all in-house.
Even if she’s working 180 hours a week, or is that possible at Ellen in A, the I alone the Lorimer is she doesn’t go home, she just works, right?
Yes, I can be able to be a specialist in SEO. It changes every day. She is not going to be a specialist in social media. It changes every hour. So what happens is, is that you need to make sure your marketing person is the quarterback who’s running a team of specialists and those specialists only focus on their area of expertise.
You can get a team-based system for the price of hiring one other employee.
If you imagine that Mary marketing is one employee and then the whole team is just another employee, the price you’re paying an initial team is about comparable to hiring a second employee, it’s scalable.
It’s profitable, and it’s fireable.
CM: Yeah, I oh yes, absolutely. shift the blame to someone else.
Oh goodness, let’s see… And I just have it just a couple more questions for you. You’ve shared so much valuable information for our listeners.
You founded Farotech and it’s now a top ranked inbound marketing agency. Do you want to just dive into your company and services a little bit, give a little pitch?
CC: I think the sales pitch that we would say is, is that we are truly partners. By being true than partners is if you’re looking at you, the company, you’re hiring to do your marketing as a vendor right, you’re always going to treat it like a vendor and the results are going to act like a vendor.
Now a partner is responsible for the things that you are responsible for. So if I’m the CMO and my job, my dependency is about getting appointments, making sure that critical physicians are seeing, you’re opening up a new practice, making sure that I have enough walk through traffic, digital traffic, whatever it is.
I want to make sure that as a partner that they’re on the line for the same things. And that is what we do and I, we sort of put ourselves in the line, we find out what matters to you most we bring strategy, we bring people but we bring accountability.
Yeah, and that’s the critical part for us is that our butts are on the line too and so if you’re going to walk out on the ledge we’re going to walk out there with… So you yeah, and so how do we plug ourselves? Would you really great work?
We obviously see we had really very results we work a really large brands, but we also work with some medium such brands as well.
But what’s exciting for us is just the transparency we have with our clients. It’s funny I got married and I had clients that weren’t even invited to the actual wedding come to the actual reception. I’ve got clients that call us and say, “Hey, what do we say about this particular treatment area?” We’re so ingrained that you know what I mean.
And so, then they do a critical they say they’re going to expand they come to us first, because not because we’re getting the commission, but they come to us first so they know what data they need to know before they make decisions, and that’s what I live. A good partnership looks like. And what I believe a good vendor looks like, and I think that’s what a good marketing company looks like.
One other thing is, is that I hire, I love the 99.9% of all my employees. I hire really great people that are passionate about their clients. That’s important because you’re going to spend, you spend most of your waking hours behind a desk, so right, so if you don’t love what you do don’t work here at Farotech and don’t work for my clients.
CM: Yeah, great, I love that. And then lastly, to wrap this up, are there any marketing strategies that your team is currently testing that you think other agencies might not be implementing for their clients?
CC: Yeah, one of the things that we’re trying to do right now is being a scenario where we’re doing a little bit more outbound email.
So here’s what happens. Let’s say, hypothetically, on your patient intake form they work for a really large provider, say a pharmaceutical company, right?
So oftentimes, we don’t go back and look at our database as the source or the well of where people are. And so what happens is I can go back and I make sure that I ask “Who is your employer?” And I also ask what your business title is. And the reason why I’m doing that is because if I know your employer and I’m able to get email addresses to your employers and do lunch and learns at your employers.
That’s a really good thing. So I want to be able to go to each of the large providers in my area and be that guy that practice, or that organization.
I want to be in a scenario where, let’s say, the medically, it’s a C-level executive, I can’t guarantee it. The people at the bottom of the totem pole are in the same place as the C-level executive is. So I want to know how quality is my list. And if their middle-of-the-road, or the title feels been on the road I freeze it.
Other things that it does is it says, you know what, if this guy went to my practice and his insurance basically he’s covered by his insurance at my practice basically his insurance is valid. I know that everybody else in that company.
That’s right, that’s right, and right. So I’ve been doing orthopedics for a long time, my wife has to drag me to go to the doctor’s office, drag me like literally, I know better. I know you have to figure that for every patient you have, there’s 10 patients that have nagging pain that are just like me, that just refuse to get there.
So if I’m going to get you a market and create really critical arguments for an idiot like me.
CM: Well Chris, thank you so much for your time, thank you for the valuable insights and information that you’ve been able to share. Are there any questions that you feel I should have asked that I didn’t?
CC: No, I think usually what happens is, is that the first question I get is, “How long does it take?
It really depends on how much do you want it? If you’re willing to put it in the hard work, and get your foundation straight and get your blogging straight and consistently stay proactive not reactive, and you can see how your results work by the 90-day mark, and you can know how it should progress.
If you are sitting in the dark, if you are not in a scenario where if you’re a reactive marketer we’ll never know when this is going to pay off.
Get that editorial calendar, get focused, work hard, and know what the next 90 days, six months, one year.
CM: Thank you again, Chris, it’s been such a pleasure having you on the show, thank you, I appreciate it. It was wonderful, it was a wonderful experience for me to know right I so thank you again to Chris with barite for joining us today it was such a pleasure hearing about his expertise and about some of those tactics that you should be implementing for your own health center.
So again, my name is Caitlin McDonald, and please tune in for a next episode of The Social speak podcast.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Copy-of-Copy-of-Social-Speak-Podcast-chris-carr.png7201280Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2019-03-20 12:00:352019-04-22 23:01:58Behind the Scenes Look at How Your Orthopedic Practice Should Use Digital Marketing - Interview with Chris Carr founder for Farotech
John is a technical SEO expert who’s deeply engaged in the local and national SEO community. With over 15 years of web management experience, John has led digital strategy for many enterprise healthcare companies such as Epic Health Services, Aveanna Healthcare, Cornerstone Healthcare Group, and more!
Founded in 2009, Cardinal Digital Marketing has been ranked the #1 fastest growing agency in the Southeast (The Agency 100). In addition, they have been consecutively named on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing privately-held US companies in 2014 and 2015. The agency has also been a multi-year recipient of the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter Awards as well as selected as one of the 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For®.
