Let Your Patients Do the Talking: How to Use Reviews to Build Your Practice’s Reputation

Let Your Patients Do the Talking: How to Use Reviews to Build Your Practice’s Reputation

blog, Reputation Management

Your practice can add credibility and complexity to its content when you regularly incorporate the positive feedback your patients leave. This practice has an added bonus of rewarding patients for their praise, strengthening your relationship with them and encouraging others to follow in their footsteps.

You may think that simply regurgitating patient acclaim can seem like a cheap or shallow tactic. When you go about using reviews and testimonials incorrectly, that can certainly be the case.

But when you can masterfully weave praise into your content marketing and collateral materials, it feels like a natural fit. Your content becomes richer, and your brand name becomes more credible.

According to eMarketer research, online reviews are by far the most trusted source of business information. In fact, 91% of 18-34 year old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Putting your reviews front and center in your content offer documented proof of peer approval, and no one has to go digging into third-party sites to find that proof.

So if you’re considering using patient reviews to obtain all of the above benefits and more, try putting the following strategies into action.

Pepper Website Pages, and Especially Landing Pages, With Embedded Reviews and Accolades

Medical practices have a trust gap they must clear when a potential patient first arrives at their website. No matter how comforting or flashy the site is, patients are always on the lookout for signs that they could get burned. They may scrutinize your claims or look for fine print that reveals how your offers aren’t what they seem.

Oftentimes, they will look to outside resources before they can let down their guard. The Local Consumer Review Survey 2018 by BrightLocal unveiled that 86% of consumers read reviews for local businesses (including 95% of people aged 18-34) to inform their purchase decisions. Not only that, but 80% of 18-34 year olds have written online reviews – compared to just 41% of consumers over 55.

Adding reviews right on your web page immediately begins to chip away at their defenses. They can begin to feel some relief knowing that your practice has rewarded others for their trust. Evidence that people don’t regret spending their hard-earned money on your services can reduce the natural hesitation some people might feel.

This also helps keep them from heading down rabbit trails on the internet looking for outside information on your practice. It keeps them on your site. If they already see positive reviews then they don’t need to go digging through all of the other reviews online. This helps to ensure that they are less likely to encounter negative reviews that color your business in an unfavorable light. 

Even if someone does do their own homework and encounters a mixture of positive and negative reviews, their first impressions are already fairly rosy. Each negative reviewer must then make their case for why this positive first impression is wrong.

When incorporating testimonials and feedback on your web pages, be sure to use the following best practices:

 

  • Take a second to re-read the third-party reviews site’s policy on sharing reviews. They may have limitations on how you use them.
  • Always ask the reviewer for permission. Nothing hurts worse than having someone who praised your business turn around and complain that their own words were used unethically.
  • Don’t take things out of context. Using an excerpt of a review is fine, but don’t cherry-pick statements that paint a different picture for the reader than the review as a whole. For instance, don’t just take the positive things a reviewer conceded out of a negative review.
  • Quote the person verbatim. Changing words around or using tricks like mashing two unrelated things together to make a sentence is deceptive and unethical. You may even be subject to FTC penalties.

Share Interesting or Glowing Reviews to Social Media

Getting people to leave reviews is hard work! Unless, of course, they had a bad experience. According to one study of 2,000 U.S. consumers, over half of people say they’re likely to publicly complain about a bad experience with a business—often resulting in a bad review.

A second study found that most people only leave a positive review if they were overwhelmed with how great their experience was. “If instead you had a moderate view, you’re likely to have left no review at all, finding it not worth the time and effort,” say the researchers in the Harvard Business Review.

So how do you encourage patients to leave a review if they aren’t angry with you and they weren’t absolutely blown away? Simple: reward them with a public mention!

By sharing someone’s positive review online, you reinforce the behavior. You also encourage others who want public recognition and attention to leave reviews of their own.

Let Reviews Inspire Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content should solve audience needs and conclude with a gentle promotional nudge towards your company. Treading this narrow path between information and promotion is admittedly difficult for most businesses. Seventy-nine percent of editors say they have to turn down guest blog posts because they’re overly promotional.

The problem is that most businesses can’t find an angle. “8 Reasons Our Food Is Amazing” is something no one would want to click on! But “10 Keys to Improving Customer Service” can work, especially if you’re able to point to specific best practices you can use.

