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Anatomy Of An Internet Marketing System
Please let me tell you about the Internet marketing systems I use and find helpful. This information may be of some benefit to you, especially if your goal is to monetize your site or earn an income from your online marketing. My name is Titus...

Article Marketing: Dress Up Your Own Site
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Marketing to Your Niche Markets with Stories
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10 Extraordinary Uses for a Pocket-Sized Marketing Tool

Pick up any magazine at a newsstand a few years ago, and you’d find it shrink-wrapped with America Online disks. The initial rapid growth in AOL’s subscriber base was thanks in large part to this very clever guerilla marketing technique.

It worked because people hated to throw out those disks. CD-ROMS were novel at the time and had a high perceived value and curiosity factor.

Don’t tell your competition… but there’s still a way to effectively use the very same marketing tactic -- on a much smaller scale.

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Meet the New Guy in Town

There’s a new size of CD-ROM in town that is capturing people’s attention and curiosity. It’s known as a business card CD-ROM.

These miniature marvels are real CD-ROMS, but they’re only about the size of a credit card and hold between 30 and 50 megabytes of information. That’s still a lot of “stuff” -- equivalent to between 500 and 2000 Web pages.

You can buy blank business card CD-ROMs in computer stores, online merchants, and from mail order catalogs for about 50 cents each in bulk. You can add content to them yourself with most CD-ROM burners. This allows you to change them as needed and customize presentations if you desire.

You can also buy them imprinted and burned with your content through companies such as discmakers.com.

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The Shirt-Pocket Marketing Tool

They’ll easily fit in your shirt pocket and represent one of the best new marketing tools to come along in a while. They have a sky-high curiosity factor. Just pull out one of these little guys at a meeting and you’ll be answering a dozen questions in no time. “You mean you can actually play that thing in your computer?” They’re hooked.

Hand out one of these little guys at a trade show and chances are pretty darn good that it’ll be taken home and popped in the old PC. That’s great for marketers because it gives this new marketing and communication tool a long shelf life. It means more exposure to key marketing messages.

The only drawback besides their capacity is that the disks will only play in CD drives with trays -- Macs or PCs. You can’t insert them into a slot-loading CD-ROM drive or into the CD player in your car. The tradeoff is worth it.

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But What Do You Put on the Disk?

You can entice people to play the disk quite easily, thanks to its diminutive size. But you’ve got to deliver the content, too. What you put on the disk is limited only by your imagination and your objectives.

It can range from slick professionally produced interactive applications to PowerPoint presentations, and from Web pages to digital books and publications in Adobe PDF format -- and everything in between.

Since the content is played from a “local” source rather than being streamed over the Internet, you can include all sorts of material to keep your target audience informed, engaged, and receptive to your marketing messages. This includes high-quality audio, video, searchable databases, and much more without being hampered by Internet bandwidth restrictions, Java, and server-side issues.

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Ten Ways to Spin Marketing Success

Here’s a handful of ideas for using business card CD-ROMs in your healthcare marketing efforts.

1. Patient Education Materials on Disk

Prepare a complete patient education disk chock full of material on a specific disease. It’s ideal for severe and chronic illnesses that patients and their families will be dealing with over a long term. Cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, asthma, cancer, obstetrics, and many other areas lend themselves to this type of resource.

Besides offering educational material and professional advice, the content can include marketing material that presents the services and leadership positioning of the medical practice or healthcare organization. Top it off by printing an attractive label that doubles as an actual business card.

2. Digital Health Product Catalog

Medical equipment companies, nutritional supplements suppliers, and other health-related companies can place their entire catalog on a business card disk. It would be ideal to leave behind with buyers or purchasing agents of these products for retail establishments.

It can be as simple as a Web site on disk or as complex as an interactive application. Allow the buyers to access a special online extranet to place and track orders in real time.

3. Card Key to a Loyalty Program

Want to create a loyalty-building program for a special market segment, such as executive health? Use the business card CD as a “key” to access an exclusive online area for this audience. All they have to do is pop the CD in their PC and they’ll instantly connect to a private online area.

Once there, they can book appointments, track health and fitness goals, communicate with health providers, peruse health articles, and more. Include the business card “key” as a benefit highlighted in your marketing materials and include it in your program’s welcome packet.