Cardinal keeps pace with rapidly shifting trends in Digital Marketing, and develops engagement strategies that are not defined by a platform or a category, but leverage the best marketing vehicle to solve every unique challenge. They approach every situation with the client’s customer in mind and measure success not by increased traffic or impressions, but instead higher client profits.
Services offered include Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click Advertising, Social Media Management, Web Design & Development, Mobile Marketing, Online Reputation Management, Web Analytics, and more. What are your specialties?
In this interview we focused on SEO and search marketing for health and wellness businesses. We covered:
The difference between SEO and Search Marketing and how this differs from other types of digital marketing.
Current trends are you seeing for wellness practices with SEO marketing in 2019.
Tactics that were expected to perform well or had a lot of hype, but failed to take hold in 2018.
The top 3 things that a wellness center should be doing online to see a return from their SEM efforts.
The top strategy that should be followed, but often marketing teams get it wrong.
Marketing strategies your team is currently testing that you don’t think many other agencies are implementing for their clients.
Please be sure to subscribe to the Social Speak Podcast for more interviews with experts in digital marketing for health and wellness businesses.
Podcast Transcript:
Hello my name is Caitlin McDonald, and welcome to the most recent episode of the Social Speak podcast. I am so excited, today we are joined by SEO expert John McAlpin. Now, John works for Cardinal Digital Marketing. Founded in 2009, Cardinal digital marketing has been ranked number one of fastest growing agencies in the South East. In addition, they have consecutively been named on the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing privately held companies in 2014 and 2015.
Cardinal keeps pace with the rapidly shifting trends in digital marketing and develops engagement strategies that are not defined by a platform or a category, but leverage the best marketing vehicle to solve every unique challenge. They approach every situation with the client’s customer in mind, and measure success not by increased traffic or impressions, but instead, higher client profits. Services offered include search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, mobile marketing, online reputation management, web analytics and more.
Our guest, John is a technical SEO expert, who’s deeply engaged in the local and national SEO community. With over 15 years of web management experience John has led digital strategy for many enterprise healthcare companies such as Epic Health Services, Cornerstone Healthcare Group, and more so let’s give a warm welcome to John.
Caitlin: Welcome John, we’re so excited to have you on the show today.
To kick things off. Tell us a little bit about your background in digital marketing.
John: Sure, it actually started way back when I was 11. I started building websites when I was 11. I found it interesting and saw my dad doing it So, I found W3 schools and started teaching myself how to do all that. But at a professional portion of my career I started in the corporate side, mostly in a tech field, international e-commerce, and then I moved into healthcare and fell in love immediately. I was doing full digital strategy for a healthcare company, and then from there, I transitioned to a agency life and never looked back really. I love agency life. It’s nice to get a little mix of everything.
C: Yes, it definitely is. There’s always a new project to be working on … So John a key aspect of Cardinal digital focuses on SEO and search marketing. Can you describe how this differs from other types of digital marketing?
J: Sure, on it’s own this is a really interesting topic. A lot of people get confused about the actual true definition of SEM. I even heard people consider Social media as a part of SEM and so I think it’s really important to know the difference. Search engine marketing is any type of marketing that has to deal with a search engine. Specifically people refer to it with paid search, like PPC or CPC however you want to refer it to, or SEO. And so that’s essentially search engine marketing. While things like social media channels, have a search box that’s different than a search engine. It is important to note. And so search marketing really is just another form of inbound marketing and what’s unique about it compared to other things, is you’re catching both people during the discovery phase, where there’s no intent to purchase, and during the intent to purchase phase.
C: Great, great thank you for diving into that. So what current trends are you seeing for wellness practices with the SEO and SEM in 2019?
J: What people are in healthcare are starting to do is find alternative ways for people to book appointments. Traditionally it starts with a call then developed. Now we’ve got great technology to book appointments on the website, but now it’s gonna find alternative way to give people more options, to book appointments.
Something that we’re doing is Google My business is actually having features to help integrate their platforms truly need to visit your website, to book an appointment, you can even text or even other direct links. There are some other third-party industry sites like if they’re a directory that we can book appointment straight from there. For example, in the restaurant space Yelp, you can order straight from Yelp. And so, the future is hoping to get voice functionality working out. So all you’re a home assistant, such as Alexa, to help book appointments, that’s a future hope. I don’t know if you were gonna get there, in 2019, but it’s definitely in pain that see a lot of people going towards.
C: That’s pretty incredible. So I’d just be able to say “Alexa, schedule my appointment with this center,” and to be able to do it.
J: Right. I predicted to see a specific company, not a healthcare company, but a technology company developing an application. There’s a lot of partners with it, who are trying to work together to develop this type of technology, so I see it being… You signed up with a partner and they will add you to their list, of preferred vendors, and then you would be able to use their system. That’s the place I see this going.
C: That is incredible, that’s wonderful. Now, in a previous podcast episode, and this isn’t something that we talked about previously, but in a previous podcast episode one of our guest Abby was talking about how interactive websites is actually really helping out with SEO because people have more time on site. A lot of health care centers, direct people off-site to do the scheduling and booking. Is it better to have the scheduling tool actually embedded on your website, rather than directing someone off-site?
J: So, that’s an interesting topic because there’s a couple of things that you wanna think about here. Not just your SEO interactivity, but also how you track conversion. A lot and people who have booking on their site or using an Iframe, which means that your analytics may not be able to track.
And so, really it gets to the point where Google is aimed more to the user experience and that’s where people get that time-on-site type of metric, and technically it’s better to have people to book on your site versus off because it’s less steps to take an action, but in a perfect world we be able to develop software to have booking on our site, and have our own proprietary thing. But, not everyone has those kind of resources. And so it is really however you can get the job done. An Iframe will work. Just be careful about what you’re tracking. As marketers, it is hard for us, so we don’t always have the ability to track it. Cardinal specifically does a good job of working with a whole lot of vendors to make sure that we can get the information that you need, but a lot of agencies don’t have that reach or those resources so be careful.
