Healthcare Marketing Strategy Archives - Page 4 of 4

Marketing Is Not a Department

April 19, 2016/in Healthcare Branding, Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Carol Dobies, MBA

Why Healthcare Marketing Leaders Need to Inspire Others in the Organization to Deliver on the Brand Promise

When we present a strategic marketing plan to a hospital, for example, we start with a simple statement that has enormous value. It sets the tone for the entire data-driven document:

“The strategic marketing plan is a blueprint to support organization-wide growth. It is used by hospital and physician leadership, practice managers and the marketing department to guide the execution of organizational and marketing initiatives that will contribute to market share growth.”

In other words, marketing is not a department. While the quote above is specific to hospital marketing, the overarching concept is true for any healthcare organization. And our brand plans carry a similar message: brand is all about what an organization does. Everyone in the organization has a role in delivering brand authenticity – the behaviors and actions of everyone in the company come together to form the brand. When we emphasize this to clients, we see heads nodding, but few really understand what it means. Our job as healthcare marketing and branding experts is to make certain that leaders at our client organizations understand that brands are symbiotic with culture. Or, stated another way, brand building is not an initiative that belongs solely to the marketing team.

Today’s competitive healthcare market requires engagement throughout the organization to deliver on the brand promise. While the marketing department can strategically share the right message with the right audience using the right method, it is the experience each customer has with the organization that creates the brand. That’s because purchasing healthcare isn’t like purchasing your everyday product – it is far more complicated, involving far more moving parts. Before selecting a doctor or a hospital, consumers have to piece a lot of information together. They look at online ratings and reviews, social media posts from friends and neighbors, and content on health-related websites. They also have conversations with multiple people at the various hospitals and practices they are considering. Some of the information they obtain comes from communication created by a marketing department, but the vast majority is organically assembled by the experiences consumers have with the brand.

So, isn’t it logical for each person in your health organization to have a role in ensuring the right purchasing decisions are made? Logical, yes…but few outside the marketing team will claim responsibility for customer engagement, much less marketing.

A 2011 McKinsey Quarterly report summed it up nicely: “At the end the day, customers no longer separate marketing from the product—it is the product. They don’t separate marketing from their in-store or online experience—it is the experience. In the era of engagement, marketing is the company.”

As such, everyone in a given organization needs to be accountable and universally accept that marketing is the organization. This is a notion that continues to challenge many in the healthcare space. For example, recently we were exploring how one of our healthcare clients might better engage his organization to deliver on the brand promise. While the employees were conceptually on board with the notion that everyone in the organization is accountable for delivering on the promise that is communicated by marketing, they expressed concern about who would ultimately be charged with driving market share growth. We explained the marketing leader is the catalyst – the individual responsible for fueling the company’s customer engagement engine, while the marketing team is responsible for designing, building and deploying new customer engagement approaches and brand-building strategies across the organization’s departments. The marketing leader must influence everyone at the organization – not just the marketing team – to row together, getting the organization further, faster. In doing so, the marketing leader creates brand ambassadors who exponentially increase the reach of the marketing team and engage employees in new ways that make them more vested in the organization’s performance.

According to the 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer, there is a clear and compelling business case for connecting with employees as brand advocates. Data show people want to hear from employees more than any other spokesperson on issues like organizational performance and business practices. Plus, an engaged workforce is typically happy to be part of the organization and willing to go the extra distance to help enhance the organization’s overall performance (especially when the company is engaged in societal issues, as our Chief Strategy Officer, Julie Amor, discussed recently in Corporate Social Engagement: What it Means for Healthcare Brands).

In today’s era of consumer engagement, marketing and branding are no longer the purview of a single department. As mentioned, your customers no longer separate marketing from the healthcare service – it is the service. After 24 years of helping healthcare clients deploy strategic marketing and brand plans, I encourage you to build a culture of brand authenticity and engage your entire organization in the role of delivering on your brand promise. It’s time to influence others in the organization—to coach them on effective customer engagement tactics and reward them for building tighter relationships with customers. Your customers will appreciate hearing directly from your employees and your leadership will appreciate the accountability to organizational performance.