When writing these types of articles, starting with positive features of your business or product as a jumping-off point can lead to a disconnect. In other words, your business could be proud of something that no one really notices.

Instead, take a look at your own reviews to get inspired. Let’s say you received a review from a patient who cites six different positive reasons they love coming to your office; it was clean, friendly staff, comfortable waiting area, short wait, and a professional doctor who took the time to really listen to their concerns.

Taking that list, you could simply write an article about the “6 Most Important Things to Look for in a Medical Practice.” Since you know people enjoy these things about your office, you can mention them honestly. You can also write while thinking about the perspective of a patient who has been to a clinic or practice that is not welcoming or that regularly has long and uncomfortable wait times.

Of course, you can also use negative criticism to inspire you. If you have had issues in the past with bad customer service, you can list “X Things We’ve Changed to Make Your Experience Better” to win people back.

Getting More Patient Reviews to Use in Your Content Marketing

All of the strategies listed above depend on a constant, fresh stream of patient feedback. If your most recent review was from 2014, you may have a problem!

To counteract this issue, make leaving a review as simple and convenient as possible. You can use third-party software tools to automatically send an email to someone and ask them for their review on your preferred platform. You can also leave a convenient link on your home page so that everyone can easily find their way to your review pages.

Reach out to some of your most loyal or satisfied patients to see if they would take the time to write a one to three paragraph testimonial on your behalf. You can use these longer reviews (with their permission) as quotes or embedded reviews framing your content or occupying your most critical landing pages.

Another surefire method to jog people’s memory is to use marketing collateral offered by review platforms both online and in real life. Place window decals on your entrance or include a ready-to-print plaque right by your cash register.

Train sales associates and office staff to ask for feedback at the end of every interaction. Be aware of specific platform policies, though. For instance, Yelp demands that you only use certain brand materials in certain ways. They also have a strict policy where you can’t ask people to “review our business on Yelp!”

With just a small amount of effort, your content quality and credibility can be dramatically improved by using patient reviews in clever ways. Patients’ trust absolutely thrives on documented proof, and they like to see that their words matter when they have something to say.

Sharing their reviews is the best way to tell them “thank you” and that their opinion is important. That’s customer service and content marketing rolled into one!

How to Make your Customer Service your Biggest Marketing Advantage

How to Make your Customer Service your Biggest Marketing Advantage

blog, Reputation Marketing

Now that so much interaction and business is being done online, it may seem that customer service has become a relic of a bygone era.

Many businesses once defined their success as a company by the excellent customer service that they offered. Companies like Nordstrom and Chick-fil-A come to mind.

Customer service has changed and it seems that many businesses have not adapted to offering a new more modern forum of excellent customer service, especially in the medical and health care fields.

All of this creates an opportunity for medical practices that do provide excellent customer service to not only be proud of what they’re doing but also to use it as an excellent marketing tool to grow their practices.

Here are five steps to make customer service your biggest marketing advantage.

Step no. 1

Define customer service.

The first thing that you need to do is define what excellent customer service is in your practice. If your team doesn’t know what’s expected of them to create excellent customer service, then they can’t be expected to do it and do it consistently.

Create a document that captures the spirit of what excellent customer service is at your practice, as well as specific steps to create an excellent customer service experience. Be specific and give examples of excellent customer service to help employees start to see opportunities.

You can even ask employees to think of a time when they received excellent care or service. Have them describe what happened, and ask how they think service like that could be implemented in your practice.

The first thing that you need to do is define what excellent customer service is in your practice. If your team doesn’t know what’s expected of them to create excellent customer service, then they can’t be expected to do it and do it consistently.

Create a document that captures the spirit of what excellent customer service is at your practice, as well as specific steps to create an excellent customer service experience. Be specific and give examples of excellent customer service to help employees start to see opportunities.

You can even ask employees to think of a time when they received excellent care or service. Have them describe what happened, and ask how they think service like that could be implemented in your practice.

Step no. 2

Measure it.

If you’re going to say that you provide the best service in your city, you had better be able to back that up. The way to back that up is to be able to measure the effectiveness of your customer service.

Of course, the way to do this is to find out what your customers actually think about your service. One of our favorite ways to do this is using what’s called a Net Promoter Score.

The Net Promoter Score is a simple, consistent, very brief survey tool that gives you back statistically significant data to help you determine how you’re doing with your customer service.