C: Alright, so let’s jump to the next question, are there any tactics that were expected for well or had a lot of hype, but failed to really take hold in 2018?
J: Voice. I think, voice is gonna be a big one. It’s not the future. It’s now. Some data scientists are predicting that 50% of all searches, are gonna be voice by next year. And I think this is a little confusing because people are getting confused between Voice Search and Voice Assistance.
Asking for the weather, asking certain time or something like that. It’s just those are voice assistance not voice search. And so right now we don’t really have a good way to track search. Also, it is important to note that your Search Console data, a lot of these queries can be voice and Google won’t be telling you which are voice.
I’m sure they will, but they’re not telling you right now. It’s also important to know that as far as asking questions that come from your website, all answers are first position featured snippets. They wanted to be voice focus on getting those featured snippets ranking high. And it’s important to know that feature snippets can appear anywhere in the search and only 30% are in position one.
C: Is there any way to be able to do research about how voice searches and the phrases and terminology that people are using and search differ from me typing into a search engine for something?
J: So as far as tracking or as far as optimizing?
C: As far as optimizing.
J: Sure it’s really just answering commonly add questions that you can relate to your business. Anyone can really get a question answered, but that doesn’t really lead to a conversion or help your branding at all.
So if you really wanted to optimize for voice, currently, before the future hits, it’s really answer the questions as quickly as you can. One of two sentences, the question needs to be answered. A lot of people will try to think about word count, not word quality. So they add all of these filler words. Work to really answered the question directly, in a first two sentences. The rest of that page can be or filler content.
Yeah, and those first two sentences, then you can work your brand name and according to Dr. So and So, at whatever your business name, is, the flu can be treated if caught earlier.
That was a the brand recall there. They can go and search that later or if they just are searching that question online at all, on the paper knows your name at the features on it. Oh, the that’s who I heard that from. And they can follow group.
C: I assume that that’s going to be one of the answers to this next question, but what are the top three things that a wellness center should be doing online to see a return from their SEM efforts?
J: Actually, it’s not one of the three in a lot of the…
There a more important foundational things that people need to worry about. A as far as voice, yes. One of the things I focus on Q+ A answer format. Include all of your services include all of your conditions on separate pages and have a way to inter-link them, Focus on your internal in-between them, so that they can relate and people can learn more information.
One of the first things they need to do is focus on having clean citations and for people that don’t know is a caption. That’s just your directory listing thing about Google My Business, Yelp. And then also think about your industry-specific citations.
Rate My doctor and things like that.
These directories have a huge impact on voice search and how business appear – having a consistent citations in.
So there’s a lot of tools that help it is or you can do it manually, but a lot more work, but you can pay more to have is, will do it for us if a lot of out there for it so I think the biggest factor that wellness centers and we really need to focus on is the user experience.
You can do SEO to a crap site. But if it doesn’t convert and people are turned off by it, they can’t navigate through it, it doesn’t mean anything that is so important.
Yeah, you can put a Band-Aid on it. But it’s not going lead to the results that you need in the end. And I feel as though Google with its algorithm, says, “Well it’s ranking site’s higher that have that positive user experience. People are staying on the site longer, they’re going directly to it.”
C: And then, let’s see, what is the top strategy that should be followed but often marketing teams at these health and wellness centers get wrong or other agencies, just get wrong?
J: So SEO, technical SEO, that’s the first thing I noticed that it’s wrong, but really the biggest missed opportunity is having a holistic digital marketing strategy and having your teams to silo doing their own things, not so picking on the same goals or focus or when teams are working on different ways to achieve different tactics towards the same goal.
Specifically, they need to be blending to the technical side of SEO, PPC, social media and their content. Repurpose your content for different channels.
C: That’s great, that’s great. You work for Cardinal digital, which is a full service agency and one of the top-ranked inbound marketing agencies in the US. Tell us about your company and your services, because you do really merge all of those different silos together for work with your clients.
J: As a strategy partner, we use the term partner, because it really is a relationship that we try to build, we try to build long-term collaborative relationships with national enterprise healthcare companies, because not one company is the same as the other, and everyone deserves a customize strategy. There’s no recycled formula for everyone … See what works best for everyone. We also have a really strong paid media team, and extremely simple track or record merging all of our tactics that blended to re-All full welcome out strategy.
C: Are there any marketing strategies that your team is currently testing that you don’t think many other agencies are implementing for their clients?
J: Sure almost doing a lot of the same one-off tactics and traditional SEO things, and payments paid media, but one of the things that we do is that I’ve seen that I have not seen other agencies really focus on is develop cascading edge tracking software.
We’re trying to use every tool the book to make sure that we can unlock the most insights so we can do the best action because really we put the data in the hands of our clients.
This is what we’re seeing our recommendation and this is how we collaborate with our clients, so, but they are fully aware of every step and they can make the best position possible because we give them the best information possible, and that to be anything from, not just keyword tracking, but also heatmap tracking it seems… How users are actually interacting on their site, so we can have the full holistic US experience.
C: Definitely, definitely, that’s great. And then, John, is there anything that I should have asked but I didn’t?
J: Yes, a lot of questions, I don’t know. I think you have a great job…
C: Awesome, well thank you so much for joining us, has been such a pleasure learning about your experience, your take on SEO and SEM and some of what Cardinal Digital is doing for their clients. So thank you again for joining us today.
J: Thanks so much for having me.
C: Wow, thank you, thank you, thank you to John for joining us today. He shared such wonderful information and it’s no wonder Cardinal digital is such a top-ranked agency with talent like John.
We spoke today about optimizing your directory listings, including both services and conditions pages on your website, as well as how to increase your exposure for voice search by having an FAQ section on your website. All of these are simple tips that you’ll be able to implement on your wellness website to help out with SEO and SEM.
