It’s Back! Healthcare’s Only Crowdsourced Survey Call for Questions

We are excited to announce the launch of the Second Hospital Industry Crowdsourced Survey on Digital Marketing! If you are a marketer in the hospital industry, you know how important benchmark data is to your peers and executives. Hospitals compare themselves on everything, using data to stay abreast of their performance, competition and customer behavior, and to inform their ongoing marketing strategies.

Here is what we are looking to accomplish this year:

1) Once again, it is free to participate and as a participant you will get the results first.

2) We’ll keep the questions relevant to you. You will help us determine what they’ll be by submitting questions in the comments area below.

3) The report will include a summary of findings, results for each question and relevant charts and graphs illustrating key points to help you make better decisions for your organization.

A little over two years ago, Mike Stutman our SVP of Strategy lead our inaugural survey where you and your peers provided us with your burning questions on digital marketing. We used them to shape the first ever Hospital Industry Crowdsourced Survey and over 100 respondents provided answers. The survey results were so intriguing that it lead to coverage from several organizations including IHealthBeat, Fierce Healthcare, HealthCare ITNews, AMA, and more.

We’re also excited to announce that this year we’ve partnered with eHealthcare Strategy & Trends, which has served the industry since 1999. They’ve been an incredibly valuable partner, helping us guide the initiative from the start.

Here are some general guidelines to submit a question:

• Submit your question (or idea) by leaving it through a comment to this post.
• Any question related to Digital, Integrated and/or Emerging Marketing in the Hospital Industry is welcome.
• Feel free to submit more than one question/idea for consideration, but please understand that not all of your questions may get asked this time. If you like someone else’s comment please let us know and it will have a better chance of making the final cut.

• Please submit your questions and feedback by Tuesday, June 12, 2012.  After that, stayed tuned for notification of the availability of the survey itself and please take the survey when it is sent to you!
• If you have any questions about this survey, please feel free to contact me directly at:  Matthewd@acsysinteractive.com or (832) 449-5755.

Sample Questions (to spur your thinking):

1)      Do you have a site wide content strategy in place?

2)      What is the one thing patients should accomplish when interacting with your organization online?

3)      Does your hospital have plans for mobile marketing?

4)      Do you have a budget allocated to mobile technology for 2012/2013?

5)      How do you plan to measure ROI from your mobile initiatives? What KPIs will you be tracking?

The above questions are only a few to get your thoughts started.  We are far more interested in the burning questions you would like to ask your peers.  Thank you in advance for your participation.

If you missed the results from the first survey, you can check them out here: http://www.acsysinteractive.com/insights/crowdsourced-2010/

Social ROI is Not What it Used to Be

Social media provides relationship-driven benefits to a business once done right.  But many of these benefits aren’t tangible. How do you sell this to your CMO? The key to measuring the ROI of social media correctly is to deploy a balanced 360-degree approach aimed at unlocking the true value of social media throughout the customer lifecycle.

A recent study by Bain has showed that:

• Customers who engage with companies over social media spend 20% to 40% more money with those companies than other customers.
• Social media fans also demonstrate a deeper emotional commitment to the companies, granting them an average 33 points higher Net Promoter score.

Unfortunately, metrics like these can only be measured accurately in the long run, with significant investments in market research. And in this day and age, when any business tactic that is ever-so-slightly ‘undatalicious’, it gets the BIG NO-NO from executives. It’s our job, as marketers, to come up with creative proxies to articulate the value of your social media efforts in the interim.

Some simple questions to get you started:

• Do you tag the links you publish on Facebook/Twitter, then use Google analytics to track goal visits? Have you considered assigning monetary values to quantify these goals?
• Do you use Facebook Insights/Twitter Analytics/YouTube Insights to understand engagement around your profiles? What kind of content resonates better with your audience?
• Do you compare behavior of social media traffic to traffic from other sources? How does engagement KPIs such as “average time on site” and “pages viewed per visit” compare?

The fact of the matter is that measuring ROI for social media is far more complex than for its digital siblings: Paid Media, SEO and Email. And this complexity naturally puts social media at a disadvantage in the eyes of ROI-driven executives.

So, if you feel your investment in social media is not reflected in the results you have measured, adapt, improvise and keep measuring.

Beyond ROI

Another way to measure social media is Influence. But like ROI, influence cannot easily be measured numerically.

It is said that the debut Velvet Underground album titled “The Velvet Underground & Nico” only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band. The influence of Velvet Underground on music greatly exceeded their sales figures.

This thought applies directly to social media marketing today. A small regional hospital’s Facebook page is most likely not going to attract 500K + fans, however, if it can create the right type of followership, it can position itself as a thought leader in healthcare, within the community it serves.

There are tools such as Klout, Twenty Feet and Crowdbooster that help you get started with gauging influence but this science is in its infancy, with serious limitations. You should only use these metrics directionally, especially if you are not a national or international level player.

So time to re-think how influential you are as a brand.  And more importantly, what’s your Return on Influence?

5 Steps To Digital Leadership

Hospital marketing is poised to go digital by the year 2013. Our infographic provides hospital marketers with five steps to take to lead the way in their new digital world.

Gain additional analysis and data by viewing our Crowdsourced Survey On Emerging Marketing

Facebook – A Marketer’s Newest Broadcast Channel

Facebook is an important element in many company’s social media mix. With Facebook’s worldwide membership now over a half a million strong, your well defined and executed strategy for this destination can have a significant impact on your brand.  Many marketers are familiar with the platform’s basic features and are integrating feeds from their YouTube and Twitter channels into Facebook.  I am really intrigued by an emerging new trend on Facebook – live video and integrated chat! (more…)