Smarti Solutions is a marketing consultancy and agency search firm that connects businesses with advertising agencies, PR firms and allied companies.  Founder/President Michele Harris has authored an interesting white paper on “Selecting a Marketing Agency” that may be helpful for those looking for help in a hurry.  She divides her advice equally between “Do’s” and “Don’t Do’s.”

Do’s and Musts

1. Establish a budget range up front
2. Scope the size of the agency’s clients
3. Develop a clear scope of work
4. Check to make sure agency top talent is still on-board
5. Gauge expertise
6. Match agency culture with your own corporate culture

Don’t and Pitfalls

1. Avoid paying for “full-service” unless you really need ancillary services
2. Don’t fall for “hot” or trendy – what works for others might not be right for you
3. Avoid signature creative looks that may prove restrictive
4. Differentiate between the chemistry of the team and the needs of the business
5. Beware of larger firms taking on smaller clients during the recession.
6. Issue a blanket RFP to a long list

Health Care Communicators Benefit From Up-Front Homework

Harris’ last point is particularly important to health care marketers in a hurry.  Sending out a flood of Requests for Proposals is like a carpet-bombing campaign: it destroys everything in it’s path.  Your up-front homework:

• Saves you internal staff time – by some estimates up to 40+ hours for a small to medium size RFP
• Allows you to focus only on those agencies already up to speed on your business and regulatory environment
• Preserves honor and goodwill.  If you invited them to bid you must read the proposals and take the meeting for the final presentation.

At Group 8020, we recommend issuing the RFP to just 3-4 agencies, any one of whom you’d be interested in working with.  Yes, it takes a little bit of effort but it pays off in longer term relationships.  In fact, 100% of the agencies selected by our clients have been invited back for repeat business; none of them required Group 8020 for that second round of work.  It’s a win-win for everyone.

Links:

• You can read Smarti’s full article here [open's PDF in new window].
• Link to Smarti Solutions corporate website

As reported in “The Onion” and with holiday weekend implications, consumption of double stuff Oreos may lead to “tolerance”:

For 90 percent of Americans, it now takes twice as much stuf to reach the same level of satisfaction once achieved with a single layer of stuf,” the report read in part.

Health care practioners are bracing for the surge of new patients with “S.O.S” or “stuf Oreo syndrome.”. Read the full article here.

[By way of Amy Dangerously]

MBSTIA is a 7-year old design firm outside of Washington, DC. Specializing in design and color for digital marketing, they offer 5 tips about working with web designers:

1. Look at other web sites to develop a profile of your tastes for your project.
2. Figure out what color schemes you like and would be appropriate for your business or service.
3. Gather important images that will be part of your web site and design.
4. Decide on who will write your web site copy (the text on your pages).
5. Avoid excessive revisions by being clear about your project from the very beginning.

If you work in health care read the original article 5 Ways to Save Money When Working With a Web Designer and ask yourself:

What design element would you like to change on one of your web pages?

What this means for your digital marketing initiatives

The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that 61% of American adults look online for health information and continue to deepen their engagement with the online world.

• 41% of e-patients have read someone else’s commentary or experience about health or medical issues on an online news group, website, or blog.
• 24% of e-patients have consulted rankings or reviews online of doctors or other providers.
• 24% of e-patients have consulted rankings or reviews online of hospitals or other medical facilities.

Social networking sites are used only sparingly for health queries and updates

• 39% of e-patients use a social networking site like MySpace and Facebook
• 12% of e-patients use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or to see updates about others

Group 8020 suggests: Given the lack of FDA guidance for pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device manufacturers looking to engage in social media, this sparse interest is not surprising.  It does provide health care communicators with guidance, however, on allocating budget for social media marketing until such regulatory guidance is provided.

Positive self-help

• Half of all online health inquiries (52%) are on behalf of someone other than the person typing in the search terms.
• Two-thirds of e-patients talk with someone else about what they find online, most often a friend or spouse.

Online health inquiries have an impact on decisions or actions and there are clearly more positive experiences than negative ones. Fully 42% of all adults, or 60% of e-patients, say they or someone they know has been helped by following medical advice or health information found on the internet. This represents a significant increase since 2006 when 25% of all adults, or 31% of e-patients, said that.

Group 8020 suggests: Health care communicators may want to focus greater effort on the tools associated with sharing – “forward to a friend” links for example – to give existing content greater reach.

Exercise and fitness are hot

The percentage of American adults getting exercise and fitness information online has jumped from 21% in 2002 to 38% now – an 88% growth, a more rapid increase than any other health topic covered in the survey.

Group 8020 suggests: While the focus on fitness may be attributable in part to the recession, brands with a lifestyle story to tell would be well-advised to trot that content out.  Consider creating a YouTube channel of repurposed materials.

Mobile drives digital consumption

Wireless connections are associated with deeper engagement in social media and an accelerated pace of information exchange. adults between the ages of 18 to 49 are more likely than older adults to participate in social technologies related to health.

Group 8020 suggests: Asking your agency to validate your digital content for mobile browsers like iPhone’s Safari and Blackberry’s Web Browser.  The incremental cost to remedy any mobile access issues are minute compared to the gains you’ll achieve in engagement.

Links:

• Download the full report “Health, Mobile, Web 2.0 : The Social Life of Health Information” from Pew Internet [opens PDF in new window]
• Survey questions and methodology

Meaning + Promotion = Semantic Advertising

Semantic advertising is the marriage of content analysis with online advertising.  As first discussed last year ( The Semantic Web – Prove It to Yourself in 5 Minutes and What is the semantic web? Why do I want it?) semantic technologies are the bedrock tools and standards that enable the web to begin to both understand itself and to create meaning.

Semantic analysis of content provides advertisers with the opportunity to more finely tune ads through a robust understanding of the environment in which the ad is placed. This in turn would ideally generate higher click-through rates as consumers respond to increasingly more relevant ads.

The quality of the semantic advertising is a function of the:

1. algorithms used to derive semantic meaning from the web page
2. the ad network used to manage and deploy ad inventory

A quick way to get up to the speed is to look at some of the top players in the field (though this list is by no means exhaustive).

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Health care advertisers looking to drive traffic to unbranded, disease-awareness sites would benefit from a robust understanding of semantic advertising.

Buzzword Status Score

• Hype: Low
• Value: High
• Origin: Convergence of semantic technologies with online advertising best practices
• Timeframe: Worth your attention