The allure of influencer marketing is undeniable. Just like organic SEO, influencer marketing can bring brands amplified awareness, improved engagement metrics, and perhaps most importantly, a boost in conversion rates.
Influencer marketing and SEO can even be powerful tools when used strategically and in concert with each other. However, relying on influencer marketing to improve your organic reach can be complicated.
How do influencer marketing and SEO work together?
Though distinct players in the marketing game, influencer marketing and SEO share a complicated relationship. Even Google has acknowledged the link between the two strategies. Both SEO and influencer marketing offer unique advantages and challenges, and understanding the complex relationship between them is key to unlocking the full potential of both.
Here’s how influencer marketing and SEO can complement each other:
Increased brand awareness: Both strategies aim to get your brand in front of more people. Influencer marketing leverages influencers’ established audiences, while SEO optimizes your website for search engines, making it more discoverable to an even broader audience.
Improved brand trust: Positive influencer endorsements can build trust with their audience, which can translate to your brand. Similarly, high-quality, informative content created for SEO can signal trust to search engine algorithms, not only boosting your rankings, but potentially earning you visibility among Google’s rich results and establishing the expertise of your brand.
Content creation: Influencers can create valuable content (e.g., blog posts, social media posts) featuring your brand, which you can then leverage on your website or social media for SEO benefits.
Backlinks: If influencers link to your website in their web-based content, it can boost your SEO ranking through high-quality backlinks. (But remember, most social media links are “no-follow” and won’t count as backlinks.)
Here’s how influencer marketing and SEO are different
Sustainability: Influencer marketing often delivers short-term bursts of traffic and engagement, while SEO aims for long-term, sustained organic growth.
Control: You have limited control over influencer content and messaging, while you have full control over your website and its SEO strategy.
Scalability: Reaching a large audience through influencer marketing can be expensive, while SEO can be scaled more efficiently with ongoing effort.
Measurement: Measuring the direct impact of influencer marketing can be complex, while SEO metrics are typically more well-defined and trackable.
You might summarize the relationship and differences between influencer marketing and SEO like this: use influencer marketing for building brand awareness, social proof, and potentially generating high-quality content. Use SEO for building long-term organic traffic, establishing your brand as an authority, and improving overall website visibility. And of course, let’s not forget the links between SEO and social media, too!
Let’s talk about Lashgate and its impact on SEO
TikTok beauty influencer, Mikayla Noguiera, is no stranger to controversy, but last year’s “Lashgate” has gone down in social media history. In early 2023, Nogueira posted a TikTok video review, in paid partnership with L’Oreal, showing off the conspicuous results of the brand’s new Telescopic Lift mascara. But the drama began to unfold when another app user posted a video asserting she had proof that Nogueira was wearing artificial eyelashes — specifically Ardell Wispies — in her review, which cast doubt on the mascara’s results. Nogueira posted the review that inspired Lashgate on Jan. 24, 2023. As of Jan. 24, 2024, exactly one year later, the video has garnered more than 60.5 million views on TikTok.
According to organic search data from SEMRush, “Telescopic Lift Mascara” was searched 320 times in January 2023 (before Lashgate and shortly after the product launched). Monthly searches jumped to 5,400 in March 2023 as the drama peaked, and as of January 2024, the phrase has averaged 9,900 searches per month.
Even though the search volume for the product exploded by more than 4,200%, it’s not all good news. Branded search volume for the product largely included long-tail modifiers like “drama,” “controversy,” and “fake reviews.”
On the flip side: What happened to Wispies?
Ardell false eyelashes hit the market more than half a century ago and have been a beauty industry favorite since. However, they have a slightly different SEO story to tell.
Let’s look at monthly search volumes for the term “Ardell Wispies”:
January 2023 (before Lashgate): 5,400
March 2023 (peak of Lashgate): 6,600
January 2024 (1 year after Lashgate): 5,400
Even though Noguiera’s paid partner was L’Oreal and not Ardell, the latter benefited from a modest-but-fleeting lift in monthly search volume when interest in the Lashgate controversy peaked. And this is how influencer marketing, regardless of hype or drama, typically works: a brand or product will see a surge in organic search volume and traffic after a product goes viral, but these figures fall back to the status quo when the hype dies down.
While the short-term impact of influencer marketing can drive a rapid, short-term increase in brand visibility that could translate to a temporary positive impact on your brand’s bottom line there are no guarantees except that results will be fleeting. Long-term organic search success comes from investing in a healthy, ongoing SEO strategy.
