Hailing from a “good-sized town” of Tulsa, Oklahoma came the meek and marvelous Julie Rowell.

Trust – It’s a critical factor when it comes to healthcare. You want to know you’re getting the very best information and that it’s coming from an expert. In the past, you would find your healthcare provider through word-of-mouth or you would hear about healthcare issues on the evening news. In the age of the internet, a person has access to research, customer reviews, facility tours and even interaction with the healthcare community from the comfort of their couch. So how can you ensure that you’re positioning your brand as an expert and building trust with your current and new clientele? Here are 5 ways to improve the way you market your healthcare brand.

1. Discoverability

Gone are the days of flipping through the yellow pages. Now, we are able to have a variety of crowdsourced information right at our fingertips. You need to have an online presence. Search engine optimization for your website, social media and blogging are all vital parts of today’s marketing landscape, but that’s not all. You need consistency. Make sure your name, address and phone number are identically listed across the web. The more consistent your information appears, the better chance your listing will show up in a local search.

I think it's apparent that in marketing today we can no longer taut the "big sale" or the "new feature" and truly believe that our message is going to resonate with our audience. Heck, our audience no longer wants to be seen as an "audience" or a "consumer" or a "prospect." They want to be seen as a human.

Audiences of today, especially younger demographics, want brands to be more socially aware, authentic and transparent. They care more about who you are than what you are selling. As the digital world moves us into automation and algorithms, the human aspect is now a competitive advantage and a selling point for marketers. We need to understand that purchasing decisions aren't always rational. There are almost always underlying motivations, emotions or sentiments involved in the buying cycles. In an analysis of the IPA dataBANK, which contains 1,400 case studies of successful advertising campaigns, campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) as those with only rational content. Additionally, the purely emotional campaigns performed slightly better than those that mixed emotional and rational content. Emotionally connected customers spent, on average, twice as much annually as highly satisfied customers. It's safe to say empathy is key to marketing campaigns in 2019 and beyond. 

Emotion in marketing isn't a new concept. Brands are building content around brand experiences, storytelling and social purpose—but we have all seen this go wrong. There is a real difference in talking about emotion and having true emotional intelligence. Brands often pay the price when they don’t walk the walk. I think one fault we have in behavior change marketing is that we often want to help solve a problem or challenge that our audience faces but really we need to respond to the challenge, itself. Brene Brown says, “The truth is, rarely can a response make something better—what makes something better is connection.”  She follows that by stating that real connection requires vulnerability.  “Empathy is a choice, and it’s a vulnerable choice because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling.” We need to aim to connect with both the rational and emotional parts of our audiences to truly move the needle towards objectives. 

So what does emotional intelligence or "EQ" look like for a brand? Brands that are harnessing EQ are honest about their motives, deeply empathic with their audience and find the overlap between organizational objectives and the motivations of an audience. This is the balance between the emotional and rational parts of your brain. Emotionally intelligent brands, like emotionally intelligent humans, succeed in finding empathetic connections between the who and the why. Emotionally intelligent brands are going to pave the way of this new era. They can identify the underlying needs and motivations of individuals who are not just driven to make a purchase but who can be motivated and empowered enough to make a life change. If marketers can use empathy to understand a persona's life experiences then we can connect our brand with those needs in a truly relevant way.

VI Marketing and Branding has landed the agency of record contract with the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) effective February 2019. 

In her final semester at OU, Renée Harriman landed an internship at a disruptive agency in OKC. Little did she know that pint-sized firm would become the marketing juggernaut known as VI Marketing and Branding. And perhaps no one could have predicted that Renée would become head honcho of VI's media department. No one, that is, but Tim Berney.

"Each time a woman stands up for herself, she stands up for all women," proclaimed Maya Angelou. 

The future of payment processing lies within mobile technology as it continues to disrupt traditional payment systems including credit, debit cards and even cash. In fact, mobile wallets are on track to exceed both credit and debit card usage by 2020 (WorldPay). With mobile payment, it’s time to get with the times or get left behind.

Need some digital marketing inspiration this week? The digital team at VI is always seeking out the latest in digital marketing insights. In an ever-evolving industry, we keep our skills sharp and our clients top-of-mind. 

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But, it’s a horrible brand strategy. You can’t own a position that another brand already owns in the consumer’s mind. And certainly not if that brand is a stalwart like McDonald’s. Yet, Burger King is doing just that: They are trying to beat McDonald’s at their own game. The most recent is the BK version of the Big Mac (Big King XL), but there’s a long history of Burger King chasing Micky-D’s.

VI Marketing and Branding shined bright at the 53rd annual Oklahoma City ADDY Awards on Saturday night. The electric lights beamed throughout Oklahoma City's Criterion venue as the agency took home twenty-five awards in all including: 5 Gold, 11 Silver and 9 Bronze ADDY Awards.

What are personas and why do we need them?

Are you one of over 40 million of us still yawning from a late night of Adam Levine abs and not enough touchdowns?