Holley P. Malia presented strategies for healthcare marketers to reduce costs and maximize returns on marketing investments given economic pressures and demands for more cost-effective approaches. She emphasized leveraging existing digital assets through repurposing content, optimizing websites for search engine optimization, and using low-cost or free online and social media strategies. Malia also stressed data-driven tactics like keyword research, defining customer personas, and email marketing with a focus on lead generation and nurturing.

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle:
Making Every Dollar Count in
Healthcare Marketing
Holley P. Malia
President, Grey Matter Marketing
2011 DxMA Conference
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2. New Market Landscape
• Shifting market dynamics, economic pressures, and
regulatory demands
• Marketing to a more discerning and sophisticated
constituent who is already well-informed through
personal data resources
• Moving from retail/detail approach to customer-centric
partner strategy
– Must consider personalization, timing, medium,
and cross-channel activities
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3. Marketing Conundrum
• “Do more with less”
• Cost-cutting efforts can improve organization’s
short-term economics, but can’t derail marketing
efforts
• Must find the right mix of messages, across the
right channels, in order to maximize the return
on marketing investment
It really is about working—and spending—smarter.
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4. The Good News
• Leverage cost-effective online opportunities
• Maximize mileage of existing content
• Increase conversions through lead nurturing
• Steer clear of common wasted expenses
• Share your ideas and successes!
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5. Driving Demand
• Avoid
Awareness • Assess Acceptance Action
• Acknowledge
• Across all healthcare industry segments
• B2C and/or B2C
• Must motivate and engage target audience
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6. What’s Online?
• Websites and Blogs
• SEO
• Social Media
• Online display advertising
• Paid search
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7. Who’s Online?
• Patients, Physicians, Media
• 67% of patients search online for health information
– 34% use social media
– 46% use health portals
– 67% use search engines
– 21% use Wikipedia
• 36% want to see what other consumers have to say
about medication/treatments
• People comment, share, influence
– They want to tell their story — let them
Source: Consumer Reports National Research Center, How America Searches: Health
and Wellness. 7

8. Who’s Online?
• Patients, Physicians, Media
• 89% of US physicians rely on the Internet as
an essential part of their professional practice
– Approximately 72% of physicians now use
smartphones
– 41% of physicians research takes place online
• Sermo = Facebook for doctors
– Over 115,000 practicing MDs participating
– 68 specialties
Source: Manhattan Research, 2010 8

9. Who’s Online?
• Patients, Physicians, Media
• 70% of journalists now use social networks to
assist reporting, compared to 41% the year before
• Use social media channels (blogs, forums and
microblogs) to share success stories from out-of-
the-ordinary operations or treatments, medical
research or other significant achievements
• Digital PR is a new avenue that should be included
in your media relations strategy
Source: Middleberg Communications survey, reported by PRWeek 2010 9

10. You Have a Website. Now What?
• Optimize what you’ve already built to get the
most out of the investment
• Realize it isn’t static: make it a routine habit
to refine, refresh
• Take a holistic, proactive approach to content
strategy: strength comes from integration
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11. Digital Asset Optimization
Content Strategy
Keywords
Personas SERPs
Assets Editorial Mapping
Operationalize Off Page DAO Promote Measure
What can be searched can be optimized
Source: TopRank Online Marketing 11

