The other creative considerations

So, in addition to size, here are some of the other creative considerations...

6. Think single-focus offer. Nail this one down tight. Postcards are offer-driven, meaning that it is the precise, strong offer that needs to be communicated instantly. There is no time or space for long or detailed text in this media. Start and end with the main point–a clear and compelling offer. You need to grab attention and communicate a single-focus message in just a few words. 7. Think benefit. Within the confined space, connect the offer/message to a benefit of importance to the reader. The offer is the "why they should act now," but the bigger-picture benefit is "what's in it for them." Maintain focus, but there may be more than one benefit. 8. Think bold graphics. The visual elements of a postcard (color, picture, symbol) need to be strong to help get attention and be directly supportive of the message. Anything weak is not seen, and an unrelated graphic is meaningless, confusing or distracting. 9. Think call to immediate action. A well-composed creative message inspires response, so the means of response–your phone number, for example-needs to be obvious. (You would be surprised at how often we find that the phone number is not obvious and sometimes missing.) And having a clear deadline, expiration date, limited quantity or consequence of inaction that is connected to the offer communicates immediacy and increases response.

These considerations are part of the formula for success and, frankly, it's a tough creative challenge to manage all these tasks with few words and small size. You can call us to discuss how postcards may have a well-considered place in your marketing program.

For more enquiries, please email us at sales@medicalamrketing.com.hk or call us at 852-25801059 in office hour HKT 10:00 to 14:00 / 15:00-19:00.

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

Hire us! Why? Because we have …

1.      Solid experience in management of medical-related projects.

2.      Ability to collaborate and work well medical professionals.

3.      Good understanding of usability, conversion funnels, web analytics, web design, and information architecture design.

4.      Good understanding of technical requirements of organic search

5.      Good medical writing skills and HTML skills

6.      Similar approach and philosophy about organic search as yours.

7.      Familiarize with Google’s webmaster guidelines.

If you have interest on the web marketing in Asia, you are also recommended to visit www.asia-web-marketing.com as well.

 

It's Time to Rethink Viral Marketing – Burger King Campaign as an example

The goal of a viral campaign is that it doesn't perform well in the next 10 minutes; rather, that it have some long-term impact. For example, instead of simply uploading a video on YouTube, think about how your audience will find your content -- are you using the right keywords to provide stronger ties to your brand and your viral marketing effort through SEO? And once your content is discovered, how are you encouraging your audience to remain engaged? Also, is there a clear path of distribution?

The list is exhausting yet necessary if you have any chance at sparking sustainable viral content.

So what does this have to do with sandwiches and my spontaneous thought the other day? Well, I was simply curious to know if the benefits of an almost seven-year-old viral project still proved valuable to Burger King.

This could be challenging. When the burger king campaign launched, The co-developers of the campaign, the term "viral marketing" wasn't yet mainstream and to really make you feel old.

Yet even without the benefits of video aggregation platforms, Facebook and Twitter, the burger king campaign saw 1 million hits the first five days. The average time spent on the site was an amazing 5 minutes and 44 seconds. The campaign over the years has accrued more than 4 million hits.

Back to my original thought: Impressive as its statistics were years ago, does the campaign still provide a benefit to Burger King and how?

Well, impressive SEO results for one! Burger King is #4 on Google when searching the word "chicken" -- only below Wikipedia, recipes, and KFC.

What's more, the Burger King campaign content continues to be discovered through social-media channels such as Twitter, where sentiment is positive and frequency of mention is high.

The façade that is all too easily emulated and completely misunderstood is the "life curve" of a viral campaign. While some companies guarantee viral success, their definition of reaching goals need to be rethought and re-taught. Campaigns via viral marketing are designed to be provocative, yet how does that provocation impact your overall brand marketing strategy? If you start thinking "logistical versus parabolic" then you'll be in great shape. The assumption that all viral contain is good only for the short term amplified brand lift has to continue to be disproved. By embracing sustainability when it comes to your viral campaigns -- thinking through integration strategies, your landing pages, and your content.

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

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

Facebook’s Facelift: Does your practice need one too?

