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By Jeff Walter, Senior Editor and Writer
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Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines evergreen, in the non-botanical sense, as “retaining freshness or interest: perennial” and “universally and continually relevant: not limited in applicability to a particular event or date.” As a noun, an evergreen can be “something that retains its freshness, interest, or popularity.”
You probably have a lot of evergreens in your marketing arsenal … or forest (to stick with the metaphor). Time-tested wisdom never goes out of style, and it’s always in demand.
If you’re continually struggling to generate fresh new content, maybe you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. Consider whether it might make sense to revisit some of the information, observations and insights your organization has shared in the past. If it has been a while, it might be time to dust them off, update or otherwise adapt them if appropriate, and share them again with a receptive audience.
Your newer customers, and potential ones, might never have been exposed to these ideas and would benefit from them—especially if they fall into the category of thought leadership, education or inspiration, as opposed to pure sales.
Another option is to repurpose materials. A blog post from a few years ago might be distilled into an arresting infographic, for example, or a dated PowerPoint presentation might be converted into an entertaining and current video. It’s possible that you’re too close to the subject and could benefit from a fresh set of eyes that can see new possibilities in existing content—and can help you discover new ways to keep it relevant.
The ongoing creation of new content will always be critical, of course, but the “evergreen” approach can supplement and round out what you do.
Image: Getty Images
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.
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By Jeff Walter, Senior Editor and Writer
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Regardless of your industry, your organization is brimming with knowledge on a range of topics. The best, brightest and most experienced of these might well be considered subject matter experts (SMEs). What intelligence and insights they might share! But are they doing so?
We’re not suggesting that you give away any trade secrets. But useful facts and astute observations from your people, whether that information is recently acquired or from the “vaults,” may be a hidden asset that your organization has yet to exploit to its full potential. You might use it, for example, to establish your industry credentials, arouse consumer (or B2B) interest in your brand and potentially drive traffic to your proverbial door, or keep existing customers engaged and tuned in to your brand and what it’s been up to lately. Your SMEs can play an important role in fostering loyalty over the long haul.
E-books, white papers, blog posts, videos, webinars, social media, virtual events, infographics and other content culled from your experiences can educate and inform without being overtly sales-oriented. This content can target as broad or narrow a base as you desire to reach.
Your SMEs’ wisdom—your institutional knowledge—is a resource you can tap to produce compelling content that shines a bright light on your brand, without explicitly angling for the sale. When you share what you know, others can draw useful lessons from it that will increase your long-term value to them and help you nurture lasting relationships.
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.
By Jeff Walter, Senior Healthcare Editor and Writer
One of the most pressing challenges in today’s healthcare environment is access. That one simple concept touches practically every area of what hospitals, clinics, health systems, health plans, home health agencies, provider groups and other healthcare organizations do every day.
There’s access, first and foremost, to care. There’s access to insurance coverage, to specialists, to reliable information (including one’s own records), to assistance in navigating the whole complicated system. The needs are great and the resources, unfortunately, limited. Outsourcing and partnerships can be valuable allies in providing the best care.
The same often proves true in healthcare marketing. How easy are you making it for your patients/customers (and potential ones) to access the information and messages that your organization wants to communicate to them?
Today’s most successful healthcare marketers realize the importance of engaging with consumers across a range of media and platforms. Personalization means reaching people “where they are,” giving them access to useful information at their convenience, on their timetable and on their terms, through their preferred channel(s). From text and email campaigns to blog posts, from e-books to whitepapers, from infographics to videos, from case studies to social media, the methods of reaching your target audience are practically as limitless as your imagination.
There may be limits, however, to the time and other resources that your in-house staff has available to effectively and efficiently craft and curate this content. Whether your team is directly involved in patient care, or it plays a supporting role as a vendor or service provider, consider whether you are content with your content. Might you benefit from access to marketing specialists who can provide critical services as needed? Most companies find such content too specialized and too expensive to create in house.
At Hammock, we have a demonstrated track record of helping healthcare companies market themselves through carefully created content that their varied audiences can actually use. Our experienced researchers, strategists, writers, editors and designers can help your organization forge deeper and longer-lasting relationships with customers—helping instead of hyping, all in the interest of everyone’s good health.
Image: Getty Images
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
By Jeff Walter, Senior Editor
There is a reason you’re in the business you’re in, and it’s not just to sell products and services. This reason runs deeper than even the best mission statement you might compose. Chances are, you get a little emotional thinking about it. Your passion helped you get where you are … and it will keep motivating you to get where you still want to go.
But you didn’t reach this point on passion alone. You’ve done the legwork: the self-education, the research, the outreach, the preparation, the partnering and collaboration that are necessary to do what you do at a high level. You’ve made agonizing decisions, confronted daunting challenges, celebrated victories large and small. You quite likely have faced the challenge of selling others on your dream and your vision, be they partners or investors or employees.
It all makes for a heck of a story. How well are you telling it?
