by Jenna Warner | Jan 18, 2017 | Blog
You may have heard of the 4 P’s of marketing: price, product, place, promotion. It’s a broad view to the marketing puzzle of taking a product or service from concept to consumer. Sometimes, businesses gain ground without thinking through these 4 Ps. Rapid growth is bound to plateau at some point and that when it is the perfect time to take a step back.
So, what’s next? Now, you just need to solidify how you can take your company to the next level. The next step may need to be more targeted and work quickly to reach the rapid growth you were projecting.
Nowadays marketing options are everywhere. You could pick multiple paths or you could home in on one big trend. The key is to find balance on the scale: Not spending too much time on one effort and not stretching resources too thin across multiple efforts.
Marketing efforts work best when they work together, with similar power across a range of efforts much like a crew of rowers all working at the same time to move. When one oar is doing all the work, you’re not going anywhere. The same thing happens in marketing and PR. It needs to be strategic and comprehensive to “move the boat.”
Carrying on the alliteration fun of the 4 p’s, here are 4 ways to start thinking like a marketer in your next strategic campaign. Use this process to focus your efforts for maximum results!
1. Picture
If you could picture your perfect marketing strategy plan what would it be? List all items or initiatives that you would like to see happen. This is the time to be a little unrealistic. Think of all the efforts that would make a difference in reaching your end goals. Include stretch goals, SMART goals, and even some ideas you know you don’t have the resources to complete.
Think of a variety of goals and efforts. For example maybe you want to increase your social media engagement or maybe you just want to better target a specific demographic.
Get your ideas out and on paper to discus with your team or your agency. The benefit to adding all of your goals in the discussion phase is that there might be options that are more plausible than you thought. This can also help generate new ideas from your team.
Don’t limit yourself in the initial brainstorm, or you might find yourself feeling some regret down the road. Prevent this by letting the creative juices flow early on in the process!
2. Prioritize
Now it’s time to get realistic. Until artificial intelligence (AI) and biorobotics are developed enough for us to be highly-productive cyborgs, we are going to have to live with the fact that we are human. There are only so many things that we can do at one time, and only so many things we can do well. Not to mention the budget we have to execute them.
There are also limitations as to how many or what type of marketing and PR efforts will benefit your company. You don’t want to waste your time creating a great marketing effort that falls on deaf ears. Like an Instagram campaign for Medicare, when only 15% of Instagram users are above the age of 50.
Do your research, ask others for their opinions, and see what efforts will make the most impact on your target market. You want to think of immediate lead generation, long-term lead generation and customer loyalty.
3. Plan Ahead
Now that you have a prioritized list of what you want to accomplish, its time to decide when things need to be completed. A thrown-together effort isn’t going to have much of an effect. In fact, if it’s sloppy it may have an adverse effect on your potential customers.
My favorite example of this happening, all too often, is the holidays. It seems every year I hear people say, “Oh the holidays just snuck up on me!” While I understand this, and may have said it myself, it’s just not true. We know the exact date years in advance. You may not be able to finish your personal holiday shopping before Thanksgiving every year, but it is important to stay ahead of schedule for your business.
It’s tempting to throw together a cool initiative after seeing another company perfectly execute one, but will it be valuable to your target market? If you think of a great idea for a Thanksgiving email at 9:00 pm on Thanksgiving eve and you can’t complete it, don’t scrap it! You can use it next year.
Train yourself to think like a retailer. Have you ever been annoyed at the sight of Christmas decorations for sale in August? Use that as your reminder to start thinking about holiday marketing efforts. Or other annual events related to your business.
4. Pull
Your efforts should pull your audience in. Every effort, regardless of how much power you have behind your strategy, should be focused on the end goal. When you go to execute your plan all efforts should be relevant to your customers and their pain point that you solve.
Your social media strategy should be targeted at your ideal customer, digital marketing efforts should all center on your customer and your article placements should be in publications your targets are reading. It’s easy to get caught up in something that looks cool or to fit in somewhere you have a connection. However, if it has nothing to do with your brand, what’s the point?