Connecting the dots between influencer marketing and SEO for long-term growth
Now that we’ve unraveled some of the nuances in the complex relationship between influencer marketing and SEO. Here are some actionable steps to craft a strategy that maximizes the potential of both to amplify your brand’s reach and build lasting organic visibility:
1. Align your influencers with your SEO goals:
Consider micro-influencers: They often engage in deeper connections with their audiences, creating content that feels more authentic and resonates better with search engines.
Prioritize content quality over reach: Choose influencers who align with your brand values and can create informative, engaging content that optimizes for relevant keywords.
Invest in evergreen topics: Don’t just chase fleeting trends. Collaborate on content that has long-term appeal and relevance, offering lasting value to your audience and search engines alike.
2. Capitalize on content synergies and measure impact:
Repurpose influencer-generated content: Share their social media posts, blog articles, or video snippets on your website and optimize them for relevant keywords.
Leverage backlinks: Encourage influencers to link to your website within their content, providing valuable backlinks that boost your SEO ranking.
Track and analyze: Use analytics tools to monitor the performance of your influencer campaigns, both in terms of audience engagement and organic search traffic.
3. Build a robust SEO foundation to sustain the momentum:
Optimize your website: Ensure your website is technically sound, with fast loading times and mobile-friendliness. Incorporate relevant keywords strategically throughout your website content.
Focus on quality backlinks: Beyond influencer partnerships, actively pursue high-quality backlinks from reputable websites in your niche.
Create valuable content consistently: Don’t rely solely on influencer content. Publish informative blog posts, articles, and other valuable resources on your website to demonstrate your brand’s expertise and attract organic traffic.
Learn from the best: Want to see how influencer marketing and SEO work together first hand? Look at SEO influencers to see how it’s done.
Influencer marketing and SEO are both powerful tools, but don’t rely on influencers alone to expect long-term results. By implementing these actionable steps and a strong SEO strategy, you can leverage their combined strengths to build a brand that shines online, both in the spotlight of an influencer’s collaboration and in the steady glow of long-term organic success.
Ready to see for yourself? Let’s discuss how a full-funnel marketing program leveraging organic SEO can equal outstanding experiences and ongoing success. Here’s to the start of a great partnership.
Target audience research and persona profiles have become a standard part of the marketing toolkit. Despite the changes I’ve experienced in my 20 years as a marketer as new technologies have emerged, channels have evolved, and customer expectations have become more demanding, the importance of persona profiles has been one of the few constants. A rich persona can be hugely beneficial in driving and informing how we engage with prospective customers, certainly through marketing efforts, but more broadly as well.
Despite the rapid rate of change that has shaped the marketing landscape, how we approach persona profiles hasn’t changed all that much. I’ve seen personas with different levels of depth and layouts, but they’re generally pretty similar at their core. Most of the time, they include a combination of what your audience looks like, with details like their age, income, job title, and marital status. The more creative ones even include fictitious names and pictures. And the rest is some combination of consumer behaviors, statements, pain points, and information gathered from a fairly small number of representatives of your audience, often through interviews.
But there’s one big problem with the traditional approach to personas. Nearly all the information they include has very little to do with what you care about most: WHY your customers buy and HOW to get prospective customers to do the same. The good news is we believe we have a better approach. In this post, I’ll share a method for audience research and persona development that taps into a huge repository of existing data to deliver insights on the values that drive your customers’ decisions.
Why Values Matter for Driving Consumer Behavior
Roy E. Disney, nephew of Walt Disney and longtime senior executive for the Walt Disney Company, put the power of values into the most succinct statement I’ve seen yet: “When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.” He understood that, just like our customers, we make decisions every day, not based on our demographics or our past behaviors, but on our values. And brands can tap into that power. If you know which values your best customers share, the values that motivate the buying behaviors you’re trying to inspire in prospective customers, you have the power to know what to do and say to get existing customers to say yes more often and to drive new customers to purchase.
The Disconnect between Values and Demographics
As it turns out, our values have little to do with our demographics. Our demographics might be part of the reason we don’t take a particular action. For example, odds are if I don’t have children, I’m not searching for pediatricians or childcare options. Being childless, which is part of my demographics, is the reason for my inaction. But for people who share the demographic condition of parents, that common characteristic only determines that searching for and selecting a pediatrician or a childcare option is a choice they’re likely to make. The demographic condition of being a parent has nothing to do with which choice they make and why. If it did, all parents would make the same choices. But of course, they don’t. They make different choices based on what they value. That’s why using demographics alone to connect with and influence your audience doesn’t really work.
