mHealth firms are under the gun.
The pressure to show and deliver results is constant. A daily concern.
Sales must happen. When people buy it puts the stamp of viability on your product or service.
Investors demand sales to show your product or service has value and that your marketing and sales processes deliver paying customers.
Return On Investment is the key.
Or is it?
Too Much Marketing Time and Effort on the Wrong Things
Lots of mHealth firms when feeling the heat to produce sales focus on things that don’t produce results.
Many mHealth marketing budgets include spending for things like trade shows, promotion, sponsorships. social media, and advertising. Yes, you can get results from these tactics.
But, that’s what they are…
TACTICS.
Technology has changed today’s buying process. A sound strategy trumps jumping into tactics.
Buyers today are well informed, technology enabled, bombarded with media, and suffering from information overload. Buyers today lack the time and willingness to meet with sales people or engage in the sales process. Buyers now self-direct the educational process in search of a solution to the problem they face. The new buyer isn’t hanging out at trade shows or responding to promotions, Buyers tune out or block ads. They are skeptical of sponsorships and blatant promotions.
Needed: A Strategic, Focused Marketing Approach
Your marketing budget must address the new buying behavior of your potential customers. Determine where your buyers are going to get educated. Focus your marketing time, efforts, and money on meeting them there.
Invest in building these 7 strategic building blocks.
Buyer Personas- WHO exactly is your targeted customer? What are their problems, concerns, and fears? What keeps them up at night… either with worry or excitement?
You must know your potential buyers cold. It’s the only way to understand where to reach them and what marketing messages will break through and move them to take action.
The Buying Journey- It’s also crucial to map out the steps, the journey, your buyer takes from his or her world into your world. What’s happening early in their journey? What are they key decision points? Who do they encounter? Who do they trust and who do they question? In fact, the questions they ask throughout the Buying Journey must be answered.
Your Story Strategy- Your marketing message must educate, engage, and inspire the potential buyer during the entire Buying Journey. The story must tap the language and key phrases of your buyer. It must provide the data. But more importantly, it must move the buyer emotionally… even if it’s an executive at a healthcare organization.
Content Creation- Creating enough of the right kind of content is a struggle for lots of mHealth firms. Today’s buyers seek timely and relevant content during the Buying Journey. If your content doesn’t educate, engage, and motivate potential customers, they will ignore it.
Most mHealth firms have content assets they can tap. A Content Audit will identify existing content that can be used. It will also reveal content gaps and weaknesses that need to be addresses.
Create content in a variety of formats to appeal to diverse buyers throughout the Buying Journey: Blog Posts, White Papers, Newsletters, Customer Interviews, Video, Webinars, Slideshare, Print Articles, and Live Events.
Creating Awareness- The content you create must be promoted and marketed to gain the attention of your prospects. Spread your content with social media, press releases, guest blog posts on industry and relevant authority sites, and tap relationships with key marketing partners.
Nurture and Build Relationships with Prospects and Customers- Follow up and a quick response to both prospects and customers builds trust. This trust leads to sales and advocating your firm. Listen to the questions and concerns your prospects and customers raise. Respond promptly and intelligently. Demonstrate value and caring in how you respond.
Marketing Automation- Marketing Automation is the art and science of automatically managing the targeting, timing, and content of your outbound marketing messages in response to prospects inbound actions and online behaviors. Marketing automation puts you in the position to deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right prospect or customer.
Before investing in marketing automation, make sure all the above strategic steps are completed.
Your Marketing Call to Action
Completing the 7 steps above requires you to ignore short-term ROI of your marketing and sales campaigns. These strategies are required to win the hearts and minds of today’s technology savvy buyer.
There are no short cuts. Most mHealth firms lack the time, experience, and expertise to complete these 7 strategic steps without a professional marketing agency.
If it makes sense to have a marketing agency that specializes in mHealth guide you through this process and hold you accountable…
Let’s get on the phone and talk.
photo credit: Michael_Nocelo via Flickr
