Thursday, April 23, 2015

What is Engagement Marketing and How Do I Use It?

Operating a healthcare job board requires finding effective ways to market yourself, both to healthcare companies that are recruiting and top candidates seeking jobs. Engagement marketing is an increasingly popular technique in today’s marketing landscape, as companies seek to find creative ways to meet consumers on their own terms. By speaking directly to their most urgent needs and being consistently present on their top social and information channels, you’ll raise brand awareness and build trust as an authority in your space. Here’s a closer look at some of the key ways that different organizations achieve effective engagement marketing.

SEE ALSO: Audience Engagement: Social Media and the Power of Visuals

Personalization

It’s important to think about who your audience is, what they need, and what contact will engage them most effectively. The days of the universal email blasts being successful are gone. For a job board, this might mean segmenting your list into three categories: companies/recruiters, active job seekers, and past clients who might be passively looking for great opportunities. When you personalize your marketing and content distribution so that it’s highly relevant, customers are more likely to see you as a valuable expert and want to interact with your brand.

Behavioral vs. Demographic Targeting

Traditional approaches to marketing are often demographic. “Our typical customer is female, between the ages of 25 and 55, and employed in an office job” begins the marketers’ refrain. But engagement marketing suggests that companies use behavioral tags to segment their audiences. For example, specific content might be helpful to users that are searching for information on your site about how to write a resume. This could differ from what people searching for information on how to negotiate a job offer need and want. The more you know, the more effectively you can serve your audience.

The Surround Sound Technique

Understanding your audience is essential to choosing the channels that will reach them most effectively. Many successful marketers recommend not just targeting one or two channels, but systematically showing up everywhere that your audience is looking for information on relevant topics. For example, it might be that you promote your job board via social media, advertise in trade publications, and write guest posts on healthcare industry career sites about job searching tips. The more frequently you show up in your target audience’s world, the deeper the relationship that you’ll form with them over time.

Of the many ways to reach your audience, engagement marketing is one of the most natural and authentic.

Calls To Action and Engagement

Engagement marketing relies on your ability to measure your success. It’s helpful to understand if you’re being successful so you can improve your focus on failing pieces and double down on the efforts that are yielding a positive result. One area to look at is calls to action. Every page of your website and piece of content that you publish should have a clear goal. What does it say to the reader? Also ask yourself what the next step is, and then be sure to clearly end on that note. Finally, use analytics to track your progress and to look at whether visits, page views and other desired behaviors are increasing.

Engagement marketing can open up whole new possibilities for job boards in the healthcare industry. As a niche job board, the more effectively you target your audience the better you’ll be able to reach your business goals.

resource : http://blog.realmatch.com/trade-publishers/engagement-marketing-use/