San Diego: A Tribute In Postcards

Lets celebrate our city through the voices of those who've experienced it.

We commence our postcard series...

Question for you...

Is your E-marketing program working?

Why or Why not?

Don't forget...the first five responders get a collectible stuffed lizard

What Women Want

Women as consumers are different from men, particularly when it comes to healthcare. Here are suggestions to reach and engage women:

1. Involve women in creating your messages.
Trust is a big deal, particularly when it comes to healthcare marketing. One of the most intuitive, and most effective marketing-to-women strategies is informal, interactive research providing springboards for spontaneity helps create a more transparent, empowering and compelling message your audiences (women) want to hear and trust.

2. Marketing to women successfully requires a careful consideration of their beliefs and values.
This includes:

* Strategies that connect with the causes that are important to women
* Aligning your brand and messaging to those social and community causes
* Reinforcing the role of a total wellness and lifestyle solution

3. Target women in "life stages," not "age stages."
Examples of phases can be fitness, family-centric, discovery, and seasoned. Speak to their life experiences right now, not their ages.

4. Think mother-daughter bonding.
Winning their minds and hearts means connecting with them and their influencers. Strong intergenerational influences can be found between women and their mothers, and between women and their daughters. Information and advice, especially related to healthcare, is solicited. It flows freely from one generation to another. Reinforcing this idea, Medelia Monitor Research recently revealed that 64 percent of women surveyed talk with their mothers on a daily or weekly basis. More than 41 percent say their moms are their best friends.

5 Do's When Hiring an Ad Agency

Do determine what you need: Do you need someone to lead or someone to follow? A firm that can develop a strategy or an expert at execution? Someone to challenge your thinking?

Do notice the advertising that you admire: Look for campaigns that you think are smart or creative and find out who did them.

Do initiate a conversation: Send the agency partners a letter, an email, or give them a call. Spend a few minutes on the phone together and you'll get an immediate sense of chemistry and interest.

Do narrow your list to two or three agencies and spend time at their shop: Meet their teams. Experience their culture. Initiate conversations with people in each department.

Do invite the agency to your place to review a handful of case studies: Keep in mind that you're not looking to see if they have good outcomes to report (all of them do) but to understand the thinking behind how they arrived at their solutions.