I think the values gap that exists within a traditional demographic and psychographic approach to audience research and persona profile development is something that most marketers recognize intuitively. But there haven’t been a lot of better options for uncovering the nuances of what an audience values in a scalable way. That is, until I listened to episode 331 of the Digital Marketing Podcast, The Death of Demographics, An Interview With David Allison. In it, David Allison talked about his book, The Death of Demographics, and the research data behind it that spawned the first big data tool that makes a scalable, data-driven approach to values-centric audience research and persona creation possible.
The book is the product of a massive global research study known as the Valuegraphics Project (more on that in a minute) that finds that when it comes to values, humans agree about 8% of the time as a baseline. When you group by any demographic cohort—age, gender, income, marital status, you name it—that agreement only increases by 2.5%. So building a marketing campaign around what you think “Gen Z” or “working moms” or “retirees” care about is going to be only slightly more effective than throwing the spaghetti at the wall and deploying your campaign to anyone and everyone. Because while the year you were born, whether you have kids, and your employment status may influence decisions you will or won’t make, they don’t have anything to do with the “why” behind them.
So what will be more effective? The answer is valuegraphics.
The Valuegraphics Project
The Valuegraphics Project is a global mapping of core human values, the drivers behind all our decision making. Through nearly a million surveys deployed in 152 languages in 180 countries across the world evaluating 436 values-related metrics, 56 core human values emerged. And 15 statistical clusters of agreement around subsets of those values, which the architects of this project call “archetypes,” emerged from that research data. Those 15 archetypes can be used as the basis for valuegraphic personas, each representing an audience that is demographically diverse, but highly aligned on values.
So building a marketing campaign around what you think “Gen Z” or “working moms” or “retirees” care about is going to be only slightly more effective than throwing the spaghetti at the wall and deploying your campaign to anyone and everyone.
This focus on values doesn’t mean demographics and psychographics don’t have a place—they do. They can be practical and effective ways to limit your audience based on functional barriers to making the decisions you want them to make. But demographics and psychographics won’t help you understand what actually drives those decisions. You need valuegraphics for that. That audience data triad of demographics, psychographics, and valuegraphics all come together with your audience engagement strategy in the Value Thinking process.
Values Thinking is a process for identifying the underlying values that motivate your target audience so you can build an engagement strategy around those values.
Valuegraphics in Action
Value Graphics in Action: The U.S. vs the world.
So how do you go about putting valuegraphics to work to better understand and engage your audience? It starts with understanding the valuegraphics profile for your target regions and then surveying your target audience to illuminate their dominant and least dominant valuegraphic archetypes.
Regional Valuegraphic Profiles
One of the outputs of the Valuegraphics Project is a set of region-specific profiles that tell you the top values for each region. Looking at the regional valuegraphics profile for the US, we know that belonging, family, relationships, personal growth, and health and wellbeing make up the top 5 values for the region. Looking at the top 5 values for the US compared to the rest of the world, we see that family and relationships are valued similarly. But there’s significant divergence between the US and the rest of the world when it comes to belonging and health and wellbeing.
If you’re targeting a US-based audience, that’s already much more useful than any demographic or psychographic data when it comes to not just getting in front of, but influencing your audience to take a particular action. No matter what else you say, if you can connect your product or service to the values of belonging and health and wellbeing, your efforts will be much more effective at striking a chord than they would be with demographic and psychographic data alone.
Valuegraphic Archetypes
Value Graphics in Action: Adventurer Archetype.
With the valuegraphic profile for your target region, you’re ready to uncover the most and least dominant valuegraphic archetypes of your audience. Let’s say you’ve surveyed members of your audience and determined that the dominant valuegraphic archetype among them is the Adventurer. This is the 7th most common archetype globally representing 10% of the population. So you’re already getting much more narrow than the regional profile. When you get down to archetypes and the values they contain, you’re tapping into a currency that not only drives human behavior, but drives it in remarkably similar ways for those who share these values.
Comparing the regional valuegraphic profile of the US with this specific archetype, two points of meaningful distinction in the top 5 values are immediately apparent. Experiences aren’t in the top values for the region at all, so focusing on this value will be uniquely resonant to this group. Personal growth is in the top 5 values for the region, but it’s ranked much higher for this particular archetype. Tapping into these values will create an engagement strategy that’s uniquely relevant for this specific audience. So in this example, we’ve deployed a valuegraphic survey to the kinds of customers we want to find more of. And in analyzing that data, we uncovered the Adventurer as the dominant archetype. How do we get from here to a values-driven persona that marketing and other teams within our business can sink their teeth into?