Thank you again for tuning in, thank you to our guest, John for joining us today, and I will see you on the next episode of The Social speak podcast.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Social-Speak-Podcast-John-McAlpin.png312820Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2019-03-13 09:43:112019-03-04 20:57:50Search Engine Marketing vs Digital Marketing - Interview with John McAlpin of Cardinal Digital
This week we have the privilege of speaking with Abby Thompson from Salted Stone, a Diamond Tier Partner with Hubspot. Salted Stone is a global agency with an award-winning team. They provide end-to-end solutions for clients focusing on strategic marketing programs, tactical support, and project engagements.
In our podcast, Abby and I took a deep dive into some of the key concerns for health and wellness centers when tackling Inbound Marketing.
In this episode, Abby provides insight into:
Current trends she is seeing for wellness practices with inbound marketing in 2019.
Tactics that were expected to perform well or had a lot of hype, but failed to take hold in 2018.
The top 3 things that a wellness center should be doing online to see a return from their digital marketing efforts.
What is the top strategy that should be followed, but often marketing teams get it wrong.
Inbound strategies Salted Stone is currently testing that you don’t think many other agencies are implementing for their clients.
Please subscribe to Social Speak Podcast for more interviews with experts in digital marketing for the health and wellness industry.
Before jumping into the transcript of the Podcast, I wanted to highlight eight key takeaways that you can implement in the digital marketing strategy for your wellness center.
8 Ways to Master Inbound Marketing in 2019 for your Wellness Center
Takeaway 1: Inbound marketing is a comprehensive journey. It is about creating opportunities for your target market to find you and interact with your brand in a way that encourages them to take action.
Takeaway 2:Current trends in Health and Wellness for Inbound Marketing in 2019 include building authenticity into how you position yourself online. For example, wellness brands are moving away from partnering with Influencers that alienate their target market and working more with people who welcomes and builds trust.
Takeaway 3: Not all technology trends played out in 2018. Salted Stone expected AI to be much more advanced for content creation, but it still is failing to create content that seems authentic to the brand. Additionally, be on the look out for more advanced functionality for Chat Bots in 2019.
Takeaway 4: Wellness centers should focus their digital marketing efforts on creating Interactive Content. Interactive content increases time on site, prospect engagement, and ultimately helps to build trust with your brand. Examples include: quizzes, calculators, dynamic landing pages, product or service walk-through videos, and more. In general, clinics with interactive content at the center of their digital strategy see a higher ROI than those who don’t emphasize interactive content.
Takeaway 5: Encourage user reviews and value the transparency and authenticity of both positive and negative reviews. Don’t hesitate to incentivize patients to leave reviews about their experience with your practice.
Takeaway 6: Track the correct KPI’s, such as your customer lifetime value to your customer acquisition cost ratio. Vanity or glamour metrics, such as the number of Likes or Shares a post receives, won’t move the needle when it comes to best marketing your practice online.
Takeaway 7: Marketing is not a one-size-fits all proposition. A health clinic in NY may find that different marketing tactics work to book appointments than a wellness center in OH. You need to dig deep and understand your ideal patient.
Takeaway 8: Don’t think you need to be everywhere online. Talk to and interview customers and prospects to find out where they spend their time. Then, focus your Inbound Marketing efforts on growing these channels. Be strategic about where you market yourself and what tools you use.
So, with that covered let’s jump into the Podcast to hear from Inbound Marketing specialist, Abby Thompson.
Inbound Marketing Tips Interview Transcript
Caitlin: Hello and welcome to the newest episode of The Social speak Network podcast. I’m Caitlin McDonald, and today I am joined by Abby Thompson. Abby is the Director of Marketing at Salted Stone, a global agency with an award-winning team of humans, and dogs, where she spends her days spearheading lead generation and strategic initiatives. Abby is a Boston native with a passion for mission-driven business development, branding, and technology. So please, let’s give a warm hello as we welcome Abby, to the podcast.
Abby we are so excited to have you on today, first to kick things off, can you tell us a little bit about your background in digital marketing?
Abby: Yes, absolutely, thank you so much for having me on. I’m excited to be here.
Prior to joining the team at Salted Stone, I was working with a sustainable and renewable energy education company based in Portland, Oregon. We offered online courses for engineers and professionals who wanted to learn more about solar and wind energy and sustainable building. I was responsible for assisting with editorial campaigns on our blog, social media marketing, sourcing, managing experts, building courses with them, and answering questions from prospective students, as well. I got a chance to handle initiatives that followed all ends of the buyer journey.
I created Inbound content for marketing purposes, and also used chatbots to qualify leads and even sell to site visitors, worked with the instructors to build a new courses, and then sold and cross-promoted to them.
It touched on marketing, sales and customer success, as well. After I left that company, I joined the team at Salted Stone about two years ago. I started as an intern and then I worked in our PR and earned media department and now I lead marketing specifically for the agency. I’m a little bit less client-facing now, and I’m really in charge of lead generation and strategic initiatives over here for our agency.
C: Awesome, I love it. So you’ve really been able to have your hands in all different aspects of digital marketing, and now you’re really just marketing the business, which is great.
A: I’ve got to work on the business and in the business which is really cool.
The Difference between Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, and Inbound Marketing
C: Salted Stone focuses on Inbound Marketing, can you describe how this differs from content marketing or digital marketing? There are so many catch phrases out there. What are they?
A: There are so many buzz words. From a high level, Inbound is a technique that really turns the old-school concept of pitching, advertising, and finding and courting leads or buyers on its head. So where in the past, you were always making cold calls, buying leads lists, trying to push your message with an outbound approach, now you’re creating opportunities for folks to find you and interact with your brand in a way that encourages them to ultimately take an action. So, of course, content marketing, content creation, and dissemination of the content that you create are a part of Inbound Marketing.
Certainly a tenant of Inbound is to write or design really helpful guides, blogs, e-books that folks will find and enjoy. And in that process, of course, they’ll get to know the product or solution that you offer, but Inbound is about a lot more than that, really. It’s ultimately about optimizing every domain you have on the web to move people closer to the point of sale, or to renew, or to evangelize your brand and come back again and tell others to come back again.