4. Interactive Capabilities Presentation

The interactive capabilities of CD-ROMs are a real advantage in telling your marketing story to a receptive audience. That is “if” they play the CD. The business card CD is just the ticket to persuade them. A fast-paced interactive presentation can reinforce your image and branding and explain who you are and what you do.

For greatest results be sure to customize the presentation with the recipient’s name and company and build in an easy way to respond to a tempting call to action by connecting to the Internet.

5. Web Site on a Disk

Not everyone has a speedy cable modem or DSL Internet access. Some Web sites take way too long to load for Web surfers who aren’t in the fast lane. If you’re relying on your Web site to play a major role in selling your products and services, then placing your Web site on a business card CD could be a way to expose more prospects to your complete message.

What’s more, the Web site on the disk can link to the online Web site for placing orders, requesting information, and accessing databases -- all without waiting for pages and images to download.

6. Medical Product User Training

If your company produces technical medical equipment, then you’re also investing significant resources in training end-users to operate it. Create a business card CD with periodic user training updates. Interactive simulations allow the users to learn new procedures at their own pace, possibly reducing the reliance on field training by your company.

Incorporate a testing application on the disk to determine how well the learner did in the training program. Send results to Web server for tracking and evaluation. Then you can email the results the learner and others for documentation.

7. The Magic Card Disk

“You’ve already won!” No, this isn’t a ply like that publisher’s sweepstakes, but it uses the same type of psychology to get the recipient to move on your call to action. The Magic Disk is an idea that’s been around for a while. Originally it used a floppy disk. I like this updated version of using the business card CD because it opens up greater possibilities.

You can use the Magic Card Disk idea for several purposes, including selling a digital product or as an incentive to do something else. Regardless of the ultimate goal, the concept is this: You mail the card disk to a group of prospects along with an introductory letter. The disk contains a self-running presentation that conveys the offer. Also on the disk is a password-protected copy of a valuable application, digital book, or other product that’s too valuable to pass up.

The presentation tells the recipient that they are in possession of a valuable product, except that it’s locked right now. They can have immediate access to it if they call right now to order for only $25, or complete an online marketing research survey and receive the code for free upon its submission over the Internet.

8. New Patient Welcome Disk

Your medical practice can place all of its vital new patient forms, practice information, office policies, links to your practice Web site, and even a personal audio welcome from the healthcare providers on a business card CD. When a person calls to request that your practice accept them as a new patient -- and you agree -- then generate a personal welcome letter, signed by the doctor, and mail it with one of these special New Patient Welcome Disks.

It’s a great way to show your patients that you’re on the leading edge. Like the patient education materials idea, you’ll want to print out and apply an attractive label that doubles as an actual business card for your practice.

9. Physician Referral or Health Resource Directory

Physician referral guides are produced by many healthcare organizations, large and small. Usually they’re created as printed booklets. It’s a simple matter for most graphic designers also to produce an Adobe PDF file of the referral guide that can be downloaded on your Web site, or in this case, burned onto a business card CD that can be sent to your referral network along with the hard copy of the guide.

The real advantage of having the guide in digital format is the ability to use the built-in search capabilities rather than paging through the printed guide. You might even decide to forgo the printed guide in favor of the much less costly CD version. (Or at least give them the option of which they’d like to receive!)

10. Virtual Tour of Your Facilities

Tours of the maternity unit, tours of the hospital, tours of the new cancer center -- do they ever end? Use the business card CD to publish an interactive virtual tour of your labor, delivery, and recovery area and provide it to expectant parents. Include an audio narration that explains each area and what the patient can expect.

Maybe you’ve just built a new cancer center and you’re running a capital campaign to support the expansion. It would be intrusive to take donors on tours of the facility during the day. However a virtual tour and interactive case statement on CD can be left behind after a meeting with a top donor prospect. What’s more, you can even create a virtual tour on CD of a facility that hasn’t even been built by using many architectural design programs.

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About the Author

Kevin Richardson is a healthcare marketing consultant, executive coach, and writer who provides fresh perspectives and expertise on using the Internet for healthcare marketing.

He helps physician practices and healthcare organizations maximize their online healthcare marketing success. For more information, call (217) 425-4817, send an email to mailto:krichardson@medrocket.com, or visit http://www.medrocket.com.

Written By: Kevin Richardson