Building a Better Customer Profile: Valuegraphic Personas
We’ve taken this process one step further to create personas based on the valuegraphic profiles we’ve built around specific audiences. One of the first things that makes these personas stand out from the traditional fare is what they don’t include. What you won’t see in this kind of persona are the demographic elements you typically see (a picture, fake name, age, and bio). That’s by design because they generally have nothing to do with the action we want to compel. And including them can imply that they do. Best case scenario, it’s not helpful. Worst case scenario, it can cause us to arbitrarily limit our audience and cut us off from engaging with values-aligned prospective customers.
Here’s what you will find in one of our valuegraphic personas:
The valuegraphic archetype(s) represented and a brief description of it, including contextual statements from people who share the archetype(s)
Statistics on how common this persona is in your region and their degree of values alignment
Highlights of the most and least dominant values, which serve as driver and detractor values respectively
A list of qualities and characteristics that are virtually certain (in that they’re true for 90%+) and highly likely (75-89%) to be shared by people who represent the persona and implications for your brand
The information in the first three bullets helps us start to get inside the minds of this persona. But the last bullet contains the gold nuggets that have actionable impact on marketing and beyond. The certainties and likelihoods for valuegraphic personas cover broad and sometimes unexpected ground, from unique perspectives on values to common behaviors and preferences related to travel, mobility, money management, leisure, the list goes on. And they can inspire insights that can influence everything from product and service innovation to content and creative, targeting, affinity and partnership marketing, and more. And these insights aren’t the product of a handful of qualitative interviews; they’re the product of a massive global research study that included analyses on massive quantities of research data at a level of statistical rigor that would exceed the requirements of most major universities.
Beyond B2C: The Value of Valuegraphics for B2B Brands
It’s easy to see how a valuegraphics-based approach to target audience research and persona profile development applies to B2C companies. But the applicability to B2B companies might not seem as obvious because in these scenarios, we tend to adopt an institutional view of our buyers. In reality, purchase decisions for businesses are still made by human beings (and in most cases, multiple human beings). That means that not only is the concept of connecting with the values of your buyers still very much in play, one could argue that the impact is compounded given that purchase decisions are made by multiple decision makers. So if you’re engaging in a way that’s not aligned to your target audience’s values, you’re going to hit the same snags over and over again with multiple decision makers.
In the context of the traditional approach to target audience research for B2B companies, it would be typical to develop buyer persona profiles for the different stakeholders who play a role in making purchase decisions and develop distinct persona-specific value propositions for those different decision makers. In the context of valuegraphics, the same logic holds. Illuminating the values that drive decision making for your cadre of B2B buyers will make you more successful in aligning to those values and compelling the desired action.
Evolving Your Approach to Understanding and Driving Consumer Behavior
With the execution of the Valuegraphics Project, we now have a way to leverage a much bigger body of data in the art and science of developing persona profiles. As marketers and growth drivers for our businesses, that gives us the ability to develop a deeper understanding of our audience at scale and parlay that understanding into action both within and beyond our marketing strategies to align better, resonate more, and compel action more effectively. As the world around us grows increasingly privacy-sensitive and the data at our disposal to drive reach with our audiences becomes more limited and nuanced, the brands who know their audiences best will have the greatest advantage.
If you’re ready to evolve your approach to target audience research and harness the power of valuegraphics data to drive your market engagement strategies, I highly recommend checking out David Allison’s book, The Death of Demographics. Or better yet, give us a call for the CliffsNotes and our playbook for putting it into action.
As soon as COVID-19 hit, healthcare systems and organizations across the world scrambled to craft new strategies to serve their communities whilst keeping employees and patients safe. But despite their efforts, there was often one barrier that often prevented patients from seeking care in times of need: Trust. Trust that they’d be protected from contracting COVID-19, should they visit a hospital in-person.
In the latest episode of Tallwave’s Innovator Series, our Vice President of Marketing Jessica Pumo talks to Patrick Knauer, the Director of Digital Marketing for Banner Health’s Ambulatory practices, about developing and implementing digital marketing strategies to give patients peace of mind, as well as what he believes is in store for the future of healthcare, the patient experience, and digital marketing as a whole.
Innovators Q&A With Patrick Knauer
Jessica Pumo: Hello everyone. I’m Jessica Pumo, Vice president of Marketing at Tallwave, a customer experience design company. Welcome to the latest installment of our Innovators Series. Today, I am thrilled to be joined by Patrick Knauer, Director of Digital Marketing for Banner Health Ambulatory Services. Welcome, Patrick.
PK: Hi Jessica. Thank you. It’s great to be here.
JP:Now, at a high level, Patrick, you work with Banner Health’s ambulatory service lines to align marketing strategies to business direction, and then you work with the broader marketing and media teams to execute marketing campaigns. So, I know you’ve got great perspective to share.