You can also utilize our Reputation Marketing System. We’ve designed an easy-to-use system that makes it simple to generate a flood of 5-star reviews for your practice. We also syndicate those review across the internet so that everywhere a potential patient looks, they’ll see real-life glowing reviews about your staff and services.

Whether it’s Net Promoter Score or our Online Reputation Marketing System, make sure you have a way to consistently measure the feedback from your customers

Step no. 3

Number three is to report it.

Once you have that data, you need to use that data to help your team understand how they’re doing and make adjustments so that they can improve any shortcomings that they have in their customer service.

It’s our experience that by reporting this data to your team, your team gets very motivated to improve that data and define ways to improve that data, which creates a culture of improvement and accountability in your practice, which is what great customer service is all about.

Step no. 4

Compensate for it.

Behavior follows compensation in business. If you want to make sure that something happens, pay for it. By tying compensation to excellent customer service, you can ensure that you’ll have the attention and focus of your team.

This doesn’t have to be a major change in compensation plans, it can be as simple as finding ways to offer fun bonuses like a gift card, based on customer service experiences and feedback from patients.

That alone can be enough to create a cultural shift to focus on customer service within your practice.

Step no. 5

The final step, and this is where the marketing comes into play, is to brag about it.

Once you have excellent data around your customer service that’s worth bragging about, don’t let it go to waste.

Excellent customer testimonials and feedback and specifically showing data that you’re performing at top of industry levels is an incredibly effective marketing tool. Take that data and use it to create marketing campaigns.

You can also use it to create campaigns where you’re bragging about your employees and the job that they’re doing for your patients.

By humanizing the story around your customer service, you not only motivate your employees, who will appreciate the attention but also add more character to your company to show that you’re human.

Most of all, it shows that you really care about the personal experience that your practice can offer to new and current patients.

That’s five ways to make customer service your biggest marketing advantage. Look for opportunities to implement all five of these steps in your practice and turn customer service into your most effective growth marketing tool.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR ONLINE REPUTATION MARKETING

Why Patient Trust Is Vital to Your Brand

Why Patient Trust Is Vital to Your Brand

blog, Brand Optimization, Reputation Management

Click to watch the video, or watch on YouTube.
Check out our recent Facebook Live Event where Neil talked about the importance of trust for medical providers.
With increased access to information on the internet, patient expectations are higher than they’ve ever been, and competition is fierce. Patient trust has always been important for medical practice growth and success, but this new environment makes it absolutely vital.

In addition to nurturing lifelong patients that will consistently choose your office over another, patient trust also gives your medical practice a little leeway if problems arise in the future. No matter what may happen, earning the trust of your patients ensures your company’s brand can survive.

So, what is patient trust and how is it earned? This isn’t a new concept, but it’s an area in which many medical practices fail. The transparency that leads to trust is about more than including the standard copy about why your office is better than the rest — you have to truly care about your patients and their problems.

What Is Patient Trust and Why Is It Important?

Generally, patient trust happens when you have a deep understanding of your patients’ needs and have a valid solution to their problems. You provide them with relevant information and products or services that cater to their unique needs, rather than touting the benefits of choosing your medical practice.

Ultimately, this trust is about putting the patient first in your content and your products or services.

The reason trust is more important now than it’s ever been is a direct result of the bombardment of information and options available today.

Consumers no longer need to choose between only a few brands. They have virtually limitless options and access to reviews, testimonials and marketing tricks that can give them an idea of what you have to offer. Because of this, marketers need to look beyond the competitive pricing, features, and benefits, and direct their attention more toward the history and legacy. Patients have become empowered and skeptical, so they’re looking for the whole package — one that will not only give them a product or service that’s reliable, but also a medical office and customer service that they can count on now and in the future. Ideally, your product or service will address their needs at the time, but in the event that it doesn’t, they want to know you’ll be there to make it right.

How Is Patient Trust Created?

As we know, the idea of building patient trust isn’t new, but it can be difficult to achieve. Just making promises about your medical practice is no longer enough, since consumers are looking for actions that back up your claims. This has a big influence on loyalty as well, since patients are more likely to return to the doctor that gave them the experience they wanted the first time around.

Authenticity is key. Authenticity is the one thing that transcends industries, generations and cultures, since it’s the universal thing that all patients are looking for. It’s about being transparent and giving the patients what they expect, whether in products or service, and delivering the values of the brand.

