It can be difficult to figure out what the right thing to do is when it comes to marketing your company. There's no magic bullet, no one size fits all strategy, and their so many different ways to market nowadays that knowing what's right for your company is almost impossible to figure out. When you don't know what to do, sometimes it helps to look at what not to do.
1. There can't only be one. Using only one form of marketing, having only a website, or only brochures, or only print ads, or relying only on word of mouth, does not work. While it may be difficult to figure out which marketing methods you want to use, it's vital that you use more than just one. It's fine if your business gets most of it's clients through word of mouth. But these days, with so much competition, if you don't expand, if you don't use online resources like ZocDoc.com, or list yourself at city hall, or have a presence on line, you'll miss out on clients and fall behind the competition.
2.The internet is your friend. A business without a web presence will not survive in our current climate. This is more than just having an eye catching, well designed website. It's about listing yourself online, being present not just at physical marketing conferences, but on online chat boards. It's about having a mobile website, and a Facebook page. The average person spends about 4 hours a day online. Americans spend about as much time online as they do watching tv, if not more. If you're advertising on TV, you should be advertising online as well.
3. Constant vigilance. The thing about cultivating an online presence, is that it must be a presence. Once you have your website, you have to maintain it. Having a twitter feed that only updates sporadically, if at all, defeats the purpose. Marketing online isn't like marketing in print or on TV. You can't just create an advertisement, put it out there, and ignore it until it starts delivering results. Fortunately, most web designers will also upkeep your website for you, but creating a site without maintaining it, or a Facebook group without updating it, is like buying a car without insurance.
4. But I have a superior product! It's an unfortunate truth that the quality of a good or service doesn't necessarily correlate to how well it does. It is perfectly possible to be the very best at what you do, but if the guy next door has a better ad campaign and slightly lower prices, he'll take all your business. Being the top of your field doesn't matter unless other people recognize you as such. A business can have a quality product, and only a few customers. Trusting only in your talent to see you through is tempting, but ultimately unwise.
5. All flash, no substance. On the flip side of the previous point, when advertising your product, there has to be content. It helps, of course, if you do have a superior product, but even if you don't, you must have an actual, tangible, product or service. Consumers are not stupid. If you have a flashy website with almost no real content, people notice. If you make big claims, but have nothing backing them up, people will notice. Just having a good product isn't enough. But not having a product at all is much, much worse.
Most of these mistakes come back to the same thing: the very human impulse to get more for less. (Or, in the case of point number 4, to rest on your laurels, so you don't have to do more work.) In order to make marketing work for you, you have to invest your time and your money into it. If you hire a marketing company, they'll take some of the personal time investment off your hands, but if you don't put in any effort at all, you won't get any results.
Think we should do more work? What common mistakes have you noticed? If
you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or
didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on
twitter and facebook.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Social Media Etiquette
So you've just started a social media site for your company. You've probably been using Facebook and twitter in your personal life for years, and you know how important it is to have an active online presence not just for yourself, but for your company. What many businesses seem to forget, is that the rules, so to speak, are different when you're not just representing yourself. Here are few basic etiquette rules for social media sites.
1. Use proper punctuation and grammar, even on twitter. This may seem obvious, but you would be surprised (or maybe not) at how often allegedly professional accounts stop using capitals and punctuation on the internet. Even on Twitter, where you are sometimes obligated to use abbreviations simply because of the character count, and it can be tempting to just not punctuate (because every piece of punctuation counts as a character) do it anyway. If you can't say it in 140 properly punctuated and spelled characters, don't say it at all.
2. No one cares what you had for breakfast, unless you're a breakfast food company. You use your personal Facebook and twitter accounts to update your friends, families, and acquaintances on your personal life, thoughts, and feelings. Your business twitter or Facebook page is being used to update your clients on your company's life, interests and ideas. Don't mix the two. Unless your personal life and/or preferences some how directly relates to your business life (we regret to inform you that our CEO is stepping down due to an unfortunate bacon and eggs related incident this morning), your customers don't need to know about it.
3. Spam is for sandwiches, not newsfeeds. No one wants to wake up one morning to find that they're entire Facebook wall, for pages and pages, is nothing but minute by minute updates of what you had for breakfast. The same thing applies to your business accounts. Spread out your updates and vary the content. Cross platform spamming - posting the same thing to your Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn pages, is excusable, and in fact necessary, since your audiences won't be identical across the sites. Deliberately posting the same or similar things more than once in a short period of time will only serve to annoy and alienate your client base.
