2009 December | Catalyst Marketers

Archive for December, 2009

Pharmaceutical Sales Reps Using Electronic Devices with HCPs

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

Advancements in technology, especially with mobile devices and the Internet, has led to tremendous change for many industries. One industry that is playing catchup is the Pharmaceuticals and Biotech industry. One of the slowest areas within Pharmaceutical companies to evolve is Sales, and more specifically, the roll Pharma Reps play with Health Care Professionals. It used to be that Reps were key players in educating Health Care Practitioners and getting them to write more prescriptions. Now, HCPs don’t have time to see Pharmaceutical Sales Reps, but when they do see them, they’re expecting more educational information from Reps than ever before.

One of the main reasons why HCPs are expecting better educational information from Reps is probably because HCPs now get a large part of their new information from online tools via the Internet. With their time being so precious, HCPs can’t afford to sit with Reps unless they are truly learning something new, since they are now mostly self-educating during their off hours. In order to give HCPs what they need, and ultimately meet their sales goals, Pharma companies are arming Reps with technology.

This blog post is a market research post on behalf of a customer of ours. We are trying to find out what technologies Reps are using, as well as, what else they need, but might not be getting from their organizations. The survey is meant to be completed by Sales Reps or other Pharma/Biotech employees who have knowledge of Pharma Sales. It’s only a few short questions, so please take a minute to provide us with your opinions on the following questions.

Thanks for taking time to participate in the survey. Please pass it along to anyone you know who’s in the industry. I appreciate it.

Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Tags: pharmaceutical marketing, pharmaceuticals, sales reps
Posted in Online Marketing | No Comments »

Do You Want to be on My JetBlue Facebook Team?

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

So you want to know the answer to the age old social media question? You know the one —-> How do I get people to become my fan on Facebook? Look no further than a great promotion that JetBlue is running, All-You-Can-Jet Facebook Fan Sweepstakes.

JetBlue is offering fans of their Facebook page a chance to win round-trip airfare, plus a vacation OR free flights for a year. The only criteria are that you become (or are currently) a fan of their Facebook page and that you click the JetBlue Sweeps tab to enter your information.

There’s also a team component. Once you enter, you can build a team of four individuals who will all receive a great vacation package if their team is selected at the end of the promotion.

Now, you might be saying, I cannot afford to fly someone around the world free for a year, but I’ll bet you can afford the $2,000 or so to send 4 friends on a great vacation. I mean, it’s an Advertising write-off anyway, right?

I’d even be willing to bet that you can think of a much better prize, which costs you a lot less. It’s all about getting creative. You can even get a designer/programmer to build you a Facebook application like the one JetBlue built for a small investment. JetBlue is already up 50,000 plus fans – almost double from when the promotion started.

If you’re thinking, “well, JetBlue had 60,000 fans on Facebook to begin with and even more Twitter followers. I don’t have that many people in my network to roll a promotion out to”. That’s OK. It’s all relative. Use JetBlue as an example, but then bring the promotion into your own set of realities. Offer your 30 Facebook fans or 100 Twitter followers a great promotion that provides them something of value in exchange for some sort of action by them.

I have to say this is a really great promotion by JetBlue. They could have stopped at allowing individuals to become fans in order to win a chance at free airfare or a trip. Instead, they did that, and on top of it, they added a viral component to it – Sign up a team. This allows those who become fans of JetBlue on Facebook, to get their friends involved. This opens the door to even more new fans for JetBlue.

I hope that JetBlue will take the contest to the next level after the current promotion ends. A few great add-on promotions that I can think of to help new fans stay connected with the brand are:

Use the database of teams collected during this promotion and create a new team-oriented promotion (think March Madness)
Have the team who wins record their trip for an additional bonus to them, and then use that footage for news ads/promotions
Have a runner-up competition for the top 10 individuals who appear on the most teams. Allow them to take part in a new promotion that generates buzz for the JetBlue brand.
Run a promotion to new/existing fans where one fan is selected to accompany the individual who wins the free flights for the year. Each time the original winner flies somewhere new, another fan is selected to fly with him/her.

What do you think of JetBlue’s promotion? What ideas do you have around using a similar promotion for your small business?

Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Tags: facebook fan page promotion, facebook marketing, jetblue fly free, jetblue promotion
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Attention Small Business Owners, Customer Service is Crucial

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

Sometimes in the rush to build a great company that offers remarkable products and services, business owners forget one critical element of all great organizations, Customer Service. Having an outstanding Customer Service department could be the difference between keeping customers and losing customers or between having one-time customers and loyal followers.

Excellent Customer Service is critical for success

Creating a Customer Service policy is a great first step. It can be situation-based. Write down all of the possible situations you can think of where customers will need the help of your Customer Service team. Then figure out the best possible way to solve each situation. Be sure to coach your employees on this. With this being said, I think it’s absolutely critical that you empower your employees by allowing them to stray from the policy when they feel it’s appropriate.

The overall message should be, “keep our customers happy”. If a customer comes to one of your employees with an issue, but doesn’t like your policy for handling their issue, then allow your employee to improvise however they see fit, as long as it’s going to keep that customer happy and not impact other customers or your business too much. By keeping your customers happy at all costs, you’ll turn frustrated customers into loyal followers. Those individuals are invaluable as they will tell many members of their network about how great your company is because you successfully solved their issue.

As your business grows, so too will customer service issues. Make sure your policy is fluid and constantly updated. Check-in with you employees quarterly or monthly to see if there were any unusual customer service issues that they were able to solve. Based on the feedback, update your policy accordingly in case that same, or a similar, issue comes up in the future.

Have you had any Customer Service mishaps with any businesses that have left you feeling either more loyal to that business OR totally turned off by it? Please share your feedback with our readers so that they can see just what types of issues arise and how they were handled. I think those real world scenarios will help all of us when drafting our Customer Service Policy.

Happy New Year!

Rating: 10.0/10 (2 votes cast)

Rating: +2 (from 2 votes)

Tags: Customer Service, Small Business Marketing
Posted in Small Business | 13 Comments »

Claim Your Small Business on Yelp

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Do you own a small business? If not, do you know someone who does? If so, then Yelp is a tool that needs to be used. What is Yelp? Straight from the Yelp website, “Yelp allows consumers to share the experiences they’ve had with local businesses and lets business owners share information about their business with their customers. Simply put, it’s word of mouth– amplified.”

If you’re looking for ways to get the word out about your business while not spending a ton of money on traditional advertising that doesn’t work…You know what I’m talking about. Those radio spots and print ads that you’ve been paying for that haven’t returned any positive sales growth for who knows how long. Follow the steps below and unlock your business profile on Yelp today.

Navigate to biz.yelp.com and perform a search for your small business
Setup your free business profile
Check out what people are saying about your business
Respond to any customer reviews
Check out your stats by clicking the “My Businesses” tab
Add images and more detail to your profile to make it stand out
Use Yelp to promote specials, coupons, and events
Stay active on Yelp to get the most out of the social tool

That’s it. You’re all setup. You can now log into Yelp as much as you want. Employees at Yelp created a great video that goes into more detail on the steps above. Check it out when you have some time.

Thousands of consumers share opinions about local businesses every single day on Yelp. Be sure that you are a part of that conversation. Whether the feedback is positive or negative, it can benefit your small business. If customers share negative reviews about your small business, and you have unlocked Yelp, you have the ability to respond to that review, both publicly and privately. Another benefit of a negative review is that you can learn about what you should be doing differently to satisfy other customers. If customers share positive reviews about your small business then you’ll capitalize on that positive word-of-mouth marketing when other interested prospects see that positive review and decide to give your product or service a try. Either way, being active on Yelp gives your small business a huge advantage over your competitors.

One thing to note is not to solicit positive reviews. First, it’s unethical and Yelp has a way to filter out reviews that seem overly positive and second, prospects become suspicious if there are nothing but positive reviews on your Yelp profile. True feedback is the best feedback.

Click the image below to check out the Business Owner’s Guide and learn more about what’s available to you on Yelp. If you want to get on Yelp, but just don’t have the time, give us a call about our Localize’it solution. Catalyst Marketers can help get you setup on Yelp and manage your account for you.