Whereas digital marketing itself, might be an umbrella in which a lot of these actions, fall, Inbound is really about creating a comprehensive journey. So say someone finds you on the internet because you have a great website that’s keyword optimized with good domain authority.
And maybe they’d spend some time clicking around, chat with someone on a live or scripted bot, look at the resources you might have to offer, download something, maybe they get enrolled in an email marketing nurture workflow and eventually, hopefully, you become your buyer. It’s really it’s a bigger picture, long-term mode of thinking for brands rather than just focusing on SEO for example, or a lot of folks, they just say, “Oh you know what, I’m going to blog…” It’s really much more comprehensive than that.
Flywheel Approach to Marketing from Hubspot
The folks over at HubSpot, who coined the term, they call it now the Fly Wheel way of thinking. Basically the customer is at the middle and then around the customer is sales, marketing and customer success alignment. So you’re making sure that from the point of time where they’re finding them on the internet to when they decide that they want to spend their money with you, you’re really making sure that they’re happy, that they love your product, still that you’re being consistent in your messaging, as soon as they become a client, and just making sure you’re investing in equal measure in all parts of that journey for them. That’s really what Inbound is about it.
Current Inbound Marketing Trends for Wellness Practices in 2019
C: Now, as you know we focused a lot with health care and health and wellness what current trends are you seeing for wellness practices with Inbound Marketing in 2019?
A: Yeah, absolutely, I think we undeniably live in the age of an elite and often unrelatable influencer or social media star, and I think prior to now, many brands have made the assumption that the star power of a person endorsing your product or your service is enough to persuade buyers. But the truth is most wellness or fitness influencers don’t really live life like your buyer does.
And I think you are sending a message with a little bit of dissonance there. And I think marketers have now really caught on that. It sends a sort of phony and unattainable message to have people who don’t live anything like your buyer promoting your product, or… So now I’m basically saying wherein companies embrace this idea, and really tailor they’re Inbound initiatives around fitting their initiatives into the lifestyle of the whole market. Not just that one demographic that can live like those influencers. And to me, that just makes business sense it. Why make your club, the club that only a few people feel they can connect to or join. Why not eliminate those sort of alienating messages and images and open your brand up to folks who want to spend money with you.
Because so many people in the past, if you’re just using sort of elite Influence or marketing, many people probably felt that they weren’t welcomed, or desired customers of your brand.
C: I love that, it’s creating a much more authentic presence for your business.
A: That’s right, And there’s so much to be set of course for using powerful influencers as sort of like an aspirational sort of token. I think that’s powerful still, of course, and there’s so many influencers that are fantastic and very real about their lives and everything, but I think I’m seeing a lot of wellness brands really understand that maybe it can be influencer with a little bit of user-generated content sprinkled in then showing real people using your product or your service ultimately, I think the best word of mouth, comes from your friend on Facebook, who’s probably not Kendall Jenner, with all due respect. I think the authenticity carries. I think people know it, and they recognize it, and they appreciate it.
Marketing Tactics that had Hype in 2018 but Failed to Take Hold
C: A great insight, thank you Abby.
What tactics that were expected to perform well or had a lot of hype around them but failed to take hold in 2018?
A: Beyond what I mentioned before, one that we’ve seen and it isn’t necessarily specific to the world of wellness or fitness, but really, it got a launch through marketing is the role of artificial intelligence in content creation, specifically.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Content Creation Still isn’t where it needs to be in 2019.
So I know at the onset of 2018 we were seeing all these new tools and software is being rolled out and we were expecting folks to be using more of those machine learning services that for example would turn out keyword packed blog posts or write ad copy for you.
It seems like the technology really is isn’t fully there yet, where the whole AI component, just isn’t quite sophisticated enough to write like a human and in many cases, it’s really quite expensive still.
So that’s something we figured we’d be coming up against a lot and contending with a lot and it just hasn’t taken all the way I think many people expect that it would.
C: Oh very interesting. A recent to study did just come out by co-schedule saying +67% or more of marketing directors felt like they didn’t have the technology that they needed in order to really have a robust content marketing strategy. [Actual Fact: Marketers who use automation tools say time is the biggest barrier to advanced marketing while those who don’t automate say that budget is their biggest barrier. (Openprise)]
It’s interesting that you’re talking about the AI and content creation and how it really doesn’t seem like it’s lived up to the hype. So it’s probably not the right product that the audience or the market is looking for.
A: Yeah, it’s true and we’ve seen a few examples and it’s almost the technology in some instances, when it’s applied incorrectly can create sort of no offense intended, but remarkably bad blog posts where you can tell that no human had any part in the creation of it, because it’s just a string of words that doesn’t really make a lot of sense when put together. I have faith that I’ll get there, it’s just it hasn’t taken off the way folks thought it would in 2018.
That goes back to that authentic presence too, do you want to just have a blog post out there or do you want to actually capture your voice, and your brand and draw people into your story?
C: Were there any other tactics that you were expecting to perform well last year and just didn’t live up to the hype?
Obviously, there’s still a lot to learn about, and this actually kind of still falls under the AI cannon, but there’s a lot for us to learn still about chat bots and about live chat and the things that it’s capable of. I certainly wouldn’t say that it didn’t perform or didn’t live up to the hype, but there certainly is a lot more to learn in terms of using chat bots to lead qualify and things like that. I expected that a lot of the products and tools would be a little bit more sophisticated at this point. And they still many of them still have a lot of components to be built out.
The Top Three Things a Wellness Center should be doing online to see a return from their Digital Marketing Efforts
C: Yes, absolutely a great point there. So let’s jump on to the next question, what are the top three things that a wellness center should be doing online to see a return from their digital marketing efforts?
A: Yes, great question. The first is in our opinion and what we’ve seen work for our agency and for our clients is just use interactive content.