You know your customers pain points, but do your marketing efforts show your customers you want to alleviate them? For example: fitness gyms have an extreme increase of patrons and new memberships in the months of Jan- March, as many make their New Year’s resolution to get healthy. Let’s say your business is a solution for an automated member check in system that makes going to the gym easier for patrons and puts less strain on staff during rushes. You want to start marketing to gyms as they are preparing for this rush, not in the middle of the painful rush.
There are so many ways to incorporate your brand into something funky that isn’t a direct sell. But it should all point to you and your brand’s values in some way.
Set your business up for long term success by dreaming big, selecting what you can do, acting on it in a timely manner and using every effort to engage with your customer.
by Todd Stein | Jan 11, 2017 | Blog
Why should you write a book? Most busy tech executives have a hundred good reasons why they can’t spare the time for books. Their PR advisers may be tempted to concur since PR performance is judged largely on the quantity of placements secured. After all, why spend months writing one 80,000-word book when you could write 100 800-word articles for a variety of online publications?
Yet a book’s value exceeds that of even dozens of articles. With a book, you can dive into your topic in much more detail than you ever could with online content. Sure, it might not sell but sales aren’t the point: books are tools for establishing you and your company as thought leaders. They’re magnets for relationship building. An expert who is confident and knowledgeable enough to set her expertise in stone with a book will win instant credibility in the eyes of potential partners, clients and customers.
Books also achieve a few very important goals in PR:
- Books are assets that you can share with brand advocates, customers, prospects, investors, and industry stakeholders.
- Books can attract other opportunities to you and your company. Conference organizers, for instance, are much more likely to give a keynote to the author of a respected book even if it doesn’t sell well than to a book-less competitor.
- A book can build trust by positioning your company as having a knowledge-based environment, rather than one focused on sales alone.
The key to making the most of a book is good promotion. At Amendola, while we don’t specialize in book promotion, we’ve learned over the years how to augment the distribution and promotion efforts of book publishers to drive PR value.
Below is a sampling of the tactics we use in helping our clients draw attention to their books and leverage them for relationship building:
- Send the book to key journalists and bloggers and request a book review (ideally) as well as offering the author for an interview on the book’s topic
- Pitch the author as an expert on the topic, with the book as proof of their expertise. Broadcast media love interviewing authors with new ideas.
- Do a Google Hangout with the author to promote the book
- Run a Tweetchat with the author leveraging a major partner hashtag to drive attendance
- Turn the book chapters into a webinar series, with each chapter or section a separate webinar. Give the book away as enticement to register for the webinar.
- Turn the book into blog posts: one for each chapter or section, and link to the book at the end of each post
- Arm all salespeople with several hard-copy versions of the book as leave-behinds, or use book giveaways to drive a Salesforce email campaign to prospects in their territories
- Hand out the book at all events where you exhibit, as well as at your end-user conference
- Email the book to attendees at webinars, trade shows or seminars as a follow-up
- Write a LinkedIn status update about the book and post a link to it in groups where prospects congregate.
- Pull out keys facts or items of interest from the book and tweet those on Twitter with a link to the book and a popular related hashtag
- Include the book in your email signature, with a link to download it for free.
If this short list helps convince you to write a book, give us a shout. We can help.
by admin | Aug 24, 2016 | News
Amendola Communications, a nationally recognized, award-winning healthcare and healthcare IT public relations and marketing agency, announced today that it has been selected as the agency of record for Vocera Communications, Inc. (NYSE:VCRA). Amendola will provide a broad range of public relations and content services that promote Vocera’s mission to break down communication barriers and improve the healthcare experience for patients, families and care team members around the world.
“We knew Amendola Communications was the right agency to promote our unique value proposition to the right audiences and media outlets, with its deep industry knowledge and significant media and analyst relationships in the healthcare and healthcare IT sectors,” said Kathy English, Vice President of Enterprise Marketing. “The decision to hire Amendola was a clear and easy one to make after vetting the agency’s track record of delivering high-performance PR and marketing campaigns in our targeted markets. In just a few months, Amendola has already exceeded our expectations.”
Smartphones and wireless technology are fundamentally changing how care teams connect and collaborate, and Vocera is leading the way by supporting all types of communication, working in concert with multiple devices, and integrating with more than 70 clinical systems. The Vocera Communication Platform provides a secure, enterprise-class solution with an intelligent active staff directory that enables users to connect and communicate with each other instantly via voice communication, secure text messaging, and contextual alarm notifications. Used by more than 1,000 hospitals around the world, Vocera delivers the right information to the right person at the right time, saving valuable steps and time.
