Every organization has a secret recipe for marketing success. These recipes can be traditional, light, fresh or innovative but the basic ingredients are almost always the same or something that someone has used before, in another form or manner. In this article, we will discuss three organizations and the secret audio-visual ingredients that led them to marketing success.
Virtual Workshops (Overeaters Anonymous)
Virtual workshops or webinars are a great way to connect with people spread over continents. They allow businesses to deliver their content in a powerful audio-visual message. Some of the benefits of virtual workshops are collaboration with dispersed teams, productivity boosts, on-hand training, visual motivation and great cost savings!
Overeaters Anonymous (OA) started as a humble group meeting initiated by three women who shared a common goal: fighting binge eating and losing weight. Today, it has 60,000 members and publishes books, a monthly periodical called Lifeline, and a host of other digital products like CDs, downloadable MP3 videos, podcasts and webinars. For an organization that supports itself through voluntary donations and sales of literature, OA seems to be doing pretty good.
Organizing meetings that stretch across so many countries can be a challenge for even seasoned pros, so how does this organization keep in touch with its members spread extensively over 80 countries? The answer is simple – OA has always remained a step ahead in using collaboration tools. From using Yahoo chatrooms back in 2009 to harnessing the power of podcasts in 2015, this organization has come a long way, making good use of technology and latest communication methods.
OA hosts week-long annual World Service Convention and Conferences, where members connect with each other, attend workshops, hear from noted speakers from the world over, run marathons, and take part in a lot of other fun events. These workshops are later recorded and made available for sale.
However, it is not just non-profit organizations that can benefit from virtual workshops. For any business that is cleverly using content marketing, recorded meetings or virtual workshops can be a great medium in getting the message across. If you don’t prefer third-party platform like Google’s Hangouts on Air and would like to maintain proprietary access to recorded meetings, ClickMeeting is a great tool to help you get started.
Knowledge Podcasts (Tenable)
Podcasts are one of the least expensive and most effective ways of one-way communication with your target audience. Companies have taken the big leap with streaming podcasts across industries such as healthcare, finance, security, software and manufacturing. Some valuable ways for businesses to take advantage of this channel are to invite keynote speakers to shed light on latest trends applicable to their business, hold interviews with industry thought leaders, and get clients/users to share their stories.
Tenable has been freely using this platform and have over 200 podcasts on various topics. From eBay hacking to malware detection, their podcasts answer all your questions about networking security and threats.
Audacity is a simple, open source audio software that lets you make podcasts in a jiffy, regardless of whether you use Windows, Mac, or Linux. Spreaker lets you do the same on your Android phone. You can then incorporate your podcast in a WordPress blog or upload it to a hosting platform like SoundCloud.
Video Customer Service (Milford Regional Medical Center)
Kate Burke, M.D. and emergency physician at Milford Regional Medical Center, Massachusetts, felt a big disconnect between what she explained to her patients and what they understood. She also felt that she didn’t remember all the details at the time of consultation and needed to reach out to patients post-consultation. When she met with an accident, she underwent physiotherapy, but found she couldn’t remember the exercises later at home. So the next time, she carried a camera and shot videos of the exercises. This helped her do the exercises correctly even years after the accident.
Dr. Burke then thought why not do the same for her own patients? This Eureka moment led to MRMC’s new initiative – video customer service. Dr. Burke found that patients can’t remember even 50% of their doctors’ instructions. Further, one can’t expect patients to understand medical terms that doctors use freely, albeit out of habit.
So Dr. Burke films herself, the patient or the patient’s family member, depending on the situation. This video can then be replayed and shared easily. She spoke about cancer patients and how they have so many questions and want to get different opinions, “But how, as a patient, can you keep track of this? How can you remember those nuanced suggestions by these incredible experts that are trying to fit all this information into the visit?”
According to Dr. Burke, clinicians can help by adding to the video content by directing patients to relevant sources that can answer all their queries and make them better informed about the disease. For instance, Postwire is a patient engagement tool that allows sharing of videos and helpful articles among health providers, caregivers, patients. Years ago, doctors and healthcare providers dreaded video or any form of electronic medical records, but Dr. Burke and her ilk have changed the way healthcare is imparted, making it more transparent and open.
While there is little point preaching the benefits of video content in general to your business, I’d suggest you waste no time in making videos an integral part of your branding and marketing strategy. Outside of YouTube, Wistia is THE professional video hosting and delivery tool to use, with an excellent blog to help you master the nuances.
Parting Thoughts
All three of these organizations are from different industries but it takes little to realize that all of them are big on communication. Their business objectives are different: OA focuses on helping distant members, Tenable wants to establish itself as thought leader on all things security, and MRMC wants to give great post-consultation care to patients. Thus, OA’s application of communication is customer-centric, Tenable’s is knowledge-centric and MRMC’s is support-centric.
Almost all businesses differ in their marketing plans and strategies, but they share a common objective – to reach out to as many people as possible. With the world leaning closer to hear more from you, you’d do better to use more tools and methods of collaboration and communication, no matter what your goals are or what channels you choose to pursue them.
