Posts in the ‘Home Care Marketing Tips’ Category
What is Inbound Marketing?
In today’s technology-driven marketing environment, there’s an ever-changing language of buzz-words. At the moment, I’d say the most important term to have in your vocabulary arsenal is ‘inbound marketing’. To introduce and examine the most effective strategies for marketing home care, I’ll be sharing a series of blog posts that will work through the overall process of strategic inbound marketing and more. So, to begin, I’ll start with an old-fashioned definition.
Definition of inbound marketing: Using the Internet and related media to learn about products or services; offering useful information, tools and resources to attract and develop relationships, educate and engage.
Platforms used with inbound marketing: SEO; Blogs; PPC; Social media; QR codes
Inbound marketing means remaining relevant with your audience—and building an online presence that fits the new model for how people find goods and services. With high-speed Internet access available almost anywhere and with smart phones and tablet computers quickly becoming the hub for much of home care sales and marketing, social networking, mobile-friendly websites, online directories, industry blogs and interactive communities should be an active part of any marketing strategy.
Confused about where to start? My next post will explore website design and development—which is a necessary starting point for implementing inbound marketing. I have plenty to say about content creation, search engine marketing, and mobile applications. A good company website is arguably the most important marketing tool and absolutely crucial. Read this recent article that I wrote which may serve as a great introduction to our continued discussion.
In the meantime, if you have questions about marketing your home care agency, I would love the opportunity to strategize to help you meet your marketing needs. Or, book me to speak at your next home care or marketing event.
business marketing, drive marketing, inbound marketing, Internet marketing, marketing, marketing home care, marketing strategies, strategy
Resource-Rich Marketing to Referral Sources: A Way to Stand Out from the Crowd
Today’s presentation that I’ve prepared for the Indiana Association for Home & Hospice Care is a marketing message that should be heard by every home care agency owner—and it’s my bread and butter. I have more than 30 years of combined experience in geriatric care, managed home care, Internet marketing and strategic communications. Additionally, I’ve been in the shoes of many of my listeners as I’ve previously owned and operated my own private duty agency for more than 15 years.
My home care marketing discussion is rich with first-hand understanding that private duty home care is an at-need service, so being remembered when a need arises is the key to increasing referrals. This can be accomplished by using a variety of tactics across all media. It’s all about marketing, marketing, marketing!
Today’s session, titled “Resource-Rich Marketing to Referral Sources: A Way to Stand Out from the Crowd,” further defines the strategy behind this concept and how it has proven to be effective. And, participants will:
· Be able to demonstrate the importance of a marketing strategy by understanding the “at need” component of home care services
· Be able to discuss the human elements of reactions to branding, consistent messaging and educational and informational components that resonate with referral sources
· Be able to identify how to implement consistent, branded and resource-rich marketing messages and visuals across a wide variety of referral sources to generate new referral sources
Thanks for reading my ongoing homecare marketing tips, resources, and strategies for success here at www.merrilyorsini.com. You’ll always find something new to bring to your marketing strategy, be reminded of home care marketing basics, or simply stay in the loop about upcoming conferences, webinars, and marketing and technology topics.
If you would like more information about booking me for a consultation, to speak at your conference or event, or to review and provide input on industry ideas, information or materials, please fill out the form here and someone will be in touch with you shortly.
association marketing, Homecare Marketing, marketing to referral sources
Make the Right Marketing Impression
When planning corporate messaging, it’s crucial to consider the impression that will result from your marketing. The article from HealthLeaders Media titled, “Gut-Grabbing Messages: What Makes an Impression?” pinpoints positive ways to navigate successful marketing in health-related fields. From experience, I know home care is a tough service to market using traditional tactics—which is why I developed a unique monthly marketing program called MOST. The program is designed to surmount the challenges of promoting home health care services through education about the issues of chronic disease. Specifically, MOST positions clients as the top resource on in-home care in their local market and leaves a responsible and reliable impression.
The article warns about using emotion appropriately. With healthcare, it’s easy to want to lean on scare tactics to equip an audience with the grim facts. But, if you overdo it, you risk sending your listeners running for the hills and tuning everything out. On the opposite spectrum, if messaging is too positive, it may not seem serious enough for treating patients—unrealistic. A clear understanding of the desired impression is needed to determine an appropriate marketing tone. Educating your audience in a positive way communicates confidence and assurance.
