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 John Lavey, CEO/President
I’ve spent much of the last few months, like most people in my industry (and like most people in any industry), trying to make sense of artificial intelligence tools that have the potential to upend or optimize how we work. ChatGPT is the best known, but there are others.
I think AI is a powerful tool. But when I asked one tool, Jasper AI, whether writers were going to be replaced by AI tools, it told me we would not be replaced.
While we might be thinking our robot overlords are being clever, here’s what I can learn from AI on this very topic. Some of the content below was actually assisted by Jasper AI (I also wanted to test my editors to see if they could tell the difference between my writing and a machine’s) and also reflects conversations with colleagues and clients.
I think there are lots of ways AI can optimize content successfully for SEO or higher open rates. I think AI and machine learning will be a great tool for the tactical aspects of content marketing. But the strategic value and human storytelling value aren’t yet being replaced.
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 John Lavey, President and CEO
One of the great opportunities when you work with many different healthcare clients is to continue learning. No area has provided more opportunities for our team to learn than what we call “engagement.”
We often think of engagement as a marketing activity. And, in part, it is. Engagement is about activating a patient, opening a channel of communication and then nurturing positive behaviors that drive positive health outcomes.
But engagement is really a bigger discussion—and a more challenging problem—than simply marketing. Healthcare organizations can’t truly improve patient engagement without focusing on health equity. True engagement requires addressing health equity issues throughout your entire organization—not just in your marketing communications.
Individuals from all walks of life—regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identify or disability—must be considered when we’re thinking about patient engagement. For example, mistrust in the healthcare system persists among many Black Americans because of a long history of mistreatment by the healthcare industry. And patients and family members with limited English proficiency often have trouble accessing healthcare services and suffer worse outcomes because of language barriers. Healthcare organizations must first address equity to truly engage patients.
Some of our clients are tackling health equity head on—and finding solutions. I would challenge you to think about engagement and equity more broadly within your organization. It’s not strictly a marketing issue. So, what are you talking about when you are talking about engagement?
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 John Lavey, CEO/President
My perspective on content marketing (after close to 30 years in the business) is that we shifted about 15 years ago to a harder emphasis on content as a lead-generating tool. There were a couple of significant reasons
There is still a role in high-quality content to support your brand by delivering proprietary research, unique insights and distilling complexities to help your audience make sense of their challenges.
If you’d like to talk to someone about helping you with that kind of content … (Just kidding, no CTA on this one!)
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 Megan Hamby, Editorial Director
A wise woman once sang,
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail
Strategy sets the scene for the tale”
OK, so maybe Taylor Swift borrowed that first line from Benjamin Franklin. And she definitely wasn’t singing about content strategy. But the sentiment is true: Failure to plan is planning to fail.
With only a handful of weeks left in the year, now is the time to start thinking about your content plans and goals for 2023. Consider these four questions.
Do you need help planning your content marketing strategy for 2023? Give us a call.
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 Megan Hamby, Editorial Director
In 2017, Adidas sent an email to Boston Marathon finishers, with the subject line, “Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!”
I know what you’re probably thinking: “Oh no.” Just four years after the Boston Marathon bombing killed three people and injured 280, the sportswear giant sent this tone-deaf and insensitive email.
Even though the company issued a public apology on its social media accounts a few hours later, this blunder has become an object lesson to marketers, as one of the worst high-profile email mistakes we’ve ever seen.
As a marketer, you might be thinking, “Our company would never send something as egregious as that.” But without the right checks and balances in place, even the most seasoned marketers can press send on an email that could be read as insensitive or offensive.
So how can you avoid putting your foot in your mouth in your email marketing campaigns?
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 John Lavey
Most healthcare companies, small or large, are hard at work on marketing to customers, whether those are consumers or B2B customers. But are they raising awareness or acquiring customers? Are they better at one than the other, or are they doing both equally well?
This excellent piece by Christopher Girardi breaks down the differences between efforts to raise awareness and efforts to acquire customers. His post is primarily focused on marketing efforts by health systems and how important it is to do both awareness and acquisition marketing. And, where possible, to blend them.
At Hammock, we have worked with large health systems that are marketing to consumers, as well as small B2B healthcare companies seeking customers—and we have seen separate, but similar, challenges between B2C and B2B players.
Newer, smaller B2B healthcare organizations tend to be anxious to generate leads and keep them coming in, and think of all marketing efforts as sales support. They are focused on acquisition. Some of those companies overestimate awareness of their brand. And they are underinvested in awareness.
Larger organizations, like health systems, often have siloed departments. One department buys all the media to raise awareness, and there are separate efforts to generate leads. There isn’t a lot of coordination between those efforts. What Girardi’s article shows is that acquisition efforts flourish in markets where there has been adequate attention to awareness. And correspondingly, where efforts to raise awareness sometimes fail is in the lost opportunity to drive awareness directly into an acquisition effort.
What is your organization doing on awareness and acquisition? Are you stronger at one than the other? Do you have lost opportunities?
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 John Lavey
You can find a lot of marketing content making the claim that human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish, but this seems to be unscientific research used by marketers to help pitch video as a replacement for text-based content.
But we do know getting audience attention is a huge challenge for marketers. Whether the problem is a shorter attention span, a general failure to provide engaging content, or both, a solution is needed.
One place to start is by creating websites that work. Websites often fail at answering one basic question: “What do you do?” That’s because, in part, the story is spread across different sections of the site, and the format that we have become used to expects us to click across a top navigation bar to get the answers we need.
One content tool that cuts through the clutter is explainer videos. Explainer videos are perfectly named. They explain what you do. This is particularly helpful if your solution is complicated or abstract. You don’t need an explainer video to market Coca-Cola, but you might need it to sell an SaaS platform that addresses a critical niche problem.
Here’s a test. Try to explain to your kids or to a casual acquaintance what you do. If you find yourself struggling to make an elevator pitch that is super clear and concise, you probably need an explainer video. If your kids’ eyes glaze over, then you need an explainer video. (Note: It would be highly unusual if your kids showed that level of interest in what you do, so you need something easy for them to remember.)
Explainer videos are usually 45 seconds to 90 seconds long. They often use simple animation with illustrations or photography, typography, music and voice-overs. You can build the imagery from scratch or use stock imagery creatively to tell the story. They have energy to propel the narrative, and when done well, they convey the problem the audience faces, what the solution looks like, and what the outcome will be.
Putting explainer videos on a prominent place on your website can go a long way toward making it easier to understand the value of your offering. Even if the attention span is closer to that of a goldfish (whatever that might actually be).
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.