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Caring People Case Study

Healthcare Digital Marketing Strategy to Beat Big Franchises – Case Study

I used to work in the health care industry. I was the Digital Marketing Senior Manager at Caring People Inc. A home care company that helps seniors with daily living at home for over 20 years. Caring People offers personalized service in a very competitive market across four states. People often called-in at times of crisis – trust is the #1 priority on how we communicate to prospects online.

 

The challenge:

When I started to work for Caring People, the website was out of date, hard code. There was no content marketing in place and no strategy to generate leads. I started the digital marketing department and I was one team for all SEO, PPC, Email and Social Media.

Healthcare was a big challenge for me because my previous position was in e-commerce. I had to learn a new industry, educate Caring People CEO and stakeholders, and convince them to invest in digital marketing initiatives. I also faced another challenge since the sales team did not understand the value of digital. Therefore, I had to show them a new way to work with me as a team.

 

The Solution:

 

I suggested to create a new website. While the developers were working on the new website, I planned the strategy. I put a content marketing and SEO plan together. As a result, I created hundreds of local listings and more than 100 new blogs. I used long forms and topic cluster approach to earn competitive keywords. I also invested plenty of time vetting writers that had experience in the health care- senior industry. Finally, I also created SEO guidelines for the writers.

 

I started a competition with the sales team to collect reviews because I knew how powerful they are for local SEO and for generating leads, especially in health care. Furthermore, I created the buyer personas that were only three in caring people’s case. In addition, I migrated the old site from HTTP to HTTPs successfully.  After the website was launched, I implemented the content marketing strategy by posting amazing regular content with videos and infographics.

Banklink Strategy to Increase DA and Traffic

 

Furthermore, I created a backlink strategy that allowed me to earn hundreds of backlinks. The website was earning between 30-40 backlinks a month.

earned backlinks

The backlink strategy helped to increase Domain Authority- bring more traffic. As a result, Caring People generated double leads that before starting the backlinks strategy.

Finally,  started a geo-targeted PPC campaign and used social media to amplify the content. Then, I set up an email marketing to follow up with organic and paid leads.

 

The Results:

healthcare digital marketing

After a few months that I launched the new site, I earned several Google Quick Answer Boxes for Caring People. I increased leads by 100%, the blog increased in 3 months, visits to 140% and Page Views to 150%. The organic channel grew at a much faster pace than all the other channels. I focused on organic traffic through content by using the BrightEdge platform. This helped me to get great keyword ideas for my content and for On-Page SEO.

 

healthcare digital marketing strategies

I put Caring People on top of their competitors in search results. I also beat huge franchises with content marketing strategy for being well planned and implemented. Finally, one of my long-form content went viral and a group of corporations that wanted partnerships with us. Moreover, I worked together with them to create a new infographic in English and Italian for the European market. As a result, my piece earned hundreds of backlinks from reputable sites.

 

healthcare content marketing strategy - Case study

Caring People doubled their leads; its blogs increased exponentially in traffic and the brand received recognition across the Internet.

 

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content marketing strategy

Champion And Conquer Your Content Marketing Strategy

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Early in my digital marketing career, I read something that had a lasting impact on my approach to marketing — an essay published on the Microsoft website by Bill Gates called “Content is King.” Bill Gates is a true visionary. What amazes me is that content marketing has taken many different forms over the last decade or so, but it is still king. Content marketing is a cost-effective way to bring in a steady stream of new leads and keep your customers coming back for more. That essay continues to inspire me to reinvent my content marketing efforts and conquer them like a champ.

One thing that I always make a priority is keeping track of my goals. When I’m not getting the results that I’m looking for, I revisit my original marketing goals so I can reground myself and rework my plan step by step.

Knowing Your Market

Do you know who your company’s audience is? If not, you have some homework to do. Send out a survey, create reader personas, ask for feedback and monitor your content to learn more about who needs your products or services. Use analytical tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Audience Insights or review the demographics of your current customers. It doesn’t really matter which method you use, as long as you do something to find your target audience, so don’t get bogged down with semantics.