Amendola Communications is executing public relations, social media and content marketing strategy and programs for Vocera, with a special focus on the company’s thought leadership. Vocera’s leadership team is made up of widely respected clinicians and tech industry luminaries who are at the forefront of national movements in healthcare today, including offering technology solutions that address longstanding communication challenges and restoring the human connection at every point of a patient’s healthcare experience.
“We felt an instant connection to Vocera’s impressive team and look forward to promoting their initiatives and successes in this high-tech market where we have deep expertise,” said Jodi Amendola, CEO of Amendola Communications. “Our team is leveraging both Vocera’s thought leaders and clients to convey their important value proposition to the healthcare industry that critically depends on teamwork and the right information in order to globally dismantle communication barriers across even the largest healthcare enterprises.”
About Amendola Communications
Amendola Communications is an award-winning national public relations, marketing communications, social media and content marketing firm. Named one of the best information technology (IT) PR firms in the nation four times by PRSourceCode, Amendola represents some of the best-known brands and groundbreaking startups in the healthcare and HIT industries. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros delivers strategic guidance and effective solutions to help organizations boost their reputation and drive market share. For more information about the PR industry’s “A Team,” visit www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow Amendola on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media Contact: Tara Stultz | 440.225.9595| tstultz@acmarketingpr.com
by Jodi Amendola | Aug 3, 2016 | Blog
Cloud technology gets a lot of deserving recognition for equipping organizations with a modern IT infrastructure at a fraction of the time and upfront cost it would require to build one in-house. In an interesting paradox, the value of hiring a public relations agency is less perceived, even though the benefits are much the same professional expertise and tools (and not to mention, valuable media relationships) all at the ready, priced at a pay-only-for-what-you-use basis. Yet PR agencies are often asked, “Why should I hire you instead of adding a full time employee?”
As it happens, there’s a quantifiable difference. While there’s no doubt that a full-time, senior-level or even junior employee can bring value to an organization, there’s a decided limit in experience, media relationships and hours in the week. By contrast, a public relations agency like Amendola typically assigns a team of five people to each client account. On average, each team member has 15+ years of experience in one or more niches such as account management, strategic counsel, crisis communications, social media, media relations, content development and more all of which won’t necessarily cost more than bringing on a single full-time employee. In addition, when employees call in sick or go on vacation, you may be caught short. Not so with an agency team behind you, where PR activities are constantly covered.
Hiring the PR agency brain trust
One of the most compelling reasons to hire an agency like Amendola is that our employees come from a variety of backgrounds, giving our clients access to broad expertise. Some of us hail from agencies, while others are former TV, newspaper and radio reporters. Others come from the client side, including provider and payer organizations, healthcare IT companies and industry trade associations. What this means for Amendola’s clients is that instead of having one person with some degree of knowledge in multiple areas, they can put multiple experts to work in many different areas.
For example, a client that’s been focused on the provider side may at some point want to enter the pharmaceutical space. That’s no problem at Amendola, where we can quickly add strategists or writers, social media or media relations experts–deeply versed in life sciences to the existing client team. We even have market intelligence researchers who can uncover valuable information about newly targeted spaces. When it comes to gaining insight and a foothold on new markets, the power of an experienced PR agency works faster than just one or two insulated employees.
Strategy driven by business goals instead of personal comfort levels
Speaking of the in-house bubble, very often whoever drives public relations and marketing in these departments makes decisions based on their own expertise, comfort and convenience. This isn’t a criticism so much as the natural propensity of humans to do what they do best even if it’s not necessarily best for the company’s business objectives. And so, these professionals end up spending all of their time/energy/budget on their favorite or most familiar strategies, and neglect other often important areas.
At Amendola, we offer expertise in all areas of marketing communications, branding, PR and content, which no single person can possibly provide. This enables us to determine and deploy strategies that are most likely to meet our client’s business goals. If that includes social media, we’ll assign a social media expert to the account. If brand awareness, we’ll bring in a well-connected media relations. We will customize our services to meet your business objectives.
