1. BUILDING A MARKETING PROGRAM FROM THE GROUND UP – AND ON A SHOESTRING BUDGET
Laura Alabed-Olsson
Director of Marketing, PointClear Solutions
April 2017

2. Introductions Laura Alabed-Olsson
20+ years experience in marketing and corporate communications, including tenures with 3 early stage health IT companies
Call Nashville home (one of the fastest-growing IT markets in the US)
Entrepreneurial spirit
Total research geek
Die-hard NHL and SEC football fan (Go Preds and Roll Tide!)

3. Agenda
Learn
Build
Grow

4. Learn

5. Begin with 20 questions – or at least these few:
Who is your target audience? Get granular.
What’s keeping these folks up at night?
What changes and challenges are coming their way? Your way?
Who are your competitors? 
How are you different (and better) than they are?

6. Investigate Conduct an informal SWOT analysis
Identify, get to know, and learn from your competitors (Google Alerts, social, their marketing s) 
Read, read, read every day - and then share what you learn! Weekly news digests
Track key findings and predictions on an ongoing basis  Stats spreadsheet

7. Build

8. Begin with the basics – leveraging what you’ve learned.
Elevator pitch / boiler plate: In 100 words or less, tell who you are, what you do, and why someone should care.
Create With SEO in mind

9. PointClear Solutions is a leading digital health consultancy, with offices in New York, Nashville, Atlanta and Birmingham. We have 10 years’ experience providing application strategy, design, development, and management services for clients worldwide, including healthcare industry powerhouses like McKesson, Walgreens, Change Healthcare, and the CDC. To date, we have successfully completed more than 500 projects of various sizes and complexities, helping our clients improve clinical outcomes, encourage population health, expand market share, and drive revenue. 

10. Social Media Determine where you need to have a voice
Optimize your profiles (Hint: Start with your elevator pitch.) 
Develop a plan of attack
What will you post? (Hint: Lean on your Weekly News Digest.) 
With what frequency?
How will you manage the process?
Connect with industry thought leaders, existing/prospective clients, partners
It’s okay to rely on others for social material in the beginning, but, over time, you want to use social to push people to your web site and your landing pages.
HootSuite,
Sprout Social
Buffer
Use your social profile information on review and partner sites

11. Collateral
Bios (executives, sales team, PMs/AMs, SMEs/department leaders)
Early stage sales sheets (product/service line overviews, company history, etc.)
Case studies (long- and short-form versions; numbers driven)
Create with SEO in mind
As you get client quotes for use in case studies, start a testimonial spreadsheet for use in other efforts (RFPs, web site, etc.)
Leverage free and low-cost tools: Canva (layout), PicMonkey (image editing), Piktochart (infographics)

12. Web site (front end assessment)
Can people easily find what they’re looking for? If not, is it a navigation issue or are their gaps in content, or both?
Can your site be improved by incorporating the new content you’ve created? What else will visitors be looking for?
Are you providing multiple opportunities for lead capture? Gated content, contact us form, blog/e- newsletter subscription, etc.
Are you making it easy for visitors to connect with you via traditional (phone, , mail) and social channels?

13. Web site (back end assessment)
Is your site mobile optimized?
Has your site been indexed properly and submitted to Google/Bing webmaster tools?
Are you making the most of tagging – with UNIQUE H1 and H2 tags, headline tags, meta descriptions, and alt image tags?
Are your images sized properly so that pages load quickly? Slow page loads drive bounce rates up.
Do all of your internal and external links work?
WordPress, Yoast

14. Basic email templates for use by Sales
Enjoyed meeting you
Billy Bob suggested we connect
Congratulations
Thanks for visiting our web site/downloading our content
“Getting to Know…” drip campaign
It’s great if you have access to SalesForce, Tout, etc. (for ease and tracking), but small batch s from Outlook and Gmail work, too!
By creating sales s, you’re making life easier for your sales folks AND controlling the message. It’s a win-win!

15. Marketing email outreach
Understand the power of regularity and predictability
Create concise, compelling messages with a clear call to action
Seize the occasional opportunity to not sell (Thanksgiving, New Year’s, etc.)
Pay attention to your measures. Use them to refine your strategy.
MyEmma, MailChimp, Constant Contact, Pardot, HubSpot, Shutterstock 

17. Grow

18. Start thinking about how you will take it to the next level.
Collateral to support mid- and late-stage conversations: Look beyond your product offering and ask: “What are our core capabilities? Areas of expertise? Key processes?”
Security/privacy
Integration
Interoperability
What to expect during implementation
Standard timelines

19. Conference strategy
Define purpose: Business development? Education? Both?
Identify conferences that will provide biggest bang for your buck
Prepare your sales team for each event and clarify expectations for ROI
Will you sponsor, exhibit, host a private event, or simply network?
Determine pre- and post-conference outreach strategy

20. Thought leadership positioning
Blog (Hint: Lean on your SMEs)
Sponsored content
Speaking engagements
Webinars
White papers
Infographics
Create with a multi-purpose mindset. Can a speaker’s deck be repurposed as a webinar? Can statistics from a whitepaper be transformed into an infographic?

21. Thank You! Download our latest ebook for free at:
Laura Alabed-Olsson
Director of Marketing, PointClear Solutions
April 2017