This article gives you insights into the current trends and explains how you can make the most of them.

Image is important:

Not so long ago marketing a medical practice was simply a matter of putting a sign up and choosing a nice font. Now your customers expect more. Today a website is an essential tool for strengthening current relationships and assisting potential patients learn about what you stand for and even connect with your practice. However, simply having “a website” is not enough. A poorly executed online presence can backfire, result in disappointed users and may even damage reputations. News spreads fast in the online world! On the other hand, a considered online marketing strategy and a well-designed website is your chance to appear inviting and professional.

Before you run off and build a new website make sure you have thought about the ‚Äòimage‚Äô you are have chosen to convey. Of course ‘trust’ is a given but there are other important decisions you will need to make about your chosen persona. For instance, do you want to be seen as friendly, professional, modern or traditional? Good web agencies will help you understand your options in regards to colours, layout and language and how these link to your personality.

What is important is finding the thing that makes you different. Ask some of your patients. They may have some valuable insights that you have failed to spot.

Help people find your site:

As anyone who has searched for a ‚Äòdoctor‚Äô on Google knows the web is a very big place. In fact Google has now indexed well over 1 trillion web pages. So having a website gives you no guarantee that anyone will see it. You need to think beyond “website” if you are to get results and ensure you do not waste your budget on a solution that will become obsolete or too expensive to maintain or expand.

Fortunately, a good online marketing strategy does not need to cost the earth – in sharp contrast to traditional channels such as newspaper, radio or TV. It takes some careful planning and a little bit of time but it will be very beneficial. Much of it comes down to choosing the right partner to supply you with sound advice and solutions.

Optimising for search engines:

Part of any build phase of a new website should be Search Engine Optimisation [SEO] which is the combination of a number of strategies employed to make your website easy to find. To some extent the ease with which potential customers can find you through search engines comes down to the way the site is built. So make sure your web agency has a good understanding of this. The words you opt to use on your site will also affect search efficiency.

Search engines rank sites on original content so avoid copying text from other sites. Make your text clear and easy to skim read and ask your web development company to give you a list of commonly used key words to include: The more you use the better your results from web search activity.

Creating well optimised website text is not rocket science. Just be sure you get professional guidance before you start.

Online advertising:

There are many types of online advertising available but the most common, and by far the most cost effective, is search engine advertising. You probably have seen this form of advertising when performing a Google search. They are called “sponsored links” which have been designed with smaller businesses in mind, and can be very effective. But don’t assume this is the right choice for you.

There are many ways to run a search engine marketing campaign and getting it right can save you a lot of money. Look to partner with a company that has experience in this field and work with them to set targets and budgets.

Directories:

Online directories are a simple way of raising your profile. There are many online directories available in Australia including Sensis, Yellow Pages, AMA and other official medical directories.

Some directories are free but many charge for a listing. Before you take the plunge and pay for a listing make sure you know the profile of the directory’s viewers. If the operator of a directory can’t provide that type of information it may be a sign that it‚Äôs unlikely to work for you.
Utilising social networks:
Social Networking seems to be the buzz word of 2009. In fact, online social networking has existed for a very long time. What’s new are services such as Twitter and Facebook having recently taken off. Networking sites may come and go but what won’t go away is the desire of your customers to connect and share thoughts and information. Developing a Social Networking strategy will be worth the effort.

Depending on how you want to approach the market you may want to make this a big part of your overall plan or just a small addition. Either way it is worth remembering you can’t do everything. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, article writing and participating in forums are all forms of social networking and it is easy to get caught up trying to influence all of them. A far better approach is to identify where the people you want to communicate are found and target a few areas that will help add to your reputation.

Understand the rules:

Doctors hold a special place in society so advertising can get tricky. The Medical Practices Act and State Medical boards will have information on rules and regulations around marketing your practice. Spending some time reading and understanding these documents will help you avoid any pitfalls.