I like to think that I know my company’s audience pretty well, but I’ve also learned that audiences can change over time. Even seasoned marketers need to spend some time conducting market research from time to time to keep their marketing efforts sharp.

There’s another reason I like to reassess who my target audience is. Our current clients are already hooked, but I like to continually challenge myself to expand our customer base. In addition, new products and services call for new analysis of the target market.

Establishing Your Goals And Objectives

Two very important steps follow identifying your target market. First, you need to be clear about what they need. Second, you need to learn how to quench their thirst for information. To sum up, relevant content is a valuable commodity.

Once you’ve acquainted yourself with who your customers are and what they need, you’re ready to establish your marketing goals and objectives. Do you want to spark the interest of your current audience? Do you want to build a new audience? Expand your current audience? Promote a new good or service? Increase brand awareness?

It’s important to establish goals and objectives so you know how to move forward. It’s also essential to define successful marketing campaigns. Have you thought about how you’ll know when you have achieved your goals? Think this through before you put your marketing plans in motion. Will you measure it by increased revenue, lower marketing costs, targeted customers or some combination of benchmarks?

Creating The Content Of Champions

Unless you are at the starting gate of your marketing plan, chances are good that you have some existing content to work with. Take a hard look at the work you’ve already done and decide whether you can reuse any of it. Can you update past articles to make them more relevant? Can you add to existing content so that it better enhances your brand or becomes more engaging? Can you beef it up by embedding links to products or services?

Putting The Plan In Motion

With the basic framework in place, it’s time to build on the cornerstone of your efforts. Determine your main formats and advertising channels and develop an overall marketing strategy.

I’ve found that even when my marketing strategy is complete, it helps to leave a little room for experimentation. I like to experiment with a variety of advertising opportunities like sponsored content, social media advertising, infographics and videos. Your marketing plan might include podcasts, e-books, workshops or webinars. Whichever formats and outlets you use, don’t forget to investigate your competition’s marketing efforts to make sure that you’re differentiating yourself.

There are a few different ways that you can manage your content marketing and publication schedule. I like to use a master calendar of what I’m publishing and on which outlet. You can control all the posting and publishing yourself or use an app on which you can load your ads and articles and schedule them to appear at specific times and dates. If you’re working with a marketing team, develop a plan for who will be responsible for creating, posting and publishing content.

Final Tips For Content Marketing Strategy Success

Keep a pulse on how well your marketing plans are connecting to your goals. If you’re not getting the results you want, review your marketing strategy to make sure that you’re following it exactly as planned. You might find that it only takes a few tweaks to get things moving in a better direction. And don’t fret if you’ve made a mistake or two. Learn from them and make better changes moving forward.

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email marketing generate leads

Email Marketing Is Still The Top Way To Generate Leads

As the general public became familiar with electronic communications, mass postal-mail marketing campaigns gave way to email marketing campaigns. If you have been working in marketing prior to the social media boom, you surely remember when emails were the top marketing platform.

Over time, the popularity of email marketing campaigns resulted in personal email inboxes that were overflowing with the latest and greatest offers. Email campaigns grew and people grew tired of them. Laws that allowed customers to unsubscribe breathed new life into email marketing campaigns as customers could easily pick and choose the companies they were interested in.

Email marketing has long been a tried-and-true method for generating leads. This approach continues to enjoy a strong track record in spite of the rise of social media platforms. Email marketing is still an efficient way to generate leads at a reasonable cost.

One thing that hasn’t changed with email marketing is that you need to be strategic about how you word every part of marketing emails. One of the best things about email subscriptions of today is that you can count on your prospects having some level of interest in your product or service that encouraged them to sign up for your subscription list to begin with.

Write email campaigns that get results.

One of the first lessons that I learned about email marketing campaigns is to give sincere thought to how a customer perceives every component of the email, starting with the subject line. Media headlines grab your attention and get you to listen longer or read further. A meaningful subject line for an email offers the same punch. Subject lines should be relevant, interesting and genuine.

