4 Ways To Promote Your Healthcare Agency
“The cobbler’s children have no shoes.”
If you’re working at a healthcare marketing agency, you’ve probably heard this proverb at a company meeting. You’re so busy — A new client! Must send out this RFP! Conference season! — you barely have a moment to showcase your agency’s talents. Instead, you’re running around barefoot, blistered and doing whatever you can to help your client succeed.
But it’s time to put on some shoes. Or at the very least, a pair of Crocs.
A lot of times, hiring a marketing director is too costly when you’d rather spend the salary on hiring a project manager to drive revenue. Hiring a freelancer is an option (shameless plug: me), but there are some easy things you can do to spread out the marketing work between your staff. Here are a few ideas:
Stop talking about your conference booth
Great! Your team is attending a healthcare conference and you’ve decided to rent a booth. But you don’t need the whole team manning the booth, throwing out stress balls and keychains to attendees who just happen to look your way.
Instead, you need people from your team to go to the sessions and report live on what’s happening. Not posts that say, “Come to booth 427 for a margarita!” but posts that establish your agency as a thought leader at the conference. (Need some inspiration? Here are five ways to get your agency noticed on social media at a conference.)
Conference sessions are full of material, but you won’t find it at the booth. Sit in on sessions to get the pulse on what’s happening in the industry. You can use this material to create:
· New blogs and newsletter updates
· A thought leadership piece from your CEO about the conference
· Whitepaper about your clients who are speaking at the conference
Your blog shouldn’t be a love letter to clients
Sometimes, a healthcare marketing blog can be overloaded with client case studies. While highlighting clients is important, it’s not the only thing that readers care about. See your blog as a resource to clients — something that can help them do their jobs a little bit better. Headline ideas that always win:
· Latest trends in healthcare marketing
· Tips, how to’s or checklists
· Numbers, numbers, numbers (see the title for this blog)
· Interviews or Q&A with experts
Oh, and one more thing: I know that starting a blog can seem overwhelming. You’ve heard it before, but start small. Real small. Like once a month, 500 words max. If you don’t have the extra cash to hire a freelancer to write the blogs, offer a gift card to an employee. Once the blog is posted, blast it to your staff in an email, acknowledge the employee who wrote it and encourage them to share it on their social media channels. Also, ask: “Who’s next?”
Write an email newsletter that clients look forward to reading
Once you get into a regular cadence with blogs, it’s time to start thinking about publishing an email newsletter. Start quarterly. Feeling ambitious? Amp it up to monthly missives. Keep it short and sweet. A sample template:
· Link to your newest blog with a quick blurb about it
· Spotlight on a client project
· Tip or best practice from a team member
· Your upcoming conference schedule
· Promotional discount
Encourage LinkedIn makeovers for employees
Sometimes, it’s hard for writers to write about themselves and their accomplishments. That’s why someone else needs to do it for them. Assign staff members to re-write each other’s LinkedIn bios. Think of it like the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for LinkedIn. A few other ways to encourage engagement on LinkedIn:
· Offer to provide them with a professional headshot
· Ask them to connect to clients
· Encourage them to post once a week. (Offer incentives to sweeten the deal.)
Your clients know you can do the work. With a little extra marketing help, you can show everyone else that you can, too. (And if you need a little extra help, let me know.)