Guide To Owned, Paid and Earned Media For FQHC’s
source
Owned Media in FQHC’s
It is not unusual to spend the majority of your marketing efforts on owned media which is content that you own and create for your website, blog, social media, newsletters, email lists and more. These channels are utilized to deliver and control your clinic’s message to patients and prospects. It is a culmination of corporate content + promoted brand content + created content that’s shared.
The Importance of Owned Media
Owned media hits many different benefits at once. It gets your message out in a controlled way, it boosts your site’s SEO and search rankability and it creates brand credibility. With owned media, your get out what you put in. If your facility is consistently creating unique, readable and relatable content that patients and prospects want to see, you will naturally build your reader base. Once you have regular traffic to your post, blog or site, your rankings will continue to improve with Google.
Tips for Owned Media in Healthcare
- Create Infographics with interesting statistics or data making it shareable
- Share recent health updates and news
- Share preventative health tips
- Enage and education patients with health tips across all channels
- Raise awareness for charities, events and volunteer opportunities
- Create videos that answers questions and establishes trust with patients and prospects
- Post regularly, target audience, track results and optimize content
- Create website that provides utility and value to patients
Paid Media in FQHC’s
Paid media is exactly as it sounds, it is the content that is paid to get in front of an audience and increase brand exposure. You pay or leverage a third-party channel to drive exposure. This is done through social ads and pay-per-click campaigns. For example, you might conduct a PPC campaign based on keywords around a trending topic your patients are searching in order to gain visits to your post or website. Paid media can be used to not only amplify your owned media but help generate more earned media. It has become a major focus for many brands and is only increasing by the year. Statistica projected that $398M will be the ad spend for 2021.
When creating display ads it helps to create campaigns through various channels to see what works best for you. There is a stretch of time when you are beginning paid ads that you will need to test and optimize, test and optimize. This time allows you to identify your target audience including demographic, location and craft your messaging to a place that sees optimal results.
The Importance of Paid Media
The benefits of paid media comes with the ability to track your data, control your message and scale your reach. While Owned media utilizes views, shares and comments to track the data, paid ads utilize reader conversions through clicks, web visits, calls and online bookings. It also has the capability to scale in direct correlation to your ad spend budget. FQHC’s have the opportunity that other healthcare facilities do not, due to their 501-c status. Google has created a grant program called the Google AdGrant that allows non profit organizations to qualify for up to $120,000 per year for their ads. While qualifying and getting the grant is typically quite easy, maintaining the grant is a little trickier and will require a marketing professional experienced in AdWords. To maintain the grant the facility must meet a 5% click-through rate. If it falls below that percentage, the facility will get a warning and then will lose the grant. Once the grant is lost it is much more difficult to obtain a second time. We suggest (if not us) you go through an experienced marketer to manage your grant ads.
Tips for Paid Media in Healthcare
- Promote through various channels (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, IG, and more) track results
- Try video ads and adjust the target
- Apply for the Google AdGrant to have Paid Marketing covered
- Retarget through Google and Facebook display ads
- Establish the keywords you will use for Paid Ads
- Connect Ads to user friendly and high-converting landing pages
- Review metrics regularly, adjust and optimize
Earned Media in FQHC’s
Earned media is a bit of a different breed than the first two. While owned media requires the leg work and elbow grease on your end and paid media can be outsourced to a company creating your display ads (which we highly recommend), earned media is content and brand exposure published by someone other than your company. This includes reviews, conversations, PR and influencer mentions. It is more or less the hype of your brand. To get started, facilities may find influencers to talk about their clinic. The exposure to their following has a ripple effect in word-of-mouth marketing, as earned media is allowing others to do the marketing for you. More so than paid and owned media, earned media thrives on momentum. While it usually takes some time and effort to get a good start, once it takes off, earned media has the ability to spread much quicker with a large reach and have the highest ROI for marketing efforts. It comes from audience engagement with posts, content and collaborations you’ve created and pushed out. Earned media are the conversations, the reviews and the publicity your facility is getting. When it comes to earned media in healthcare it can be a physician review, news articles, or awards you’ve received.
The Importance of Earned Media
According to a Nielsen study, 90% of consumers acknowledged trust in getting recommendations from people they know. 70% acknowledged trust in consumer opinions online and a similar amount, 69% trusted editorial content. Well over half of those who are surveyed agree that receiving recommendations from others can have a significant impact on the decision making process. If this isn’t already part of your marketing plan, it is something that needs to be considered. While it can reap many rewards, Earned media can be a bit of a challenge to cultivate because of the fact it comes from sources other than facility. It is important to create a long-term plan when thinking earned media.
Tips for Earned Media in Healthcare
- Ask happy patients for reviews
- Encourage people to share your social/blog posts
- Establish content syndication through blogs, whitepapers and videos
- Encourage Editorial Content through a unique angle that’s share-worthy
- Apply for National Awards that highlight your service, staff or facility
- Create human-interest stories
- Prepare press releases for innovative solutions your facility is working on
- Get more involved in events, particularly charity
- Participate in industry-trade shows and conferences