Marketers everywhere are under constant pressure to create, innovate, and captivate. There’s so much competition—especially in the behavioral health sector—and the pressure to stand out from the crowd is daunting.
Your creatives, whether you’re working with video, audio, images, or any other ad format, have to evolve to remain effective. And evolution requires innovation. Successful marketers are, as a general rule, innovative—it comes with the territory. But innovation alone isn’t enough. You also need the skills and expertise to ensure your creatives evolve in a way to support your digital marketing goals.
Improving Your Creatives
When it comes to your digital marketing assets, there are a few fundamentals that will always help you produce high-quality creatives that resonate with your target audience while helping to support your digital marketing objectives. Start with these, and then innovate away!
1. Effective Imagery
Images are what people see first when they look at your advertising. You have 50 milliseconds to make an impression,1 and the visual aspects of your ad will determine if people stick around any longer than a few milliseconds.
As a behavioral health marketer, your patients and your team are at the heart of what you do. Make sure you use original (not stock photos) of individuals who work for and are treated by your center. Research shows that ads featuring human beings perform more than 30% better than ads that don’t.2 Be sure to get permission from your clients and staff before sharing any photos in your materials.
When you spotlight people in your marketing, consider how to incorporate diversity. Around 64% of people admit to taking action3 after seeing an ad they perceived as diverse or inclusive.
Videos offer the best chance of capturing attention for a meaningful amount of time. If video is your medium (and it should be), introduce your behavioral health center as quickly as possible. Viewers are 23% more likely to remember your center4 when mentioned within the first three seconds of the video ad. Limit video ads to 16-20 seconds to achieve the greatest impact.5 Your potential clients have a short attention span, and there’s a lot competing for their time.
Imagery extends beyond just photos and videos. For example, your text should be title case, not sentence case. Google’s own research shows that title case descriptions perform up to 27% better than sentence case descriptions.6
2. Content That Connects
What do people do after they look at the images on an ad? They read the copy. And when they read, they’re looking for something helpful and personalized.
Most consumers say helpfulness is one of the most important attributes of a brand. An astounding 78% of consumers want advertising to demonstrate how a business or organization7 can help them in their everyday life. Fortunately, demonstrating helpfulness in the behavioral health world should already be your primary goal. Active messages like, “get help today,” or “you can change your life,” will likely resonate with your ideal client.
But your prospective patients also want to feel special. They want to feel like your marketing campaign is tailored specifically to them. This isn’t just a preference, but rather an expectation. Ninety-two percent of marketing professionals claim8 that prospects expect personalized marketing.
Research backs this up. Google’s analysis of personalization in marketing revealed that personalized headlines perform up to 30% better than non-personalized headlines.9 Individualized meta descriptions also perform twice as well.
3. Hire a Digital Marketing Firm
Stagnation is a real problem in marketing today. When you live, eat, and breathe promoting your behavioral health center, losing that creative spark at some point in your career is predictable.
You love what you do and are passionate about helping people. But finding the time to create effective marketing that resonates with your ideal patients takes time; keeping up to date with the latest technical changes to Google’s algorithm and the latest marketing trends and best practices can be a full time job all on its own.
If you’re finding yourself struggling to keep up with the demands of promoting your center and reaching the patients who need your services, outsourcing your creatives to an agency with an understanding of the space can alleviate that pain point.
Looking for more ideas on how you can keep your creatives fresh and impactful, or want to take a deeper dive on your marketing strategy to make sure you’re addressing the needs of your target audience? Dreamscape Marketing can help. Contact us at 888.307.7304 to schedule a strategy session today.
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