Of course, authenticity and transparency are useless for the pure sake of it. You need to be providing content that demonstrates an in-depth understanding of your patients’

needs and expectations, so you can provide them with relevant, valuable solutions. Superlatives, false claims, half-truths and other marketing hype that can’t be verified instantly reads as false, so focus on positive information of substance and value to your patient.

 

Also, if you’re falling below expectations in some way, it’s vital to learn from it and find a way to improve. While it may be difficult to accurately measure the value and performance in terms of patient trust, you can set standards for your medical practice to ensure that each and every aspect of your business is accountable and staying on track. This not only makes your trust tangible for your audience, but it also keeps your practice living up to the image you’re putting out into the world.

Why Is Patient Trust Hard to Earn?

There are many reasons trust can be hard to earn, especially for certain brands, but skeptical and savvy patients are the main reason. More and more data breaches and misuse of data are dominating the headlines, so it’s becoming more difficult for consumers to immediately trust a brand and be open to new or unproven brands.

Fortunately, this issue is easy to combat if you’re truly putting the patient first. A brand must be clear about its purpose and values, as well as being transparent with policy and procedures. Perception is everything, and a company that offers the truth is more likely to have good impressions with potential patients.

There’s been a shift in power between the business and the consumer. In the past, the brand had the power and patients had to accept what was given. Now, consumers have a broad outlook and understand more about what a company should and should not be, so they’re less forgiving of missteps. Patients want a brand that shows its customer loyalty and demonstrates shared values, so an effective strategy would be to align your practice’s values with the information you’d gladly offer to the public.

In addition, transparency is often forced upon brands, since patients can find dirt if they look hard enough. In all likelihood, questionable ethics and practices will leak in other media and be found by patients, leaving a medical practice looking disingenuous and sleazy, which is worse than having no trust at all.

Conclusion

While patient trust may sound like a swift strategy or “silver bullet” for new leads and business growth, it’s anything but. That trust is difficult to earn and keep and is far more than just a marketing strategy.

The authenticity and transparency necessary to garner real patient trust comes from honest communications, solid company culture and treating the patient as you would want to be treated, rather than just lip service.

Though it’s clear that consumers want trustworthy brands, their general trust isn’t high. This can be an area of opportunity for new or developing medical practices, or offices looking to revamp their image and surge ahead of competitors. Whether we like it or not, the power is with the patient, so it’s more important than ever to put their needs first for business success.

Why No One Clicks on Your Social Media Content — 6 Tips for Improving Engagement

Why No One Clicks on Your Social Media Content — 6 Tips for Improving Engagement

blog, Social Media

For a small medical practice, gaining steam on social media is undeniably an uphill battle. You have to contend with algorithms that make it nearly impossible to get discovered until you achieve a certain level of visibility. This situation puts you in a catch-22: you can’t get anyone to view your content until you get engagement, which requires views!

Nevermind the fact that social media overwhelmingly prefers silly or opinionated content—two things that really don’t gel with the average healthcare and medical practice’s branding. Sure, you can gain thousands of shares by posting ridiculous cat videos, but there’s a slim chance all that attention will aid your business goals.

Despite all these challenges, putting your practice out there on social media isn’t just worth it; it’s necessary. According to research from Stone Temple, 63 percent of all web traffic in 2017 came from mobile devices. In the U.S., 87 percent of mobile internet time is spent in apps. What are the most common apps? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, to name a few.

Following this logic, people on the internet spend the majority of their time looking at social media apps on their phone. While Google Search is another top app—meaning SEO is also critical for medical practices—social media is by far the most common way people discover content. Consider that two thirds of U.S. adults say they get their news from social media.

Put simply: if you aren’t on social media, you will have an incredibly hard time gaining brand recognition for your office. You will also have a tough time getting attention for your laboriously curated or crafted content.

So how can you climb uphill to earn engagement and, eventually, legions of new patients? Start by following the six tips below.

1. Talk About Your Audience, Not Your Business

No one logs into social media to talk about you! Okay, that may be an unfair exaggeration, but our point is that most people enjoy social media because it’s all about me, me, me.

You should use that tendency. Instead of talking about your medical practice, talk about the healthcare industry in a way that people can relate. Suddenly, you’re not just promoting. You’re conversing. Or, you’re informing. Sometimes, you might even be commiserating.

Here’s an example: consider a post written by a local Chiropractic office that says, “Regular adjustments loosen up tight muscles! Come in today and mention this post for $5 off.”

