Making Health Insurance Marketing Fun

While pursuing Faceboook I began to see these great pictures with little captions on them. They caught my attention. These United Healthcare has been running a great campaign called #CodeoftheDay. Health Insurance ads are very rarely funny or entertaining. United Healthcare has found a way to overcome this by finding some of the best official medical codes and combining them with a funny picture.

 

This campaign allows them to add some humor to the serious business of health insurance. It also allows them to have a post for just about every holiday and national trend. I would think the combination of codes and pictures could almost lead to an unlimited supply of pictures to meet every need. I could see uses for things like: MLB’s Opening Day, Halloween, Election Day, and various other things that social media brings to our attention, (Like Llama Drama)

 

This campaign goes to show that you can make almost any subject matter light hearted if it meets your brand image. I think similarly you could look at the Farmers “University of Farmers” campaign, though it is not as funny. Humor is great to inject into your ads if it fits your brand. Restaurants and Insurance can pull it off. Funeral homes can maybe pull it off, but therapists and mental health facilities should probably pass on humor.

 

Here are a few examples of the UHC Campaign (you can see more on their twitter @myuhc): Screen Shot 2015-04-15 at 10.37.28 AM Screen Shot 2015-04-15 at 10.37.42 AM Screen Shot 2015-04-15 at 10.38.00 AM Screen Shot 2015-04-15 at 10.38.27 AM

 

 

A Reckoning is Coming: Good Uses for Traditional Media

The post is a part of a series of blogs about traditional media’s data quality versus digital data.
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You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. 

local marketing

In this last part of this series I want to talk about the benefits of local media. Depending on the size of your market, local media will be around for a while or forever. (If you come from a really small market you might lose your newspaper like my hometown just did.) But print media will be in decline in the coming years but TV seems to be on the upswing. Jackson recently launched another local network. But how can you leverage these local mediums to your advantage?

Local Media Works great if:

1. You only sell locally. If your product or service is used nationwide, local marketing might not be a great idea. If your product is national there will be lots of and lots of markets to focus on and unless you are large enough to hire a national ad firm this will be an exhausting process. Local products and services go well with local media because of the local audience. While online ads might be great for targeting people locally who are currently looking for your product and local media can increase brand awareness.

2. Offer a specific deal. As covered in the first post, we should look skeptically at the data that local media outlets give us. They have no good way of measuring the eyes and ears that take in their content. But think of ways you can measure the effect of an ad. Can you make a specific offer for each campaign. Maybe you can create a second URL for people to go to for the promotion? Maybe you can activate a second phone line for a particular ad campaign? There are different ways to try and measure the ads that you are sending out.

3. Position as an expert. Local newspaper and radio can be great ways to position yourself as an expert in the community. This is a soft sell tactic. Use their medium to broadcast free knowledge to the public to help them realize that you know what you are talking about. While not measurable it is a great marketing technique and I would bet more effective than regular ads(without a specific offer).

4. Have lots of money: If you have money to spend local advertisers can use as much of it as you want. One of the keys with local ads is repetition. Repetition takes time and money. If you are going to run a traditional campaign plan spend enough to make effective.

 

If you want to talk about your marketing plan. Send me an email: kevin@kadelseberger.com

A Reckoning is Coming: Digital Data is better than Traditional Media

The post is a part of a series of blogs about traditional media’s data quality versus digital data. 
Subscribe to my email list to make sure you see the other parts of this series.
You can read part 1 here and part 3 here. 

Screen Shot 2015-03-24 at 4.59.54 PM

 

I believe a reckoning is coming about the quality of data that traditional media is able to give us. As I mentioned in my last post, the metrics that traditional media (newspapers, tv, radio) gives us is not of good quality.

Digital media offers a quality of data that traditional media cannot touch. This is something I have become more aware of as I have become part owner of a digital media journalism group called: “Our Jackson Home“. While preparing to sell advertising on the website and podcast I realized that I had something that other companies could not offer: I can bring amazing data to the table. This data also reminds me that privacy is dead in the internet age. In fact there is beginning to be a market of companies that sell privacy through apps or devices (see Mark Cuban’s CyberDust). With free tools like Google Analytics I can tell exactly how many people visited my website, how long they were on there, where they are from (down to the city), approximate demographics, what operating system their device was running and how they navigated through my site. Also and most importantly for Our Jackson Home, I can tell an advertiser how many people saw their ads and how many clicked on their ads. 

Podcasts offer a similar set of data. We can tell exactly how many people started listening to the podcast and what device they listened to it on. Unlike radio which I propose works from a assumption of its listeners not paying full attention, podcasts are intentionally downloaded and listened to. Generally ads on a podcast are designed to be more engaging and are written for the target demographic of the listening audience of the podcast instead of a ad targeted to a demographic of the listening audience of the radio station. This sounds like a slight semantic difference but it is a huge real difference.

Email Marketing is a great way to communicate with customers. It is one of my favorite ways to reach out to customers for my clients. With good email clients like Mailchimp, you can get pretty in depth data on each of your email subscribers. You can see who has and has not read your campaigns and then using filters communicate with your best and worst customers. With the proper integrations of software you can track someone from email to website to online purchase. Its an amazing world we live in.