Five Ways Millennials Empower Us to be Better Healthcare Marketers

December 1, 2015/in Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Thom Ludke

Consumer healthcare marketers know millennials – generally defined as people born between 1980 and the early 2000s – are one of the most challenging segments to win over. There are countless blogs and articles about how millennials think, how to reach them and how to motivate them to act. So let’s turn the conversation around and take a moment to look at how the millennial generation has made us work harder and smarter – and in doing so, helped us become more effective healthcare marketers.

Here are some of the top characteristics of millennials we should all truly appreciate:

Millennials are entitled.

This is an opinion you will find on any online search for information about millennials. It doesn’t sound like a positive attribute, but their sense of entitlement is building higher expectations in healthcare and contributing to the industry’s need to be more patient-centric. Millennials want to make informed decisions about health—and they want it to be easily accessible on their desktops and mobile devices. They want virtual care models, text message notifications and online appointment setting. They demand convenience and often refuse to wait, which is contributing to the rise of more urgent care outlets, forcing traditional physician practices and hospitals to rethink their patient experiences.

Millennials have natural truth detectors.

Millennials are very perceptive and quick to identify when advertisers are giving it to them straight – and when they are not. As a healthcare marketer, you must avoid corporate speak and be authentic with your messaging. Otherwise, you put your brand at risk of poor social media reviews. After all, millennials feel it is their right and moral obligation to protect the social good by sharing experiences and observations online.

Millennials take a stand against campaign messages that conflict with their values.

Millennials support creative messages and brands that align with their values. Remember GoDaddy’s controversial puppy commercial planned for the 2015 Super Bowl? After a preview of the spot aired on a popular talk show, social media exploded with outrage over the ad. The company pulled the spot the very same day. If the creative aspect of an ad isn’t relevant, timely, tasteful, concise and compelling, it will fail quickly in the eyes of millennials.

Millennials lead technology adoption.

Marketing has always been on the leading edge of technology that facilitates connections between people and companies. Today we are learning a great deal from millennials. They are self-assigned researchers and testers of new digital technology, especially social media and mobile apps. Engaging target audiences on mobile devices has never been more crucial because more than 85% of millennials now use smartphones. That’s why, as a healthcare marketer, you must always consider mobile strategies with ease of access, simple messages and fresh content.

Millennials do their research.

Millennials like to learn the facts. In a matter a minutes, they will determine if an organization, physician or product is worth their consideration. Providers who are very transparent with price, quality and outcomes data will have an advantage over competitors who are less forthcoming with information. The assumption is if organizations aren’t sharing this data, they must not be proud of it.

There is much to be said for the qualities of millennials. Although some may be perceived as challenging, I find they stand up for what they believe, want and need. Most of all, they are raising the standards for healthcare marketers and providers. As healthcare marketing professionals, it is up to us to step to the plate and deliver the information millennials need to make informed decisions about health. If we don’t, I’m sure we’ll hear about it.

Healthcare Marketing Strategy Creates a “Flywheel Effect”

November 4, 2015/in Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Julie Amor, MHA

In his book, Good to Great, nationally recognized business author, Jim Collins, references the Flywheel Effect as key to an organization’s success. This concept has long guided my strategic leadership capabilities as a healthcare marketing professional. As the former Vice President of Marketing for a major academic medical center, I developed marketing strategies designed to position the organization as a market leader. I analyzed data, combined with competitive advantages and an understanding of the operational imperatives needed, to ensure success and develop a road map for growth.

Jim Collins uses the analogy of the flywheel, a device designed to smooth a machine’s operation through its ability to store energy, generate momentum and maintain a constant rotational speed, to describe how organizations can grow and continually progress. As a marketing professional, energy, momentum and constant forward movement have always been keys to my success. I believe a solution that ensures the Flywheel Effect is worth sharing.

Do you have a strategic marketing plan–not a list of tactics, but a strategic framework to drive your organization’s competitive market position? Believe it or not, most hospitals and healthcare organizations I have interacted with over the years do not take the opportunity to incorporate strategy into their marketing efforts. They may have organizational strategic plans, but no related marketing strategies to drive growth, create brand equity and address the operational components of their plans.