To kick things off today, I’d just like to start by hearing a bit about your professional journey. What initially attracted you, like so many of us, to digital marketing, and how did you get to where you are today?
PK: Yeah, I started off in digital marketing, working for a search engine optimization company, not knowing how much I would love it, but it really became my passion just because it changed it. It felt like every two weeks Google would reset the landscape and we would always [have to] adjust and have to rethink our approach.
That sense of excitement really stuck with me as I grew and it’s still that way. I’ve been in digital marketing for over 15 years now and it does feel like every two weeks there is a new tweak to keep you on your toes. So, that excitement hasn’t faded.
JP: So, let’s get a little more specific about how your role contributes to Banner’s larger mission. How is success defined for you and your team and how does that help Banner reach its established business goals?
PK: Yeah, so, Banner is working to meet consumers where they need healthcare, and that’s in an ambulatory setting. My role and the teams that I work with, are working to make sure that we’re easily accessible. That we’re easy to find through digital channels and that when our consumers need care, it’s not troublesome or burdensome to schedule to get into a healthcare clinic and to get out.
So, we have a lot of communication that we need to do, and we have a lot of marketing that we need to do to make sure that we’re omnipresent on various digital platforms that consumers use today.
There was a fear about being inside small spaces and healthcare locations. People were more hesitant to just walk in. They wanted to use their digital tools to limit their time, to limit their exposure, and [to] make that appointment on the computer.
JP: Wonderful. As, as we narrow our focus a little bit, I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t start with something that I know has changed the landscape for all of us. And it must be an understatement to say that the pandemic has changed the healthcare landscape.
So, given that the pandemic has driven a lot of changes to how consumers find and engage with businesses of all kinds, what kinds of changes have you all seen in terms of how consumers search for and engage with ambulatory services?
PK: One of the best examples that I could give you would be just our online appointment rate for our Urgent Cares, which is of our ambulatory service lines. We see the most volume out of our Urgent Cares. We have over 50 locations in Northern Colorado, [and] Arizona, so a lot of different points of access.
And, what we noticed from the beginning of the pandemic to its peak, was that our online bookings rose by 37% [percent] all the way up to 50% [percent]. So, about half of the patients coming through the doors were scheduling online. And the reason we saw that increase was because there was a fear about being inside small spaces and healthcare locations. People were more hesitant to just walk in. They wanted to use their digital tools to limit their time, to limit their exposure, and [to] make that appointment on the computer.
JP: Since you’ve mentioned it, I would love to jump to that idea: How concerns around personal health and safety have changed with the pandemic.
I know that’s really put those concerns front and center and the need to build trust with consumers has never been more important than it has been just these last several months. This need must have been even more acute when it comes to ambulatory services.
So, I’m curious what data points have you used to help understand patient needs and patient pain points as they’ve evolved through the course of the pandemic?
PK: Our analytics demonstrated that, prior to COVID, the most popular action that we would see consumers takes were clicks over to our website where they could access more information on the location or the services that were there.
But during the pandemic clicks to the website went down and direct phone calls to our clinics went up… We extrapolated from that there was more information that they needed directly from a person: To hear what steps were being taken or specific situations – if you’re at high risk for COVID or you have an auto-immune disease, or you’re in a certain age bracket – you might need reassurance of talking to someone at the front desk, and asking questions [such as], “Can I be seen?”, “What special requirements or services do you have for me?”
That was one data point that we really noticed, and it helped to kind of informed the communication that we put out there to our consumers because we were able to take those data points out of the conversations and understand, what are the concerns? How do we address them [and make] them easy to find, and put them in front of our consumers so that they already know the answers to some of their questions?
There’s a myriad of different digital transformations that are happening, but most of them are revolving around improving the ease and the experience.
JP: It’s really fascinating to hear how you’re looking at those digital signals and interpreting them as indicators of how that experience needs to change, knowing that the experience inevitably – in an ambulatory setting – is going from online to in-person. How has Banner worked to build patient trust through marketing and messaging from what they experienced in local search to what they experienced when they arrive in-person at an ambulatory services center to inspire and build that confidence and trust and drive continuity in that experience?
PK: That was the main challenge with COVID. And the main objective was to really make sure people understood the efforts that, as an organization, Banner Health was taking to make care safe.
