June 23, 2022
Squeeze Content for More ROI Juice
Anyone who creates content regularly knows that, at times, it can become a slog. Sometimes the well of creativity dries up, or other duties and deadlines infringe on your content creation time. Here are a few tips to get the most out of the content you've already created by repurposing it.Maximize your Blog Posts.
If you have a blog as part of your healthcare marketing strategy, that’s a great source to mine for additional content.
- Make your blog posts part of a regular E-Newsletter that goes out to your customer base (and drives traffic to your website!)
- Turn data and statistics from your blog post into infographics.
- Convert a blog post into a SlideShare by reorganizing the information and adding visuals. A slide deck is a great way to present information to those of us that lack the attention span to make it all the way through a blog post.
- Adapt a blog post into a video. Grab your most camera-friendly teammate and work your blog post into a script for them to read on camera. Voila! YouTube content!
- Create a white paper or eBook. Expand an existing blog post by digging into the subject matter and covering all aspects of the topic. Just remember to keep it interesting.
- Podcasting! Rework your blog post into a podcast script and get your co-worker with the radio voice to record.
- Pull pithy quotes, interesting data points, salient information, and summations and turn them into tweets, Facebook, and LinkedIn posts. Heck, make a TikTok about it!
Repurpose your Videos.
- Edit snack-sized videos. If creating videos is part of your content marketing strategy, clip out smaller portions and use them on social media. For example, if you have a video showcasing all the ways your surgical laser is the best for cataract surgery, pull out a section that shows one feature of the medical device and make that the topic of the short version. If you have seven features discussed in the big video, you’ve now added seven smaller videos to your content marketing queue.
- Turn your videos into podcasts. The heavy lifting is already done, just reconfigure as an audio package, add an intro and outro, upload to the appropriate platform, and you're in the podcasting business.
- Transcribe it. The content of any videos you create can be transcribed and molded into a blog post.
Social Media Roulette
- The social media posts you create for one platform can be used on other platforms. For example, expand the Tweet and photo about your new medical device into a LinkedIn article. The trick is ensuring the post matches the platform in tone and structure
Why Your Email Stats are Messed Up
Are you feeling cozy with your email analytics? Get ready for a blast of cold arctic air because stats like open rate and click-thru rate no longer work. Blame it on Apple. In September 2021, Apple introduced its Mail Privacy Protection on all new devices. Here's how it works: Any message sent through the Apple Mail application is cached on an Apple server. The server downloads all the images and keeps them handy in a cache, preventing email marketers from collecting information about user email habits.
With the old analytics scheme, it appears that all emails are open, when sent through MAIL. And that's why your email open rates have soared over the past year. Sorry about that. Note: There is evidence that Google's Gmail is starting to pre-open messages, too.
New Apple devices ship with MPP activated, and there is a setting to turn it off. But that's as likely as an igloo in your backyard surviving July.
What you need to know.
You can no longer judge the success of a campaign by open rates. Operations that depend on open rates, like time of day and location, are kaput, too, which affects:
- Re-engagement campaigns sent to lapsed subscribers
- Automated nurture cycles which trigger subsequent emails
- Campaigns that depend on time optimization, for example you want all subscribers in all time zones to receive an email an hour before Happy Hour
- A/B tests that depend on an open rate to select a winner
- When targeting that depends on the last opened date or time of day
Source: litmus
Switch to Clicks
Overall, clicks will become the key metric to measure engagement. CTOR (click-thru rate to opens) looks attractive, too. You can calculate CTOR by dividing unique clicks by unique opens multiplied by 100 (unique clicks/unique opens x 100); for example, if there are 2000 unique opens and 150 unique clicks the CTOR would be 7.6%. Google Analytics can be your friend, too, by tracking the amount of traffic to your website and conversions generated by your campaign.
Focus on Engagement
With the advent of MPP, email marketers need to focus on generating clicks from their campaigns. Try designing more interactive emails, like polls, surveys, and trivia quizzes to engage your audience, and design emails that visually and textually drive users to the call to action. A/B can help, too, by evaluating the components of your email that could increase clicks, like button colors and labels, design, graphics, and copy.
The silver lining is that MPP is good for consumers, and it pushes email marketers to create more effective campaigns.
Send comments to Bill Abramovitz
The World’s Most Expensive Camera
Are you a photo bug with deep, deep pockets? Recently, a photo fan shelled out a cool $15 million for a Leica prototype that belonged to the inventor of Leica, Oskar Barnack. The Leica brand camera is famous for its stellar optics and German engineering, and using one gives you a certain amount of prestige among the cognoscente. So, if you manage to get your hands on one owned by the inventor of 35mm photography, your hipster cred goes through the roof!