These are just a few basic etiquette rules to get you started. What annoys you the most about how businesses conduct themselves online? What are some of the most common etiquette mistakes you've seen? Let us know in the comments, or on our own (perfectly polite) twitter and facebook accounts.
1. Use proper punctuation and grammar, even on twitter. This may seem obvious, but you would be surprised (or maybe not) at how often allegedly professional accounts stop using capitals and punctuation on the internet. Even on Twitter, where you are sometimes obligated to use abbreviations simply because of the character count, and it can be tempting to just not punctuate (because every piece of punctuation counts as a character) do it anyway. If you can't say it in 140 properly punctuated and spelled characters, don't say it at all.
2. No one cares what you had for breakfast, unless you're a breakfast food company. You use your personal Facebook and twitter accounts to update your friends, families, and acquaintances on your personal life, thoughts, and feelings. Your business twitter or Facebook page is being used to update your clients on your company's life, interests and ideas. Don't mix the two. Unless your personal life and/or preferences some how directly relates to your business life (we regret to inform you that our CEO is stepping down due to an unfortunate bacon and eggs related incident this morning), your customers don't need to know about it.
3. Spam is for sandwiches, not newsfeeds. No one wants to wake up one morning to find that they're entire Facebook wall, for pages and pages, is nothing but minute by minute updates of what you had for breakfast. The same thing applies to your business accounts. Spread out your updates and vary the content. Cross platform spamming - posting the same thing to your Facebook, twitter, and LinkedIn pages, is excusable, and in fact necessary, since your audiences won't be identical across the sites. Deliberately posting the same or similar things more than once in a short period of time will only serve to annoy and alienate your client base.
These are just a few basic etiquette rules to get you started. What annoys you the most about how businesses conduct themselves online? What are some of the most common etiquette mistakes you've seen? Let us know in the comments, or on our own (perfectly polite) twitter and facebook accounts.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Top Ten Tips for Marketing your Company
There's a lot of marketing advice out there, some of it helpful, a lot of it not. Below I have collected ten of the best tips for marketing your company, in no particular order. Many of these things are just common sense, but with all the advice out there it can be easy to lose track of the basics.
1. Consistency of brand. It's important to have a consistent brand. Every aspect of your company must agree with and cohere with every other. Someone who's heard of your company and stumbles on a site related to your company must immediately be able to recognize it as yours. Consistent logos, layouts, and color schemes can help quickly and easily identify a component of your larger marketing system as yours.
2. Consistency of social media. It is also just as important to have a consistent social media update schedule. Anyone who runs a blog, or uses Facebook knows there's nothing more off putting than going to a company's social media site and seeing three updates spaced months or years apart. Set a day, or a number of days, each week where you will, without fail, update your social media sites and stick to it. This is the best way to show that your company is active, is reliable, and knows enough about/is good enough in its field to provide information about it.
3. Use all your resources. Don't rely only on one form of marketing. Social media marketing alone isn't enough. Traditional marketing isn't enough, even word of mouth marketing isn't enough. By putting all your eggs into one marketing basket you're ignoring significant opportunities to grow your company and will inevitably fall behind companies who do embrace multiple marketing technologies.
4. It's better to direct your focus than to spread yourself too thin. Use all the resources available to you, but use them wisely. If you're an eye doctor, focus on making connections with other eye doctors, with general practitioners who can provide you with references, with school nurses who can refer you patients. Eye doctors should advertise in glasses stores, foot doctors in shoe stores and gyms. Identify your customer base, and target them specifically.
5. Existing customers can be your best marketing resource. Involve your customers by holding raffles, sweepstakes and offering coupons. Encourage customers to bring you referrals, create loyalty reward systems. A happy customer wants to help you, so give them the opportunity to.
6. Research. Keep up to date with the latest developments in your field, and share them with your customers. Start gathering statistics and information on your clients, so you know who your existing clients are, and provide feedback questionnaires so you can better provide them with what they want and need.