Ad targeting and cost: One of the best things about digital advertising for business is that on some platforms like Facebook and Google Ads you can spend as little or as much as you want. You can literally spend $5 or $5000 on Facebook or Google Ad Campaigns. In addition to this you target your ads to the groups of people you want to and know that they are really getting your message. You can also engage people who are already looking for your product with Google Ads.

I think one of the reasons that the NFL just announced its first completely online game. (Other reasons being: 1. Its being played in England 2. Bills and Jags have smaller fan bases and 3. People are moving off of cable.)  Why is there a correlation? I think the large national advertisers are already feeling the need to start getting better data. Once a tv show or sporting event has moved online they can collect the same quality of data that I can on my website here in Jackson. They will be attractive to powerful marketing firms and companies.

I still feel there is a place for local traditional marketing in your planning but I willl write about that in my next post.

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A Reckoning is Coming: The Traditional Media’s Data Problem

The post is a part of a series of blogs about traditional media’s data quality and its use. 
Subscribe to my email list to make sure you see the other parts of this series.
Read post 2 here and post 3 here. 

Screen Shot 2015-03-20 at 3.20.47 PM

I believe a Reckoning is coming.

I think someday soon (3-5 years) most business people across the country will begin to revolt because of the lack of data that offered by traditional media outlets. Our culture is growing more and more data aware and savvy everyday. This is not to say that traditional media will no longer be a good place to advertise. I believe that traditional media can be useful and I will talk about that more in the 3rd post in this series. Lets look at three of the main types of traditional media and their data:

Newspapers and Magazines: Newspapers and magazines strongest data to show someone is their distribution. In the Old World of data this was sufficient. I believe there is a little something in our heart that assumes that what ever the distribution number it is the same as the number of people who would see our content or ads. But in our brain we know that there is no possible way that everyone of those newspapers was read and of the ones that were picked up very few of them were read all the way through. But there is no way to know what the number of people who read the newspaper is or how many of them interacted with your ad. Newspapers and magazines also have a short shelf life but longer than Radio and TV.

Radio: Similar to a print distribution number but more accurate I think are radio ratings. But radio ratings are still based on what I would consider an extremely fallible system which is built similarly to TV.(more on that in the next paragraph Radio deals with a few specific challenges like: are people paying attention when listening, is it on in the background of a work place, or are people talking in the car while its playing. In my opinion most radio stations do not start from a place that assumes engaged listenership.

TV and Radio operations usually refer to Neilson ratings (or a similar type service like Arbiton, which was  acquired by Nielsen). Nielsen has had some problems recently: Here is a New York Times Article on how Nielsen had bad data for several months.   But that Old World Data is still going to be inaccurate even if reported correctly. Nielsen collects ratings two ways: journal and meters. Journal (or diary) markets have people who record what they watch on TV or listen to on radio each day. Journal reporting relies on peoples ability to remember and their willingness be honest in their reporting. Nielsen and organizations like it select people based on demographics to report in these journals. West Tennessee is journaled market. Similarly in a metered market a demographically diverse group of people are selected and their TV or Radio use is recorded and transmitted to the collecting organization. These numbers are flawed in a New World of Data because its only a sample group. As our culture becomes more and more segmented the representation of demographics will become less and less accurate. People are less and less likely to watch what everyone else is watching or  if they do it might not be on the same screen.

Additionally most of the traditional mediums are based on repetition to get the message across. This requires money over time. This may work if you are a large business but if you are small business or a startup you probably will not have enough cash to start an effective campaign.

The new world of data demands much more than what traditional media can offer. In post 2 I will talk about the New World of Data in marketing and in part 3 talk about some ways to maximize use of local traditional media.

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Update Yahoo Local – A How-To

I had a client recently who found that their map listing on Yahoo Local was incorrect. They had tried and had been unable to find how to update Yahoo Local. I then took up the quest to change their Yahoo listing and also found it to be difficult. I wanted to show how to make that change and talk about why it is so hard to change:

1. Using Yahoo search: Look up your business.

2. Look for the local listing, which should look like a map listing.

3. Click the text that says: Is this your business? Verify your listing

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 11.02.38 AM

 

So far so good. But here is where it goes downhill:

You will now be taken to a page that instantly aggregates almost all major (and some minor) directories online to match up the contact information for your business. This showed about 36 directories in all and all the info shown about your business. It also highlights the problems with each listing.

This tool is powered by Yext. Yext is a tool that I was told about by a fellow CO Member Austin (@NotReallyAustin) a few weeks ago. Yext allows you to update all of your online listings at the same time. This could be a very useful tool for marketers and businesses in two ways: 1. It shows you were your listings are incorrect (for free!) and 2.) if you have more money than time (established business or if you do not have an intern), you can pay Yext to update all your listings at once. Yext would be a great tool for creating brand consistency over all the different channels people might be looking for you. Yext could be a good tool, but this article is about Yahoo.  Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 11.04.02 AM

Yahoo really really really wants you to use Yahoo Localworks.  Localworks is Yahoo branded version of Yext. Yext has a small icon at the bottom of the page indicating that the Localworks is powered by Yext. Most of us are not going to want to pay to update a Yahoo Listing though!