So, we created a safe place for care, a logo, and a brand campaign… [We put that logo] on communications, whether it be a top of the funnel advertisement or bottom of the funnel, actually inside the clinic. We had the steps we took to clean a clinic, that we ask our patients to [wear a] mask, and the other steps that we take for our own employees to make sure everyone [is] safe. And we put those pieces of communication on our website, on our blog, within our emails – all over the possible digital touchpoints, so that no matter where the consumer interacted with Banner, the logo was there and the information was there. And if they needed a deeper dive, we provided the URL where they could go and read exactly the steps that we were taking behind the Safe Place For Care campaign.
JP: When you look at any one of those individual touch points, the changes that you’re describing may seem really nuanced, but when you look at them in [the] aggregate, that really is some significant changes to the patient experience.
PK: It really was. And it was a lot of work to spread that kind of communication across 400 plus clinics, [through] email, blog, or website advertisement. But that was our mission. That was our objective. I was proud to be a part of the team, and the outcomes were great because we had a lot of people tell us that they felt safe, and they appreciated the efforts that we took.
JP: Which is so important. So important. Well, let’s move from innovation to transformation here for just a second. Something that’s top of mind for me and for the Tallwave team, based on our recent Tallwave research report, is telehealth as a prime example of the digital transformation underway in the healthcare space. What does digital transformation in healthcare look like for you and your team?
PK: It looks like a lot of things. That’s a difficult question to unpack because it could be an app on the phone that has a host of capabilities – from communicating with your provider to accessing lab reports, to making an appointment. And that’s just within an app. But there’s also other touch points out there, on the web on a mobile web, where you need to have other capabilities like online scheduling.
One of our most popular digital transformation features is our symptom checker, which is really easy to use. You can just pop onto BannerHealth.com, open up the symptom checker app, tell our computer exactly what you’re experiencing: What you’re feeling, [and] what your symptoms are. And after a series of questions and answers, you get a mini-diagnosis, and it’ll point you to the right level of care, which is important in healthcare, because you don’t want to go to the emergency room when an urgent care visit is perfectly appropriate.
There’s a myriad of different digital transformations that are happening, but most of them are revolving around improving the ease and the experience, overall, that you have interacting with healthcare.
JP: I know we’ve talked about some of the complexities of managing that experience within the pandemic, but I certainly don’t want to lose sight of how complex that is for you and your team, just on a day-to-day basis.
In general, outside of the pandemic, I know Banner has leveraged a really diverse constellation of digital touch points to address patient needs and pain points by meeting them where they are, when they’re there. And I know that really does cut across a lot of different teams at Banner. So, how do you set the stage for smooth handoff, from your team to the next, so that that patient experience feels really seamless as they move through multiple points of engagement from the Banner websites to social, to email, to Google My Business, and everything in between?
PK: Yeah, that’s one of the core responsibilities of my role. As the Director of Marketing for our ambulatory service lines, I need to understand the objectives of one of our business units, like Urgent Care or the medical group, and come forward with a marketing plan that meets the goals that they’re trying to accomplish.
Then, I put that together into what we call a marketing playbook, which lists out: What are we trying to accomplish? What are our goals? What are we going to use as our call to action? What are our proof points, or what we like to call “reasons to believe” in Banner Health or Banner Urgent Care or Banner Medical Group. [I] put that into a centralized tool, which we use work from, and pull all of the various teams together and have kickoff calls, and installation meetings, and go over all of this planning [around] the direction, and everything that we are going to use so that everyone understands: “Let’s use these calls to action. Let’s use these reasons to believe. Here are blog resources. Here are website resources.”
And then, whenever it’s time to actually execute, the teams can go into [that] work, [and] know that they can pull the information [and] that will be the same information that the web team is pulling, or the email team is pulling, and the advertising team is pulling. So, everything is the same across the board, and you have that nice, beautiful experience that’s consistent.
We know that the level of trust that we encounter through Google My Business and organic search is higher just based upon the way our consumers convert and make those appointments – but paid search is a very high converting platform in itself.
JP: I think you you’ve touched on some things that really are very actionable for all of us. I think there are very few marketers out there who are not working hand-in-hand with other marketers who may be on different teams, different departments, different divisions, but the idea of starting with a really clear unifying strategy in enrolling everyone into that strategy together, so that you’re all on the same page, and then offering up the tools and resources that everyone needs to do the job. I know it sounds simple. It’s hard to execute and certainly worth bearing in mind. So, thanks for calling those things out.
As a marketer who manages a combination of paid search and organic search, which are needs supported by different teams in my world, it’s not lost on me how challenging it can be to marry those things. That really should be two parts of a whole. So, I’m curious, Patrick, how do you think about organic versus paid search as it relates to the patient experience, and how do you coordinate your efforts on the organic front with those of your partners managing the paid activity so that those things work together?