12. Keyword Research
• KW research usually handled via Google’s
tool, Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, etc.
• Social media monitoring can reveal a more
important KW to include
• Understand the mix of data sources
• What key language and topics are
being discussed on the social web?
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13. Define Customer Personas
• Who are your best customers or ideal target
audience?
• What do they want to read about and in what
format?
• What is the buying cycle they go through and
what do they need at various stages?
– Broad phrases typically represent early stages
– More specific topics often indicate a buyer closer
to purchase
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14. Asset Optimization
• Inventory existing content and digital assets
• Repurpose what you have
– Host webinars
– Create downloadable white papers
– Send newsletters
– Video testimonials
– Article reprints
• Video deconstructed
– Multiple short form videos
– Single images
– Transcribed into text
– Split out audio for a podcast
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15. Editorial Plan for New Content
• Understanding search and social media KWs,
personas and assets allows you to ID what you need
to create
• Think like a publisher not a marketer
– Don’t just issue a press release
– Create a resource page for media with links, images,
PowerPoint, video, executive interviews, audio snippets, etc.
– Integrate “share to social” tools = free leads
• Helps SEO b/c creating multiple entry points via
search and link to destination content on corp site
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16. Optimizing SEO
• Dial in your title,description and keyword meta tags
– Don’t lead with your business name unless it’s keyword rich
• Identify keywords for each significant page
– Use 3-5 per page; don’t generic batch
• Content is king
– Great for crawlers, makes you an expert and a resource
• What are people searching for and how are they navigating?
– Don’t forget the search and social KWs and potential KWs around
editorial plan
• SEO is not a one-time event
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17. Off Page Digital Assets
• Sharing content and assets should be easy and encouraged—
and doesn’t cost you anything
• Host assets on social media sharing sites (YouTube, Flickr,
Slideshare, etc.)
• Can introduce optimized content to new audiences and attract
traffic and links (Stumbleupon, Delicious, Google Buzz, etc.)
• Consider creating a blog as another source of quality content
– Free/low cost high-end templates available
– Doesn’t have to have corporate brand
• Create a Wikipedia page
– http://www.searchengineguide.com/todd-mintz/
how-to-create-y.php
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18. Social Media in a Regulated
Environment: Can it Work?
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19. 2010 FDA Warnings
In 2010, the
Division of Drug
Marketing and
Communications
(DDMAC) issued 52
warning and notice
of violation letters
to companies
Only 1 was issued
re: social media
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20. Promote and Syndicate
• If you build it, they may not come. Must
promote it!
• Develop social networks where your
customers and influencers spend time
• Cultivate a distribution group and notify them
when news is available (Email newsletters,
RSS, TwitterFeed, etc.)
Add value not self-promotion!
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21. What Else?
There is more to marketing than the web
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22. Email Marketing
• Extremely cost effective
• Highly trackable
• Consistent presence with customers and
targets
– Plan 3-6 months out with topics/headlines
• Needs to be actionable and high value
content
– Powerful subject link (question, promotion, etc)
• Lead nurturing through automation
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23. Demand Generation
1. Lead 2. Lead 3. Lead 4. Lead 5. Sales
Generation Qualification Nurturing Management Engagement
Need Recognition Solution Intro Brand Evaluation
Web
Print
TV Continuous process
until ready to buy
Email Ready to
Buy
Lead Scoring
Marketing Automation Tools Hand off to sales
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24. Mining Your Customers
• Who’s most profitable to you and why?
• Where can you find “like” customers
• Create case studies to showcase benefit of
your partnership/solution
• Ask them, “What can we do better?”
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25. Rethinking Collateral
• How are you communicating with your
customers?
– What’s needed, when, how?
• Shift from printed to electronic
– If printing, go digital vs off-set
• Manage inventory
– How much do you really need?
• Advertorials
– More powerful than ads and easy to repurpose
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26. Spend Wisely
• Hire freelancers and consultants whose credentials —
and fees — fit the job
• Creatives: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
– Don’t change b/c you’re sick of it if it’s still generating
desired results
• Advertising rates are negotiable
– Reduced rates for last minute vacancies, series
– Develop good relationship with sales rep
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27. Small Budget. Big Marketing Impact.
• Increase public reach of messages
• Increase web traffic
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase customer action (revenue)
• Increase customer loyalty and competitive
barriers
Make your message resonate!
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28. 2 (or More) Heads are Better than 1
How have you overcome
budget constraints to deliver
top-notch marketing results?
Thank you and good luck!
holley@greymattermarketing.com
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