Staying Ahead of the Curve
Saturated by images of marketing funnels—convinced you are—by the process of moving prospects through the well-defined stages of awareness, consideration, right down to action. Businesses need to create a digital footprint to stay ahead of the curve, as it has become the leading source for content, products and services, entertainment, and connections.
You sit in your office sipping the marketing Kool Aid and become unabashedly saturated by images of marketing funnels—convinced you are—by the process of moving prospects through the well-defined stages of awareness, consideration, right down to action.
Businesses need to create a digital footprint to stay ahead of the curve, as it has become the leading source for content, products and services, entertainment, and connections. Want to differentiate your business from your competition? Want to get in front of your target audience? Want to be recognized with authority and increased credibility online? Look no further than your digital footprint.
I understand. This is the model we’ve fallen back on for years. It’s the path of least resistance and creates a sense of order when considering marketing initiatives and how they serve our over-arching goals.
Well, it’s time to put down the rainbow, throw order out of the window, and recognize that the funnel no longer accurately represents the reality of marketing and brand exposure.
Today, your prospective customers, whether referring physicians or patients, begin their journey with your brand from a variety of touch points. Those points are no longer well-defined stages; rather they are wavy lines, side steps, and backwards loops. To top it off, you have to compete for their attention in an increasingly noisy marketplace. In the last issue of the RBMA Bulletin, I wrote about strengthening your digital footprint. In that article, I asked you to think about where your customers are engaging content and what you have to offer them that fits in that space. You might be wondering, “Where, exactly, are my customers engaging content?” The answer is: likely in multiple places, and the only way to know for sure is to produce relevant content, create meaningful relation- ships with your targeted audience, and actively listen. To me, that means surveying and monitoring engagement, specifically on any medium where you can track impressions and click-throughs such as social media, and measuring effectiveness through analytics.
Taking a closer look at entry points where your targeted audience may be likely to encounter your brand, here are a few guiding principles to get you headed in the right direction.
Your website must contain relevant, informational content and be responsive (mobile device friendly) so that your audience can easily engage with your content on the go. Further, your website should serve as the foundation for all of your content. Your goal is to create a website that is scalable and to drive the traffic from other mediums back to your website where your targeted audience can get the information they need and want.
Maintain an active presence on social media. Your targeted audience will be looking for your brand on social platforms and a conversation that may include check-ins, reviews, and mentions will be taking place in the social sphere whether you are there or not, so it’s best to participate in a two-way conversation and offer content that shapes positive impressions with your audience. Your goal is to create brand advocates.
Search engines such as Google love fresh, active content. Write a blog or case studies, post testimonials online, produce videosof your patients’ success stories, or get your physicians involved and create videos that highlight their specialties. These types of content will be more likely to be indexed higher in search enginesand will build credibility and establish your group as subject-matter experts in your marketplace.
If you want a sure-fire method for increasing exposure and driving traffic to your website, try pay-per-click or social media advertising. I have witnessed numerous successful online ads for everything from pulling a targeted audience to a blog, increasing social media followers, and increasing awareness of and getting appointments scheduled for new services.
Social media insights and Google Analytics are two tools you must have in place to monitor the success of your digital marketing efforts on a consistent basis. You will need to understand from what entry points your audience engages with your content and the path they take while engaged to further produce valuable content.
This is just the tip of the iceberg and a topic such as this deserves more attention. Stay tuned for future issues of the marketing section of the RBMA Bulletin for more on digital marketing strategies.
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