Use Interactive Content on your website and in your marketing to see a return from your digital efforts
Offer quizzes, calculators, dynamic landing pages, blog posts with clickable interactive elements, products walk through. These have just proven to result in infinitely higher engagement. We’re seeing better conversion rates, and in some cases, they allow marketers to close more deals. Our statistics around adding interactive components to sales proposals and how that has increased the likelihood of people closing. These interactive component pieces also encourage folks to stay on your website or your page longer, and ultimately that’s beneficial for many reasons. They’re more likely to consume the information, they are likely to want to spend money on your product or service, but ultimately, time on page gets factored into how high up on a search engine results page you’re going to sit.
If folks are spending time, using a quiz or a calculator, clicking around, really enjoying that user experience, it is also going to factor into how you rank on Google or Bing, or any of those search engines.
Interactive Experiences creates an exceptional ROI for your healthcare center
So invest in interactive experiences from marketing to sales to success, it’s just an exceptional ROI because there are so many tools out there now that really enable users to make this type of content without breaking the bank.
We’re agency partners with a couple of really great tools that have enabled us to make this kind of content and do it quickly, but still make it beautiful and effective and genuinely helpful and interesting for folks who come to the site.
C: It’s almost as though five years ago or so, everyone was all about social media in order to have a conversation and to communicate with your prospects online. Now, it’s really about having a conversation with every single thing that you do online, whether it’s a calculator or questionnaire…
A: And let people have the power. I mean the cool thing about interactive content is that it enables the user to decide what they want. Blog posts and e-books have a very important place and they’re not to be overlooked but ultimately when people read them, the brand that they’re reading it through is talking at them.
There really is an opportunity for them to abandon that and just decide they’re going to do something else, but if you’re offering something like an interactive product walk through, and that’s if you have the software or if you have a physical product to great for both that’ll kind of enable folks to at their own leisure figure out what it is that they want to be learning more about.
And it also, on the back end, if you have great reporting set up, it really tells you where your visitors are spending the most of their time as well. So we’ve rolled out interactive components for software companies, or for physical products, and it’s enabled us to really see “Oh Wow. People are interested in the hardware” or people are interested in something we might not have even necessarily known would be a point of differentiation.
C: Yes, the power of data.
A: Yes, for sure!
C: Data driving every decision. So even if you have a strategy and a plan set up, the data may point in a completely different direction.
A: That’s right and you can’t fight the data.
C: We talked about the use of the interactive content. Are there any other efforts that wellness centers should really be focusing on?
Encourage User Reviews on Yelp, Amazon, G2 Crowd, and Google to Build Trust and Authority
A: The second thing I would say is to make sure that you’re encouraging user reviews on sites like Yelp, Amazon, G2 Crowd, Captara, Google and make sure you’re demonstrating those reviews in your marketing collateral. There’s remarkable power in social proof, what we call social proof. And we believe that consumers today really should look at user reviews, as a trustworthy source of insight. As marketers, we know that a lot of the content that we’re reading on the Internet has been funded or branded by a company looking to sell a service so it’s really important that consumers, today, take a look at what actual users are saying.
So we’ve been crafting review strategies on behalf of our clients, and for our own purposes for a while, and as long as we’re asking for honest feedback, and showcasing all truthful testimonials, even the ones that don’t really make you look like the best brand in the world.
Those bad reviews will happen, of course, we’re all people, but as long as you’re asking for that honest feedback, there’s no reason not to incentivize reviews as well. You can show them off on paid ads, and emails, on your web pages. People trust people, way more or then they trust brands and if authenticity is kind of the unintended theme of the day, there’s really no more authentic route to go than to just give people the choice, and the opportunity, to talk about your brand from a real-world perspective.
Make sure you track the correct KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to truly understand success in digital marketing
And then the final one is really to make sure that you’re tracking the right key profit indicators, KPIS, or Key Performance Indicators. We found that it’s so easy to pay close attention to what we would consider more like glamour metrics like engagement on a social post or identifying which of your email campaigns garnered the most clicks, but ultimately some of the more technical metrics will help you glean a solid picture of the return on your investment and really figure out where to invest that money going forward.
One of the ones we’ve been paying closer attention to now is looking at your customer lifetime value to your customer acquisition cost ratio. Which is kind of a mouthful, but it’s really important because it measures the relationship between the lifetime value of a customer, how much they’ll spend with you over time, and the cost of acquiring that customer. It’s pretty easy to determine with just a little bit of math. You just divide the average lifetime value in dollars by the average cost it took to get most customers through the door.
C: This is so powerful. Let’s take a step back for a second. So let’s say you are a marketing director at the healthcare group down the street.
A: Yeah, this seems like something very difficult to transact.
C: And for me, I love data, so I’m all were just jumping in. What tools should these health centers use?
Most health care centers do have some sort of custom or software where they are able to see and how many times somebody comes in the average cost of their visit, so that’s really adding that up over the whole life cycle of the patient that’s coming in. That would be the customer lifetime value correct?
Customer Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost Ratio = Average Lifetime Value of Patients / Average Cost to Get New Patient Booked
A: Yes, exactly. So that is going to be, whether it’s a service or a product, it’s really going to be throughout the lifetime of your customer. And that usually obviously, I mean life time with your brand, not the entirety of their life, but that value that they’re going to add in the entire time that they choose to work with you.
If you sell the products to see and how many times they’ve bought that product, if you tell a service, that’s how many times they’ve renewed or upgraded, it’s really just the amount of time that an individual is going to spend with your brand over the course of the time that they work with you.
C: And then in that acquisition cost is something that say they came through a paid advertisement, right?
A: And then there was a, the depending on the length of the selling cycle because of course it… It’s drastically different if you’re “B2B or “B2C it’s drastically different if you’re a software versus a service. That’s really going to vary quite a bit, but figuring out how you acquired that customer. We do this often by persona, we won’t look at an individual that it would be hyper-granular and a little bit difficult to make the patients so we’ll do it by persona. I will take a look at how much a certain group of people have made our clients and then we’ll pay attention to how much it caused to bring those people on.
And if it’s an instance where we know that a huge group of folks came through, say Instagram advertisements, we can break down the cost that we allocated towards Instagram ads, and compare that to the customer lifetime value by just dividing those two numbers.