Journalism students quickly learn how the inverted pyramid style of writing gives readers the most important information first. The rest of the paragraph or article supports the initial information or offers additional details. Your email marketing customers will respond to the same style of writing. They want the big news first because they’re often reading your email while they’re commuting or at work. If they want the details, they’ll read the email again just before they buy.

Keep your emails simple and minimal. Just as a crisp, pressed business suit sends a professional message, a clean, uncluttered email tells consumers that you are professional. If you can’t create a professional-looking email, look for professional-looking templates where you can fill in the blanks.

Be cognizant of your purpose. Each of your emails should have a clear goal such as educating your customer, asking for referrals or getting them to follow your company’s social media platforms.

Engage your email readers with content that is short and to the point. Wordiness and fluff have no place in email marketing campaigns. Reveal your purpose up front and talk about how your purpose relates to the customer to get a connection started. Choose large fonts in an easy-to-read style. Your readers may be people who constantly read while they’re on the go or they may have poor eyesight. You’ll want them to be able to read and scan the email quickly.

Move the wording in your email toward your call-to-action section quickly and make the action that you want them to take ultra-clear. Try to think about the ways emails in your inbox grab your attention and those that cause you to hit delete.

Create customized emails for cold leads from all sources.

The main sources from which I get our leads are our blogs, organic traffic, pay-per-click ads and salespeople. No matter where you source your leads, use several email chains that are customized according to what those leads are looking for. Next, categorize them and get them in the right automated email chain. This places them in your sales funnel to warm them up and get them ready for sales.

Generate leads from blogs.

Our prospects love our informative blog articles. Use your blog as an opportunity to send them related articles. This primes the prospect for a call to action asking them if they want you to call them.

Move warm email leads to hot leads and make the sale.

It’s important to give your warm leads as much attention as your cold leads. When our emails move from the cold list to the warm list, I have a specific email that I send to nurture the relationship and make it a little warmer. I also include a thoughtful testimonial to help gain credibility.

After sending the warm email, follow up with a second email asking if they’re still looking for your services. Include a sale offer or coupon to move the lead closer to a sale.

Test and analyze email marketing campaign results.

There’s still a lot of power in A/B split testing. Testing emails reduces bounce rates, tells you more about your customers, increases conversions and is cost effective.

In analyzing my email marketing campaigns, I look for open rates at 30% or higher to know if they were successful. I don’t expect as much from click-through rates, where I like to see around the 5% range.

When a new approach to marketing takes marketers by storm, some marketers make the mistake of moving into new strategies full force, leaving methods that have worked well in the past smoldering in the dust. The best marketing campaigns use several marketing forms simultaneously. The key to maximizing results with every effort is to know your purpose, target the right customers and learn from your results.

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SEO As A Primary Marketing Tool

SEO As A Primary Marketing Tool — With A Little Help From PPC

Paid advertisements have long been a staple of the marketing industry. Advancements in technology showed us how to organize content so that potential customers could more easily find our offerings on the world wide web. This began the great debate of whether it was better to attract customers by educating and enlightening them or by splashing attention-grabbing ads where they couldn’t miss them.

In my career as a digital marketer, I’ve learned the pros and cons of search engine optimization and pay-per-click through experience. Marketers can use both for any type business if they master one important concept — understanding why they need to put more effort and resources into one rather than the other.

Going Back To The Basics

SEO and PPC can complement each other nicely. Are you marketing a product or a service? How well-established is your business? I’ve found that answering these questions are good places to start when making decisions about which marketing approach is likely to be more effective, or whether you need to use some combination of both.

This is when it helps to go back to Marketing 101. Are you clear about who your target market is? Where will your potential customers be looking to find the products or services that you’re offering? What words would you type into the internet search box if you were looking for the same product or service?

PPC As A Marketing Strategy

PPC tends to work well for companies that are offering products. Paid ads also work nicely when you have a new angle or new use for an existing product or service. When paid ads are designed well, PPC helps attract new customers quickly.