While the offer may be tempting and the service may be useful, people may tune them out. Instead, the office can say, “Has sitting at a desk all day made you achy and cranky? Come see us! With a quick chiropractic adjustment, we’ll have you feeling like a new person when you walk out the door. Get $5 off your service when you mention this post! ”The difference is all about perspective. When you write content, don’t just subtly hint at relevance to your audience. Instead, write things for them that subtly steer them towards your services. Flipping your thinking around can be a quick path to more consistent conversions.

2. Cover Interesting Healthcare Topics Rather Than Just Your Brand Alone

Another way to branch away from overpromotion is to be a provider of news and information from the healthcare industry. A healthcare provider can offer self-care tips and the latest studies on which health practices are most effective. You may even want to share stretches and exercises people can do at home to start feeling better.

When done right, this content earns your audience’s interest without your practice appearing like it wants something in return. You also round out your subject matter pool to include topics that are universally interesting and helpful to potential patients.

3. Participate in Discussions in Groups and Trending Hashtags

What if your brand were a really helpful person? That’s the approach many of the most successful social media marketers take when they’re trying to build an audience. They get proactive, reaching out to target audiences in the social niches they occupy.

For example, the same hypothetical Chiropractic office mentioned above could join yoga, martial arts, or natural living groups. As long as they are not overtly promoting or stealing focus from other discussions, the business can become a valuable contributor to the group. After all, who better to offer expertise than the experts?

When building your initial audience pool, try to be very active in Facebook groups and public discussions. Avoid coming across too opinionated, but don’t be shy about setting facts straight. With enough effort, you can gain some initial followers—and even new patients!

4. Aim for Emotional Content That Tells a Story About Your Customers

Going back to one of the main drawbacks of social media marketing for medical practices: only certain types of content seem to excel on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These popular content categories include humorous content, content that impresses/amazes, content that sums up people’s feelings succinctly, content that isn’t afraid to state a strong opinion and content that stirs emotions.

Of all these options, emotional content is probably the easiest to pin down. While getting an emotion out of your audience may seem like a tall order, it’s actually fairly hard to fail completely at it. An attempt to make a joke or be “cool” might go over like a lead balloon. Being controversial is never a good idea since it, well, stirs controversy. But no one can 100 percent fail at communicating emotion as long as they’re sincere.

Think from your heart and start by telling stories either about your patients or related to their lives. Get to the emotional core of what your service offers. If you’re relieving pain, you’re offering the ability to make more memories and have good times again. If you’re offering weight loss, you’re providing confidence and empowerment. If you’re offering hormone therapy, you offer customers an emotion: a feeling of control over their lives and the ability for them to feel like themselves.

When using a storytelling approach, start small. Highlight a patient whose day you made. Or, mention the emotional benefits of whatever information your content offers, such as information to help make people’s day less stressful.

From there, you can learn more about how to combine images and text in a way that stirs people’s souls.

5. Engage Your Social Media Marketing Audience Directly by Asking Them Questions

There is probably no more powerful social media marketing phrase than “What do you think?”

Arguably, all of social media is just one big pile of people telling others what they think. When they share art or humorous content, they’re really saying, “This is the type of thing I like!”

“People like to think things through,” explains Barry Feldman on Hubspot. “They like to hear from other thinkers. Certainly, they want other people to know what they think.”

Soliciting opinions is a surefire way to get your audience talking. Try to avoid controversial topics, and moderate comments that include vulgar, hostile, harassing or otherwise off-brand statements. Having someone mad at your medical practice for deleting their comment is a whole lot better than being the practice that let someone attack others in their comment section.

The beauty of asking others for their opinion is that it can be done with just about every post. You can ask people how many times they broke a bone before graduating from high school. Or, if you’re writing about weight loss, throw in a question on your post asking your audience what their favorite healthy snack is.

Soliciting opinions is easy, and it can reliably earn engagement. Just be wary of doing it too often, especially if no one’s taking the bait. You don’t want to be the brand that gets mocked for throwing a poll that absolutely no one clicks on.

6. Research Your Audience’s Interests and Influencers

All of the above methods work well on their own, but you turbocharge their effectiveness by doing a little digging and documentation on your audiences. Try to identify the types of content topics they seem to be most interested in. Look at influencers they frequently interact with and try to write content you think that influencer would share.