PK: I think they’re both extremely valuable and, in my mind, there’s not a difference between the two. There’s performance differences – we know that the level of trust that we encounter through Google My Business and organic search is higher just based upon the way our consumers convert and make those appointments – but paid search is a very high converting platform in itself.
The thing that we want to do is make sure, again, that our messaging is consistent, that we’re using the same reasons to believe, because we know from analysis of how long it takes some to convert, that there might be multiple touch points along the way. Paid search might be two of three touch points. So, we want to make sure that the messaging, the reasons to believe are consistent no matter where they interact with us. But from a strategic level, they’re both lower funnel for us. And they’re both of high importance,
JP: [It] all kind of goes back to recognizing that those things have to be seamless in the customer experience. Right? So, how do you see local search within the ambulatory services space changing and how is your team adapting?
PK: So, yeah, I think that’s an interesting question. Real estate in Google is shrinking, and Google is owning more of the first page for its own products, like Google My Business, for zero click information. I think that that’s going to continue. I think paid search is going to stay rather consistent with the results that you see on the page and the real estate that it’s given, but zero click information and Google My Business, in my mind, has more of a future because the big change in healthcare would be if you can make an appointment to get into your doctor or to an Urgent Care clinic directly from Google, [without ever] having to click over to Banner Health or any other health system, that would be a zero click conversion.
Google is working towards that in many industries, including healthcare. And it’s probably not going to be a 2021 solution that you see, but it’s not too far down the road. And being able to provide our consumers with as much information, and as much access as they can out of local search is an extremely strategic focal point for us at Banner Health, and one that we’re keeping a close eye on.
So, we’re very active within our local search tools, [and] with our listings. We want to make sure that we’re providing everything that we can, and the information in there is as up-to-date as possible. So, we solicit reviews. We post new information. We provide videos. We provide images. And that continual effort to work the local search has paid very good dividends for Banner Health.
Being able to provide our consumers with as much information, and as much access as they can out of local search is an extremely strategic focal point for us.
JP: I think that’s a well-informed look at what may lie ahead. When it comes to that local search space, what other changes are on the horizon for you and your team in a post-pandemic world?
PK: That is yet to be known. Right now, we’re kind of letting the data tell us what to do. Our research team is constantly bringing us new information on the consumer perspective [within a] COVID and a post-COVID world. And, right now, we’re continuing our messaging of safety and a Safe Place For Care, but we realize that that may not last forever, and that we need to plan for the future.
I think what we want to do is make sure that, no matter where you are on the spectrum of COVID-concern, whether you feel very comfortable without a mask and you’d like to go about your life like it’s 2019, great! Or if you are forever changed, and you need to know that there are certain safety protocols for you wherever you go, great, we also want to make that person feel very comfortable.
So, planning for those two different consumer types is something that is existing at Banner Health, as well as understanding the nature of the changing landscape of healthcare with the digital space, and how those two things can work together to be each other’s benefit.
JP: Such an interesting road ahead, no doubt, regardless of how that crystal ball changes over time. But you’ve been very generous with your time today, Patrick, thank you again for joining us, and for the great conversation.
PK: Oh, thank you so much, Jessica. I enjoyed it.
If you’d like to learn more about Banner Health, you can visit BannerHealth.com or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, all at Banner Health.
If you’re interested in learning more about Tallwave and how we help companies design exceptional customer experiences, contact us today. You can also read and download our recent research report, “Data-Driven Insights Into the Evolving Customer Experience” here.
There’s no denying that the Coronavirus outbreak has impacted individuals and organizations across every sector. Since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, there has been an increased effort to prevent the spread of the virus with a slew of immediate precautions, which included cancelling large scale events like basketball games, Coachella, and even the 2020 Summer Olympics. While the promotion of social distancing and event cancellations is intended to impact the trajectory of new Coronavirus cases, its uncertainty also has businesses on edge. Companies are reacting by cutting their marketing spend. While this is a very natural reaction, now is not the time to halt all marketing and acquisition efforts.
Now, more than ever, brands need to get smart about their budgets and evaluate the channels that will allow them to endure and grow during this time.It’s challenging for everyone – there’s no doubt about that – but the horizon remains wide open for marketing, it just requires a little extra focus, effort, and creativity.
To help guide where you should consider shifting your budget, we’ve created a high-level assessment of the channels that will see changes, what that means for your marketing budget and business, and how you can act now to accomplish your goals and reach your bottom line.
Now, more than ever, brands need to get smart about their budgets and evaluate the channels that will allow them to endure and grow during this time.
What does this mean for you? With more people working from home and social distancing, these numbers indicate that the digital landscape is steadily increasing.