Stand above the crowded field by using robust and resource-rich content. Using MOST gives you web-based instant access to a library full of themed sales, recruitment, design, and advertising materials created by home health experts. Spanning all types of sales and marketing communications, such as print, web and email, as well as services such as social media, blogs, search engine optimization and public relations, MOST lets you choose what fits your agency best.
As you consider revisiting your marketing strategy, remember the advice spelled out in the article mentioned above—and remember the ever-expanding library of resources you can use with the MOST program.
home care marketing, monthly communications, monthly marketing
Planning before Implementation: the Key to Success
An old Chinese proverb “Dig the well before you are thirsty” sums it up. And, in these volatile economic and emotional times, thinking about the future may be preferable to living in the present. At least PLANNING for the future can be done at no better time than today. And, it might even ease the pain of living today and watching as the financial markets swing wildly.
The first – and most common –action when economic things are scary to a business is to cut the marketing budget. It makes sense, after all. When you have less income coming in, it’s best to cut expenses where you can and marketing is the easiest function to slash without affecting day-to-day business operations. Or so it may seem.
The other option is the choice the wises business person makes, and that is to focus on marketing, and start with planning how best to reach the right people with the right message so they will take action, even in tough times. In a downturn, when money is tight and consumers are making tough choices, marketing is more important than ever before. This presents a great opportunity when others are cutting marketing to get in front of your target audience and show the consumer why your products or services deserve their dollars. Customers who may have been in the bag when the economy is riding high suddenly need some extra convincing. They need to hear your message. That’s where strategic marketing comes into play.
In an classic interview with BNET, Dr. Gary Lilien, author of “Turning adversity into advantage: Does proactive marketing during a recession pay off?” a report by Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, pointed to three factors that should be considered before determining whether a marketing endeavor is worth the expense:
• Do you already have a marketing infrastructure in place? If not, it’s going to be difficult in this economy to launch a brand new marketing arm from scratch.
• Does your company have “the guts” to throw down the marketing dollars during a recession?
• Does your company have the budget to spend the money without damaging normal business operations?
“Companies that have been looking at marketing as an investment, and not an expense, and have been running their business through customer knowledge are the ones that are going to come out of this [recession] really, really well,” the article quotes Lilien as saying.
It’s important as well to make certain that your marketing efforts are reaching consumers through venues that they frequent. It’s pointless to spend money on distributing a message that no one will ever see.
Using a variety of media, including the traditional as well as e-mail and social media- outbound and inbound efforts makes it more likely to reach both an older market as well as younger consumers.
No one knows right now what the economy is going to do. If expenses have to be cut, however, choose – but choose wisely. If you abandon your marketing efforts completely, you may soon find that your revenue is going the way of the stock market when it is dipping down.
Come to corecubed for help. We have strategic marketing services that can fit any budget, a talented team that understands how to get business to come a knocking, even when financial times are tricky.
Branding Revisited or Pay Attention to Power
Great discussion with a client this morning about branding. When you understand branding, and implement it, it truly works. Well branded businesses do have greater success, partly because a good brand generates more permissions and more opportunities than lesser known brands.
A good article that reinforces this also discusses the “Five Permissions” that a well branded company can expect.
Access. Having a good brand opens doors. Whether trying to sell something or just talk to someone, being from a well known and recognized entity opens doors. A good example is Rotary. Wearing a Rotary pin or mentioning Rotary to a fellow Rotarian will get your call through faster than anything, or, get an introduction made.
Latitude. Because a well branded company means a more trusted company, those from that company can expect more latitude in taking chances. Having proven oneself to the public means that more permissions will be granted in areas unproven.
Recovery. Permission to recover is granted to a well-branded company. A smaller business may not be given permission to restore confidence when a mistake does happen..
Scale. Trust and perception are built into a well branded company. It’s this greater trust in the brand that allows permission to grow and take on bigger projects..
Set standards. Unknown services, products or technology are oftentimes given a chance simply because a well branded company has a proven track record and it is believed that the company, if they are recommending a product, service or technology, are doing so because they believe will eventually be a standard.
Branding is not just a logo, font, colors, it is what someone thinks and feels about the company, and the reaction that seeing the company name or hearing about the company generates in the viewer. Branding takes time, focused strategic integrated marketing efforts, and a good product or service to back it up. Lately corecubed has been receiving accolades on our branding efforts. IS your brand working for you? If not, give us a shout and we’ll see if we can help!