C: You don’t need to have a person-A, person-B, person-C really, you’re looking at your practice as a whole, just to get a sense of what that percentage breakdown looks like in the ratio looks like there.
A: Exactly… And so we, for a real world example, we at Salted Stone, were a HubSpot Diamond Tier Partner, so we get a lot of leads and a lot of interest coming through the HubSpot partner directory. So if you know that a certain segment of our leads come through there and they spend X amount of money per year with us or over the course of their lifetime with us, we could take a look at what it cost us to have that directory listing at HubSpot, and to keep it maintained, and we can figure out that ratio. That to us has lead to some incredibly important business decisions. I mean, in a situation like this, it’s “Okay. We know that we have a lot of money coming in through that great partner directory. How do we make sure that we’re still adding value there? How do we make sure that we’re allocating our funds to keep that active?” So it’s really, it’s helped us inform some of the bigger decisions we’ve ever made.
Salted Stone as your Trusted Inbound Marketing Agency Partner
C: Yeah, that’s great. Now tell us a little bit more specifically about what you do as a Diamond Tier Partner with HubSpot. Tell us about your services and your company.
A: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll give you the higher level picture of Salted Stone first and I’ll talk a little about our involvement with HubSpot, as well.
So we’ve been around for over a decade now, we’ve got to all over the globe, we have FAO teams in Australia, in the United States and in the Philippines, and hopefully within the coming year we’ll actually be spreading out even more. So that’s kind of exciting. We call ourselves, a lot of people ask what it means to be a full service digital agency, and we call ourselves that because ultimately we really do everything for our clients and we do it all in-house. So if you need a website, a marketing video, a custom CRM integration, I mean a direct mail campaign sale systems, even training for your business development, everything from logos to booths decor for a conference. You can come to us and we’ll take care of it all with the team that really gets to know the context of your industry and is deeply familiar with your goals, and that’s the benefit, really. I’ve also working with teams that keep everything in-house, is that they can share that information with each other.
For example, if we have a designer creating an infographic, for you that designer has been working with the account manager and the people who are focusing on your brand voice and the folks who help you identify what your new fonts are going to look like. I mean everything, we keep it all within the team, and that’s led us some really, really cool brand experiences for folks. Additionally, we scale our services up and down in terms of that scope size, so we can either be your fully embedded strategic partner where we’re basically your marketing agency of record or we can just produce a one-off deliverable for you.
So that’s a very long-winded just about Salted Stone, and we’ve been a Diamond Tier Partner, I want to say for about three years now. But we’ve been involved with the Hubspot ecosystem for closer to six or seven. Basically our CEO when we started off, we were just a Search Engine Optimization agency, we were doing a lot of work, but just making sure, websites were getting in on that early algorithm for Google and ranking highly, and then, we like everybody else, noticed the shift where folks for getting pretty tired of constantly being advertised too, and wanted to instead learn more and make decisions for themselves. That really empowered consumer mindset took hold at Salted Stone, for sure. So we decided to invest in Inbound and invest in HubSpot as a tool that we use and that we deploy for clients. And it’s been a really, really fantastic partnership. They just have an exceptional team, and exceptional product, and it’s been amazing working with them.
We certainly work with companies outside of HubSpot, as well, part of Salesforce, Marketo, really whatever folks need we’ll take care of it. So we’ve talked a lot about Inbound in this episode, and HubSpot is the parent of Inbound it’s where it all came from. So we’re really so thrilled to be connected with that with that organization.
Unknown Inbound Strategies that can put your Practice on the Map
C: Wonderful… And as a business, as a whole, are there any Inbound strategies that your team is currently testing but you don’t think other agencies are really implementing for their clients?
A: Yeah, a good question, and I actually, I talked to our strategist, all the time now that I’m not as client-facing as I used to be I talked to our strategies all the time, about some of the more outside the box initiatives, or things that they’re doing that they’re really excited about that’s working for their clients, and what always emerges is really one central theme and that’s Salted Stone works from where our clients’ businesses are at, from a maturity perspective, to move forward.
A lot of agencies take a sort of one-size-fits-all approach to strategy.
When you do that, you’re really not immersing yourself enough in the context of what needs to happen next in order for a company to grow. So we’ve worked with some B2B companies to combine what would be considered kind of more analog modern call center tactics with hyper-personalized, email workflows or retargeting.
We’ve done direct mail campaigns, we’ve been crafting strategic event or activation campaigns that use micro-influencers, so thought leaders of specific to spread a message. And those are folks would say, 20,000 followers, not 6 million followers, so we’re constantly gathering context, we’re constantly meeting companies where they’re at in their development and trying to set all these really realistic, but often still really aggressive goals instead of just making it a sort of canned approach to marketing and that’s not at all to put down those agencies that are taking that approach because of course, in many instances, is absolutely going to work. But I just… One thing that our team is really, really good at is making sure our clients understand where they’re at, and we do that through ways that I think sometimes surprise them a little. We do really comprehensive stakeholder and customer interviews, we talked to thought leaders and influencers in the industry sort of independent of our clients, we make sure that we paint a really complete picture of exactly where they’re at and make those steps really tangible for how they can be moving forward in a way that’s smart. That way they’re allocating budget towards things that have staying power towards growth that is sustainable and scalable, and I think that that’s one the… A lot, I see a lot of agencies not do quite quite as much, and maybe that’s less so a differentiator and it’s just me being very proud about the fact that it’s worked really.
I think it’s so important. I didn’t really understand where customers are now, and where they want go, understand their unique customer set. It is something I feel like a lot of agencies talk about, but don’t necessarily do.
I think often, even happens with sort of in-house marketing teams, as well. Where it’s kind of viewed as a nice-to-have, and not a need-to-have to keep refreshing your understanding of where you’re at in the market and who you’re selling to, and what they want. So I, I think there’s this idea in marketing that your key selling points are fixed and your buyers are always going to be looking for the same thing and your differentiator is always going to be the one that resonates, but that’s simply not the case. And you have to be constantly asking for feedback, for reviews, for honest discussion about who you are in the market, and ways you can be better reaching people and meeting their needs and I think… And taking that bespoke approach to work with our clients has just been better in the long run as well for a relationship with them too, because it garners trust when you’re able to just be honest and say “Here’s where you’re at, here’s what we suggest, let’s work together to make your goals or reality.”
