Meijer Orthopedie is a family orthopedic company with 80 years of tradition. It expands its online business through the website Thuiszorgwinkelonline.nl, selling products for both home care products for long-term ill patients, and products for acute injuries caused for example by intensive sports.
My role: Digital Marketing Specialist, Marketing Strategist
Thuiszorgwinkelonline.nl is a long-recognized website on the Dutch online care market, successfully competing with the big players. The brand strategy so far was focused on the sales techniques, without further implication of marketing. As a digital marketer, entering the company, my task was to apply the SEO and SEM strategies. But you simply cannot build a roof without building the walls. So I sat down and built the whole house, steady from its foundations. I defined thuiszorgwinkelonline.nl as an online caretaker with an understanding of both patients and their caregivers.
Scope
- Brand Development
- Digital Marketing
- SEO
- Marketing Strategy
- UX Design
Who is that thuiszorgwinkelonline.nl and what is (s)he doing?
Data are the key. For this reason, before using my intuition, I like using the available data to guard this intuition in the right direction. After researching the site and marketing tools, and comparing this sample with the customers of the offline Meijer Orthopedie shops, two main target groups crystalized.
What are the data without a clear interpretation? Just a bunch of letters and numbers, I think. After collecting all the information, the most important process has started. The conversation with the client about the held values, confronted with the social-psychological theories, data of a Dutch health-care market, and finally our company data. Our two main target groups held their solid position, neither of them giving-up its seat. In line with this finding, I have decided to switch from the socio-demographical positioning to the ultimate perspective-taking, borrowed from the human ethology discipline and suggested by V. Griskevicius, J. M. Ackerman, and J. P. Redden (2012).
Let’s face it: Socio-demographics are not always the best division-makers
According to this approach, natural selection doesn’t influence only our morphological traits, but also our psychological and behavioral tendencies. These tendencies are often treated by marketers on the proximate, short-term level, whilst the ultimate approach offers long-term solutions, answering the challenges which are set up in our minds since hunting-gathering societies. The needs were, among others, the protection against danger, forming friendships, and taking care of the kins. Since every individual reacts to the given impulses in a different way, it was important to find one which is positively stimulating both our target groups towards the finished purchase.
This approach let the team switch my attention to the most effective purchase motivations, narrowing the related needs to the protection against danger and kins protection. After a comparison with the company’s needs, the four main brand pillars emerged:
Fast Relief
Expert Advice
Understanding
Fast Return to Life
Solution? Thuiszorgwinkelonline.nl as a caregiver
While ethology provides broad-ranged solutions, the archetypical brand approach brings clear instructions that a client can follow easily, even if a marketer is not present. Thuiszorgwinkelonline.nl was reborn as a brand that cares for the health of others and helps them protect it so they will not lose it. It cares about their physical and mental health, the same as about a healthy society in general. Like that, the brand can help not only individuals but the whole society in the most effective way possible, by using its nature. Besides helping others, the brand grows thanks to the core value of long-lasting relationships and endurance, reinforced through the implementation of CRM, feedback-active approach, newsletters, and blogs.
On these foundations I could build the CSR strategy, twisting the customer-purchase approach to the wider society, answering the following question:
Does anyone know how it is to be a caregiver?
We do. We know family is the most important thing and we are always here to help and listen. We know taking care of someone is a complicated issue, full of battles, sacrifices, and the perplexing desire to help someone but not to hold them back.
Roll your sleeves up – it’s time to build a roof!
Building the brand strategy allowed me to craft meaningful messages across all channels, including UX design and SEM tools, such as Google Ads. Holding the effective tone of voice, together with focusing our attention on the best ROI products yielded great results.
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Source: Griskevicius, V., Ackerman, J. M., and Redden, J. P. (2012). Why we buy: evolution, marketing, and consumer behaviour. In: C. S. Roberts, Applied evolutionary psychology (p. 311-377). Oxford: Oxford University Press.