7. Don't get discouraged by mistakes; learn from them. There's no universal formula for a successful marketing campaign. If there were, marketing firms would all go out of business. Some techniques and strategies that work for one company,won't work for another. You can make an educated guess as to what we'll get you the most ROI, or the happiest customers, but you can't be certain until you try. And sometimes, you don't succeed. But if you give up, or try to sweep your failure under the rug, you definitely won't succeed. Study what didn't work, figure out why, and use that information to figure out what will.
9. Ask for help, if you need it. You don't need to do this on your own. Marketing your company is tricky. It's a lot of work, and you don't always have time to devote as much time to it as you should. That's why marketing firms exist, why there are so many marketing books and marketing consultants. Asking for help doesn't have to be your first step, but it shouldn't be your last. There's a strong supply of marketing advice out there, so don't feel bad about demanding it.
10. Patience. The effects of a marketing campaign are rarely visible overnight. It takes time to see ROI and it can be easy to get discouraged and write the whole thing off as a waste of time. But while the internet means that when you update your website, or revamp your social media, or offer new discounts and deals, that information is put out there faster then it ever has been before, it still takes time for customers to see your new sale, or visit your new website. Any marketing firm, though this applies to all facets of life as well, that promises you overnight or instant success is scamming you, full stop. So be patient. You've researched, you've prepared, you've made the most educated guess you can. All you can do now is wait for your plans to bear fruit.
We're not afraid to ask for help either. If you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
1. Consistency of brand. It's important to have a consistent brand. Every aspect of your company must agree with and cohere with every other. Someone who's heard of your company and stumbles on a site related to your company must immediately be able to recognize it as yours. Consistent logos, layouts, and color schemes can help quickly and easily identify a component of your larger marketing system as yours.
2. Consistency of social media. It is also just as important to have a consistent social media update schedule. Anyone who runs a blog, or uses Facebook knows there's nothing more off putting than going to a company's social media site and seeing three updates spaced months or years apart. Set a day, or a number of days, each week where you will, without fail, update your social media sites and stick to it. This is the best way to show that your company is active, is reliable, and knows enough about/is good enough in its field to provide information about it.
3. Use all your resources. Don't rely only on one form of marketing. Social media marketing alone isn't enough. Traditional marketing isn't enough, even word of mouth marketing isn't enough. By putting all your eggs into one marketing basket you're ignoring significant opportunities to grow your company and will inevitably fall behind companies who do embrace multiple marketing technologies.
4. It's better to direct your focus than to spread yourself too thin. Use all the resources available to you, but use them wisely. If you're an eye doctor, focus on making connections with other eye doctors, with general practitioners who can provide you with references, with school nurses who can refer you patients. Eye doctors should advertise in glasses stores, foot doctors in shoe stores and gyms. Identify your customer base, and target them specifically.
5. Existing customers can be your best marketing resource. Involve your customers by holding raffles, sweepstakes and offering coupons. Encourage customers to bring you referrals, create loyalty reward systems. A happy customer wants to help you, so give them the opportunity to.
6. Research. Keep up to date with the latest developments in your field, and share them with your customers. Start gathering statistics and information on your clients, so you know who your existing clients are, and provide feedback questionnaires so you can better provide them with what they want and need.
7. Don't get discouraged by mistakes; learn from them. There's no universal formula for a successful marketing campaign. If there were, marketing firms would all go out of business. Some techniques and strategies that work for one company,won't work for another. You can make an educated guess as to what we'll get you the most ROI, or the happiest customers, but you can't be certain until you try. And sometimes, you don't succeed. But if you give up, or try to sweep your failure under the rug, you definitely won't succeed. Study what didn't work, figure out why, and use that information to figure out what will.
9. Ask for help, if you need it. You don't need to do this on your own. Marketing your company is tricky. It's a lot of work, and you don't always have time to devote as much time to it as you should. That's why marketing firms exist, why there are so many marketing books and marketing consultants. Asking for help doesn't have to be your first step, but it shouldn't be your last. There's a strong supply of marketing advice out there, so don't feel bad about demanding it.
10. Patience. The effects of a marketing campaign are rarely visible overnight. It takes time to see ROI and it can be easy to get discouraged and write the whole thing off as a waste of time. But while the internet means that when you update your website, or revamp your social media, or offer new discounts and deals, that information is put out there faster then it ever has been before, it still takes time for customers to see your new sale, or visit your new website. Any marketing firm, though this applies to all facets of life as well, that promises you overnight or instant success is scamming you, full stop. So be patient. You've researched, you've prepared, you've made the most educated guess you can. All you can do now is wait for your plans to bear fruit.