Measuring success:

After doing your research, optimising your site and fine-tuning your online marketing strategy, you’ll want to know how successful it is. The obvious way is to look at your bottom line. But building a brand name takes time so getting some higher level data is necessary to check if you‚Äôre on the right track.

Make sure your website has an analytics device attached so you can see who visits your site and how long they spend there. This knowledge is essential in achieving success with your online efforts. Luckily Google offers site analytics for free. The information gathered will give you a greater understanding and assist in the allocation of your marketing budget to further strengthen your online marketing efforts.

Act now:

A wide range of new technologies are changing the way everyone is using the web. The global financial crisis has just added momentum to that trend as individuals and firms switch to more cost-effective and valuable ways of communicating and marketing. There is no better time to take advantage of this shift and build yourself a great online presence and strengthen your reputation.

Customers are very publicly talking back and it is making the management teams of some brands very nervous.

Not so long ago the relationship that brands had with their customers was a one way street. The brand was the boss. They told their customers what they liked and how to like it. The only say the customer had was the decision to buy. This is no longer the case, customers are very publicly talking back and it is making the management teams of some brands very nervous. Web based social networking platforms give customers power never seen before. Now one voice can be heard by thousands of people. Brands need to learn to deal with this evolution, so here is a primer.

First, some background on how the internet has altered consumer behaviour. The internet, and particularly the rise of social media, has allowed people with similar interests to connect. This is abundantly obvious when one trawls through Twitter where the common social network model of simply connecting with people you know tends to give way to people connecting in groups according to interest. Indeed, people interested in any topic imaginable from all areas of the world are connecting. It’s like subject based forums on steroids. People are forming tribes.

People desperately want to be connected but, even more importantly, they want to be led.

Humans have always formed tribes. Religion, family, sports and fashion are all examples of tribal behaviour. The difference now is that any interest group can form a tribe almost instantly. Social media has allowed any fringe idea to become the basis of a tribe and a movement. People desperately want to be connected but, even more importantly, they want to be led. We are in a time of massive change. This change is driven by everybody’s desire to do things in a new way and to be heard.

Barack Obama’s recent landslide victory is a good example of this. He promised change, he communicated differently and led with integrity. He connected to his audience through social media. He started a movement, formed a tribe and then he and his followers charged to victory. What the world discovered is that you can now make an ad campaign as slick as you want but if the product is poor then it simply doesn’t matter.

So “advertising is dead” in the sense the old methods don’t work the same way they used to. Obama’s opponents didn’t fully understand the impact that social networking has had on society. They continued to use the old and trusted methods of marketing. These apparently transparent methods are diminishing in influence as social networking begins to infiltrate every media touch-point. In two recent articles I wrote for the Anthill blog I talked about how this is already happening to television and how the newspaper industry needs to change to avoid becoming irrelevant (see the end of this article for links).

Brands that don’t adapt to this reality will be left behind.

Social media is much more than a passing phase. Human civilisation is built around social interaction. It’s what the people want and this new media is only going to get bigger. It will eventually become part of everything. Individual social media companies might fade away (MySpace seems to be in that category) as better designed products come onto the market, but the world has spoken and it wants to be connected. Brands that don’t adapt to this reality will be left behind. They will become the guy at the party that nobody wants to sit next to because he just keeps talking about himself.

Tribal behaviour

Blogs have become socially and commercially influential. From what started out as individuals chatting on about their lives, blogs have become business tools and money making ventures. They influence groups, buying patterns and fashion. They are modern tribal leaders.

Now anyone with a camera or a desire to write is ‘the press’.

Not so long ago commentators speculated that blogging was simply a passing fad. What these commentators didn’t realise was that it was yet to achieve maturation and once it had it would signal big trouble for the large media organisations. Now anyone with a camera or a desire to write is ‘the press’. This pattern is being repeated for micro-blogging, a category of which Twitter is the current market leader. Some commentators question the relevance of utilising Twitter to listen to people “drone on about their lives”. But Twitter, and other micro blogs, are in the early stages of their development. They too will mature, most probably much quicker than the original blogs, and enable much bigger tribes to develop around even more specific subject matter.