What Part of my Budget Should I Consider Reallocating?
If you’re currently running any of these advertisements, you may want to consider reallocating them elsewhere:
Out-of-Home and Radio Advertisements
Currently, the CDC is recommending avoiding large public places and gatherings, prompting some cities to have a “shelter in place” plan. Due to this, many workplaces have moved to a virtual workforce. As both out-of-home and radio ads are well suited for commuters, it may be worthwhile to reallocate your budget for these areas elsewhere for now.
Experiential Marketing
Experiential marketing includes event sponsorships, trade show participation, and community events. Given the circumstances, a lot of these events have been cancelled, postponed, or turned into virtual events. We don’t recommend attending or hosting a large gathering at this time, but you can cut your losses and reallocate your budget elsewhere.
Linear TV Advertisements
Linear TV refers to the traditional way of watching tv where a person tunes into a specific channel to watch a scheduled broadcast. While Linear TV and advertisements took a hit when sporting events were canceled or postponed, television may actually benefit from people staying home. However, it’s likely that consumers will shift to Connected TV (CTV), also known as streaming services, such as Hulu, Roku, and Apple TV.
If we were you, we’d recommend shifting your budgets to CTV or Over-the-Top (OTT) channels to cater to the significant spikes we’re seeing in this area. More on this later.
What Channels Should I Reallocate my Budget to?
If you’re advertising on any of the channels listed above, we recommend making the switch to the following channels. Here’s why:
We believe that brands who act quickly and decisively today will come out stronger after the storm by using these tactics.
Streaming Channel Advertisements
Streaming services (CTV and OTT channels) have been rapidly garnering subscribers in the last few years and are projected to grow even more with people spending more time at home.
Streaming services are a great place to advertise as they allow brands and advertisers to get in front of consumers with targeting capabilities that are unavailable through Linear TV buys. If you already have quality resources in this space, you should consider expanding into this channel.
PC and Mobile Game Advertising
PC and mobile gaming are more popular than ever right now. As of March 15, 2020 global PC streaming platform, Steam, reached a new concurrent user record of 20 million users. Their big spike in users is attributed to people staying home due to Coronavirus. Showing banner ads, pop ups, reward ads, or in-game billboard ads are a few of the ways you can use the popularity of online gaming to your advantage.
If your customer base has an affinity for tech and is between 18 and 40 years old, this might be an innovative space for you to place your ads. Some verticals that might fall into this category include car insurance companies, automotive companies, companies that produce electronic devices like computers or cell phones, entertainment companies, such as TicketMaster, gaming event hosts, or Hulu, and quick service and food delivery services, like DoorDash, Pizza Hut, or Chipotle.
Display and Social Advertising
Traffic across social channels is increasing consistently right now as more and more people stay home and connect with each other through these platforms. Currently, we’re seeing Facebook ad spend take a hit as small businesses, restaurants, travel, and retail companies have pulled their ad spend due to Coronavirus. We’re also seeing a rise in Coronavirus-related advertisements right now. A lot of consumers think it’s unsuitable for a brand to advertise adjacent to Coronavirus content, especially in the food and beverage, travel, and finance verticals. While this is not good for these industries, the lack of ads also allows social advertising to become a less-saturated market. If you’re in the health, government, or education spaces, however, your advertisements are better received among consumers when it’s aligned with COVID-19 content.
Although the food and beverage ads aren’t faring well near Coronavirus ads, there has been a spike in demand for curbside pickup and delivery services that more and more brands are quickly adopting. Brands that are new to this space should incorporate high impact display opportunities that are available through Facebook, Google Ads, and Programmatic buys to drive awareness for these services.
Podcast Advertising
During this time, podcasting is maintaining its popularity on a global scale. For example, podcast giant, Acast, recorded its biggest weekend for listeners. In just one day, their listeners increased by 7%. While sports-related podcasts are down about 2% in listeners, other genres like education, entertainment, science and medicine, and health are all up 10%.
Direct Mail
We’re gonna be honest – this one’s up in the air right now. While people are home and are looking for things to do, they may be deterred to interact with mail due to germs and spreading of the virus. While there isn’t any current data to sway us in either direction, it’s still a channel that has a possibility of success if you think outside the box.
As we all navigate through these uncertain times and enter the holiday season, there’s no reason to completely stop ad spending for your services. The key to being successful is to remain flexible and get creative with where you place your ads. We believe that brands who act quickly and decisively today will come out stronger after the storm by using these tactics.
If you have any questions on what kind of strategy to take, contact us. Our paid media experts are ready to help figure out your situation in any way we can.
