A hospital manager asked me the other day why they should work with us when they're already listed on another directory service. Now that's a great question!The Internet is far to big to be considered one "venue". When you think of marketing and advertising, many veterinarians and animal hospital managers think of the Yellow Pages, or a community newspaper advertisement. The Yellow Pages is one venue. It's one place where a pet owner will find you. On the Internet, your website could be found many different ways. For instance, a pay per click (PPC) campaign on Google is one venue. If a pet owner uses Google to search for an animal hospital or veterinary clinic in Chicago, IL, they may find your ad. But what if they use MSN or Yahoo? What if they ignore the PPC ads and look at the "natural" or "granular" search results (these are the "free" results that appear under the ads)? What if they're looking for a veterinary practice on Facebook using their friends fan sites? Twitter, LinkedIn, Local Profile Pages, Blog Sites, Groupsites, etc... The Internet is comprised of hundreds and thousands of ways for you to be found.
Seems a little overwhelming, doesn't it? That's exactly why companies like My Hometown Vet (www.myhometownvet.com) exist. It's a lot to ask of a small business owner who also happens to be practicing medicine to understand all there is to know about the Internet and using Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 tools to grow their practice. However, that's where your clients are.
To reach them, you have to meet them where the are.
Let's focus a little more on Web 2.0 today. The more you understand what your clients use to find information and communicate with each other, the better you'll be equipped to meet them where they are by using the tools they use.
To your marketing success,
CJ Levendoski
The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World
The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 15, 2008
By SALVATORE PARISE , PATRICIA J. GUINAN and BRUCE D. WEINBERG
For marketers, Web 2.0 offers a remarkable new opportunity to engage consumers.
If only they knew how to do it.
That's where this article aims to help. We interviewed more than 30 executives and managers in both large and small organizations that are at the forefront of experimenting with Web 2.0 tools. From those conversations and further research, we identified a set of emerging principles for marketing.
But first, a more basic question: What is Web 2.0, anyway? Essentially, it encompasses the set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online. That includes blogs, wikis, social-networking sites and other online communities, and virtual worlds.
Millions of people have become familiar with these tools through sites like Facebook, Wikipedia and Second Life, or by writing their own blogs. And a growing number of marketers are using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with consumers on product development, service enhancement and promotion. But most companies still don't appear to be well versed in this area.
So here's a look at the principles we arrived at -- and how marketers can use them to get the best results.
Don't just talk at consumers -- work with them throughout the marketing process.
A Web site can be a marketer's lifeline with its customers, but what happens when it's marred with negative reviews and comments? Bruce Weinberg, marketing professor at Bentley University, tells WSJ's Erin White how to address and recover from poor feedback.
Web 2.0 tools can be used to do what traditional advertising does: persuade consumers to buy a company's products or services. An executive can write a blog, for instance, that regularly talks up the company's goods. But that kind of approach misses the point of 2.0. Instead, companies should use these tools to get the consumers involved, inviting them to participate in marketing-related activities from product development to feedback to customer service.
How can you do that? A leading greeting-card and gift company that we spoke with is one of many that have set up an online community -- a site where it can talk to consumers and the consumers can talk to each other. The company solicits opinions on various aspects of greeting-card design and on ideas for gifts and their pricing. It also asks the consumers to talk about their lifestyles and even upload photos of themselves, so that it can better understand its market.
A marketing manager at a company says that, as a way to obtain consumer feedback and ideas for product development, the online community is much faster and cheaper than the traditional focus groups and surveys used in the past. The conversations consumers have with each other, he adds, result in "some of the most interesting insights," including gift ideas for specific occasions, such as a college graduation, and the prices consumers are willing to pay for different gifts.
Similarly, a large technology company uses several Web 2.0 tools to improve collaboration with both its business partners and consumers. Among other things, company employees have created wikis -- Web sites that allow users to add, delete and edit content -- to list answers to frequently asked questions about each product, and consumers have added significant contributions. For instance, within days of the release of a new piece of software by the company, consumers spotted a problem with it and posted a way for users to deal with it. They later proposed a way to fix the problem, which the company adopted. Having those solutions available so quickly showed customers that the company was on top of problems with its products.
Myhometownvet.com allows veterinarians to market their veterinary practice on the internet; marketing your veterinary practice website; search engine optimization for the veterinary practice. Veterinary practice management. Veterinary marketing. Veterinary advertising, veterinary reminder cards.
The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 15, 2008
By SALVATORE PARISE , PATRICIA J. GUINAN and BRUCE D. WEINBERG
For marketers, Web 2.0 offers a remarkable new opportunity to engage consumers.
If only they knew how to do it.
That's where this article aims to help. We interviewed more than 30 executives and managers in both large and small organizations that are at the forefront of experimenting with Web 2.0 tools. From those conversations and further research, we identified a set of emerging principles for marketing.
But first, a more basic question: What is Web 2.0, anyway? Essentially, it encompasses the set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online. That includes blogs, wikis, social-networking sites and other online communities, and virtual worlds.
Millions of people have become familiar with these tools through sites like Facebook, Wikipedia and Second Life, or by writing their own blogs. And a growing number of marketers are using Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with consumers on product development, service enhancement and promotion. But most companies still don't appear to be well versed in this area.
So here's a look at the principles we arrived at -- and how marketers can use them to get the best results.
Don't just talk at consumers -- work with them throughout the marketing process.
A Web site can be a marketer's lifeline with its customers, but what happens when it's marred with negative reviews and comments? Bruce Weinberg, marketing professor at Bentley University, tells WSJ's Erin White how to address and recover from poor feedback.
Web 2.0 tools can be used to do what traditional advertising does: persuade consumers to buy a company's products or services. An executive can write a blog, for instance, that regularly talks up the company's goods. But that kind of approach misses the point of 2.0. Instead, companies should use these tools to get the consumers involved, inviting them to participate in marketing-related activities from product development to feedback to customer service.
How can you do that? A leading greeting-card and gift company that we spoke with is one of many that have set up an online community -- a site where it can talk to consumers and the consumers can talk to each other. The company solicits opinions on various aspects of greeting-card design and on ideas for gifts and their pricing. It also asks the consumers to talk about their lifestyles and even upload photos of themselves, so that it can better understand its market.
A marketing manager at a company says that, as a way to obtain consumer feedback and ideas for product development, the online community is much faster and cheaper than the traditional focus groups and surveys used in the past. The conversations consumers have with each other, he adds, result in "some of the most interesting insights," including gift ideas for specific occasions, such as a college graduation, and the prices consumers are willing to pay for different gifts.
Similarly, a large technology company uses several Web 2.0 tools to improve collaboration with both its business partners and consumers. Among other things, company employees have created wikis -- Web sites that allow users to add, delete and edit content -- to list answers to frequently asked questions about each product, and consumers have added significant contributions. For instance, within days of the release of a new piece of software by the company, consumers spotted a problem with it and posted a way for users to deal with it. They later proposed a way to fix the problem, which the company adopted. Having those solutions available so quickly showed customers that the company was on top of problems with its products.
Myhometownvet.com allows veterinarians to market their veterinary practice on the internet; marketing your veterinary practice website; search engine optimization for the veterinary practice. Veterinary practice management. Veterinary marketing. Veterinary advertising, veterinary reminder cards.
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