The tribal leaders of these new social media can be reached and persuaded to support you, no matter what platform they decide to use. Unlike the old ‘one way’ approach however, they need to be interacted with on their own terms. Provided they have a group of true fans, they can influence hundreds of thousands of people – in a matter of hours. This is what gives them such power.

And this is what marketers in the current environment have to understand. The ‘mass-market’ model is on the decline. What is needed now is a pattern of marketing to the ‘early adopters’ – the guys at the front of the bell curve, the ones that have a true interest in what you have to offer – and form a base of evangelists that will market for you. You no longer have to aim to connect with everyone. This really leaves the field wide open for the smaller brands to break through – the ones willing to challenge.

The age of the challenger

In marketing speak a ‘challenger brand’ is code for ‘the small brand’. A challenger brand is one that is meant to be fast, flexible and innovative in its communications. But in my view the word ‘challenger’ should instead be short hand for ‘emerging leader’.

Emerging leaders challenge the status quo, they challenge themselves and they connect with others who have similar ideas – those people who need a leader to show and inspire them what to do. The market leader wants the status quo to remain just that. They want to speak and be heard in a mass market. No discussion thanks.¬† The challenger realises that, in order to create a movement there needs to be systems in place for everybody in that tribe to be heard, and they commit to leading that tribe with everything they’ve got.

Traditional advertising is not about interaction with the individual. It is predominately a one way conversation to a mass audience. But nobody likes to be forced into making decisions. This is why the traditional advertising model is beginning to fail. It relies on mass media, and this media is itself being transformed by social networks.

What can social networking do for your brand

All of this may sound a bit scary for brand managers. It’s true that it does take time and effort to build a community and to be truly effective you have to obey some rules. Even so, it is not a hard thing to do. It takes far more time and resources to build that fan base with traditional advertising. Be honest, be helpful and contribute to the community and you’ll get supporters fast.

Social networking is far more than having a Facebook profile. It is any platform that gives the end user an ability to contribute. Many companies have realised that developing an internal social media platform can aid in communication but have yet to work out how it can help shape their brand personality.

A good social media strategy accepts you can’t do everything at once. A company can employ a social platform to perform customer service, to connect directly with customers thereby humanising the brand, to obtain demographic information on individuals to improve the effectiveness of direct marketing or to harness a mass of surplus cognitive resource to generate new ideas.

You can’t do everything with social media but as long as you are focused you will be able to do much more than you may expect.

Where to start

In the coming months many companies will try to market through social networks and many will fail.

In the coming months many companies will try to market through social networks and many will fail. There are of course ways of dramatically upping the chances of success, not least of which is making sure you hire a company that knows the space well. Making sure you are across the fundamentals will help move things along quickly.

The first thing any company moving into social networking should decide is the overall goal. Knowing what you want to achieve and why you are doing it may seem obvious but is something that is easily overlooked if you rush into a project too quickly.

Like any good marketing activity you need to know how your customers think and behave. Unlike traditional advertising, marketing online is very data rich. It is possible to know exactly what your customers are looking at, how long they spend doing it and who they then talk to about the experience. Make sure you know as much of this information as is possible before you develop a strategy any further.

From there deciding what channels you wish to utilise becomes a very important choice. You should know where your target market is by this stage so deciding if Facebook, Twitter, Bebo or any other platform is right should be easy. Deciding to create your own platform is a bigger step but can be very rewarding if it is done correctly. Again, make sure you are getting good advice and a solid strategy and don’t just assume that if you make something it will get used.

