Your communications professional life was busy enough when, only a few digital moments ago, your internet marketing mainstay was a good website. And your hardware was a clunky desktop PC.
The boss (and the budget) was happy with that, but the simplicity of that early state is long past. And one of the new challenges for the planners and forward-thinking managers is how to keep up with the consumer/patient/customer on multiple digital devices.
The healthcare marketing watchword for this year is multi-screen. If it’s not a line item in your plan, it will be soon. Your audience is a moving target and their ordinary life is increasingly connected via two (or probably more) digital devices.
Take your own Screen Inventory…
Should the boss or anyone else need convincing, the evidence is close at hand. Consider your own “tethered-to-tech” activities and devices at home, office, vehicle and in your pocket:
And on the horizon…Google Glass and next-gen wearable tech. (Not to mention the convergence of television and the Internet as Smart-TV sets.)
“Arguably the biggest shift in consumer behavior in the last few years has been the explosion of devices and the number of screens in a consumer’s life,” observes artist and speaker Tom Fishburne. “That has a major impact on media consumption and how marketers reach consumers.”
For major brands, multi-screen marketing has moved from “emerging” to “near-mainstream” during the past few years. “Media spend attributed to multi-screen advertising campaigns is expected to grow from 20 percent of budgets today to 50 percent in the next three years, according to a study by ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and Nielsen conducted among client-side marketers, agencies and media sellers.
“Multi-screen campaigns were defined as those that run during a similar timeframe across two or more screens including TV, computer, tablet, mobile phone and digital place-based media.”
And just to make things a lot more complicated, individuals seamlessly slide between or among more than one device for a given task. “This means advertisers have to take a holistic approach to their marketing strategy,” a Microsoft study reports, “and adjust the content to fit the context of various screens while considering consumers’ multi-screen habits.”
About Cross-Screen Engagement
Achieving marketing and advertising objectives is a matter of reaching the right audience with the right message by way of the right device at the right moment. Certainly multi-screen targeting is easier said than done.
Historically, your television set (or more likely, several sets) has been the "first screen." But now, Advertising Age advises, “Say hello to the new first screen: your phone. Daily time spent on mobile devices is now outpacing TV in the U.S. for the first time, according a newly-released 2014 AdReaction study from Millward Brown."
To help us sort through the cross-screen maze, Google provides some insightful stats about our new multi-screen world:
Research into connected experiences by Microsoft Advertising reveals new opportunities for marketers to reach and engage consumers. Their conclusions:
You’ll find the Microsoft report available via this page. And for more about planning, see our previous post: 13 Reasons to Write Your 2014 Marketing Plan in Pencil.
Marketing a healthcare organization can be challenging - even painful if you don't approach it with the right knowledge, tools, and guidance. By reading about mistakes and lessons others have learned the hard way, you can boost your marketing effectiveness and take a shortcut to success. Discover how to avoid these "Seven Deadly Sins". Plus, join over 30,000 of your fellow healthcare providers with a free subscription to our Insight Newsletter.
