Marketing is a fascinating field as it combines psychology, economics, entertainment and education for one sole purpose – making a sale. The online marketing gurus are quick to want to sell you the next ’sure thing’ in internet marketing. Some of these tools and advice are useful but if you do not know what to do with it, it is useless to your business.
Before you initiate your online marketing campaign, first learn the basics of marketing. This is the downfall of many online marketing campaigns. Many internet marketers believe that the internet is unique and immune to general marketing principles and practices. They believe that high rankings on the search engine results page (SERP’s), PPC campaigns and email marketing is the be all and end all of online marketing. They often do not understand the fundamentals of marketing. You may be selling online but your customer is a ‘real’ person with a ‘real’ ailment and parting with their ‘real’ money.
There are four key goals to any marketing campaign and if each is achieved, a sale should be successfully concluded.
1. Attract the attention of the consumer.
2. Stimulate an interest on the topic at hand or the product.
3. Create a desire for the product being sold.
4. Bring about an action from the customer – hopefully a sale.
This is known as the AIDA acronym = Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
The internet offers a new platform for marketing where the target market can be isolated and bombarded with a degree of accuracy that cannot be matched by other media. This makes the internet a brilliant marketing tool but if you lack marketing knowledge, you can spend a significant amount of money with a very poor return on investment (ROI).
Health and medicine still occupies a position in the top five niches for online content. Broadly these websites and blogs can be divided into those that provide information on health and medicine and those that solely exist for the sale of a health product, be it a complementary medicine, nutritional supplement or pharmaceutical.
If you are a budding internet entrepreneur, then chances are that you have tried or are trying your hand at the health and medical niche. Maybe you have tried to sell an affiliate product, ebook or online program. Alternatively, you may have set up a blog to score on the affiliate advertising. In all likelihood, you have found that the health and medical niche is not any easier to tap into than other popular niches.
In this post, we are going to look at a few pitfalls of online marketing for the health and medical niche. Now that you have a little marketing knowledge in terms of the AIDA acronym, let’s look at another concept. Its called the 4 P’s of marketing.
1. Product
2. Price
3. Placement (Distribution)
4. Promotion
We will not elaborate further upon the 4 P’s but you may refer to the article titled the Marketing Mix on the NetMBA website for more information. The 4 P’s are four parameters that will allow you to properly identify your target market.
Marketing Mix - The 4 P's
By properly understanding and assessing the 4 P’s related to your environment, you can accurately identify your target market and structure an effective marketing campaign. This is also the key to structuring a good marketing campaign on social networks which has become all the rave these days in online marketing.
In terms of the health and medical niche, there is one more factor that adds to the formula for success. This is the fifth P – Professionalism. Of course this is relevant to Promotion but it deserves further elaboration.
5. Professionalism
A lack of professionalism is probably the biggest downfall of many health and medical websites. This prevents their website from developing a good reputation.
Health care is a personal and very intimate aspect of any person’s life. Your content has to relate to the customer on a personal level while maintaining professionalism. This fosters trust and exhibits sincerity. Instead some internet marketers opt to prey on three emotions commonly used in other niches – vanity (ego), insecurity and fear.
Example :
VANITY – “Our miracle weight loss tablet will allow you to lose 20 pounds in one month so that you can be more attractive, sexy and popular.”
INSECURITY – “Losing your hair will make you less attractive to the opposite sex so use our natural hair growth oil to prevent baldness.”
FEAR – “If you do not take our nutritional joint protection formula you will face a lifetime of crippling rheumatoid arthritis”.
This may not often be said in words but inferred by the images on your website. Reassess your content carefully.
Many internet marketers will wonder what is wrong with this type of marketing? The marketing gurus will swear by it and at the end of the day it is all about the sale. Wrong. It is about sustainable sales not just once-off impulse buying. Unlike most niches, the health niche is so profitable because it is a sector of industry that can count on repeat sales to the same customer.
Does a diabetic only buy a single bottle of 60 glucose-lowering tablets for his entire lifetime?
Remember the 80/20 rule in sales performance – 80% of your sales are produced by approximately 20% of your marketing efforts. 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your product range. 80% of your repeat sales comes from 20% of your clientele.
Therefore put 80% of your effort in maintaining that 20% of your loyal clientele. Put 80% of your effort in the 20% of your successful products. Put 80% of your effort in the 20% of effective marketing.
Let us take a quick look at the pharmaceutical giants and how they do it. Let us for a minute forget their massive marketing budgets. The pharmaceutical companies count on brand loyalty not solely on effectiveness of their product.
In medicine we know that most drugs do not work on most people most of the time. Yes, its a bold statement but as experienced health care practitioners, we have seen this time and again in a clinical setting.
Look at any drug trial and you will find that the placebo group faired pretty well in comparison to the treatment group – the whole active agent vs placebo debate which we will not get into in this post. Yet millions of people globally swear by the brand of cough mixture that they had used since childhood. The cough mixtures of yesteryear was the pharmaceutical industry’s greatest gimmick – cough mixtures do not work but they sell like hot cakes.
So how do you maintain brand loyalty without spamming your customer’s mailbox?
Maintain a professional approach – in other words show that you know what you are talking about in a serious manner while maintaining an air of friendliness.
Be sincere – do not come across as the overenthusiastic and pushy car salesman – you are dealing with people, with their health and possibly their life – show that you care and not that you only want them to part with their money.
Create trust – offer accurate information with good resources and well written content which creates a sense of trust in both your content and product.
Following these three simple steps will very likely result in repeat visits to your website.
Would you buy a product from a wheeling-dealing ‘doctor’ who wants to tell you about his special offer on pain killers? Or how about the ‘pharmacist’ who knows absolutely nothing about the drug he is dispensing so he avoids your questions altogether and just insists you cough up the money for your purchase?
To sum up the do’s and don’ts in order to maintain a professional and trustworthy website :
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Do not always offer a special price on your product to newcomers. Save this for your loyal customer to maintain repeat sales. Special offers for ’special’ customers triggers a sense of gratuity which ofen compels the customer to return the favor by buying your product again.
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Do not stuff your website with adverts and flash animations saying ‘Buy Now’, ‘Today’s Amazing Deal’ and so on. Subtlety can often be more effective.
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Associate with reputable products, affiliate websites and social networks. Your product image should not be tainted by associations with unscrupulous programs and websites.
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Read your content carefully – if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. This is what your customer may be thinking. Provide respected resources for your statements. Client testimonials are useful for attracting some attention but should not be used as a form of medical authority.
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Do not use cheap tag lines like “Are you sure you cannot …” , “Can you do without …”, “What if you could …”
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Avoid playing on the vanity, insecurities and fear of your clientele – it is a form of bullying and does not foster trust, respect and faith.
When in doubt, think back to those late night TV infomercials. Do you think they enjoy many repeat sales? Of course not or they would not keep bombarding your screen night after night insisting you call now to get their special discounted price. Forget their 30 day money back guarantee. Adopting their marketing strategy will only guarantee you the once off sale, not brand loyalty and repeat sales.
To sum up the essential points in this post, always take note of the following :
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AIDA = Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.
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4 P’s (Product, Pricing, Placement, Promotion) plus our additional P – Professionalism.
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Apply the 80/20 rule when investing your time, efforts and capital.
Lastly, assess and reassess your marketing campaign and sales figures. If a particular strategy is not working for you, do not be afraid to admit that your approach was wrong. Rather re-strategize and adopt a new approach. Arrogance and complacency in the face of failure is the greatest liability of any entrepreneur.