Originally created for an audience of hospital administrators and communications staff, this presentation covers the basics of website design, search engine optimization and internet marketing.
What is marketing? People, Messages & Vehicles. It really doesn’t get simpler than that. What is marketing strategy? Research, Planning & Development of these elements to achieve a specific goal. Define and target the right audiences Carefully craft the right message that speaks directly to the needs of those audiences Package and deliver those messages in the most effective communication vehicles Your website (and the internet in general) is one of your marketing vehicles. It’s also the vehicle with the most options, the most horsepower and the most efficient when you consider the costs involved.
What is Website Strategy? Website strategy is taking your company’s marketing and sales strategy and translating it into a website that will compliment your sales and marketing efforts. What is your Spine Center’s main marketing/sales goal? Based on that goal, what does your website need to do to achieve that goal? Build brand awareness? Build credibility? Educate/inform? Generate leads? These answers provide the basis from which we will develop your new website.
After we’ve identified the overall goal of the website, The next step is to profile your customers or patients. To do this, we want to create what are known as buyer personas. Can any of you name any of the more well known buyer personas (aka demographic profiles) around the U.S.? Soccer Moms – Bill Clinton’s political consultants created this persona in preparation for the 1996 presidential election. The soccer mom was "the overburdened middle income working mother who ferries her kids from soccer practice to scouts to school. She's the key swing consumer in the marketplace, and the key swing voter who will decide the election”. NASCAR dad refers broadly to a demographic group of white, usually middle-aged, working-class or lower-middle-class men. The term was often used during the United States presidential election of 2004 These personas have been so well defined and engrained in our culture that you immediately get a mental image of those people. And knowing these people’s demographics, their needs and problems gives us the ability to understand and communicate with them very effectively. As part of the website strategy exercise, it is very important for us to create individual buyer personas that emulate your target customers. When we do this right, those personas guide every decision we make regarding website content, design and usability. Let’s go through this exercise right now and come up with two buyer personas that we’ll use throughout this presentation.
A quick exercise here…I’m going to say a few brand names and I’d like you guys to just shout out words that would characterize that brand in your minds. Mercedes – Unlike Any Other Apple – Think Different Starbucks Now I’ll throw out a few taglines and tell me what the brand is…. Don’t leave home without it. (1975) American Express Where’s the beef? (1984) Wendy’s Tastes great, less filling. (1974) Miller Lite Melts in your mouth, not in your hands. (1954) M&M Candies Takes a licking and keeps on ticking. (1956) Timex Our ultimate goal as marketers is to create and establish a solid brand and then reinforce that brand with everything that we do. Sidenote: A new website project often doubles as the launch of a new brand facelift.
Definition: The unique value a business offers to its customers. It's why your customers will want to do business with you. Questions: What are some of the things that make your businesses unique? What things will your two buyer personas focus on? What will be important to them? How will you differentiate yourself from your competition? - Different services - Better doctors - Other? Knowing this information, I like to work this into a website tagline. Now, this is different than a corporate tagline that may make up your brand. There is a difference. Examples: Bad - Creating Relationships. Building Trust. Changing Lives. Bad – Turnkey Business Solutions Good – YouTube.com – Broadcast Yourself Good – Smartvacuums.com – Our Business Sucks But It’s Really Picking Up.
So at this point in the project, we’ve determined several things: We’ve discussed how your website should compliment your company’s sales/ marketing goals We’ve developed buyer personas We’ve determined how you want your company to be perceived visually We’ve identified your value proposition and incorporated that into a new website tagline. After exhausting many of these high-level strategic conversations, it’s time to start mapping out your site. Any questions before we move on?
Now comes the MOST important part of the entire website planning process. Content Development. Content is King: Be a thought leader – put your original ideas and your expertise out there. People will notice and come to you first. Engage and steer your prospective patients – Hook them early and then steer them down the conversion path (which ends when they pick up the phone). Educate them – People want to learn about their condition. Your site can give them that. And it could save time for your doctors. Let them know about your expertise – Communicating your expertise will give them the confidence to do business with you. Write for your buyers…What problems do your services solve? – It’s not about you, it’s about them and their pain. Empathize and tell them how your services will help. Write using your buyer’s own words – Can your medical explanations be interpreted for your patients? SEO benefits… Inform them of the latest happenings – Let them know you’re an active, growing, thriving organization.
How will your content be developed? Do you have the capacity to do this yourselves? Will a peer review be required? In most cases, it’s best to get a website copywriter involved early on. - Writing will be higher quality - The writer’s laymen viewpoint often makes for more effective copy - Internal people don’t have to set aside their normal jobs for weeks on end. - Overall project will move much faster. - Professional search engine keyword integration
You Are What You Publish…So you need to think like a publisher: Let’s say your website is a monthly magazine, and every month it has the same articles, would anyone subscribe? Your competition is also putting out monthly magazines and they have fresh articles every month and their subscriber base is steadily growing.
Site Organization: An Architectural Process to Categorize Your Content Define Every Page Categorize Logically Develop Navigation…Keep it simple Use “Web Conventions” – “About Us” Use Obvious, Descriptive Nomenclature Minimize Clicks Create “Engineered Conversion Paths” that you will track with Website Analytics Walk through AD sitemap - then point out things on the site.