Without formal marketing and positioning strategies in place, organizations are simply executing tactics from a reactive position. Here are 10 key steps to a successful marketing and positioning strategy:

Review and analyze relative data such as market share
Conduct a competitive review of the market
Determine key market factors that can affect growth
Understand current preference, awareness and patient satisfaction
Analyze the data to understand key market insights
Establish a competitive positioning strategy to include goals, key differentiators and brand strategy tied directly to the business objectives of the organization
Identify internal and external operational imperatives
Execute a deadline-driven, integrated tactical plan
Monitor key metrics to determine your success
Report to internal audiences frequently to ensure everyone is delivering on the brand promise

When you apply strategy, you enhance your organization’s ability to move forward. In other words, you ensure a Flywheel Effect. Create a data-driven plan and work your tactics from that plan. Be consistent, steady and passionate about moving your organization forward. As Jim Collins says, there is no miracle moment that will propel an organization forward. Instead, the Flywheel Effect is the result of a down-to-earth, pragmatic, committed-to-excellence process—a framework that keeps companies on track.

Learn more about developing marketing and positioning strategies with maps+. Leverage the power of information through market research, competitive studies and consumer insights to navigate the nuances of an ever-changing healthcare market and move your flywheel forward.

Guide Your Marketing Strategies With Data-Driven Insights

October 21, 2015/in Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Dobies Health Marketing

Leverage the power of market data to drive marketing and positioning strategies

Is your strategic marketing plan used by everyone as a blueprint for organization-wide growth, or is it perceived as a tool for the marketing department to execute?

When you present your marketing objectives to your Board of Directors and C-suite, you can’t just talk about creative campaigns and tracking metrics. Your plan must encompass the bigger picture of how and where your organization can grow market share given your current competitive landscape (e.g. what your competitors are doing and saying, how you rank in terms of consumer preference, awareness and satisfaction, and so on). When you have this type of insight at your fingertips (and in your presentation), it becomes much easier for board members to grasp the objectives of your creative campaigns, for CFOs to allocate resources to developing authentic brand and positioning differentiators, and for CEOs to address operational barriers to ensure that your strategic marketing plan can be successfully executed.

In a perfect world, the visions of executive and board leadership and marketing professionals would always align. But in the real world, that’s not always the case. If you sense a gap between what you are trying to accomplish and how much is truly understood by your leadership, treat it not as a road block– instead, seize the opportunity to elevate the conversation and go to market with confidence.

Good news: help is available in the form of an innovative product called maps+ (which stands for marketing and positioning strategies+). maps+ rolls the comprehensive suite of strategic marketing services that Dobies Health Marketing has provided for decades into one very robust and insightful product. Expertly designed to help you navigate the nuances of an ever-changing market, maps+ helps your organization make better decisions to increase market share and brand equity.

As a healthcare marketing leader myself, I could have put maps+ to good use time and time again throughout my career. Over the years, I have personally faced the challenge of garnering buy-in from the C-suite for my marketing plans and tactics. CEOs and service line managers have asked me to “work magic” without actually being able or willing to engage in the process of defining “magic.” Consultants have been all too eager to offer help, but many, to my dismay, ultimately offered nothing more than a templated creative approach based on what has worked in other markets.

Through the years, I’ve come to appreciate the power of:

A brand built on the organization’s ACTIONS, not just a slogan or campaign
A positioning strategy based on a thorough understanding of local market dynamics AND industry evolution
Organizational differentiators that are authentic, not just marquee statements on a website
A comprehensive STRATEGIC marketing plan that is based on detailed analytics and aligned with organizational priorities
A marketing plan that incorporates measurable goals for selected individual service lines and the organization as a whole

It is only when all of the above has been presented, debated, refined and agreed upon with executive leadership that actionable plans for tactical execution can and should be developed. maps+ is your key to reaching a one to three-year marketing and positioning plan based on a market share analysis, competitive review, market forces study, preference analysis, market insights and more. I encourage my fellow healthcare marketing leaders to explore what maps+ can do for you today.

Four Reasons Healthcare Companies Should Engage Moms

October 19, 2015/in Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Dobies Health Marketing

Smart Marketing Strategies to Connect with Those Most in Charge of Healthcare Purchases

The ease of information-sharing today means people are actively seeking out health-related information now more than ever. As a result, consumer-facing healthcare companies are under added pressure to continuously increase and improve marketing efforts as they compete for business.

