Think about Twitter as a place to build relationships - Adapted from best practice of “twitter”

Instead of approaching Twitter as a place to broadcast information about your company, think of it as a place to build relationships. Put into practice, that means you could do things like:

Include in your Bio and/or custom background the names (or @usernames) of the people twittering from your company account. It’s also a good idea to include additional contact info, like email addresses.

Listen regularly for comments about your medical products—and be prepared to address concerns, offer customer service or thank people for praise.

Tip: In addition to keeping an eye on your @messages, you can use our Saved Searches feature to easily track mentions of your medical services, etc. From your Twitter home page, simply run a search, and then at the top of your results page, click “Save this search.” A link with your search term will appear on the right side of your page, and whenever you click it, you’ll get real-time results for that query. To delete a search, just head to the top of your results and click “Remove this search.”

Use a casual, friendly tone in your messages.

While you shouldn’t feel compelled to follow everyone who follows you, do respond to some questions or comments addressed to you.

Post links to articles and sites you think folks would find interesting—even if they’re not your sites or about your company.

Make sure your tweets provide some real value. You know better than we do what is valuable, but here are few examples to spark ideas:

• Offer Twitter exclusive coupons or deals
• Take people behind the scenes of your company
• Post pictures from your offices, stores, warehouses, etc.
• Share sneak peeks of projects or events in development

Don’t spam people. Twitter’s following model means that you have to respect the interests and desires of other people here or they’ll unfollow you.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

How Medical Marketing is Like Drilling for Oil

There's a five-step process that makes for best practice success.

Medical marketing is very much like drilling for oil. Success requires a proven system not a shovel.

Suppose you want to drill for oil. You can begin making random holes in your backyard, or you can use a method that's based on knowledge, experience and the right tools. You could begin looking for oil by randomly drilling in your own backyard. Then you try your friend's backyard. And then you start buying properties until the zoning commission shuts you down. It's highly unlikely that you'll hit a gusher, but some people try.

OR

You can hire a geologist to locate land with a defined set of characteristics that have proven to yield oil. The first field you try may or may not be fruitful, but over time, you are much more likely to find a gusher than if you go out haphazardly and start digging - like most people do when it comes to marketing.

Even though there is always an element of risk in marketing, you vastly improve the probability of sustained success with a well-considered, best practices approach.

It turns out that there are only five key steps in drilling for oil. It's a page from heavy industry that transfers nicely to successful healthcare and medical marketing. And the comparison is useful to medical practices, healthcare organizations, hospitals and others who want to minimize risk and maximize results.

FINDING OIL

It's wasteful to drill where there isn't any oil. Marketing is not about being everything to everybody. It's about answering a specific need with a specific solution. Geologists look for the right conditions for oil. Market research helps define the audience (demographics, psychographics, geographics, etc.) and the products and services that are in demand or will appeal to this target. You also define the media that communicates with them.

PREPARING TO DRILL

A 12-month marketing plan sets strategies, tactics and budget in place to achieve defined goals. What considerations (and possible adjustments) are needed for seasonal variations, operational steps, facilities and equipment? Is everyone aware of the plan and goals? And properly trained for their role? And, perhaps just as important, have responsibilities been assigned?

SETTING UP THE RIG

Experience counts; you need the right tools to get the job done. The creative make-ready steps define your compelling message and produce the professional marketing tools (ads, brochures, billboards, broadcast, online) necessary to reach the oil - ah, audience.

DRILLING

Drilling operations begin with a starter hole; it's the marketing equivalent of testing, tracking and making any necessary adjustments in advance of roll-out. Do the test results validate the preparation assumptions? Is the media mix right? How about the price or the offer? The testing cycle further reduces risk and expenses, and increases the prospect of bringing in a gusher.

EXTRACTING THE OIL

Gushers are a great visual for movies, but are actually wasteful. What you really want is a reliable, producing oil well that delivers results consistently. If one well pays off, the oil industry knows to drill additional wells in the same field. In marketing, you grow with reliable and repeatable results. When you've got a producing marketing formula, drill again. And then repeat the steps in this process for continued growth and success.

Random oil drilling is worse than a crapshoot; the professionals don't do it that way. It's also true for marketing in healthcare, hospitals, pharmaceuticals and provider practices. There's no reason to guess. And there's every reason to get professional marketing help right from the start.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

Facebook Gets Closer to a Trademark on the Word ‘Face

Abstracted from Kim-Mai Cutler

 

Facebook moved one step closer to securing a trademark on the word “Face” when it’s used with online chat rooms or bulletin boards, after receiving a notice of allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today.

After this, the company has six months to file a statement of use and pay a fee. An examining attorney can either approve the statement, file a refusal or ask for additional requirements. If it’s approved, then the patent and trademark office will usually issue a registration within two months.
Facebook first filed for this trademark almost five years ago in December of 2005. That was when it had only raised its first venture round of investment from Accel Partners and was still a college social networking site.
The trademark would cover the word “face” when it pertains to:
Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.
If Facebook is awarded a trademark on the word “face”, it shouldn’t interfere with Apple’s mobile video calling service Facetime, since the Cupertino-based device maker has a trademark on that term itself.
Facebook has also tried to trademark other words. It has at least 15 trademark applications around the “like” buttons it launched in April, some of which cover the word “like” itself.
The social network tends to be more aggressive with its trademarks than its patents, which it has implied it acquires mostly for defensive purposes. The company is currently embroiled in a dispute with parody site Lamebook, which takes user-generated screenshots of off-color interactions on the social network. It also sued social network aggregator Power.com for trademark infringement last year.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

Thank your patients, referral sources, and staff

Take the time to give thanks to those who help your practice succeed. Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for all of the things that you should be thankful for. In addition to being thankful for your family and your health, make sure you take the time to thank those that help your practice thrive – your patients, your referral sources, and your staff. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to practice the healthcare that you’ve been trained to do and you’re so passionate about.

