Comcast Cares?

One of the most frequently cited success stories in Social Media is the case of Comcast responding to customer complaints via Twitter. Comcast is now famous for handling and responding to the many customer complaints that people tweet about daily on Twitter.  Certainly  it’s great to use Twitter as a new, immediate, alternate channel of customer service communications.

But while it is great to be responsive to customers, engage and listen and learn from what they are saying, the large volume of communications and downright angry rants also point to some glaring customer service issues at Comcast that will never be solved by Social Media.

Do The Right Thing – But Only When People Are Looking?

Putting a positive spin on a complaint and resolving it quickly and responsively is what all winning companies do – but why should a customer have to resort to publicly challenging and humiliating Comcast before their complaint or question can be resolved? This points to a fundamental problem in the customer service  function and likely to issues with  the service or product itself.

Is Comcast actually changing the way they serve their customers based on the feedback – or are they merely doing good PR by handling public, highly-visible complaints with a fast, courteous response, while the rest of their customers are sitting on hold listening to the endless easy-listening loop?

It’s Easy to Pay Someone to Tweet All Day – It’s Hard to Make the Real, Tough Changes to Improve Your Business

The real value of Social Media to a business is not so much about how they look to the world on Twitter, it is really about actually providing better service and making their customers happy by listening and engaging with them – and changing the way they do business based on their feedback. Good Social Media can’t substitute for poor service for very long. However, changing the way you provide service and respond to customers is much harder than simply addressing the public challenges as they arise. But it is the only way to long-term success in the Social Media age.

If Comcast customers were happy with their service and could get a response to their issues resolved quickly and efficiently through Comcast’s customer service channels, they wouldn’t feel the need to publicly challenge the company in Social Media. And Comcast could focus their Social Media efforts around building a community and engaging with their customers instead of putting out the fires with a dose of good PR spin.

Don’t Just Look Good – Be Good

In short, the real winners in Social Media are organizations that want to actually be good and provide good service, not just look good in public while continuing to provide lousy customer service. Social Media is the ultimate word-of-mouth conduit, and the ultimate winning strategy is simply to treat all of your customers as if your very livelihood depended upon them – because it does.

For more on Comcasts Twitter Approach:  Comcast’s Twitter Man – BusinessWeek – http://ow.ly/1bYEg

Paul Kiesewetter is the founder of Right Place Marketing.

Who Is the Voice of Your Customers?

When I asked them how their marketing people are currently using input from the voice of their customers — input from the sales staff and from customer service staff, etc. — they were  a little dismissive of the value of input from those groups. Generally, they involved sales in the overall marketing planning and had some standing meetings, a Sharepoint site etc., but there really wasn’t a great deal of meaningful day-to-day interaction among the groups. As for the customer service staff, they interacted a lot with the product designers, but not much with marketing at all – plus they were pretty much looked-down upon.

Clearly these guys were missing the boat on the fundamentals of engaging their customers. This is not to say that Social Media isn’t a valuable and important tool for business, and yes it can be very relevant for B-to-B. However it’s foolish to chase the hottest, latest trends in Social Media while ignoring or not putting sufficient emphasis on the valuable feedback that marketers can get from their own sales and customer service groups.

Your Frontline People Know Your Customers Best

Your salespeople are talking directly with your customers every day, one-on-one and in groups. They hear all that’s good and bad about your product. They hear about the competition and they have to answer those really tough questions about your products.

Customer service can tell you all about the pain-points that your customers are having with your products and what features or attributes may be missing.  There is great opportunity here for marketers who are willing to listen. Is the customer input from these channels less vital and relevant than what a blogger or Facebook commenter says?

Get Out of The Marketing Silo

Don’t fall into the trap of spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to find out what your customers are saying about you on Twitter, Facebook and blogs while ignoring the goldmine of customer input you may already have available from your frontline staff. Get out of the marketing silo and tap into your internal Social Media network. You can even use Social Media tools to get everyone talking.

Paul Kiesewetter is the founder of Right Place Marketing.

Google Sidewiki Example from Microsoft.com

Google Sidewiki allows anyone with a Google account and the Sidewiki widget (available as part of the Google Toolbar) to post public comments on any website for all the world to see. It’s like a running commentary alongside your website where anyone can voice their opinion on your website, your services, products or anything else they feel the urge to share!

There are a few controls for website owners to claim the top position on their site and to report abuse, however other than that, just about anything goes.

In the example above, the Sidewiki allows Microsoft-bashers an open forum to critique the software giant right on its own home page. At the same time, it also allows for more useful commentary and feedback.

What are people saying about your website? it might be a good time to find out now by downloading and installing the Google Sidewiki and having a look. Then be sure to claim the top position on your site and encourage feedback and engage with your customers:

Download and Install the Google Sidewiki Widget.

Need help setting up your social media approach and strategy? Learn more about social media tools and campaigns available from Right Place Marketing.

Paul Kiesewetter is the founder of Right Place Marketing.

Chinese speakers are not only located in China, there are large populations throughout Southeast Asia, the US and Canada and they frequently use the Internet bilingually – accessing content in both English and Chinese.

*Source: Internet World Stats - www.iternetworldstats.com

This vast geographic dispersion offers opportunities for visionary health care providers to both market their international patient services programs internationally as well as to target the Chinese-speaking audience that may be right here in their own backyards.

Well Educated and Increasingly Affluent

Chinese-speakers on the Internet tend to be a well-educated demographic and are increasingly affluent and traveling internationally. They represent a large and growing segment of potential customers of international health services who have the means and are willing to travel to obtain leveles of services that may not be available to them locally.

In addition, US health care providers should not overlook the growing population of Chinese speakers who live and work right here. Increasingly affluent, educated and English-speaking, many seek out Chinese-language media and Chinese-language websites. Online marketing in Chinese to this demographic can be an easy and cost-effective way to reach this growing pool of potential customers.

Campaign Complexities

However, reaching this audience can be challenging for those who are unfamiliar with bilingual marketing.  Here are some points to consider when planning a bilingual online marketing campaign:

1. Inquiries – how will you handle inquiries? Will you need translation assistance with inquiries and fulfillment?
2. Geographic Targeting – which populations will you target?
3. Language – which forms of Chinese will you target – and will you include an English campaign as well?
4. Political/Legal Restrictions?
5. Which Advertising Network?
6. Ads in Search Results or Content Websites or both?
7. Text ads or Banner ads or both?
8. Custom Landing pages or Chinese Version of Your Website – or both?

Traditional or Simplified?

One of the most confusing elements of a bilingual Chinese|English SEM campaign can be figuring out what form(s) of Chinese to use.  Although there are many spoken dialects of Chinese, most Chinese speakers accept that standard written Chinese for international communication uses Mandarin grammar and vocabulary, even if the characters are pronounced in another dialect.

There are two main forms of written Chinese – Traditional and Simplified. The table below shows the main geographic regions of Chinese populations and the form of written Chinese used:

If you are specifically targeting one region only, then it makes sense to produce your campaign materials in the locally predominant dialect and character form.  So for example if your campaign is only targeting Hong Kong, you would produce your ads and landing pages in Traditional Chinese writing using Cantonese grammar and vocabulary.

But for most campaigns that target multiple regions, we find that producing campaigns in three versions,  Simplified and Traditional Chinese plus English, to be effective at reaching the broadest audience.

Which Ad Network?

There are many Chinese-language networks and websites which can be used to promote your campaign, however in our experience, the Google AdWords network offers one of the best values available for a bilingual campaign.

Using Google AdWords, we can set up separate campaigns targeted to each of the three language variants. We can target our ads geographically with precision and we can take advantage of Google’s robust keyword refinement options. Ads can be placed in search results or on targeted website content and can be text ads or banner ads.

This flexiblily as well as Google’s track record of reliability and working relationship with governments internationally makes Google a great choice for a biligual campaign.

Political and Legal Restrictions

Another challenge with running ads in Chinese is the issue of political and legal restrictions that may be in place when your ads run in another country.

This is especially important when dealing with the People’s Republic of China which has many restrictions.  Currently, Google won’t place ads to run within the PRC in Chinese unless the advertiser has a PRC business license and permit, in the following categories:

• Agricultural Chemicals
• Books / Periodicals
• Cosmetics
• Food/Foodstuffs
• Health Supplement
• Medical Appliances
• Medical Services
• Real Estate
• Patents
• Veterinary Medicine

However, it seems that advertising in these categories in English within the PRC is currently not restricted. Of course this can change at any time.

Although restricting medical services ads in Chinese within the PRC is unfortunate, we find that this need not negatively impact a campaign for international patient services because the demographic within the PRC that is most likely to seek these services is also more likely to travel and access the Internet internationally and more likely to search in English.  So by targeting muliple geographies and language versions, we are able to run a successful campaign even with political restrictions.

Content Ads and Banner Ads Can be a Hidden Value

Although content and banner ads on Chinese-language websites do tend to have lower clickthrough rates than their counterparts on English-language websites thus resulting in many advertisers ignoring this venue – we find that content and banner ad placements can be a hidden value for international advertisers.

If we run content placement on a pay-per-click basis, we don’t have to pay anything when our ad appears unless someone clicks on it. Yet we get the same exposure. So for clients who are interested in building awareness and visibility for their programs in the Chinese-speaking regions, this can be a very low-cost method.

For Multiple Language Search Results Pages You Need Multiple Language Campaigns

Chinese-speaking web searchers may use either form of written Chinese or even English when they are searching. That’s why our standard practice is to develop AdWords campaigns with all three versions making it much more likely that our clients’ ads will show up in relevant search results no matter which form is searched.

This means more work in setting up and architecting a campaign, developing multilingual keyword variations ad complex targeting – however the extra work involved in setting up a campaign this way leads to more efficiency and lower ultimate costs down the road. And not to mention that it will generate more leads.

Landing Pages and Website Content

What happens after someone clicks on your ad? If the purpose of the ad is to generate a lead, then your landing page needs to reinforce that and provide an easy way for the visitor to act on it. We generally recommend that a customized landing page be used in a campaign because it is usually more effective than sending someone directly to your corporate website, where they can easily become distracted or lost.

We like to produce landing pages fore each language used in the campaign. That means two Chinese versions: Simplified and Traditional. If you were to only do one Chinese landing page, we would recommend Traditional Chinese as the most widely understood. However the incremental cost of adding a Simplified Chinese version is not that high and probabley worth the extra time and effort.

The same goes for web content on your program site – if you can only do one version and are not targeting a specific Simplified Chinese region, stick with Traditional. However once you have translated your content into Tratitional Chinese, the incremental cost of producing a Simplified Chinese version should not be that high, so why run the risk of excluding those potential customers?

How Right Place Marketing Can Help

We’ve touched on some of the complexities of running a bilingual Chinese|Englsih SEM campaign, but hopefully we’ve pointed out some of the great opportunities that exist in this area. If you have knowledge and experience running Google AdWords campaigns, are fluent in Chinese and English and can build landing pages and graphics, you can easily set up and run a campaign yourself using the tips outlined above.

However if your intersted in considering a bilingual Chinese|English SEM campaign and would like some help with it – we’d love to talk with you. It’s relatively inexpensive and a very cost-effective way to reach a large potential customer base – and not many others are doing it. Plus it’s easy to get started right away and there is no cost or obligation to get started.

Here’s how to learn more:

• Right Place Marketing Bilingual Chinese|English  SEM Campaigns
• Get Started Now with a Bilingual Campaign
• Bilingual Campaign FAQs

Paul Kiesewetter is the founder of Right Place Marketing.

A recent study by Yahoo!* confirms what most of us already knew – people are increasingly using the Internet to help choose health care services. Yahoo! recently conducted a study of 500 patients who were seeking a physician for an elective medical procedure and found that 84% of the participants had used the Internet prior to making their selection. (Study report is available here in PDF.)

The study suggested that  word-of-mouth recommendations by family and friends tend to drive awareness of local physicians, while online resources tend to be used by patients to explore their options and decide which physician best matched their preferences.

Type of Treatment Keywords Most Searched Terms

©Yahoo! Inc.*

The study also pointed out something that we have found true in our experience in marketing health care services online:  patients tend to search according to the treatment they need – and not by the name of the physician, clinic or hospital affiliation.

Patients typically start out online by educating themselves on the procedure or condition, and then when it comes time to make a decision, they tend to drill down on the specifics of the providers available. According to the survey, some important specific provider details that people are looking for are:

• Certification and Credentials
• Strength of Referrals
• Insurance Accepted
• Experience of Physician
• Patient Reviews or Feedback
• Patient Education Materials on Procedures, FAQs
• Specific Treatments Offered

A Professional Website with Specific Practical Information and Web 2.0 Features Engages Today’s Health Care Consumer

©Yahoo! Inc.*

According to Yahoo!, health care shoppers who researched a physician online but did not choose that physician cited lack of online information as a main reason. They further conclude that having content that creates a perception of openness and honesty, such as reviews, testimonials and examples of past work are effective with consumers.

This is also in congruence with what our experience has been. We have found that providing practical information is the base foundation of an effective physician website.  Once that foundation is in place, what is even more effective at an even higher level,  is to build engagement and trust with patients. This can done through Web 2.0 features such as Blogs, Twitter and Facebook pages that allow a physician to showcase their expertise and allow positive interaction and endorsements from patients.

Taken all together, the Yahoo! research leads to three important conclusions for any physician who wants their practice to grow and thrive:

1. You need to be online
2. Your website needs up-to-date content which includes Web 2.0 features with opportunities for reviews, testimonials and feedback
3. Most importantly, you need to be found in search.

How we can help you:

Fortunately, there is help available for busy physicians who don’t have the time and/or inclination to learn all the intricacies of Search Engine Marketing Campaigns, Keyword Bidding and Social Media Platform set up. Right Place Marketing can do the work for you so you can focus your valuable time on patient care.

Be found in search with a geographically-targeted, keyword-specific Search Engine Marketing Campaign.  An SEM campaign is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach patients in your specific market area who are actively seeking help with specific procedures and conditions. With professionally-managed campaigns at Right Place Marketing starting now for as little as $99 a month and no long-term contract requirements – this is an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed. Learn More about Search Engine Marketing Campaigns>>

Secondly, get started in Web 2.0 now with a Social Media Campaign. Social Media is very effective at building trust and rapport with the community and at establishing your expertise with patients and professionals.  We can help set up a professional blog, Twitter account or Facebook page that not only will integrate with your website, but also will actually greatly increase your visibility to search engines.  Two great benefits from one package. Learn More About Social Media Campaigns>>

And if you don’t yet have a practice website, you might consider building a website blog combo site – contact us for details if you’re interested.

*Source: 2008 Yahoo! Inc. Survey of 500 Healthcare Consumers.

Paul Kiesewetter is the founder of Right Place Marketing.