As we all know, there’s no one silver bullet. Healthcare marketing strategies must recognize the varying needs and perceptions of target audiences across many demographics. When it comes to connecting with those most in charge of healthcare purchasing decisions, however, there is one group you never want to ignore: moms.

Marketing to moms was one of the topics discussed at the Kansas City Healthcare Communicators Society (KCHCS) Fall Conference, and with good reason. Consider these four important points about why your organization’s marketing efforts must engage and resonate favorably with moms.

Women are the “Chief Purchasing Officers” of households.

When it comes time to buy, women are most often the decision-makers and motivators—by some estimates, women account for 85% of all consumer purchases, including 80% of healthcare decisions. Women in general have strong purchasing power, with market estimates ranging from $5 trillion to $15 trillion annually across all industries. Many of these dollars are spent not just by women, but specifically by moms – women who make healthcare decisions for themselves, their children, their spouses and, depending on age, even their parents. Bottom line: moms have a very strong influence over others when it comes to spending.

Moms represent a large market – and many of them are millennials.

Moms represent a $2.4 trillion market and are a multi-faceted group. They include Traditionalists (born 1900-1945), Boomers (born 1946-1964), Gen Xers (born 1965-1976) and, more recently, Millennials (born 1977-1997).

Millennials are the largest generation in history (even bigger than baby boomers) and the newest generation of moms, with an average age of 25 years. Millennial moms are an especially important and diverse group, claiming 80% of all births in the United States and a variety of family structures. The sooner your health organization connects with millennial moms, the more likely you are to gain millennial moms as loyal customers of your brand—especially if you engage with them on social networks.

Moms mention brands online.

Moms are more likely to use the internet than other women and mention brands more often than males. Moreover, they spend at least six hours per day on their smartphones.

Digital media has a significant impact on newer generations of moms, who have grown up as digital natives, using the internet most of their lives. They do more research and get advice at a vastly faster rate than previous generations, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Moms influence other moms.

Moms often turn to friends and online communities for health advice, recommendations and reviews—sometimes even before consulting medical experts. In fact, marketing research shows 64% of moms ask other mothers for advice before purchasing a new product, and 63% consider other moms the most credible experts when they have questions. Additionally, 55% of active social media moms said they purchased an item because of a recommendation they read online. Millennial moms, in particular, are more likely to share opinions and consider the views of others when forming impressions of a brand.

Unfortunately, many moms do not feel the healthcare industry is doing a good job of this, according to an ongoing survey, Women Want More. Many non-healthcare brands thrive by marketing to moms, and healthcare companies should not be an exception. Healthcare providers, especially, have an opportunity to connect with a large, influential demographic and create brand loyalty by enhancing relationships with moms and providing helpful information to address the unique needs of this powerful target audience.

How Competitors Can Fine-Tune Your Advertising Strategies

October 12, 2015/in Creative Advertising, Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Julie Amor, MHA

Must-Have Information for Effective Hospital Marketing

What advertising messages are being launched in my local market?

What do those creative campaigns claim, show and say?

What share of voice (SOV) do they hold and what is their reported market spend?

In my former roles as a healthcare advertising professional and VP of Marketing for a major academic medical center, questions like the ones above were always on my mind. To drive effective advertising strategies, my team needed information that brought our entire competitive landscape into focus. We needed timely, reliable insight on our local market competitors – key positioning messages, SOV and spend analysis.

The Challenge: Gathering & Analyzing Market-Wide Hospital Advertising Insight

Until now, finding and packaging this type of data was time-consuming and never as fruitful as I hoped. Using media spend reports only gave me dollars reported, but I needed to know much more than that. For starters, I needed current creative assets – capturing those across the market from multiple media outlets was difficult enough – then came the arduous tasks of:

Analyzing creative to determine local competitor messaging and market position
Calculating share of voice and share of market for each competitor
Using this insight to define and better position my own organization’s marketing and advertising strategies
Presenting the culmination of this data to my C-suite colleagues

Sounds like a lot of work, right? It was. However, a comprehensive market analysis like this was critical to my ability to (1) make well-informed, strategic recommendations, and (2) secure support for and confidence in, the marketing and advertising budget and strategy I would propose.