Scoliosis Example: Let’s say I’m looking for information on Scoliosis. Thinking questions – Hmmm. Pretty busy. Where should I start? Looks like the specialize in disk replacement…Is that all they do? Is that the navigation or is that it over there? Ok, there’s spinal conditions. Which should I choose? Scoliosis is listed under both? Design Elements: Buttons should look like buttons. Text links should be differentiated with a color and/or underlined. Too much use of color is distracting. Images should be used to compliment your content, not draw attention away from what you want site visitors to ultimately do on your site. You get the point. When we’re creating a website, our job is to eliminate question marks. Extreme Examples…
Use Newspaper Example for Scanning
Example: Search engines are a good example. Many people type a website’s entire URL into the search box, instead of typing the URL into the address bar.
So…
Faced with the fact that your visitors are “whizzing by”, the most important headings should be larger, bolder, in a distinctive color and set off by whitespace or near the top of the page.
Without having to think, this design is telling the user that these items are related and probably some sort of navigation bar.
All examples of “noisy” sites.
Flash animation is everywhere these days, but there is a right way and a wrong way to use it.
Flash animation is everywhere these days, but there is a right way and a wrong way to use it. The right way: Use it sparingly to engage and entertain your visitors or to improve upon the explanation of a concept (like spinal surgery procedures). The wrong way: Don’t build your entire site in flash unless you are a flash developer.
It’s a fact – People won’t use your website if they can’t find their way around it. Walmart story – Home Décor, Housewares & Appliances. I’ll try housewares. I head to the housewares area, then I start looking at the signs on the end of each aisle. I see Crafts, Gifts & Celebrations, Home Improvement, Kitchen & Dining, Storage & Organization. I’ll try kitchen and dining. So I think I’ve got the right aisle, so I start looking at the individual products. But it looks like I’ve guessed wrong. No brita filters. So I try another aisle, and another aisle and I start to get frustrated. I finally have to find a walmart employee and ask. They walk me to the “Heating & Cooling” aisle in the Appliances section and the filters happen to be placed right next to the dehumidifiers. Who knew! I use this story to illustrate the point of a store’s “navigational system”.
Trunk Test – Set up the test. Pick a volunteer. I’m going to ask these questions. MASS (old and new)
After we’ve worked on a site for a few weeks, we no longer have a fresh perspective. We know too much. The only way to find out if the site really works is to test it. While multiple tests is better, only doing one test will show you several things that you can do to improve your website. The earlier we test in the development process, the easier and less costly it will be for us to make modifications later on. Recruiting perfect test subjects is overrated. Usability Testing software now provides the ability for others to watch the usability tests in real time or at their leisure. Common tests. Example: I want you to download our brochure on Scoliosis procedures and then request an appointment for next Friday. Drop them on the Homepage and let them go. Have your notepad ready. Take a break?
SEO basically becomes a game. And he with the highest score wins. And from this point forward, we’re going to start keeping score.
Challenges: People don’t read on the web, but SE spiders need words to determine the content topic of each page. Highly visual pages may struggle to score well. Market/Industry Saturation Your competitors are spending money on SEO too. Examples: warehouse shelving, Kansas Back pain
What are SEO techniques? Things that we can do to your overall site Things that we can do to individual pages Things we can do on the internet (off your site) to build your site’s presence/stature.
But before we do anything, we need to do our research… Keywords are the heart of SEO.
Creating a “Spider-Friendly Page” Eliminate road blocks (navigation) Keep page size down Limit FLASH usage to visual and interactive content 250-300 words of content Focus on 3-5 keyword variations per page Keyword integration within body content (improves keyword density) Title Tags Meta Description & Keyword Tags Head Tags (<h1>,<h2>,<h3>, etc.) Alt Text Tags Bold Tags Link Text (Anchor Text)
Creating a “Spider-Friendly Page” Eliminate road blocks (navigation) Keep page size down Limit FLASH usage to visual and interactive content 250-300 words of content Focus on 3-5 keyword variations per page Keyword integration within body content (improves keyword density) Title Tags Meta Description & Keyword Tags Head Tags (<h1>,<h2>,<h3>, etc.) Alt Text Tags Bold Tags Link Text (Anchor Text)
Intro: Prior to the web, organizations had only two significant choices to attract attention: Buy expensive advertising or get third-party ink from the media. But the web has changed the rules. The web is not TV. Organization that understand the new rules of marketing and PR develop relationships directly with consumers like you and me.
Search Engine Advertising – Search “Spine Center” - Point out Goolge Adwords Sponsored Ads – Explain Pay Per Click Concept Online lead generation (new patient acquisition) Pay per click vs. Pay per impression Ask Audience: How many of you read blogs? Setting up google alerts for key terms may bring all kinds of opportunities, ideas Blog advantages: A more candid arena Start conversations and get direct feedback from buyers Fresh content SEO fodder Disclaimer: If you can’t commit to blogging consistently, then don’t start a blog.
How many of you participate in social networking sites now? How do you use them?