In keeping with the social media theme, Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg just announced one of the largest profile revisions to date on “60 Minutes” with Lesley Stahl this past weekend. The profile shift will emphasize photos, personal information, and increased usability.
The new look is designed to be more interesting to Facebook users and to display information in an easier way to understand. I’m impressed with how flexible Facebook is and how they are constantly adapting to make the Facebook “experience” the best possible. Healthcare practice owners can learn a lot from this.

Facebook remodeled the format of the profile page after listening to feedback from users and watching trends. A strong emphasis was put on photos and sharing personal information. The main profile photo’s size is larger, leading to an emphasis on it being a profile page about a specific person, just as your face and personality should be front and center in the marketing of your practice.  The site is now more collaborative, allowing a user to make groupings on their profile of friends, family, music, sports, or projects that are important to them.  Similar groupings on your website would allow for easier browsing.  What a referring doctor might look for and what a friend of a patient looking to find out about a certain procedure and then book an appointment are very different, yet equally important paths you should have.  Understanding what current patients and referral sources want from your practice will help give you a wider range of subjects to consider.

The idea behind the new profile design is similar to the suggestions I gave in a previous blog post about how physicians and healthcare providers should try to develop more personal connections with their target audiences. This can be done on your web site, Facebook fan page and your marketing resume. Creating connections are important to helping patients feel more connected to you as a person as well as their physician.

Are you open to reformatting your business from feedback and trends?  Successful medical practices remain flexible and look for new opportunities to expand. Understanding that change is part of the future and embracing that idea will help your practice grow with your patients.  This change in a major social media leader leads to the question of “How important is appearance and adaptability?” Patients coming to your office for the first time will take in your personal appearance and the layout of the office. When they visit your practice website, they will look to see if the information they find important is near the top and easy to understand.  Whether it’s your qualifications, a professional photo, how to make an appointment, your services, or simply how to contact you, your patients will appreciate you taking their feedback into account and the effort you display in remodeling your web site, and your practice as a whole, in an effort to better serve them. It will also enhance your practice’s brand.

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

www.medicalmarketing.com.hk

For Facebook, bigger isn't necessarily better

You can't use Facebook well if you don't know what Facebook does well. The rapid growth of Facebook over the last 18 months requires thoughtful marketers to consider this question given its ascent to the social-media world.

The value proposition for marketers was simple to understand; social connections were trusted; and the user experience was simple to navigate.

Since then, Facebook has been evolving quickly so it can become a marketing platform. Mark Zuckerberg himself has spoken rather grandly of Facebook as being at the center of the transformation affecting everything from news and movies to music and gaming. "Our view is that we should play a role in helping to reform all those industries, and we'll get value proportional to what we put in". His most recent interview on "60 Minutes" reaffirmed his claim of Facebook having transformed the internet itself.

Ever the practitioner, I could see that Facebook was morphing into social/communication/entertainment hub. I could also see that the transformation was not without some bumps. It was getting more complicated for marketers and users alike. We see how hard it is for marketers to assign value to a Facebook fan as we saw two vastly different answers from two very credible tech companies. A confusing state for marketers to be sure.

• Four NYU kids blew away their funding goal to "build the anti-Facebook".
• Facebook endured harsh backlash resulting from its handling of the privacy firestorm
• Most untimely, the movie "The Social Network" gave more people more ammunition to "... not feel good about using Facebook".
• A pastor was counseling his congregation to give up Facebook as a way to save marriages.
• The granddaddy of the internet, believes that Facebook "threatens" web future because of the data portability issue

As the vision of Facebook to become our online hub and displace Google along the way. Facebook is doing a full-frontal attack on Google; Gmail vs. Facebook Messaging, Google Search vs. Facebook Search, Google Voice vs. Facebook (+ Skype) and even Google Docs vs. Facebook (+ Microsoft). The scope leaves even the most ardent Facebook fan doing an "intellectual double-take" to imagine Facebook so broadly.

For my part, I had to start asking myself, Can it be that Facebook was stretching users' expectations too far too fast and adding too much complexity in the process? Did they wander too far from their "simple" roots of enabling trusted social connections? Can it be Facebook had jumped the shark?

The common thread here is the a priori assumption that being bigger (stimulated by lots of features), in and of itself, is the main value to marketers. Sure, it will be enriched with targetable data, but scalable size is the end game.

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