- Ben Dillon (@benatgeo), eHealth Evangelist and Co-Owner at Geonetric, a web software solutions company out of Cedar Rapids, IA that focuses on healthcare
- Lisa Qualls (@lqualls4444), CEO for Fresh ID, a Kansas City, MO company focused on experience design and helping businesses integrate technology to expand their brand and improve operational processes and customer communications
- Mike Lundgren (@mglundgren), Partner and Director of Innovation Strategy at VML, a full-service digital marketing agency out of Kansas City, MO
- Mike McCamon (@mccamon), Chief Community Officer at Water.org, a Kansas City, MO based nonprofit organization dedicated to providing access to safe water and sanitation for communities in Africa, South Asia and Latin America.
All posts tagged marketing
Social Media Panel Discussion for Healthcare Professionals
We are very excited that Fresh ID’s CEO, Lisa Qualls, has been given an awesome opportunity to participate in a social media panel discussion hosted by Meers Advertising at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO on Thursday, June 24. The panel will discuss topics relating to social media strategy as it relates to not only healthcare, but business in general.
Meers Advertising has put together a great panel of local industry leaders for the event including:
What you need to know BEFORE creating a Social Media Strategy
We recently met with a prospect who happens to be in the franchise business. They are evaluating overhauling their brand to address some PR challenges they have faced the past year. Before we can help them or think about how to integrate social media tools into their business processes, we need to learn more about them. In order to brainstorm and strategize, we need to establish a baseline of performance, process, and expectations. We put together the following agenda list for our first meeting together. If you are thinking about creating a social media strategy, you should probably make a list like this first. Please keep in mind these questions were created for a company who is recruiting franchisees so if this is not applicable to you then please replace “franchise” with “customer.” Also, this high-level starting point was created for a specific company in mind – depending on certain factors, the questions you ask would be different and we would drill deeper upon getting the first layer of questions addressed.
1. Messaging
b. What is the brand identity they want created?
c. When people hear your company, what do they want those people to think?
d. Is their primary purpose to recruit new franchises, engage with existing franchises or make the general public aware of the company services?
2. Resource availability
a. What resources are used today for marketing and customer/franchise service?
b. Do they have a resource available to write blog posts, update facebook (I saw that there last update was in November), comment on forums?
c. Do their resources fully understand the online landscape? Are they aware of how to identify, engage and manage top influencers?
d. Do they have the tools and metrics available to monitor and measure progress?
3. Customer engagement
a. How do they address customer/franchise service today? Do they have an 800 number? Email?
b. Are they prepared to appropriately engage with negative sentiment?
c. Do they have a process to respond digitally to requests/comments?
d. What is their expectation regarding timely responses?
4. Marketing
a. What marketing are they doing today?
b. Are they participating in online marketing such as Pay Per Click, Banner Ads, Facebook ads, etc?
c. What marketing support do they provide to Franchises?
d. Do they offer promotions/discounts/contests? If so, how often?
e. Do they sponsor anything?
5. Franchise Recruitment/Support
a. Do they include online marketing as part of the marketing support to Franchises?
b. Do they offer a specific site/resource portal/discussion board for Franchises?
c. How are they targeting/recruiting Franchises?
d. How often do they pro-actively check-in with Franchises? Messaging: 1. Messaging
- What is the message you are trying to convey?
- What is the brand identity you want created? What are your brand attributes?
- When people hear (your company name), what do you want those people to think?
- Is your primary purpose to recruit new franchises, engage with existing franchises or make the general public aware of the company services?
- What resources are used today for marketing and customer/franchise service?
- Do you have a resources available to write blog posts, update Facebook, tweet or, comment on forums?
- Do you resources fully understand the online landscape? Are they aware of how to identify, engage and manage top influencers?
- Do you have the tools and metrics you use to monitor and measure progress?
- How do you address customer/franchise service today? Do you have an 800 number? Email?
- Are you prepared to appropriately engage with negative sentiment?
- Do you have a process to respond digitally to requests/comments?
- What is your expectation regarding timely responses?
- Who is authorized to satisfy customer issues?
- What are your current crisis management procedures?
- What marketing are you doing today?
- What is your marketing mix?
- Are you participating in online marketing such as Pay Per Click, Banner Ads, Facebook ads, etc?
- What marketing support do you provide to Franchises?
- Do you offer promotions/discounts/contests? If so, how often?
- Do you sponsor anything?
- How much of the marketing budget are you willing to give up to social media marketing or is your budget going to be increased to add it to existing traditional marketing and franchise acquisition?
- Do you include online marketing as part of the marketing support to Franchises?
- Do you offer a specific site/resource portal/discussion board for Franchises?
- How are you targeting/recruiting Franchises?
- How often do you pro-actively check-in with Franchises?
Successful and FREE Press Release Sites
We’ve been taking the time to create press releases meant for online publications about the recent live events we’ve done using our Twitterface tool, with some good results.