Above all else, write down your strategy, measure your results, and experiment to find better performance over time. The nice thing about social media marketing is that your engagement numbers are easy to track! Keep an eye on your graphs and let your “likes” point the way to a bigger, more interactive audience and more new patients walking into your office.

8 Secrets of Social Media Marketing That Everyone Misses

8 Secrets of Social Media Marketing That Everyone Misses

blog, Social Media

Social media marketing sounds simple enough to many newbie business owners, but they need to recognize the difference between personal social media use and professional use.

Think about it like this: if you make a good pot of coffee to serve your family, then that’s something you can manage on your own. But if you plan on serving 1,000 cups of coffee to peers over the course of a three-day business conference, then that’s an entirely more complex matter!
Everything gets more complicated when you move from personal to professional, and the results matter more, too.

Suddenly, you aren’t just posting on your Facebook when you feel like it. Nor can you just feel good about the occasional reply and like. Instead, you’re actively trying to drive business goals and represent your brand in a likeable way.
The dramatic difference between the two approaches catches many business owners off-guard. To help them out, here are a eight secrets the pros use when it comes to social media marketing — and that many small businesses overlook.

Write Down a Policy and Style Guide

Ask them to tell you what the business’s social media policy is, and you’re just as likely to get dozens of different answers. In fact, most employees may look you back blankly in the face.
A social media policy guides the brand voice as well as the decisions a business makes when posting. So, if you were trying to pick between two image types, the social media policy could help you decide on the one that aligns better with your social goals.

Set policies for employee social media use, too. Make sure they know they represent the company! Let them know what sorts of offenses could get them in hot water, including posting extreme political opinions or offensive takes.

Creating a social media style guide can similarly help make posting easier, especially if more than one employee handles the duties. Align everything in your policy and style guide so that your social media accounts can support both your brand and your marketing goals.

Target Your Content and Conversations Towards Personas

Some small businesses get HUGE social media followings …of people who would rarely buy anything from them.

There is a big gap between mass engagement and targeted engagement.

You want your posts to speak to a highly targeted audience based on the traits of your best customers. For instance, if you pitch your services to existing IT departments, don’t be shy about using jargon. Stay current on any discussion, too, so that your ideas don’t seem dated.

But if you want to offer managed IT services to regular businesses, they may not know a CAT cable from a cat collar. Feel free to post basic how-tos, and try to keep terminology approachable.
Decide upon the segments you want to speak to in order to raise your chances of success. Imagine traits of a single person in this segment, including their typical job role, the things they value most, and broad aspects of their personality. This is your “persona” for an idealized version of a target audience group.

You can even name them! That way, before you decide on a post to share or an image to use, you can ask something like: “Would Sarah the retired optometrist care about this post?”

Strategize, Set Goals, And Ditch Vanity Metrics

Always set goals for your social media usage. It should serve a concrete purpose that ultimately benefits your business.

Common social media marketing goals include:
● Raising website visits
● Generating leads through job quotes
● Helping introduce new products to people
● Getting more participants for events, contests, and things like webinars
● Upselling existing customers
● Reminding prior customers to return again
● Promoting a specific brand value, especially through philanthropy

No matter what your goals are, ensure they actually help your business get more money or improve its brand.

For instance, having a certain number of “likes” or shares from a post promoting your content should not be a goal. These are vanity metrics. Instead, you should monitor the amount of actual visits to the content on your website. Ideally, you will also have targets for the percentage of people converted from social to content to signing up for your related offer.

Carry on Actual Conversations and Engage

Don’t just post into the void or post things you, personally, want to read.
Everything you post should be targeted towards the personas you have created and tied towards business goals.

With this in mind, you want your audiences to feel like your brand is carrying on a conversation rather than just talking at them.

Respond to certain positive comments or interesting ideas. Try to see if you can get the full perspective from people who have something negative to say. Make each response feel personal, not canned.

Give your audience opportunities to take center stage. Post a question for them, like “what are your favorite ways to save money?” Ask them if they would like to see more of certain content types, or less of certain post types.

Also, make your social media use broader than just posting on your own page. Use social listening tools to monitor brand mentions and jump in on messages when you think it’s worthy of a conversation. Find other business pages, and engage with them like you would want others to engage with you.