Consider that your customers, like you, are interested in more than just products and services. Perhaps they love a good story, especially one that makes them feel good about the product or service they are buying. What else might you and your organization offer them beyond overt sales-oriented marketing?
There’s the vision, the origin, the journey so far. There’s the experience: the hard-earned wisdom you’ve accrued along the way. What anecdotes and insights, old or new, might benefit your customers while helping you connect with them on a more personal level? From the organizational level to the frontline individuals who personify the team, from behind-the-scenes glimpses to inspirational customer features, there are numerous little stories to be told, even as the big story is still being written.
Blog posts, videos and other digital content that captures why you do what you do can get other people fired up about it as well. We’d welcome the opportunity to help you share your story.
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.
By Jeff Walter, Senior Editor
Everybody knows that search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial to 21st-century businesses vying for online market share, but it shouldn’t take precedence over the customer experience.
That last part is the main takeaway of Google’s new search algorithm, which it has dubbed the “helpful content update.” This change, the technology giant says, is “part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.” The update, announced August 18, was set to begin rolling out last week.
In a nutshell, the new system works by deploying a signal that detects and penalizes sites with high amounts of unhelpful content. Even helpful content will be less likely to perform well if other content on the same site is not helpful. This emphasis on quality over quantity means some businesses would be advised to remove website content that falls short of the standard.
What distinguishes helpful content from its evil twin?
To Google, it’s a matter of whether it was created primarily for people (and by people) or for search engines. Would the intended audience find the content useful, or feel let down by “click bait”? Does it demonstrate firsthand expertise, or is it simply others’ recycled wisdom with no value added? Will readers learn anything from it? Will they have a satisfying experience?
While analytics, traffic monitoring and website scanning can help organizations assess how they are faring with the new algorithm, a bit of soul-searching is also in order: What is the real purpose of the content we’re providing? At Hammock, we’ve long preached the gospel of “help not hype.” That means taking time to get to know the audience and what kind of information is likely to engage them, and then delivering it. Data, perhaps? How-to guides? Informed predictions about coming trends?
If you haven’t been providing helpful content, it’s not too late to change your ways. The pressure is on to share what you know!
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.
Every healthcare organization has stories to tell, and case studies based on success stories can be a powerful form of content marketing. A thoughtful and well-executed case study can:
Unfortunately, many organizations find it daunting to convert these stories into studies that produce results. They struggle with finding the right client or story to feature, they overcomplicate the story by getting bogged down in minutiae that nobody really cares about, or they fail to make the story relevant to a larger audience.
At Hammock, our decades of experience in helping healthcare industry clients tout their successes have taught us some essential lessons about what makes a great case study:
We would welcome the opportunity to talk with you about how we can help you turn your success stories into case studies that help you build on those recent successes.
Image: Getty Images
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.
By: Jeff Walter, Editor
You know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello”
— John Prine, “Hello in There”
Like countless Nashvillians and music lovers (we happen to be both), we mourned the loss of singer-songwriter John Prine to COVID-19 on April 7, 2020. Prine, also a Music City resident, released his self-titled debut album a half-century ago in 1971, gracing the world with such now-standards as “Sam Stone,” “Angel From Montgomery,” “Paradise” and “Hello in There,” that last song an unflinching first-person depiction of the loneliness suffered by many senior citizens (written with jaw-dropping empathy by a 22-year-old).
We think Prine would be happy about the way his family is remembering him—and doing some good in the process. “You Got Gold: Celebrating the Life & Songs of John Prine” is a series of special concerts and other events planned for various Nashville venues Oct. 3-10. Proceeds will benefit The Hello In There Foundation, newly established by Prine’s family “to honor his memory and continue the love, kindness and generosity he shared with the world.” The foundation’s mission is “to identify and collaborate with individuals and communities to offer support for people who are marginalized, discriminated against or … otherwise forgotten.”
Two Nashville-based nonprofits will receive this year’s inaugural grants from the foundation. Room In The Inn provides shelter, emergency services, transitional programs and long-term solutions to help homeless people rebuild their lives. Thistle Farms provides safe housing, healthcare, counseling and employment for women survivors of trafficking, prostitution and addiction.
The Prine tribute concerts, which wrap up on what would have been his 75th birthday, represent a beautiful example of content marketing, a frequent topic of the Idea Email. While they honor the memory of the beloved singer-songwriter (and perhaps sell some CDs and merch in the process), they also serve a higher purpose not directly tied to sales.
We have previously written about the various forms that content marketing can take—from blog posts and e-books to sales presentations and customer welcome kits, from onboarding material and internal letters to employees to bylined articles for industry publications and public events. Earlier this month, we discussed preserving your company’s or organization’s history and future. Thanks to the Prine family for an outstanding example of how this can work. And thanks to John Prine for all the timeless and wonderful music (along with the love, kindness and generosity).
Photo credit: Laura Fedele
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.