By John Lavey | Hammock President and COO
When it comes to executing a successful content-based lead generation strategy aimed at healthcare professionals, the first challenge is developing the type of must-have information that can help these professionals fill knowledge gaps and carry out their responsibilities.
Since most healthcare professionals’ inbox are already filled with offers for such material, here are five tips for converting your must-have information into the start of conversations with prospective clients.
- Start with email. Email is a medium we all love to hate. But it’s the cornerstone of most lead generation strategies. It’s a great place to reach current customers and test the effectiveness of the message you will use with other media. To optimize your email strategy, segment your lists so that current customers get one message, prospects who have interacted with your content get another, and other prospects get a different one.
- Test your subject line. The email you are reading now has a subject line that was determined by a test conducted two hours ago. Every email sent to a group should be tested. Over time, those tests will help you discover the types of subject lines your audience responds to. Should the subject lines be about improving clinical outcomes, saving money or time, or both? Address the audience directly, whether they are C-suite or clinicians, and use language that you know your audience is searching for. Testing will tell you how people are finding you and your competitors online, so capitalize on it.
- Use the right social media channels. Posting on your own Facebook timeline may not be appropriate for your strategy, but targeted Facebook advertising may reach a prospect. In other words, how you use social media will be determined by who your audience is and the nuances of each social media channel and platform. Places where conversations are happening, such as on LinkedIn and Quora, are helpful, and posting to Twitter and LinkedIn can be beneficial for distributing lead generation content.
- Advertise. Content isn’t free, and the process of getting people to view that content isn’t either. Develop a budget for paid search (realizing there are more options than Google AdWords), as well as for content discovery, retargeting and native advertising. Design the process so that it most efficiently uses your dollars to get content in the hands of prospects.
- Measure for specific goals. When conducting a lead generation campaign based on must-have content, it’s critical that you track specific metrics. While the typical conversion goal is related to building a list of prospects, certain metrics must be measured to determine effectiveness, approach and cost-per-lead. Consider the following:
a. What are the total number of site visits or downloads from all channels?
b. What is the breakdown by channel (email, social, white papers, etc.)?
c. What is your spend to generate landing page visits or downloads?
d. What is the ratio of your total inquiries to qualified leads?
e. How much spend per qualified lead?
For more insights into creating marketing content to aid your sales efforts, download Hammock Healthcare Media’s Ebook, Using Content to Support Sales to Healthcare Providers, by clicking here.
Image Credit | iStock
About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email | This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here . To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.