We're not afraid to ask for help either. If you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Why Print Advertising Still Matters (Especially in the Healthcare Business)
It's the internet age. Websites, mobile sites, social media groups - these have become the primary way that companies advertise their businesses. Many businesses think that if they have a nice website and a twitter account, they're all set when it comes to marketing. If you advertise online, there's no need to advertise in print. While online marketing is important and necessary in our current culture, it isn't the only thing that matters. Online advertising, while necessary, is just not as effective unless supplemented and complimented by physical advertising.
At some point, especially if you're a medical practice, clients will physically walk into your place of business. You should have informative, targeted brochures - attractive, well designed, and specialized brochures give your patients and clients something to browse while they wait for an appointment. It's also a physical objects they can take home, or show to their friends and families.
Most online marketing relies on potential clients and patients coming to you. Especially in medicine, which is so dependent on referrals, the onus is on the patient to find the doctor. Direct mailers are a great way to send information, promotional material, or simply to let current and potential patients know that you care. Remind them of your services. Not only is it rare these days to get physical mail, you can also include coupons and other incentives on the direct mailer itself. Physically redeeming a coupon, or directly receiving a letter from your physician, is a lot more satisfying than clicking on a link or receiving an e-mail.
As surprising as it may seem, people still read physical newspapers and magazines. Classic, targeted print advertising is still an effective way to get your name out there, even if the main purpose of your ad is to direct clients to your website.
Not having any online or social media presence is short sighted. But letting your physical, in-real-life advertising presence slide is equally short sighted. Online advertising has not, and should not, replace traditional print advertising - it should supplement it.
If you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
At some point, especially if you're a medical practice, clients will physically walk into your place of business. You should have informative, targeted brochures - attractive, well designed, and specialized brochures give your patients and clients something to browse while they wait for an appointment. It's also a physical objects they can take home, or show to their friends and families.
Most online marketing relies on potential clients and patients coming to you. Especially in medicine, which is so dependent on referrals, the onus is on the patient to find the doctor. Direct mailers are a great way to send information, promotional material, or simply to let current and potential patients know that you care. Remind them of your services. Not only is it rare these days to get physical mail, you can also include coupons and other incentives on the direct mailer itself. Physically redeeming a coupon, or directly receiving a letter from your physician, is a lot more satisfying than clicking on a link or receiving an e-mail.
As surprising as it may seem, people still read physical newspapers and magazines. Classic, targeted print advertising is still an effective way to get your name out there, even if the main purpose of your ad is to direct clients to your website.
Not having any online or social media presence is short sighted. But letting your physical, in-real-life advertising presence slide is equally short sighted. Online advertising has not, and should not, replace traditional print advertising - it should supplement it.
If you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Tips for an Engaging Website
These days, everyone has a website. Given our current internet culture, this makes a lot of sense. But how do you distinguish your website form the crowd? What makes for a good website?
And as always, if you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
- Readability - this seems obvious, but many websites fall into the trap of having a solid wall of small sized text, that the eye naturally skips over. Or alternatively, they have an overwhelming image or images that distract from and sometimes actively prevent you from clearly seeing the text. On this vein, your font is important - stick to simple sans serif fonts - fancy custom fonts distract the eye and can look unprofessional.
- Strong Visuals- While you shouldn't let your images overwhelm your content, having attractive graphics or pictures can help visually market your website. In many cases, having an image contain content - simple, readbale diagrams and charts - is the best way to marry the two. It's also important to have a compact, relatively simple logo that can be used to brand your site across social media platforms.
- Don't be afraid of substance - It can be tempting to underestimate your audience, to treat your website like a larger, more intense advertisement. Your website, while it advertises your company by definition, should not be an adverstisment in and of itself. The job of a website is to give your customers and potential customers concrete facts. Assume that your advertising has done it's job and led people to your website - they have a vague idea of what your company does. Now, show them the actual products and/or services you want them to buy.
And as always, if you have any additional tips or suggestions, things that worked or didn't work for you, let us know in the comments, or by contacting us on twitter and facebook.
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