Is there one big secret to making online marketing work for mHealth firms?
Well, I’m not sure if it’s really a secret, and you’ll probably need more than one thing to have your marketing efforts deliver the results you want, but there is an important mindset that I see in successful online marketing initiatives.
Seth Godin nailed the essence of how the Internet works from a marketing standpoint back in 1999 with Permission Marketing. You see, the Internet is an evolved direct-response platform. It doesn’t respond well to traditional “Push” advertising methods. It is however, an inexpensive, efficient, and effective way to build audiences.
So, here’s the mindset for online marketing. While you develop and create mobile health apps and digital health service solutions, understand that you are also a media company. Many mHealth firms struggle with online marketing when they employ a series of tactics that aren’t connected to an overall strategy. The result is a misguided, ineffective mess that leaves the business wondering if online marketing produces a return on investment.
Too many mHealth marketers view content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine marketing as stand alone tactics rather than an component of an integrated marketing strategy. The smart approach to effective online marketing is to treat social media and search engine results as components within a holistic strategy that centers around producing compelling content.
Let’s look at how these three elements fit together in effective online marketing.
1. Content
Compelling content is the foundation of your online marketing strategy. What is compelling content? Content that resonates with your target audience and speaks their language. It’s content that addresses their fears and provides solutions to the problems they are struggling to find answers. Even more compelling content inspires. It inspires prospects to have the confidence to try new approaches, to change behavior, and transform their lives. Here’s the big tip that the top marketers use. They create content as if search engines and social media didn’t exist. They create content for their target audience first and foremost.
2. Social Media
Social media is the tool for content distribution. It what enables you to scale your content creation efforts and spread your content. Social media provides a networked, third party endorsement of your content. It’s not you bragging about how good you content is. It’s others sharing your content and telling others it’s valuable. Social sharing now also sends signals of quality to Google about your content.
3. Search
Search remains the number one means of how people researching solutions to problems find information. However, without compelling content with strong social signals, your content will have a more difficult time ranking in the search engines. It is up to you to format and present your content using SEO best practices for Google to discover it. Rather than a stand alone tactic, SEO has now evolved into content marketing.
When you do content marketing right, traffic and leads will follow. But the true payoff of content marketing is the ability to build an audience. Rather than buying access to your market with interruption advertising messages, content marketing positions your mHealth business in a whole different light.
Your mHealth firm becomes the media.
Over time and as your content grows, you build a powerful media asset that becomes the voice of authority in your market.
Use this as a guide to create compelling content and boost your mobile health marketing efforts.
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