PPC puts your brand front and center right at the top of your webpage. Google will typically show four paid ads on a desktop. Mobile apps leave room for three paid ads topping the page. Paid ads give you a lot for your money because they give you room for a brief written description and a few “sitelinks.” Sitelinks are subsections of your ad that will take your customers directly to a page on your website for locations, specials, blogs, news or your about page. PPC ads also allow you to select your target audience by day, time, location, language, previous visits and other important parameters.

You need to keep a tight handle on your budget when using PPC. Many clicks are bound to bring you new business, but they can also waste your budget. I’ve found that it’s important to set a realistic budget for paid ads and monitor them often.

Another nice thing about PPC is that analytics make it easy to see whether your PPC ads are effective in real time. Getting quick feedback helps me make decisions about pulling ineffective ads. It also gives me an opportunity to increase my budget for ads that provide a strong return on investment.

SEO As My Go-To Marketing Strategy

I tend to use SEO as my primary marketing tool. That’s because I’ve found that SEO works extremely well for our business, a senior home care company, as well as companies that are primarily service oriented.

Over time, I’ve worked diligently to build a strong brand within my company. My current goal is to keep the brand in front of our target market. I want to establish Caring People as the authority on home health care and continue to build trust and credibility in our brand. Organic searches deliver greater volume to our website than paid ads. SEO is the most cost-effective strategy for us at this time because content is working great for us.

Using PPC To Enhance A Strong SEO Marketing Strategy

I believe that SEO offers a better value for the home-care industry because we offer personal services. Our customers want to know more about our company before they’re willing to invest their money in our staff. Articles, reviews and positive testimonials are the key to getting clients to make that first call asking for more information.

Despite the fact that SEO takes center stage in my marketing plan, I still regularly manage a medium PPC campaign. I’ve found that adding PPC ads to my marketing strategy adds enough spice to our efforts to draw in some new clientele. I use PPC at various times to highlight certain campaigns or to tie our services into current events. For example, this year we had a huge marketing campaign for National Grandparents Day. In using SEO and PPC together, we get more clicks overall. Greater numbers of clicks lead to conversions.

As a rule, PPC tends to work better for e-commerce companies. SEO tends to work better for services businesses that want to keep their brand visible while getting new clients. PPC can strengthen your SEO efforts nicely and vice versa. Of course, there are always a few exceptions to the rule. After SEO and PPC, monitoring and analytics are your next BFFs.

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How Digital Marketing Help your business

How Digital Marketing Helps Businesses

2 hours and 51 minutes. That is the amount of time that adults, 18 and up, spend on their mobile phone each day. This equates to almost 90 hours per month that each adult spends seeking entertainment, shopping, connecting with peers, and staying up-to-date on the latest news. It is more important now than ever before, for brands to understand how digital marketing can help their business. Deciding whether to implement a digital marketing strategy or not could be the difference between a company that fails and one that flourishes.

This article will cover:

  • What is digital marketing?
  • Why are businesses avoiding digital marketing?
  • Why is digital marketing important for businesses
  • Social media and digital marketing
  • The digital marketing numbers don’t lie
  • Digital marketing is more than social media
  • In Conclusion

What Is Digital Marketing?

According to HubSpot, digital marketing is simply a term used to describe a business online marketing efforts. Digital marketing is a form of Internet marketing that includes methods like:

  • Email marketing
  • Search Engine Marketing – SEO and pay-per-click advertising
  • Online Banner Advertising
  • Mobile App Markets – Apple and Google Play

Just like traditional marketing, it is all about connecting customers to a brand at the right place and at the right time. Sending traffic to your website via these tools can help turn a prospect to a customer:

  • Blogs posts and articles
  • Infographics
  • Interactive tools like Playbuzz
  • Social media channels
  • Logos and fonts that make up your brand
  • EBooks
  • Whitepapers
  • Reviews

Why Are Businesses Avoiding Digital Marketing?

