Consider how powerful a tool the web is for you. You can use the Web, including social media, to listen to patients and better understand them. You can use the web to inform patients and reach out to them directly. And you can engage patients directly, on the Internet.

When we ran our first online patient recruitment campaign a few years ago, we were blown away by how candid potential patients were. We were approaching people in pain and we quickly understood, from the responses that we were receiving, that when people are in pain, and you appear to be a potential savior, they are willing to open up and share, with the hope that you may offer them relief. Of course with that said, it is very important to build credibility and to gain trust. Even over a short period of a few years, the Internet has changed drastically and users are more cautious today.

But when you get the opportunity to listen to the family members and patients, it is an incredible opportunity to align your messaging and your approach to what your audience really needs. It is becoming more and more critical in recruiting patients to recognize their concerns and needs. Consumer marketing departments do it all the time so it seems obvious that medical marketing should be doing it as well, to me anyway. Levis wants to know what I am looking for in a pair of jeans. Shouldn’t Merck take an interest in my concerns about insulin injections?

The Internet is an efficient platform for informing patients of ongoing studies. At the precise moment a patient is seeking information or solutions, you have an opportunity to be there to tell them what you are doing. Within seconds, when done right, you can capture the interest of a potential candidate and have them supplying all of the necessary pre-screening information.

Then you have the opportunity for engagement, where you can begin creating a relationship and communicating with your audience. This can support efforts to recruit patients for a study or, over a longer period of time, build a relationship with product advocates and patients.

Recruiting patients via the Internet may be the best ROI available in the market. A combination of online advertising and social media can be a truly powerful and cost-efficient methodology. For many areas of medicine, it is the best first effort a company can make. And once it has delivered as many people as it can reach, it is possible to move on to the more traditional, more expensive approaches.

In cases where the reach is not sufficient, this can be due to the nature of the study or of the geographical region. For example, certain types of medical conditions are more likely to be searched online by patients than others and certainly there are differences in how much the Internet is being used in certain regions. As basic as it may sound, if recruitment for a clinical trial is in a region that does not offer fast Internet, the pool of potential patients may be too small and other methods will likely be needed to reach out to enough patients. You need to have a good understanding of the target audience, what motivates them and with which media you may be able to capture their attention.

Dror worked together with Yagil of in- Design. Yagil has cooperated with WebWhile on several projects over the years and always manages to understand our crazy  thinking and to breath graphic life into our creative concepts.  WebWhile and Coca Interactive are now cooperating on the redesign of the leading web filter software web site and it should be up and running in the coming weeks. Looking forward to reporting on the improved results for bounce rate, click through and conversion on the Optenet PC web filter site as well.

And for all of you still looking for “the best’  SEO companies in Israel because you think you can zoom in on one tactic to solve your online marketing challenges, feel free to talk to Itzik at Interspace. He’ll explain why you need Internet Marketing consulting from experts with lots of experience, a wide understanding of business and how to do business on the Internet and a solid grasp of the web technologies (not hype) that are available and can enhance what you do.

I clearly remember the impact the first time it happened to me. The day Michael Jordan and Spike Lee, sorry, Mors Blackmon, challenged everything we knew about advertising in the early 90’s TV-30-something-landscape, with a pair of Air Jordan Nike shoes. It was fresh, transcended over the early 90’s and took branding far beyond everything I knew about being unique and attention grabbing. The ad stood above every other commercial just as MJ leaped above every opponent, leaving them all in dismay.  It pulled us into Spike’s Lee’s “do the right thing” world, emphasizing black and white, challenging the rules of gravity in TV advertising.

Is it the brand? Is it the brand?

After seeing that commercial for the first time, I was obsessed about trying to re-capture that cool sensation, the excitement that makes you realize that the rules have changed and you are no closer to Kansas than Morris Blackman.

It doesn’t happen every day.  I can think of only a few brands that introduced a new dimension to the way we experienced their vibes. Brands like Apple had success even way before the iPhone, Seinfeld is another one, Google search results,  and of course the movie Avatar. I call these winners “Brands of the New Dimension.”

Marketers have always tried to decipher the formula for recreating Brands of the New Dimension. The truth is that sightings of such success are so rare that it’s almost impossible to recreate them. When my clients ask me what is the formula for creating a killer Brand of the New Dimension I am tempted to tell them that if I knew, I would be too busy drinking tequila on my private Island to answer their silly questions. But since I am not busy on that Island just yet, I can take a moment to point out some common denominators. And I promise not to use abstract words like “vision” or “creativity”.

Brands of the New Dimenion – What Do They Have in Common?

1. None of the Brands of the New Dimension surrender to the “me too” temptation. Instead, being so much ahead of the curve gives them the leverage to ride the wave all the way until the novelty wears out.

2. A strong business model to follow the brand’s promise must be in place. Otherwise the novelty can easily slam into a brick wall faster than you can say “altavista.”

3. Another common attribute is guts. To come up with something that has never been seen before takes balls (ask Michael Jordan).  I can only imagine the creative meetings that took place at Nike during those “30 Something” days and the eyebrow raising and conviction of the gutsy executives entering a new marketing frontier.