As Andrew Kucheriavy of web development company Intechnic writes, “make [sure] your interactions are meaningful! Networking is about adding value to a relationship.” 

https://www.intechnic.com/blog/10-common-social-media-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid/

Make Time for Off-Schedule Posting

Many business owners go ahead and queue up an entire month’s worth of content in advance.
This is great! Having a schedule makes the social experience more consistent and professional for your audience.

But you shouldn’t be shackled to this schedule.

New articles and ideas will pop up on your radar all the time. Maybe something interesting happened in your industry this week. Maybe you just snapped a great photo of your team at the office.

Promote Content Posts to Put Them in Front of Targeted Audiences

Promoting content on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can be highly affordable. More importantly, it can grow your audience beyond people who already follow and interact with your pages.

Start experimenting with promoting certain posts and using custom audience building features. Platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook even offer the ability to target specific companies or hyper-local areas.

If you put just a small budget behind a few key posts a month, then you can quickly multiply the number of people who see your messages. You also generate valuable data based on who does and doesn’t interact when they see certain posts.

Give yourself the chance to actually share content during opportunities like these rather than hoarding it all until next month. If you set aside, say, an hour each week to make time for unscheduled postings, then you can flesh out your existing content and make your page feel more organic.

Just remember to stick to your policy, goals, and persona guides. Also, proofread twice!

Don’t Assume Social Media Marketing Is Easy to Do Yourself

There’s a reason “social media manager” is a full-time job at most big companies. Even for small businesses, managing it all and doing it right can be tough.

On top of that, you may not have the time to dig into your data or revisit your strategies and guiding documents.

So seek out help. Share the burden with others who are qualified and whose judgement you trust.
As Social Media Week observes: “Long gone are the days when you could rely on an intern to manage your business’s social media accounts. Either hire an in-house expert, or outsource to a social media management firm.”

Crawl Before You Walk, Walk Before You Run

As with anything in business, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Stick to one or two social networks at first. Otherwise your pages could feel like soulless cookie-cutter copies or, worse, ghost towns with nary an update in months.

But if you stay focused on your goals and your principles, then you can start out small to find gradual success. Only once you get the hang of it should you start to scale out and do more.

7 Ways to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Email Marketing

7 Ways to Increase the Effectiveness of Your Email Marketing

blog, Medical Marketing

Email marketing has come back in full force, and brands that know their way around best practices can reap huge returns.

According to a survey of marketers conducted last summer, the average ROI from email campaigns was over 100 percent! This ROI beat out other marketing channels by over four times, including social media, paid search, and direct mail.

One study from 2015 even found that email marketing could generate as much as $38 for every $1 spent, which equals a mind-blowing 3,800% percent ROI.

For anyone trying to squeeze more out of their email marketing or turn around their lackluster campaign success, here are 7 pointers for increasing the effectiveness of your email efforts.

Talk to people about topics, products and ideas they are interested in. According to an infographic by Mailigen, using segmented, relevant messaging more than doubles your open rate while driving 18x more revenue for your campaigns.

Segment Your List (Or Risk Being Irrelevant)

Talk to people about topics, products and ideas they are interested in. According to an infographic by Mailigen, using segmented, relevant messaging more than doubles your open rate while driving 18x more revenue for your campaigns.

This approach makes a lot of sense if you have ever been to a party where someone is droning on and on about something you just don’t care to hear about or have any interest in. “Have you seen how expensive jogging strollers are these days?” they ask, not bothering to remember you don’t have kids and haven’t jogged since high school.

While the person talking may feel like they aren’t being terribly rude, to the recipient it can feel a bit more personal. “I don’t care what you are actually interested in” the person communicates. “Everyone is equally interested in what I have to say.”

Not having email segments is the same thing. Ensure your list is segmented by buyer persona so that every message is as relevant as possible.

For people who self-subscribe, you can even give them a chance to customize the content they receive by interest, product category and other choices from a pick-list. Just don’t count on them to do all the work of segmenting for you!

Using an email automation system like Constant Contact or Mailchimp is critical to keeping these segments organized, but you can also potentially do-it-yourself by just separating your mailing lists into separate content buckets. Once you have segments established, take a moment to strategize the difference between each segment based on consumer traits, progress through sales pipeline and other situations. Then, outline the type of content that would be most relevant to each segment as well as what would be least relevant and should not be sent.

Taking a moment to get to know your audience can dramatically increase your open rates while lowering the amount of frustrated subscribers.

