We have all felt the pinch in a tough economy.  Messages get jumbled and clustered together; marketers shifting campaign focus to lower cost mediums such as webcasts and social media outlets.  And emails, oh boy the emails… ping, ping, pinging away at your inbox until you cannot take anymore.  As marketers, we must refrain from jumping on the “buy from me now” podium and take a different stance in order to stand out in this challenging time. 

My message is not a novel idea by any stretch.  But why not make sure that traditional sales efforts are once again in sync with marketing - and truly integrated. If marketing launches an educational campaign, whether it be a download, a white-paper, or a prospect reach-out, companies have to make sure those leads are followed up with quickly—which means that sales communicates back with those contacts in a timely manner.  I manage marketing for an IT consulting firm and we have implemented “Marketing 101″ in a sense, where marketing provides awareness, then sales drives the client through the purchase process with the proper phone call and follow up steps.  Again, this is not a novel idea but a simple reminder in an environment where the next greatest technology has us running to catch up. 

Do not get me wrong of course, organizations and marketers in particular must stay on top of the latest technologies in order to maintain b-to-c and b-to-b reach.  But we cannot lose out on the opportunities to remain traditional in our execution. 

In a tight marketplace, it is more important to coordinate and execute marketing and sales efforts as well as you possibly can. Make it like a re-training exercise if you have to. Learn to sync up sales and marketing all over again, since opportunities are few and far between. You have to take advantage and maximize each possibility, and that means being more on the ball than ever.  Do not forget the basics!

The old adage that “time flies when you’re having fun” really hit home for me this morning. As I was reflecting on the last ten years I’ve spent in the professional working world, I realized that one of the common denominators in each of my positions has been healthcare. 

I began my career on the public relations side, working with healthcare systems and big pharma. That interest has carried over into my role in the recruiting world. In the last four years at Paladin, I’ve worked with nearly 30 healthcare associations, providers, insurers and pharma companies, providing a vast array of talent for marketing, creative, programming, membership, training, event and communications departments.  Working with marketers and creatives in this space has allowed me the opportunity to stay abreast of trends, pressures, challenges and nuances in the field.

To get an even deeper understanding of these trends, I launched a survey of my healthcare association clients last month. The goal was to better understand the marketing, membership and staffing trends within these organizations.  I think you’ll find the survey results interesting.

A few key findings:

- The healthcare association world is a “healthy” one, despite the turbulent U.S. economy. The majority of respondents noted that their overall membership base in continuing to grow and that from an organizational perspective, they plan to continue expanding in other markets.

- As with many organizations, healthcare associations are embracing the new social media movement and offering new online and interactive forums to help their members and employees communicate. Facebook and Linked-In are becoming the top social media tools in the communications arsenal of these organizations.

- In order to remain competitive, healthcare associations are expanding their product and service offerings in 2009, including e-learning programs, online conferences, and social  media tools.

I encourage you to review the full survey findings in the hope that you’ll be able to leverage them as you continue to build marketing and communications campaigns and products for your members this year.

http://www.paladinstaff.com/promo/survey-results/

I also welcome your insights and hope you will help create a larger dialogue on this topic.  Feel free to comment here, or to contact me off-line with questions, ideas, suggestions, requests or additional resources: elise@paladinstaff.com.

The challenge: I conducted an experiment to see exactly what effect I could produce with one  blog and thirty minutes of time spent posting on social media tools. Here is what happened:

The Blog: I wrote a blog regarding helpful marketing and alumni association events that I attend on a weekly basis to help build Paladin’s business through face to face networking:

Mike’s Paladin Blog

Vehicles: I dusted off my black social media Ninja robe and my marketing throwing stars and seeded my blog through my 1^st and 2^nd connections on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Digg in exactly 30 minutes.

Target Outcome: At Paladin, my role is to bring business in the door and recruit on some of the positions with a focus on marketing communications and social media. We are a marketing and creative staffing firm with over 20 years experience in 6 major markets including Chicago. My target clients are senior level marketing and creative executives in addition to HR professionals within fortune 1000 companies. Ideal outcomes equate to finding new highly qualified candidates and inquires by potential new clients.

Here is What Happened - Blog outreach initiative by the #’s: LinkedIn: My LinkedIn “News” section – I sent my blog out to my 20 LinkedIn groups via the news section.

· “What are you working on now?” update – I post a link via my update which reaches my 700+ contacts (those that read the updates)

Twitter:  My Twitter

· 500 Twitter followers (I had several Tweeters “Re-tweet” my blog post)

Facebook: My Facebook Page

·200 Facebook friends (Posted my blog in my profile)

Results: Tracking – Google Analytics – spiked my blog page hit by 200 readers for the week (a significant increase to our brand new blog). Time spent on the page was significantly higher as well. – over 5 minutes.

Comments on blog: We’ve received multiple comments on the blog and several inquiries for interest in our business.

Shared by Others: Still working for me: While the initial results the first week were positive, the blog post and social network outreach continues to pull comments and interest two weeks later.

Why it worked: As a recruiter, a marketer and a Social Media junkie – I have a large network. The larger and the more targeted the network the better. I am very active on Social Media groups that are directly related to the topic. I have created buzz prior and have a sizable footprint in the space. Therefore, I had some momentum out of the box. But anyone can start building the momentum – with a blog, some useful content and thirty minutes of posting.

Stay tuned for part two of our series “Paladin’s Marketing Ninja Guide to Blogging on a Shoestring Budget”, when we feature the results of our associate Elizabeth Stiles blog regarding Lent and 40 days without Facebook and her beloved 1200 Facebook-Friends. Find out if she becomes addicted to Twitter or not and runs back to a always forgiving Facebook in our next installment…