Now its time to pick up with step 4.

4. From here, click on the Local Marketing tab on the main navigation menu.

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 11.26.34 AM

 

 

5. On this page scroll down to “Try Local Basic Listing for free” this is two thirds the way down the page.

Clicking “Sign Up” will bring you to a prompt to fill in your business info. This will once again bring you to a screen with the Yahoo LocalWorks listing. They will once again ask you to buy something!

 

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 9.52.18 AM

6. Read this screen carefully and find the No Thanks! button.

It is next to the large brightly colored sign up now button on the top of the page. Now you will be able to go through some more routine steps to update your information.

Screen Shot 2015-03-11 at 9.53.24 AM

There are a few steps still like verifying your identity and things but from here its pretty typical. One last thing is they have to approve your changes which takes between 2-5 days. The last listing I changed has been pending for about 2 weeks now.

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Customer Spot Light: Turner Pet Cremation

When someone told me that Turner Pet Cremation was looking for help, I thought that was a some sort of joke. Not being a pet person, I had not ever looked into a service like this before. I came to find that Turner Pet Cremation is the best in the area at providing a dignified cremation process for someone’s pet.

During this process I got to know the Mitchell family who now run Turner Pet Cremation. They are real salt-of-the-earth people who were a pleasure to work with. Clayton, whose grandfather started the business, took me for a tour of their facility and showed me some of their most popular urns. One of the things I love about working with small businesses is all the things I get to learn from my customers about their businesses!

For Turner we created a new logo and a new website. (Check out the website here.)

Here is the logo:

 

Turner Pet Cremation Logo

 

 

I am currently accepting new clients, if you know of any businesses who need help with their marketing, please share this site with them.

Gallup takes on Holistic Marketing

When speaking about holistic marketing I usually use the line, “if you have a great ad but your service is bad, the ad will backfire.” Gallup released an article about companies and Super Bowl ads. Read it here. This article points to the truth that if advertise before you are ready to handle the traffic that you ad will cost you a whole lost more than the cost of the ad.

Gallup uses a great term to describe employees, “Brand Ambassadors”. What a great term! Imagine what it would be like if your employees could be called “Brand Ambassadors” because of the quality and the care they show while they work. But according to Gallup:

  • 42% of employees overall strongly agree that they know what their organization stands for and what makes it different from its competition.
  • 33% of employees overall strongly agree that they encourage family members and friends to purchase or use their organization’s products and services.
  • 27% of employees overall strongly agree that they work for an organization that always delivers on the promise it makes to customers.

How do you improve this? The article gives some ideas. I think a key concept is clear communication and expectations. How are you communicating to your employees what you expect out of them? Are you giving them all the tools they need to succeed? How do you know how customers are perceiving your employee interactions?

Be challenged to look at every customer interaction as an opportunity to make a start raving fan of your business. Every customer complaint is a chance to make a fan.

Great Super Bowl Ad: BMW i3

For those of you watching the Super Bowl this year you might have seen the new BMW commercial. I really like this ad for a couple of reasons:

1. Its based in reality. The first half of the commercial actually happened. For some of us this seems not possible but that was on live tv back in the day. The internet changed everything and electric cars are going to change our world, but to a lesser extent. But bravo to BMW to trying frame the change that this new car will make in the same realm as the introduction of email.

2. Its funny. Looking back at what would be come such a funny moment in history and making a modern version is very clever. The bit about twerking is such a surprise that you can help but laugh.

What I don’t like:

1. Super forced. They pushed a little to hard on a few parts of the recreation to feel real. Like starting to talk to a random bicyclist? Allison still works for them? Maybe to show how far they have come they should have called Siri instead.

2. It is weird that they do not to appear to have aged. They do not appear to have aged that much in twenty years. That concerns me as a human being.

But over all a great ad. Let me hear your thoughts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1jwWwJ-Mxc

Go Daddy wins the Superbowl

Go Daddy Puppies

Go Daddy Puppies

I have been avoiding Go Daddy ads for years now. They are usually so raunchy that I just change the channel or look away. This behavior continued when I saw “Go Daddy ad causes a stir” on my Facebook timeline this morning. Then my wife told me she thought it was funny. So I checked it out. Once again Go Daddy creates an ad that generates as much or more coverage from controversy as from actually ad placement. This time it doesn’t feel like they were aiming for controversy but some companies are just better at finding it then others. The ad is well made and funny even if the message irritates some people. Here is the video:

Also in this debacle we get a lesson from the school of “always being on your toes”. HostGator decided that it could maximize this situation for its benefit. This is the ad that came up when I googled ‘Go Daddy Puppy Commercial’:

Hostgator loves puppies

 

Well done HostGator.  This might be as on the same level if not on the same scale as the now famous Oreo ad during the super bowl power outage. Maybe we all need to watch our competitors ads just to pounce with a witty retort when they make a mistake!