Lisa began this practice while at LightThread using a variety of paid and free online PR channels and trackingresults. She experienced the best results from prlog.org, obtaining front page search results within 24 hours of release and months later continuing to get front page search results. Prlog also makes it easy to link on your Facebook profile in addition to bookmarking through Delicious.
The benefits of doing this are:
- Backlinks to your site helps SEO with search engines. You will get linked to from the press release sites and anyone who picks up the story and posts about it from their site.
- People find you and your offer that might not have, otherwise… we’ve seen pretty significant results with this about the Chip Foose-John Deere event we did (they are a big brand after all so that helped) but with every release we’ve sent out, we’ve been surprised at the number of blogs and sites that have found it and posted the information or linked to the release or our site from theirs.
- It formalizes your operations. Last week Lisa zipped off a list to our team of all we have accomplished in the last 8 weeks. It is surprising how far we have come in only the past 2 months since she came on board. These press releases help us see our progress over time and give us a list of “News” items we can refer back to each year to see some of the highlights of what we’ve done.
- It’s free, save a little bit of time writing the release and posting it to the press release sites. Though we will do more formal and traditional paid announcements at various times, using this approach we’re only spending the time it takes to write and polish the release, and it’s well worth it.
- It adds credibility to your small business. Let’s face it… times are tough. Capturing quotes from happy customers and tooting your own horn in a non-pushy way can only help your efforts to sell products or services in a buyer’s market. Every little bit of promotion helps add to the overall number of people who hear about what you’re doing!
Are You Getting To the Heart of Your Brand?
Two well-known brand strategists engaged in a conversation on Twitter yesterday that caught my attention. Olivier Blanchard, The BrandBuilder and Gabriel Rossi were discussing some of the problems companies have, in their opinion, with marketing and branding.
Gabriel said “People who criticize Marketing & Branding need to learn to see the value of brands as a powerful socio-economic force“, and Olivier’s response was like a glass of cold water in the face: “… as opposed to looking at Marketing and Branding as the discipline of putting together ads, brochures and mailers.”
I’ve worked with so many companies on branding and marketing and that is what I do for them. In fact they often hire me because I am a “big picture” person who can help define and create the vision for the tangible brand, and then backtrack and execute the myriad of details to make it a reality. That has been my role, but I know that while appearance and physical materials are critical components of a successful branding effort, they are only the uppermost layer.
So often, my personal experience with companies is that we are focused on the appearance and business strategy and deals, but we don’t have time to go deep into the heart and soul of the brand and find ways to expose and communicate that. This problem reminds me of an artichoke, and I have slapped together a graphic here to try to demonstrate what I’m talking about…
The heart of a brand, like that of an individual, is vulnerable. It must be both soft enough to prove genuine caring, and strong enough to withstand scrutiny and adversity. But it is your core offering – not your products and services – and if you aren’t in touch with and know what’s in the heart, establishing lasting relationships with customers will be difficult or hit and miss. Do you want a shallow relationship with the people that interact with your brand, or a sympathetic bond that can withstand conflicts?
There are not enough hours in the day – I am all too aware of this, as I often find the bulk of my day being spent on putting out fires, or trying to take advantage of a new opportunity. It’s no wonder, between meetings, presentations, adminstration, lead generation, chasing down dollars owed and creating new content that digging very deep beneath the surface just does not seem to happen. In fact, I had to write this blog post over lunch and was not really present at the table with people, or it wouldn’t have happened. This happens to a lot of us, every day. Too many great ideas, lots of drive, but just not the time or resources to make it all happen now.
But we all need to try to carve out the time to make sure we are in touch with what matters most. Engaging people from the heart of your brand, being vulnerable and forging true and lasting customer relationships, is what will keep companies alive and thriving, through good times and bad times.
I want to thank my personal brand experts on Twitter for giving me great food for thought – not just yesterday, but quite often. The realization is one thing… figuring out what to about it, is a task for another day!
The heart of a brand, like that of an individual, is vulnerable. It must be both soft enough to prove genuine caring, and strong enough to withstand scrutiny and adversity. But it is your core offering – not your products and services – and if you aren’t in touch with and know what’s in the heart, establishing lasting relationships with customers will be difficult or hit and miss. Do you want a shallow relationship with the people that interact with your brand, or a sympathetic bond that can withstand conflicts?
There are not enough hours in the day – I am all too aware of this, as I often find the bulk of my day being spent on putting out fires, or trying to take advantage of a new opportunity. It’s no wonder, between meetings, presentations, adminstration, lead generation, chasing down dollars owed and creating new content that digging very deep beneath the surface just does not seem to happen. In fact, I had to write this blog post over lunch and was not really present at the table with people, or it wouldn’t have happened. This happens to a lot of us, every day. Too many great ideas, lots of drive, but just not the time or resources to make it all happen now.
But we all need to try to carve out the time to make sure we are in touch with what matters most. Engaging people from the heart of your brand, being vulnerable and forging true and lasting customer relationships, is what will keep companies alive and thriving, through good times and bad times.
I want to thank my personal brand experts on Twitter for giving me great food for thought – not just yesterday, but quite often. The realization is one thing… figuring out what to about it, is a task for another day!