The rewards of resource sharing
You might be skeptical that all this access to public relations expertise really can be had without investing in a sizable in-house department. But as a PR agency that works with many different clients, Amendola is able to spread the business costs across this extensive client portfolio another commonality with cloud services vendors that spread the cost of infrastructure across multiple accounts, sparing any single customer from having to shoulder the entire cost. While we offer a full range of services, including some that are a la carte, the majority of our clients have monthly retainer agreements in place that are comparable to the monthly payroll of a single employee, minus the costs of training and other in-house employment expenses, such as health insurance.
Again, these clients benefit from the experience already gained by our work for others; very rarely do we encounter a completely unfamiliar topic in the realm of healthcare or healthcare IT. And when we learn something new, all of our clients benefit sooner or later. That’s the power of “public relations-as-a-service” it brings top-tier public relations services to all.
by Stephanie Fraser | Jun 26, 2016 | Blog
Having worked for a professional hospital CIO association for over six years, I’ve moderated and attended my fair share of health IT vendor webinars. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Webinars should not be taken lightly, and should ultimately provide educational insight to attendees and your business. A webinar can help establish you as an industry expert, attract new customers, and add value to your brand.
Here are seven tips to help boost your next webinar and key mistakes to avoid.
1. Don’t be a Car Salesman
Nothing will kill a presentation faster than an overly aggressive, unsolicited sales pitch. Leave that to your sales team. If you want to be truly compelling and solidify your company as a problem solver, focus on the key issues that impact your audience and share best practices for overcoming them. Rather than sell every bell and whistle of your product, draw upon examples of how your business is allowing existing clients to reach their goals. Focus on lessons learned.
2. Don’t Pull a Bait and Switch
Your webinar title and abstract say you are going to discuss how to build and maintain an effective population health strategy, yet you spend 60 minutes doing a product demo.
3. Be Polished and Prepared.
The best presenters are experts in their field, have a strong voice, and are experienced. It’s always good to have a presentation outline in hand with concise bullet points for each slide. Don’t write a script out word for word. Not only will you sound like you’re reading it, you’ll end up relying on it and if you lose your place, you’ll become flustered. Plus, it’s a distraction from the computer screen should any technical issues arise (i.e. you are on the wrong slide, a question is asked).
4. Don’t Save Questions for the End
Don’t save the Q&A until the end of your presentation. Strike while the iron is hot and take periodic breaks throughout the webcast for questions. This makes the presentation more interactive and gives you a breather from being just a talking head. Also, not every attendee can stay the full duration and will appreciate the opportunity. Additionally, it helps if you have a team member dedicated to monitoring questions or comments that come in from the audience. This is an effective tactic to ensure questions are addressed or even skipped over. Nothing worse than reading a question a loud and it’s one you can’t answer or completely irrelevant/inappropriate.
5.Survey Your Audience
Nearly ever webinar platform has a poll feature. Take advantage of your audience as your own personal focus group. They have already proven interest by registering and showing up, so leverage their time and insight to help your business. Plus it makes the webinar that much more engaging if the audience feels involved, and they will be interested in the feedback of their peers. Just be sure to give attendees sufficient time to weigh-in. Strong questions ought to lead into the next presentation topic and help dictate the amount of time you should spend on that issue.
6. Don’t Bedazzle Your Slide Deck
Slides should be visually appealing but keep the animations at bay. They rarely ever work on cue, and slow your presentation way down. Also, don’t use hyperlinks in your slide deck. Any sites you’d like the audience to visit should be posted in the chat window. Keep your slide deck font simple. Avoid elaborate fonts that almost never translate to webinar platforms. Arial is an easy to read, universal font. Try to stick with one color palette and select data and images that reflect your key points.
7. You Nailed It, Now Continue the Engagement
When the webinar has ended, continue the engagement by sending attendees a pdf of the slide deck and an archive link to the recording. Be sure to include the speakers contact information and request attendee feedback via a brief survey. Entice your participants with a special offer or prize drawing.
With the above in mind, here are a few other tips to ensure your next webinar is a winner:
- Be cognizant of time zones and holidays when selecting a date and time for your webinar.
- Send an attendee reminder the day of and the day before.
- Log in early. Show up at least 15-20 minutes to ensure the audio and technology is working, Test advancing your slides as well.
