#007- Digital Health Marketing- Identify Content and Communication Gaps

Now that you understand what marketing assets you have available to leverage inside your digital health business, and have done your homework to know how to educate and engage your potential buyers, it’s time to figure out what’s missing. Today, we’ll talk about how to …

Identify the Gaps in Your Digital Health Marketing

About This Show:

Each Wednesday, Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

Show Notes:

 How to Identify Content and Communication Gaps

In this step of your strategic marketing planning process, you will identify what digital media you already have available, compare what you have against what digital media your market wants, and identify the gaps in your digital media. This is the content you’ll need to create.

Here are the steps you’ll need to follow:

First… List your existing digital media assets – blog posts, youtube videos, podcasts, webinars, social media profiles, followers, and content, websites, Google Rankings of top keywords, photos, audio recordings, etc.

Next… List non-digital media content – print, non-published presentations, recordings, photos, print articles, etc. that can easily be digitized and published online

Now… Identify digital media by stage – What digital media is most appropriate at each stage of the Buyer’s Journey for your healthcare IT products or services?

As buyers move through the buying process from understanding they have a problem, to research, to identifying a vendor, to purchase, they have different information needs and are interacting with a multitude of resources. The purpose of this step is to create a model to assist in developing strategies to address the different stages of this journey.

For example, blog posts and white papers might work best for healthcare IT executives, however, for individual mobile health apps, a Facebook post leading to a YouTube video is the best way to gain initial attention.

Newsletters and blog posts help to nurture individual patients and front-line healthcare personnel, but perhaps healthcare It and hospital executives seek more engagement in the form of a webinar.

To open doors with key healthcare system decision makers, you realize you need  video testimonials on your site to gain credibility with healthcare IT staff doing the initial research, however, to gain a one-on-one meeting with the real decision makers, you need more substance in the form of case studies and results profiles.

Finally, Match digital media to your by Buyer Personas- What is most important and in what format for your Buyers? Is it video, test, audio? Do they consume information on smartphones and tablets?

All this leads up to you having the ability to…

Identify gaps in your digital media- What gaps are there in your content and communication assets? What do your Buyer Personas want and expect, and at what stage in the Buying Process must you deliver it? What do you already have that you can use? Do you have digital, or even print content you can repurpose that will add value and educate your prospects?

While this is a quick and short part of your marketing strategy, don’t short cut it. It’s important to consciously spend time on this process so you clearly identify the content you have available to leverage, what you need to do to re-purpose or edit your existing content so it more closely matches what your buyers want, and lastly, know exactly what new content is needed.

This part of the process helps you set realistic targets for content creation and helps you create a budget for building your marketing content.

Next…

Now that you’re armed with the your Buyer Personas, understand the Buyer’s Journey, and have identified your content gaps, it’s time to get busy and create a series of marketing and communications initiatives, expressed as “User Stories”, across all relevant media channels. The “User Stories” are designed to influence buying decisions.  (Examples are digital strategy, websites, content initiatives, social media programs, media relations, advertising, speakers bureau, email marketing, etc.)  

The User Stories” are prioritized and assigned points based on the amount of work required to execute each initiative, the time required to execute the initiative, and financial implications of the initiative. All content marketing initiatives must include metrics.

All of this groundwork positions the digital health firm to adopt a flexible,agile content marketing approach. This agile content execution is what ultimately brands and positions the business in the marketplace.

Next week, we’ll take a closer look an the elements and process execution of an agile content marketing approach for digital health firms.

Resources:

Podcast #005- Digital Health Marketing Assessment

Podcast #006- Digital Health Marketing- How to Test and Nail Down Buyer Personas

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