Pursuing Brands of the New Dimension is a little like the NASA space race. The huge investment in trying to get far out has many unplanned side benefits for other brands and markets. The new technologies, the new way of looking at things . . . broadens everyone’s horizons and gives us the guts to take our own brands far and beyond.

Yahoo, Bing and even the Chinese search engine Baidu, as well as other smaller search system, mobile devices and mapping quarries, all need to play an active roll when relevant in your SEO efforts. The rise of total searches done in these often SEO neglected search engines, present an opportunity in gaining visibility by optimizing and advertising of businesses on these frontiers.

We’ve been pushing the need for good video to our clients for years already. Just 3 years ago, I recall a large Israel based client saying something like, “Video? Do you really think our clients will want to watch videos on our website?” The answer was – “Yes!!!” The qualifying statement was, “If they are good.”

There is an abundance of really bad video content being uploaded to YouTube by companies. It’s not surprising – look at all the awful written content those same marketing managers are pushing out (many because of some SEO expert telling them to do so or doing it for them). But it’s not just a problem of bad video content. In the many instances where the content is quite good and interesting, it still has no strategy behind it and so does not do as much as it could do to contribute to the marketing goals.

When we built the video strategy for the Aviisha Medical Wellness Institute in Los Angeles
, our goal was to generate awareness and thought leadership for this new venture in the American healthcare market as quickly as possible on a tight budget with limited human resources — in a very, very competitive sphere.

In the case of Aviisha, we found their unique niche, which was to focus on the need of good sleep for overall health. We found that most Americans do not get enough sleep, that sleep disorders are a fast growing problem in America due to changes in lifestyle and weight gain and that most Americans and even many physicians, are not aware of the importance of quality sleep and the symptoms and conditions that can appear as a result of sleep problems. What better way to promote the brand and the position then with educational, informative and entertaining videos?
So as this new company’s management forges forward in establishing itself as a major player, we set ourselves the task of building the foundations for making that a reality. One important element, of many, is the Aviisha YouTube Channel.

We are just at the infancy stage – most of the animation series we produced just went up in the last 24 hours, so we will be closely monitoring the metrics on those. The animations are particularly entertaining and highly professional -thanks to V. Builder, a California based animation company.

Everything is tagged and set up to maximize SEO. But note, first we thought about the content our audience wants and will appreciate – then we thought about the SEO. Not the reverse! And for the most part, the SEO comes naturally, as it does for all the projects WebWhile strategizes for — more on that in another post when I get some time.
These videos will be fabulous linkbait (a good thing). You know how your SEO expert is telling you that they will run a link campaign and you trust him/her to be out there bringing you all kinds of links back to your website? Some of you ask how and what he is doing and others close their eyes and trust. Well, start asking. Because without good content that is truly worth linking back to – then you ain’t gonna get wonderful backlinks, no matter what any SEO consultant or link campaign service is telling you. There is no free lunch. CNN, Fox, major portals in your industry, halfway decent bloggers — none of them are going to link back to you because Makesh or Raji, the sub-contractors hired to get you links – asked. Would you link to something mediocre or awful just because someone asked? And don’t get me started on “link exchange”! Those days are looooong gone.

A great example of a YouTube channel belongs to the Mayoclinic. BTW, most of the videos are made with a flipcam and are not scripted. The now famous piano concert in the Mayo clinic achieved over 5 million views and countless backlinks for the Mayo Clinic lucky social media team – filmed from a patient’s cellphone!

More consumer oriented success stories can be seen on the Harley Davidson channel or Clinique makeup for example. A good failure example? How about the department store, Macys? I can’t believe this is all they could manage since going live 3 years ago!

We still have plenty of work to do, but I’ll try to keep you posted on how it contributes to our overall efforts and the progress we make as we grow the channel.

Just remember, that while lots has changed in the online marketing world in the last few years, the “content is king” motto still holds true today. You want your visibility to grow, your brand recognition to increase, relevant traffic – focus on good content developed under a sensible, solid strategy.

Yet still, many companies think ranking in the search engines is enough. Some are even naive enough to thinking ranking for a handful of keywords could make their business a success. That’s why you will notice when you do your own searches, many times you choose one of the top results only to land on a page that does not hold your attention for longer than the time it takes you to click your way off the site. What is even more puzzling is when this happens with PPC – someone was willing to pay for my click, but not willing to invest to ensure i have a positive user experience on their site. Remember that – user experience — we’ll talk about it later, but you better be thinking about it now! But I digress . . .

Despite having moved beyond SEO consulting in the last few years, the WebWhile site still ranks #12 for “SEO Israel” (actually, as of 12/28/09, we are #6 – I did 15 minutes of tweaking a few weeks ago). I find it funny. And even when until a few months ago we were #7 for “SEO Israel”, I’ll let you in on a secret – I am not sure if we got any clients from that fact. That probably has something to do with me telling the callers that we are not an SEO company and trying to explain to them why they may not need an SEO company just yet – but go try to tell an Israeli Marcom that she has to tell her CEO that he is wrong.

Anyway, if we wanted to rank in the top 5, I am sure we would with some additional efforts — but the point is, that is not going to be bring me relevant traffic at this point in time, so why not spend time on what will?

What amazes me is that we rank above the hundreds of SEO consultants in Israel who actually want to get SEO outsourcing jobs. I found this out while running an initial search for a US client. We want to hire an SEO expert that we will manage. I just have a hard time with the idea of hiring someone who can’t get ranked for their own business.

The SEO industry is transitioning – I am not sure if the SEO agencies in Israel have caught up with the transition yet, but they should. It does not make sense for a marketing manager to simply outsource his “SEO” needs and wait for results. Seach Engine Optimization needs to be an integral part of marketing plans on all levels. For this particular client — a doctor in Los Angeles — we’ve been working on SEO for him since the day we first met him and he did not even have a concept defined for the medical Institute he was building. So while I am looking for someone who can handle the SEO professionally, that person will be fortunate enough to inherit a back office built for SEO, with all the on-page SEO elements he could dream about. He just needs to get out there and get his hands dirty in all the annoying, boring off-site optimization tasks. And while he brings us the relevant traffic – we will be busy continuing to maximize the conversions, strengthen the positioning and ensure the site’s visibility among all target markets.

]]> http://www.webwhile.com/internet-marketing/2009/08/20/social-media-is-it-a-fab/feed/ 0 http://www.webwhile.com/internet-marketing/2009/06/28/will-twitter-facebook-and-google-heal-us-healthcare/ http://www.webwhile.com/internet-marketing/2009/06/28/will-twitter-facebook-and-google-heal-us-healthcare/#comments Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:38:38 +0000 admin http://www.webwhile.com/internet-marketing/?p=230 In America, money buys life. Marketing medical services online in the
US make me question absolute capitalism.

I was taught that laissez fare capitalism, although while it sometimes doesn’t work perfectly, is the best off all evils. That’s what they told me at Temple University’s liberal arts college and that’s what I’ve been getting from most of my business education and environment. If you work hard and use your god-given talents, you can benefit from all that the land of equal opportunity has to offer.

This even worked for me on a personal level. I’ve managed to do well in my business life despite that I did not come from wealth. I busted my butt on my education while working 3 jobs, worked for minimum wage and made many personal compromises. Over time, I did succeed to climb up the ladder and accumulate experience and wealth.

It took more then the current economic crisis to for me to begin questioning the fundamentals of my belief paradigm.  What happened is that I became intensely involved in a new venture in the medical services field in the U.S.

It hit me like brick -  in America, money buys life. More then 40 million Americans don’t have health insurance! And many that do have medical coverage, have poor plans that do not cover enough to truly keep them healthy. Basically, in America, unless you have good health insurance to back you up or are cash rich, you will be deprived of your most elementary medical needs.

Most Americans reading that would say, “Yes, so . . .what else is new? Health care is a commodity – either you can afford it or not.” But all you need to do is open your eyes and realize that the world is changing and once again it’s to the credit of the Internet.

I suspect that Kim Jong-il, the leader of North Korea, is not twittering. But I am guessing that his intelligence agencies do. They study the Internet in order to control it. They know that free Internet access to North Koreans would bring and end to their regime. The greatest (fire) wall of China is only partially successful in blocking Chinese from freely opening up to rest of the world. Iranian new green revolt has been named already the “Twitter revolution”. It is not that all young educated Iranians are eager to make peace with Israelis like me; they just want to enjoy the freedom that they see that other young people world wide have. They want the freedom to get attention, to find dates, to be rebellious, to have fun, the freedom to find information that on issues relevant to their daily lives and belong to global communities. When they compare themselves to peers worldwide and feel discriminated, that’s when unrest can happen. What do demonstrating Africans, revolt youth in Paris, in Athens, Turkish teens in Germany and Palestinians kids in the West Bank all have in common? The answer is high speed internet, social media, and lots of frustration and feeling of being left behind.

When an American patient goes to his primary doctor and gets diagnosed, gets a test result or just when he suspects that he or a family member suffers from something, he is very likely to go immediately online and run a search. Before you can say Google, he’ll be exposed, like a growing number of Americans, to medical care they are being deprived of. A woman might learn through her Facebook that her friend is covered for a cosmetic procedure, while she wouldn’t be able to smile since her untreated teeth hurt so much. The more they learn about their compromised health and wellness, the more they’ll get frustrated with this system.

The writing is on the wall. The social medical revolution of the united state is simmering under the cyber. If you are a healthcare professional, a specially a US physician who have taken the hypocrites’ oath, you might have one day to explain to your kids, why were you standing on the sidelines while the revolution to demolish the inhuman, unjust realities of the American healthcare system was raging.

Dror and I have made an unwritten promise to one another to make every effort to avoid working with clients who do not appreciate our work. I must admit we have not always succeeded but we usually know when to politely refuse the opportunity. Truthfully, it happens often in Israel. Sometimes, Israeli clients have a tendency to be unreasonable and unappreciative.

Anyone reading here , especially those who work in Israel, knows exactly what I am talking about. But my colleague, Itai Raz, just sent me a video that is too good not to share and sums up, with some good comic relief, exactly how some clients approach each vendor from which they want to receive services.

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