The auctioned-off Number 105 was the personal camera of Barnack, and his name is engraved on the Galilean viewfinder. He used the camera until 1930, when he upgraded to the Leica I Model C O-Series and passed the 105 along to his son Conrad. The camera remained in Barnack's family until 1960 when a U.S. collector acquired it. According to the Leitz Auction where it sold, only 22 of the O-series were produced by the venerable company which was established in 1869. Today are less than 12 of the 105 Models in existence.
The 105’s new owner joins the rank of famous photographers like Alfred Eisenstaedt, Man-Ray, and Thomas Hoepker. They’ll get the camera, the original leather lens cap, and an aluminum cap engraved with Barnack's initials. Film not included.
Send comments to Ben Singleton
Dalle-mini uses AI to Turn Words into Art
It's AI playtime. You will try it, like it, and succumb to its charms over a cup of coffee or two. We're talking, of course, about Dalle-mini, an AI (artificial intelligence) that creates images from text descriptions in a prompt. The AI concocted the photo illustrations above, for example, from the phrase "scratchy eyes."
The publicly available program, Dalle-mini, uses an artificial intelligence application that inhales millions of images from the Internet as a training set and combines them with your words to output a nine-image set. The service is in high demand, so you may get a "bug off we're busy" alert, but try back in a few minutes. It's worth the wait.
Salvatore Would Be Proud
Like its namesake, Salvador Dali, Dalle-Mini creates surrealistic images that often seem dark, moody, and just plain weird. You're probably wondering about the practical applications. Well, number one, it's fun to use. Number two, it seems to work like the creative mind trying to combine multiple ideas. For example, the image below was created using the words "luxury car and corn." As such, it's a fun tool for stimulating creative thinking.
But, the images are low-resolution, and they're unsuitable for use in most commercial applications. However, you may use them as spot illustrations in web and print work or instances where file size is critical, for example, animated gifs. We're experimenting!
Google's Got it, Too
.If you want to upgrade, consider Dalle-E2, a subscription service that offers access off a long waitlist, or to consider the Imagen AI Platform, Google's entry into the space. Unlike Dalle, the images are high resolution, realistic and usable depending on the copyright.
Imagen is also a paid service that’s available for Mac and PC for a $7 per month subscription
The big question. Will AI images replace work by commercial illustrators and photographers? Maybe, but that's another column.
Send comments to Bill Abramovitz
Schedule a Getting to Know You Chat
Hello there,
We just wanted to say "hi" and introduce ourselves if you're not yet familiar with Biotica or Bionews.
We're a medical marketing agency that helps healthcare brands – medical devices and equipment, technology, and specialty clinics – rule their categories.
We launch new products, make marketing work harder, and solve thorny problems, like etching a client's nano-sized logo within a piece of glass. It's all part of the service!
Here are a few of our accomplishments (drumroll)...
- We repositioned a client with a declining market share and reversed it into 25 years of record-setting profits.
- Reccomended a product feature that yielded millions in additional revenue.
- Used Peacock power to launch a new product.
- We used a residual-free rubber spokesperson for $1.49
There's more, but we want to tantalize you, not bore you to death.
Do you have an immediate need? Would you like to know us better? Set up a 15-minute "Getting to Know You Chat" on my calendar or call 513-967-6480.
Preparing for your Personal Recession
You've probably noticed that inflation is at a 40-year high, interest rates are rising, and gas prices…well, they’re just ugly. The stock market is growling bearishly, and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not looking well.
Recession, anyone?
If we are entering another recession, here are a few tips to aid in your personal finances as we face the storm.
- Vanquish your credit card debt. Make it a priority as the rising interest rates mean that any balance carried over will cost you more. If paying off the debt isn’t an option, transfer it to a low-interest credit card.
- Look for stock bargains. If you have the capital, a recession is an excellent time to shop for quality stocks at bargain-basement prices.
- Cut back on unnecessary expenses and save some green. With a recession looming, it’s a good idea to save money in case of emergencies. That new car can wait until things are booming again. Experts recommend having at least six months of living expenses saved up.
- Get a side hustle. The job market is wide open, so if you want to earn extra cash to stuff in your savings account or pay down that credit card, a part-time gig is probably there for the taking.
On the business side, marketing during a recession is another ball o' wax. But after helping clients through several recessions, we wrote a white paper about it.
Of course, we're medical marketing experts, not financial wizards, so consult your financial advisor before making important personal financial decisions.
However, if you have healthcare marketing decisions to make, especially when it comes to marketing during a recession, We've have experience helping clients through several recessions.
Send comments to Ben Singleton