Brand clinic materials, newsletters, thank-you card, email marketing or even a simply follow-up call make different impression for the patients.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

Email marketing for your healthcare practice

Email is the communications means of choice for many individuals, but it's a surprisingly neglected strategy that never gets off the ground for the simple lack of opt-in email addresses. Here are seven easy ways to build a permission-based contact list and grow a new provider revenue resource.

One of our big moments of frustration in working with healthcare providers around the nation is when we discover that they don't have an email marketing strategy.

The reason? Many offices have a record of only 100 email addresses, often less. That strategy is dead before it begins.

Email is a popular and effective marketing communications tool. It's accepted, even preferred, by a large segment of the public. Better than 90 percent of Internet users use email, most on a daily basis.

An email strategy is completely appropriate for many, although not all, providers. It is nearly immediate, easy to use and low cost. It's an effective way to increase patient satisfaction, retention, referrals and revenue.

To be clear, we're not talking about doctor-patient email involving medical matters where there are legitimate concerns about privacy, liability, reimbursement, workload, etc. This is a permission-based email strategy, and for many medical and dental practices, hospitals, orthodontists, cosmetic surgeons and other providers - principally in elective care - the healthcare marketing opportunities are strong and varied.

The bottom line is that email works, but the first step is to have a system to regularly collect email addresses. In all cases, we're talking about asking for their permission (opt-in, decline or opt-out), and that they opt-in with an understanding of what will be sent and that it will be pertinent and valuable to them.

These are individuals who want to hear from you; often they prefer email over phone calls or regular mail, and they are happy to provide their email information. (And with an understanding of the type of information you will be sending and that it is something they will value.)

In fact it's easy to build an email contact list. Many providers can use email successfullly in their marketing mix, but they are shy about the idea, unaware of its value, or are too busy to introduce a new office routine.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

From virtual to reality: How social media can get boots on the ground

Written by John Gerzema, president of BrandAsset Consulting

If there’s one criticism that sticks to the idealists in the universe of social media it’s this: “You guys don’t know how to turn your words into action.”
What’s the point of having a great idea if we can’t get it past the point of RT’s and Diggs. Real progress happens when relationships leave cyberspace and become face-to-face teams making real progress. In a world where “FarmVille” is now at your local 7-Eleven, digital and analog are increasingly becoming one. Here are three strategies to turn virtual chatter into real action:

1. Treat your employees as media. In late 2008 Scott Monty, head of Social Media at Ford, got wind of a San Francisco-based blogger named Stefania Pomponi Butler, who had some negative things to say about auto companies. “We invited her out to our Chicago auto plant to interact with some of our managers and workers and to talk about quality initiatives and green practices and see what we are doing and who we were,” Monty says. She then wrote a post: How the Women of Ford, an Assembly Plant, and a Guy Named Larry Changed My Life. “It occurred to me that this company was not a heartless, soul-less corporation full of automatons (like so many crash test dummies) churning out crappy cars. This company was made of people. People who cared immensely about the products they were building. People on the line smiled and waved at us. They held up power tools and tires as if to say, ‘I’m building a damn fine product here. We all are. When are you smug city folk going to take notice?’ I felt like the worst kind of ignorant, half clued-in fool,” she wrote. “Democratize social media across the organization so that it’s not just one department or one individual that holds the power. We can deputize anybody who wants to speak about their company. Maybe not in an authoritative way as the official company spokesman, but somebody who can defend and who can educate and who can engage and identify themselves as being from Ford,” Monty says.
2. Think about social media as a business model. In greater Tampa-St. Petersburg, members of a graphic design community hosted by Meetup.com took a break from their own worries about job leads to donate their services to local charities. In less than six weeks, the idea for a “Designathon” went from an entry on a website to a weekend-long work session where groups like the local YMCA received free services from professional artists, writers and designers. The experience brought people with shared interest together and, in the words of organizer Brianne Swezey, gave them a break from “being down about how I need money for this and money for that.” All it took was a little leadership from Swezey — who quickly discovered that people will eagerly give of themselves when they are offered the opportunity. As former Meetup.com chief community officer Doug Atkin says, “the express purpose of a social group is to gather and to coalesce around ideas bigger than themselves.”
3. Organize to reward, not punish. The idea behind “carrot mobbing” is to turn protesting on its head. Instead of boycotting businesses that are poor corporate citizens, the mobbers scale their spending to buy products and services from the good ones. In cities such as San Francisco and Kansas City, Web-based carrot mobbers have rewarded liquor stores and grocers who upgraded their lighting, heating and cooling system to reduce their carbon emissions. The businesses got thousands of dollars in extra sales while the atmosphere was spared untold tons of pollution. Today, according to our surveying in BrandAsset Valuator, 68% of Americans now believe that they and their friends can change corporate behavior by supporting companies that do the right thing. In every case, whether carrot mobbers reward businesses with reverse boycotts or professionals organized on Meetup.com donate services to charity or employees who re-educate a disgruntled blogger, the action is positive and inclusive and nothing like the us vs. them activities common to politics and activism. If you are looking for a way to move from talk to action, those who have done so suggest the following:

• Be bold. By declaring your intent, you make your desire to act a binding public commitment.
• Be expansive. There is strength in numbers so whenever possible, design your action to include everyone who wants to participate.
• Be generous. Don’t worry about taking credit or gaining advantage. Credit will come in due course and third-party endorsement is the most valuable.
• Be positive. In the post-crisis age, optimism and hope are guiding forces that are helping people adapt and reinvent their lives. Ideas that turn into action are the ones we can feel instinctively because they come from the heart.

For more enquiries, please call us at 852-25801058 for more information.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk