The Ecology of Online Marketing

[Patrick Singson]

Aquariums are enclosed ecosystems filled with aerators, pebbles, fake coral and, oh yeah: fish. The fish are ones that play well together, won’t eat each other and are chosen for certain characteristics: fast moving, synchronized swimmers, colorful, or algae scum-eating. A well-designed aquarium exists in harmony and takes the minimal housekeeping of cleanings and feedings. Why am I starting out this article on the ecosystem of an aquarium? Because I am trying to make an imperfect analogy with the three main areas of search: SEO, SEM and SMO. (I imagine this analogy will be abandoned mid-article, but here goes…)

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization or “#1 in Google!”)
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing or “SEO Now!”)
• SMO (Social Media Optimization or “We need to create a Facebook page!”)

All of these = online traffic. SEO and SEM have more to do with each other than either have to do with SMO, but all are very different with different priorities. Social Media at the moment is the wildcard, because businesses and marketers do not yet know how to make it work. (And we still haven’t gotten into micro-blogging, video or mobile!)

SEO, SMO and SEM – Oh my! The question is how we, as marketers, make them all work together like a well-running, er… aquarium. And who, pray tell, will eat the scum? (Okay, here’s the sound of a bad analogy dropping…)

How do you sell this to the decision-makers? The purse-string holders, the Executives?

Sometimes the problem is the “newness” of the jargon, and how to translate these terms into ones that the “old guard” can understand.

• Another word for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Marketing
• Another word for Social Media Optimization (SMO) is Brand and Relationship Management
• Another word for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay-per-click (PPC) is Advertising

As a hospital marketing professional, is your business a focus on marketing, advertising and branding? Well then, online marketing methods of SEO, SEM and SMO should be within your marketing budget as well. Marketers are great communicators, but there’s a new language filled with strange acronyms and esoteric meanings. There is a translation and education process for these new terms that has to happen over and over till the decision makers get it. Till these terms become common, and become shorthand for what everyone knows them to be.

This is online real estate at its finest. Do a search on your hospital name in Google. Do you own both the #1 placement in natural search as well as the paid results on the right? Well, you should. Does your LinkedIn and Facebook profile show up in results as well? This is what I call “owning the ‘tangle” as in ‘computer monitor rectangle.’ (Okay, I just made that up; don’t get all up in my grill! Fo shizzle!)

The use of social media sites between the years 2006-2008 have shot up 93 percent! Are you going to take advantage of that? Having an online presence is no longer just about having a hospital website; you must also have a Facebook and LinkedIn profile as well. Oh, and did I happen to mention that these 2 social media sites are FREE! Facebook and LinkedIn can be seen as miniature Internetz, or web ecologies unto themselves. When a potential client is on LinkedIn and searches for your hospital profile, do they find one or not? More than a recruiting tool, it establishes another piece of online real estate within a Social Network ecosystem.

And here’s where I digress: YouTube has become another traffic driver. If you notice, on just about every search if there is a YouTube video related to the search term it will likely come up in the top three results (and many times in the #1 position). This is due to Google’s change to Universal Search that allows images and video – and not just web pages – in search results. Having a YouTube video with your hospital website branded on it can be a significant traffic driver.

And I digress some more…Twitter is another area to delve into: a stream of real-time intel into the subjects and people you care about. Chris Boyer currently has close to 600 Twitter followers, many of whom are hospital movers and shakers who eagerly await his next Twitter post (at the speed of 140 characters per post ;-)).

People go online for all sorts of reasons: research, shopping, comparisons, and interaction. Are you hitting all those points in your online marketing? These three online marketing methods of SEO, SMO and SEM interact and strengthen each other by owning the results, crowd out the fakers and trolls on the first page of results, kill false rumors and negative back-talk, shine the brand and take up valuable space. Establish a beachhead in the online ecology, own the ‘tangle.

Fo shizzle!

******************************

Chris Boyer and I have created a presentation on this topic showing the relationship between all three major methods of online marketing that is free for you to use and distribute. We only request that you retain the copyright notice with the website address.

The Ecology of Online Marketing (PowerPoint Presentation)
The Ecology of Online Marketing (PDF)