Posts Tagged ‘Digital Strategy’

RIP SOPA/PIPA: Why Healthcare Marketers Should Take Note

In the aftermath of recent Internet blackout protests, featuring big players such as Wikipedia, Reddit and Major League Gaming, the Web community rallied against proposed Internet regulation laws — and won. The people have spoken, and the bills are dead.

So, what does this have to do with medical marketing? Let’s look at the facts. Continue reading »

Striking a Balance: Emotive Websites that are Usable

During an internal creative review meeting for a hospice website this week, I heard something that I never thought I would hear: “That call-to-action is too strong.” You could almost hear the wheels start spinning in everyone’s mind.

After discussing the call-to-action further, we realized that the problem wasn’t the CTA itself, but an unbalanced execution.

Half of the room thought that the website was not emotionally branded enough and the CTA was too much, too soon. They believed it needed to be about the connection first and foremost. The other half of the room agreed that the emotional branding was very important, but that the usability of the site needed to come first.

They’re both right. We just needed to strike a better balance. Continue reading »

iPhone Leads Mobile Advertising Push

Last April, we reported on the rise of mobile ad spending. Since then, new data on mobile ad spend has put the iPhone’s iOS operating system at the top of mobile ad venues.

87% of agencies surveyed recommend driving ads to the iPhone according to STRATA

Media buying solutions provider STRATA conducted a survey of ad agencies, finding that 87% recommend driving ads to the iPhone, compared with 62% recommending Android.

These results are interesting, considering that Android accounts for 56% of smartphone share while iPhone racks up only 28%. Let’s see why agencies are recommending iPhone. Continue reading »

Hospital Websites: Beauty is in the Eye of the User

In April, we featured a blog post entitled What Do Consumers Want from a Health Plan Website?, which encouraged health plan companies to tailor their sites to consumer needs. But hospitals and clinics should also ensure that their sites don’t leave a user feeling confused and frustrated.

Hospitals face a complex balancing act. On one hand, visitors to a hospital website want to accomplish many tasks, including finding a doctor, getting directions, making an appointment and evaluating the hospital. But they also want clear and concise pages that are user-friendly. In the information age, in which 140 character tweets and text messages rule the air, people want a multitude of information in quick spurts.

The problem is that hospital stakeholders may not even realize that there’s a problem! It becomes automatic for them to click through a series of links or deal with a messy homepage. The best strategy for an employee wishing to revamp the site is to sit down and pretend to be a prospective patient. Picture yourself as a mom whose kid has a weird-looking rash or someone with an emergency.

Once you have taken on a persona, look at your site with their eyes, and focus on four main questions: Continue reading »

iPad Apps: Cutting-Edge Sales Tools for Superior Products

Before joining the account team at HCB Health, I spent a number of years as a medical sales field rep. One job specifically required me to sell $275k+ pieces of capital equipment to surgeons. At the time, my only sales tools were paper-based brochures and my winning attitude. While I found success by forming positive surgeon relationships, I often wondered if superior sales tools would make me a more successful salesperson?

Today, developing those superior sales tools is a hefty part of my job at HCB Health. I make it a goal to lead the pack in terms of how our clients market to surgeons. For many of our clients, those superior tools are iPad-based.

iPad apps can be a unique, creative and efficient way to sell your product. The best of these are tailored to a client’s products, goals and sales rep needs. Below are a few different approaches we’ve taken to best accommodate various medical equipment products and sales: Continue reading »

The Rise of the EMR

In our modern wired world, more and more personal information is becoming digitized. Though late to the game, the healthcare arena is joining the trend.

Meet the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) — an application for storing and accessing patient data online. Also known as an Electronic Health Record (EHR), it has the capacity to document every injury and ailment a patient has suffered since his or her birth. It can help physicians anticipate adverse reactions, eliminate duplicate services and ultimately help the industry more effectively perform its primary function: saving lives.

The Future of Healthcare

A recent MedPartners article touched on an increase in EMR adoption brought on by the recent healthcare reforms: Continue reading »

The Hidden Beauty of the CMS

A “content management system” (CMS) is a program used to manage website data so that individual web pages can be easily updated with little knowledge of web programming. It’s designed for user collaboration, data storage and flexibility — modern CMS’s can contain hundreds of page templates or modules. The CMS is typically the heart of expansive websites such as hospitals and universities.

The things that make CMS’s great tend to make web designers cringe. Anything that involves a “system” tends to squash our dreams of breaking free from a conservative look and grid. And we gasp at the idea of allowing non-designer users to freely edit page elements.

Despite the cons of implementation costs, maintenance and untrained users, I admit that I often find the challenge of CMS design — with its modules and ordered chaos — intriguing. With the advancement of HTML5, web typography and blogging systems, the CMS is no longer a threatening idea; instead, it’s one that allows for nicely designed customizable content on the fly. These systems even allow for easier SEO (search engine optimization) implementation.

Let’s look at the best modern options for CMS implementations. Continue reading »

The “Gamification” of Healthcare

With the diminishing mind share of traditional media among consumers, advertisers are constantly seeking new and innovative ways to reach them with their message. So where have all the consumers gone? How are they spending their free time? The answer might surprise you.

Interactive games keep people fit through healthy competition.

An estimated 72% of all Americans play video games

Today, gaming has surpassed Hollywood as the largest entertainment industry in the world. This meteoric rise in online and console-based video game popularity has become the new Promised Land among marketers.

The trick, it seems, is to create an engaging game that educates while it entertains. Instead of defeating aliens or rescuing the princess, players spend countless hours working toward intangible goals dictated by marketers. This process is known in the industry as “gamification.” Continue reading »