Many businesses have chosen not to go the digital marketing route due to these three reasons:

  • They don’t understand it,
  • They don’t think their customers have gone digital and,
  • They’re up to their neck with customers

The truth is, while digital marketing may be complicated for a business owner who is not familiar with it, there are a ton of professionals out there who can assist. Secondly, the customer demographic is changing and today there are actually more millennials than baby boomers. Lastly, a business should always have a strategy in place to obtain new customers, even when they’re at capacity.

Why Is Digital Marketing Important For Businesses?

Digital marketing has the capacity to grow small and medium-sized businesses in a significant way. The evolution of technology has created a field of opportunity that at one point was only reserved for large corporations.

Today, small and medium-sized businesses actually stand a chance and can grow in a number of ways. The reasons why digital marketing is so important for businesses are:

Better Return On Investment

A small business may find it difficult to afford traditional media methods like television ads, but digital marketing is a much more feasible avenue. If a business’s website has a consistent flow of traffic and those visitors convert into sales, they’ll be successful. In fact, their success (and failures) can be more easily measured.

Digital marketing allows you to track and monitor your results, which is helpful when you’re deciding the method that works best for you. A company can determine their Return on Investment much more easily.

The Internet Will Be Everywhere

Researches have projected that there will be more than 20 billion interconnected devices by 2020. Businesses who are on board with digital marketing will have access to their target market in a way that’s never been seen before. Being prepared for ‘The Internet of Things“, or Internet connections via everything from cars to photo frames, can put even a small business in high places.

Digital Marketing Generates More Revenue Than Traditional Methods

According to Google, companies that utilize digital marketing methods have 2.8 times better revenue growth expectancy than those that follow traditional techniques. Small and medium-sized companies can expand their business to a global scale when revenue is plentiful. Matter of fact, they have 3.3 times better chances of expanding with digital marketing.

Gain Trust From Customers With Digital Marketing

Customers who interact with brands on social media trust them more because they meet them on a personal level. If you’re looking for food, you can head to Yelp or Google and read what previous customers are saying about a particular restaurant.

When looking for things to do, you can make a post on Facebook, and FRIENDS can tag their favorite hangout spots. Referrals from people we know hold more weight; so if your business hasn’t done so yet, park yourself in a digital space. Social proof and testimonials from real customers can give you exponential leverage.

Businesses Build Brand Reputation

The amazing thing about digital marketing is it can increase customer loyalty. When a business goes above and beyond for their customers, they’ll have no reservation in telling everyone about their experience. This also means if a business sucks at providing quality services, those customers will tell everyone about their experience.

Businesses that do it right can expect their customers to become brand ambassadors and reap the benefits of providing good service.

Social Media and Digital Marketing

Now that you have an idea of why digital marketing is important to businesses, it’s imperative to grasp one of the most important components of it. Social media is a component of digital marketing that falls under the Internet Marketing branch. Social media platforms include:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • And many, many more!

For a company to thrive in these platforms, they must understand the type of customers that frequent them and how to share the content. What a brand post on LinkedIn should be different than what is shared on Instagram, as that platform caters to users in a different way.

The Digital Marketing Numbers Don’t Lie

Businesses that use social media marketing methods successfully have the potential to grow exponentially. One way of being successful is by knowing the content your target audience wants and how to reach them on certain platforms. Some companies fare better on Pinterest, while others thrive on Facebook. Either way, people should be able to leave one platform and recognize your brand on another one.

The Most Popular Social Media Platform

At the end of 2016, Facebook had a whopping 1.86 billion monthly users and the number is growing! As their number of users grows, so do their advertising products.

Marketers may find it difficult to shy away from this social media beast given how big they are. Their Ads can be targeted based on specific information like:

  • Age
  • Education levels
  • Life events – marriage, new home, new car
  • Job title
  • Devices used
  • And much more!

Facebook also offers a variety of different Ad types, such as:

  • Link Click Ads
  • Video Ads
  • Boosted Page Posts
  • Local Awareness Ads
  • Offer Claims
  • And much more!