Measurement is important in all areas of business and social networking is no exception. Developing good metric methods should be an early priority. Remember that it is possible to measure everything but not all information has value. Knowing what you are looking at is vital. If you are hiring a marketing firm to build you a social networking campaign it makes sense to have part of the payment tied to the performance of that campaign. If you are building a network to get staff talking to each other and your customers the quality of the content will go down if you assign KPIs to ‘platforms usage’ only.

Most importantly make sure everyone involved knows what your ‘voice’ is. It is wise to develop a policy around social networking usage but if that policy is too tight then you will lose support. This is about people. Learn that it is OK to give up control of your marketing message and become part of the conversation. Be honest, be objective and be involved. And do not leave your community. You have made a promise to these people to listen to them. If you stop participating they will abandon you in an instant!

Start leading

There is no better time to start developing social media strategies.

There is no better time to start developing social media strategies. All market segments¬† are spending a lot more time on social networks (the time spent on Facebook grew by over 500% in the year Dec ’07 to Dec ’08) and in this time of economic downturn it may be wise to attract new customers from further afield. In the not too distant future every company will have a social networking policy so getting in early will give you an edge.

If you can hold a conversation you can market in social media

Marketing in social networks is not rocket science. It may involve technology but, at its core, it is what human civilisation is built upon. If you can hold a conversation you can market in social media.

So get good advice and get moving. The world is changing and the challengers are going to come out on top. They will create movements and lead tribes. They will interact and not be afraid of change. They will know how to listen and realise the greatest power they have is to empower their customers.

If you understand that these networks have all been built because it’s what your customers want, then the challenger, the leader, can be you.

Further reading

http://anthillonline.com/marketing-wisely-in-an-economic-downturn/
http://anthillonline.com/how-social-networks-are-transforming-tv/
http://anthillonline.com/what-the-newspaper-industry-needs-to-do-to-survive/
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc

If it all seems like some crazy fad, think again. The human race is built on social interaction. We evolved to communicate with each other. Being social is what the world wants.

Well everything is about to change. The power-house that is Google has been noticeably quiet in the social media space, apart from buying YouTube and Blogger, for quite some time. No more. They are about to release the killer app. It’s called Waves and it is going to turbo boost social networking. The future is almost here!

The video below is quite long but if you want to know where the world is going to be in less than a year I recommend you look at it.

“While just a few years ago the mediums were associated with the teenage and 20-something sets, that’s changed. Two-thirds of all online users visit social networks and blogs, according to data from Nielsen Online. And the largest growth in social media users last year came from the 35- to 49-year-old group.

With the average age of its readers approaching 40, BradsDeals.com didn’t consider social media the best fit until this year.

“When we started on Facebook a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure we were going to connect with people because our demographic is older,” said Brad Wilson, founder and editor in chief, who also began using Twitter recently.

The company has attracted 2,500 followers through Twitter since March 1 and nabbed 1,200 Facebook users since launching a fan page this month. Now, traffic to BradsDeals.com is streaming in at more than 1 million hits a month, up 150 percent from a year ago, Wilson said, adding that consumers’ focus on frugality also factors into the site’s growth.”

To read full article click here

It’s worth a read if you are¬†considering¬†developing a Web 2.0 strategy.

You can read it here

In a high-level project with Telstra, Australia’s largest telco, we created the new-look phone bill in conjunction with research from our strategic alliance partner Axiom Consulting Australia.

According to Working Three Account Director, Christian Green, the new bill ‘worked extremely well in research and it helped to brand Telstra as modern and user friendly. It (the bill) features ‘grades of cooler blues and a more logical layout. I am genuinely excited to see that the core of our design made it through Telstra’s incredibly thorough review process.’

He continued, ‘It’s also a great example of how something mundane like a telco bill can get a real lift from true creativity. Congratulations must go to our Creative Director Mark Cameron and Senior Designer Will Clement.’

We’re sure you’ll see it in your mailbox very soon, however if you just can’t wait to see your next Telstra bill, you can see it in our Projects.