When we hear our names — even if we know it’s someone else with the same name being called — we tend to take notice. Chances are good that your parents were pros at this technique. When they said your name before a sentence, you knew they meant business!

We have the same reaction when we see our names in an email. Personalization with a name and other details increases open rates by 26 percent, and it can even help drive brand affinity.
Note that personalization involves more than just adding a first name to an email. The entire message should be framed as if the recipient is having a 1:1 conversation with the sender. LinkedIn has become a pro at this tactic. They use personalization in a way that makes you sit up and listen.

The above message not only includes a name but signals that an exciting activity has happened. It says people are looking at your profile. Think of ways to mirror this effect so people get excited or intrigued just from looking at a subject line.

Segmenting your user base by the products they have bought (or expressed interest in) is another way to connect more deeply right from the subject line. “New Jeep Anniversary Fog Lights” can be a way for a Jeep Wrangler owner to have immediate interest, for instance.

Data shows that this type of personalization is table stakes for marketers with successful email programs. “88 percent of those that exceeded revenue expectations have personalization measurement systems in place,” says Inc.

Test Subject Lines Rigorously

A lot of marketers mess up promotional emails right from the moment they begin creating the subject line. You should scrutinize your subject line, get in-house feedback from a fresh set of eyes, and A/B test different subject lines before rolling out massive campaigns.

The first step is to make sure you are using some sort of subject line preview tool, like this one. Seeing your subject line visually helps you better-imagine how a recipient would react to it in their inbox.

Take special note of how the email looks on mobile devices since over half of email opens come via mobile. People tend to filter out what emails to read by the subject line alone. 69 percent of email recipients will report a message as spam based solely on the subject line.

Worst words to use worst words:
1. FREE
2. $$$
3. Earn
4. Guaranteed
5. Whitepaper, journal, report

Some of the best words include:
1. [Recipient Name]
2. You/Your
3. Thank you
4. Account
5. Monthly
6. Subject 1 | Subject 2 | Subject 3 (e.g. “Bid Bonds | Liability Insurance | Worker’s Comp”)

Note that not every “common marketing knowledge” pointer like this list may work for you and your audience. Always test to be sure!

Promise to Not Waste Their Time by Always Signaling Value

Thinking like a recipient means coming up with ways to offer something they might actually want. For sales and promotional offers, think of the hottest product they might want or the best offer possible. Don’t just tell them there’s a “sale”; tell them what that means.

Humble Bundle, which offers discount video game bundles, leads with its most popular game in the package.

When offering something non-material, like information, explain clearly how the contents of the email benefit the user. It could be something deep/important like “Want More 5 Star Reviews☆☆☆☆☆?” or even the promise that “You’ll Laugh Way Too Hard at These Marketing Puns”.
Many email marketers find great results by telling their audience how they can get more out of the products or services they already use.
The New York Times has gotten this down to an art. Since there is a million different pieces of content on their site other than what you see on the homepage, they take it upon themselves to inform subscribers about how they can learn and do more on NYTimes.com.

Tell People What to Do with a Single Call to Action

This one is simple: every email should have a call to action (CTA).

Your CTA can be nearly anything, including:
● Go buy this product
● Take advantage of a limited-time offer
● Try our tips
● Go learn/read more at this page
● Attend our event
● Upgrade your current service package
● Book a free consultation

Ensure that your CTA is crystal clear and compelling. Every recipient should know exactly what you want them to do and how to do it.

Providing a landing page after clicks to direct them more linearly to an offer can help simplify the process further. That way, your real CTA is just “Click Here,” and then you can drive more complex conversions from the landing page.
Avoid conflicting CTAs or multiple messages. No matter what you say, your ultimate conclusion leads the audience down ONE possible path. This practice will help your clickthroughs thrive.

Stick to Best Practices to Drive Success in Email Marketing

Mastering email marketing takes a lot of experimentation, practice, trial-and-error and attention to detail, but by following the best practices mentioned above, you can be well on your way towards greater success.

Just to recap your keys to success:
1. Use segmentation to maximize relevance
2. Personalize emails to get attention
3. Test subject lines, mind your length and think like a recipient
4. Promise true value to the recipient through your word choice and messaging
5. Use emotional images in your layout
6. Direct people to act with a single strong CTA
7. Use analytics data to optimize your approach over time

Pay attention to what your data tells you, and keep up with the latest email marketing trends and advice on our blog to learn best practices that make you an email genius over time!