C: Absolutely, that’s a breath of fresh air that you do that. Thank you to everybody in the industry.
A: Oh no, thank you, thank you so much.
The key marketing strategy most wellness centers get wrong
C: I meant to ask this earlier, actually. What is the top strategy besides not doing these customer reviews frequently enough, but what some… One strategy that should be followed by a Wellness Center, but often marketing teams just get it wrong or decide that it’s not a priority when it should be.
A: Yes, absolutely. So I would say the sort of top strategy that I see happening a lot, we do get a lot of clients who are very concerned with and rightfully so, because they’ve been showed messaging that indicates they should be, but they’ve been very concerned with making sure that they’re on every platform, all the time. That they’re pushing out content, that they are absolutely churning, they are investing in the newest technology, they’re on every feasible social media network, and that’s a message that we understandably take in and think we need to apply to our business, because all of these social networks, all of these tools, they’re trying to sell to us.
Of course, you’re going to believe that if your Pinterest profile and your YouTube account and your everything is not immediately up-to-date, you’re going to believe that you’re going to fall behind. But the truth is taking time to genuinely identify the channels that your leads are coming in by, or that your ideal audience is hanging out around that is so important and it leads to much better decisions for how to use your bandwidth and how to use your budget.
It’s easy to fall prey to the idea that if you are a software company, you have to be doing webinars.
It’s easy to open the idea that you need to be advertising on LinkedIn, but that might not necessarily be how folks are going to find you and how they want to interact with you.
I would say that a one-top strategy is just making sure you know your customer and you’re constantly updating your customer.
But be strategic about the way that you invest your money and your time and do it all feel like you need to be everywhere across the internet.
Don’t try to be everywhere online – choose those channels that already engage your target market and fully invest in nurturing relationships there
There are many markets where it doesn’t really make sense to keep an active Pinterest profiles, and there’s many markets where it makes sense to not run advertisements everywhere.
Just be strategic, how I have a really strong vendor evaluation in place as well. We certainly do in-house here, but we just have a checklist of things that If we’re deciding to work with a vendor, either for ourselves or to use with our clients, we’ll go through rounds of phone calls, demos, we’ll bring in different members of our teams, we’ll have comprehensive checklist to make sure that this investment we’re making is one that’s intelligent, scalable, and going to work for everybody. It’s so easy now to find all of these companies that claim to really be a the solution that’s going to get you a head, when the truth is if everyone saying, that it certainly can all be true. So, be strategic and don’t feel like you have to be everywhere.
It’s something that we see brands do a lot and while it often doesn’t necessarily hurt to have platforms everywhere, it’s just a lot of time and often a lot of resources and a lot of money that you could be directing towards something that brings in way more value and get you in front of the right people.
C: Yes, absolutely, and something just to tie on to that as well. If you do decide that Instagram or YouTube or LinkedIn, is going to be the place where you’re going to reach your customers stick to it, don’t just… It works, the strategy for two weeks or a month or even three months. Stick to it and pay attention to the data.
A: And hear people out, always trying to make sure that a lot of our e-commerce clients, and a lot of our B2C brands, we always make sure that, say if they are running a Facebook, is it integrated with marketplace is an integrative with shop.
If they’re running ads, are they doing it in a smart way? Are they constantly responding to messages from a customer support perspective? If folks have questions about a product or they need to return something, is that omni-channel operation set up correctly? Because if you’re going to be investing in something, social media marketing is just a great example because there’s so many things you can do, is it now if you go at any… So, if you are an ecommerce brand and you’re going to be investing in something like Instagram or Facebook, just to make sure you are truly doing it right, you’re listening to customers, you are constantly running searches for your brand name, and any sort of sentiment, run sentiment analysis, use listening tools just pick your avenues and make sure that you have made them as robust and sustainable as possible.
C: Great, great well… Abby, I am just blown away by the answers that you gave. Thank you for being so transparent about what your team is doing for clients as well as what clients should be doing for themselves with their own in-house marketing teams.
Is there anything that I should have asked but I didn’t?
A: No, this is perfect. I think it’s all really comprehensive grouping of questions, and it’s made me think so much about our business in a way that’s really cool. It’s been really fun to step back and think through how we do things here. So thank you so much for having me. This has been really great.
C: Wonderful, well we really appreciate you coming on the show, as a guest, and I will be sure to add the link to Salted Stone to the description as well, so listeners, if you want to go check out Salted Stone, I do urge you to. They are a great, great agency and as you know they take care of their clients.
Thank you again to Abby for joining the show from Salted Stone. We talked about a lot of really important topics for your healthcare practice, and your marketing team to follow. Really it is all about creating an authentic presence and tailoring your Marketing Strategies, directly towards the consumer and directly towards your ideal target market persona.
One of the things I loved, is tracking the correct KPI’s – What is that customer lifetime value? This is something in your tracking software, you’ll be able to pull that.
Just take even the number of clients that come in over the course of a year, and divide that by your profit or your revenue for the year, then take a look at all of your marketing expenses. This is just such a simple way to find that ratio between the customer lifetime value and the acquisition cost.
Go out there, make sure you’re focusing on a strategy that makes sense for your unique clients, your unique target market, and don’t try to do everything. Focus on what’s going to really make a difference and have an impact for your business.
So, thank you again to Abby and I will see next time on the Social Speak Podcast.
https://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Copy-of-Social-Speak-Podcast.png312820Caitlin McDonaldhttps://socialspeaknetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialSpeak-Logo.pngCaitlin McDonald2019-03-06 12:15:132019-03-04 21:17:09Inbound Marketing in 2019 - Interview with Abby Thompson Marketing Director at Salted Stone