Recently Published Article on QR Codes

Henry Schein, Inc., a Fortune 500 medical and dental product company, recently asked Patrick Kelly to write an article on the use of QR Codes in dental practice marketing. Click here to read the full article.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Competitor Keyword Conquesting

Few things are sweeter than having someone begin a search for one of your competitor's products or services and end up buying one of yours.

In the United States, when executing a SEM campaign it's possible to bid on the trademarked terms of your competitors. The practice is often called "conquesting." Although it's a common practice, the question often comes up whether it's legal.

This question has been tested in the courts. Recently Rosetta Stone sued Google saying that Google was "unjustly profiting from its unauthorized sale of trademarks as keywords to its paid search advertisers." Their lawsuit was dismissed.

Google's position is, "Users searching on Google benefit from being able to choose from a variety of competing advertisers, and we've found no evidence that legitimate use of trademarks as keyword triggers or in the text of advertisements confuses consumers."

So for now, the practice of purchasing trademarks as keywords is allowed by Google and other major search engines. This may change, so for up to date information on Google's AdWords policies, make sure to check out their editorial guidelines.

In the meantime, enjoy the competition!

FourSquare: The Rise of Location-Based Social Networking Applications

For those of you who haven't heard, FourSquare is one of many emerging location-aware social networking applications. And like most social networking applications, FourSquare is a great tool to support and encourage the creation of communities around your brand.

While the growth of FourSquare has been rapid, the application still has a relatively limited reach compared to other social apps and the final marketing model is still being worked out. In the meantime, if you want to use FourSquare to reach customers, it is best to refrain from using the platform to aggressively advertise and instead tie promotions to community activity. This model has worked well with other social media platforms and it's likely that FourSquare will continue to follow this trend.

Here are a couple of ways to tie FourSquare promotions to community activity:

1. Create promotions that reward customer loyalty. This can be done by providing discounts for frequent visits or when customers bring in friends as new customers. In FourSquare, the person who visits your location the most times becomes that location's "mayor." Loyalty could also be rewarded by providing recognition of your mayors on your primary web site.

2. Create promotions that leverage the gaming aspect of FourSquare. FourSquare lets users gain points and unlock badges through the use of the service. Bravo Television and Intel have both created custom badges within FourSquare that users can gain through interacting with the brands. Creating similar custom badges is another way that FourSquare could be leveraged to support your own unique communities.

FourSquare is like other social media platforms, but with the added dimension of location. This gives rise to several exciting opportunities to engage your customers. In addition, with the growing ubiquity of GPS-enabled smart phones, the rise of apps like FourSquare that leverage user location will also continue to grow.

SEO vs. UX

At Method Engine we often find ourselves in a position of balancing the need to create a compelling user experience (UX) with the need to create an interactive experience that is highly findable by search engines (Search Engine Optimization). Determining the proper balance is important as it drives the design process and the budgeting process (allocating resources to one or both of these areas).

I'm sure you've come across example web sites that fall into both extremes. You've seen sites that are so laden with "keywords" that they have a cheap, untrustworthy look to them. And other great sites (you love them as soon as you see them - the UX is that compelling) that you would have never found on your own - you only saw the site because a friend sent you a link or you saw the URL on a TV spot or in a magazine.

You may have also found yourself trying to decide between allocating resources to SEO or spending these resources instead on updating an aging or flawed user-experience.

Every Method Engine engagement begins with a Strategy Phase. The only way to deal with this issue effectively is to have a good understanding of the customer, including their touch points with your brand and their use of technology.

Other key factors to consider are: What are the goals of the site? Will other marketing (or sales) initiatives take on the work of bringing people to the site or will this be accomplished primarily through search? What other customer touch points are there in the digital experience with the brand and how is this relevant to the new initiative?

These are just a few of the questions that should be addressed to come to a final strategy for deploying UX and SEO in a way that maximizes your marketing dollars.

Digital Marketing in Healthcare #1: Increasing Utilization of Capital Purchases

This post is part of a series on digital marketing tactics within healthcare.

Digital Marketing in Healthcare #1: Increasing Utilization of Capital Purchases

It's not enough to make a capital purchase. Ensuring that a big purchase is actually used to generate income or reduce costs is just as important.

In addition, communicating to your community that you have a new technology helps improve your overall positioning as a technology leader.

Some of the digital tactics that can have a measurable impact on utilization are:

1. Showcasing technology with 360 degree videos, patient and doctor testimonials and other compelling content.

2. Using geo-coded search engine marketing for promotion. Patients and doctors are searching online for your technology. Help them find you. And use geo-coding to target relevant ZIP codes.

3. Using digital tactics to target patients, caregivers and doctors. Each of these are a key part of the care giving process and each has unique needs. Create specific content and tactics targeting these audiences.

4. Participating in online discussions and communities relevant to your new capital purchase. Many online communities encourage their members to use the latest technology available. Engage them and them know you have also embraced the newest treatment options.

Marketing Tactics, SMS and Technology Adoption

On January 27, Nielsen released the results of a study which showed that American teenagers send and receive an average of 3,146 text messages every month. That amounts to more than 10 messages for every hour of the month that they are not sleeping or in school.

Five years ago, when everyone was buzzing about text messaging, Method Engine was regularly asked to develop text message-based marketing tactics. Now that mobile apps and social networking are all the rage, we are asked about those. The irony is that for a lot of brands, using text message-based campaigns might be a more useful idea now that the technology is more mature and widely used.

The key takeaway is to know your customer and understand how they use technology. This knowledge is the foundation for an effective allocation of your marketing dollars.

Augmented Reality at Method Engine

On January 25, Richard Alvarez, Method Engine's Director of Technology, hosted one of the first Augmented Reality (AR) seminars in Chicago.

Now that Flash has a toolkit for building Augmented Reality applications, the technology is much more accessible to marketers. Some early adopters like Lego and McDonald's have executed very exciting campaigns that utilize this technology.

During the seminar there was a passionate discussion about the future of AR and how we as marketers could leverage the technology to create applications and campaigns to help our clients build better relationships with their customers. You can view PDFs of the presentation here:

The State of Augmented Reality

Stay tuned for more. We intend to follow this new trend closely in order to bring relevant aspects of it to our clients.