With the right process, a small and medium sized business can find prosperity on Facebook.

What Other Social Media Platforms Are There?

While Facebook is a giant, we can’t forget about these other very powerful platforms.

YouTube

The video platform, YouTube, uploaded their first video in April 2005, and has been growing ever since. Over 1.3 billion people use YouTube and almost 5 billion videos are watched on this platform everyday. A small or medium-sized business can use YouTube as a way to showcase quality content. Think about it – a six year old made $11,000,000 from YouTube in 2017, so it’s definitely a platform you don’t want to avoid.

Instagram

If a business is looking to grow on a global scale, then Instagram may be the perfect platform. 80% of their users reside outside of the United States. With the right Ad (thanks to their parent company, Facebook), a company can significantly increase their revenue.

Users frequent Instagram for the visuals, especially after the implementation of Instagram stories, so it’s a great way to show behind the scenes experiences at your company.

Twitter

Founded in 2006, Twitter has grown to be quite the micro-blogging platform. Users are only allowed 280 characters per tweet, so the content must be packed with a punch. According to Omnicore, as of January 2018, Twitter has:

  • 330 million monthly active users
  • 500 million tweets sent per day
  • 100 million daily active users

Users frequent Twitter for quick answers, tracking the news, and sharing their thoughts.

Digital Marketing Is More Than Social Media

While social media is a huge part of digital marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC), and email marketing should not be forgotten.

SEO Content Marketing

Digital marketers know that SEO and content marketing are usually spoken about separately, but the two actually complement one another quite well. SEO is the technique of getting traffic from the organic search results on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Content marketing, on the other hand, is the process of creating and sharing useful content to attract ones target audience. The goal with content marketing is to drive a customer to take an action, such as purchasing a good or service.

As recently mentioned, marketing is all about being at the right place at the right time, and SEO content marketing can assist a business in achieving that. If a customer is searching for “potatoes written with a Sharpie in cursive typography” and your content includes SEO keywords that align with that, then the listing will be seen right when the individual is looking for the information. This is pure gold!

While SEO is great when used correctly, it is not something that’ll happen overnight. The road to success with SEO can be a long one, but definitely worth it.  No one is going to complain about free and organic leads, right? Absolutely not! However, some companies may go another route to make sure they are still found on search engines, but it comes at a cost.

Pay-Per-Click

When advertisers pay a fee for every time their ad is clicked, this is known as pay-per-click. It’s a way of buying visits to your website instead of letting them come organically. For example, if someone is looking for “potatoes written with a Sharpie in cursive typography” and the right keywords are used, an Ad may show up in one of the ad placement areas. Matter of fact, the Ad might show up in the first top spot, making it one of the first things an individual sees in the search results.

Like SEO, keywords matter when using pay-per-click methods. The research process of finding the right keywords, setting up the right campaign, and being relevant, is extremely time-consuming. However, the benefits of getting it right could result in a $5.00 bid to your website becoming a $500 sale. With Google Adwords, if users find that your keywords and ads are relevant, Google will charge you less for the click.

Email Marketing

Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is far from going extinct. Businesses with the right strategy will be able to move subscribers from interest to purchase with a good sales funnel. There are three different types of email marketing:

  • Transactional – Providing customers service solutions
  • Relational – Nurturing a relationship with your subscribers
  • Promotional – Specifically for lead generation

In Conclusion

Digital marketing has the potential to help your business in a great way. With the ability to connect with customers expanding and with constantly changing technology, digital marketing cannot be something businesses can ignore. It’s not just about what you tell the customer, it’s about what a customer tells a potential customer. Understanding how digital marketing can help your business will keep you on the playing field.

Meta Description 

The use of (or lack there of) digital marketing for small and medium-sized businesses can be the difference between who sinks or swims. Read on to learn why digital marketing is important for your business!

Social Description

Did you know digital marketing has the power to level the playing field between large corporations and small businesses? Learn why it’s important to jump onboard the digital marketing wagon and how making the switch can grow your business exponentially.

 

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