The Solution: A Single Source for Competitive Hospital Advertising Data

I am writing this article because I feel compelled to share that I have found a solution in soviews+ – a revolutionary tool because it offers a marked change in direction – packaging a comprehensive market analysis of competitive advertising strategies into one online interactive tool. The presentation-ready profile can be linked directly to your slide deck, analyzed and shared. Moreover, it provides data-driven insight that helps infuse strategy into your advertising and positioning recommendations – and what could be better than that?

We all know well-planned and strategic advertising efforts generate revenue. A market profile from soviews+ brings strategic positioning and justification to the messaging, placement and budget necessary to be more effective in local market advertising.

As someone who has been through the rigor of strategizing creative campaigns without a tool like this, I can honestly say soviews+ is revolutionary, leading-edge and comprehensive. It fully supports a data-driven approach by bringing must-have information right to your desktop. Fellow hospital marketers, I encourage you to let soviews+ guide your direction forward.

Healthcare Marketers: Align your Marketing Budget with the Organization’s Strategic Initiatives

April 28, 2015/in Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Dobies Health Marketing

With healthcare costs rising, hospital marketing executives must scrutinize spending more than ever. To strengthen the chances of achieving market share objectives while ensuring leadership approval of your expenditures, align your marketing budget with the organization’s business plan.

For example, if your organization has strategic pillars, allocate budget dollars to those pillars; if your organization has specific goals for growth, service line volume and other similar metrics, directly demonstrate how your budget supports those goals. Jump-start a more effective marketing budget with these two basic, but critical tips:

Set attainable goals for a stronger return on investment (ROI).
Only market services that are ready to be promoted. For hospitals, this means if an area of the hospital isn’t properly prepared to take on new patients due to manpower shortages, long wait times, faltering patient experience scores or quality disruptions, put your marketing money elsewhere. Similarly, distributors and manufacturers need to consider production and service indicators. Don’t waste your marketing dollars promoting products if back orders are present or customer service departments aren’t prepared to take on new volume. The recommendation sounds pretty basic, but how many times has the marketing dollar been spent based on the “squeaky wheel” factor – the physician who demands a billboard; the sales manager who needs to reach her quotas? Keep open channels of communication between production and sales so that you spend wisely and can attain ROI on your marketing dollars.

Communicate and collaborate.
Regularly let key stakeholders know how your marketing efforts are contributing to the organization’s overall business plan and financial health. When you keep your colleagues informed, you will a) find ways to extend your budget through other departments, b) help others gain a better understanding for proper use of the marketing dollar, and c) get better ideas and more internal support/adoption for your marketing strategies.

Coming up next: our final topic in this healthcare marketing and branding series covers the benefits of stepping outside your marketing comfort zone – unleashing new ideas to reach new audiences. Check back soon for that!

If you missed the last blog posts in our series, catch up now:

It’s a Strategic Plan, Not a Shelf Decoration: Why Healthcare Marketers Should Revisit Plans Regularly

June 14, 2012/in Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Dobies Health Marketing

On our new website, we promise to help clients connect the dots through careful research and informed strategic planning. But then what? Even after a marketing plan is signed, sealed and delivered, the work is far from over, and execution is only part of what remains. Revisiting your marketing imperatives to monitor, measure and sometimes modify is a critical success factor.

In other words, as you execute your strategic plan over time, make it a priority to assess the current landscape against your long-term marketing goals. What’s at stake if you don’t? Shelving your strategic plan means missing out on regular opportunities to:

Conduct a historical review. Compare marketing imperatives against new data, and pay keen attention to key benchmarks that align with your plan. For example, hospital marketers should look at measurements like outmigration trends, physician referral patterns, clinical quality measures, patient satisfaction scores and so on.

Uncover new opportunities. Looking at fresh market data through the lens of your long-term strategic plan enables timelier decisions that help you meet market demand and gain competitive advantages.

Forecast what lies ahead. Being forward-thinking and adaptable to an evolving landscape is important for marketing plans to be both efficient and effective.

Identify emerging challenges or limitations early on. It’s important to pinpoint where operations are poorly aligned with strategic priorities and to respond swiftly when local, regional and national healthcare developments affect your organization. Regular strategic plan reviews help with that.

Inform key players of progress and lessons learned. Marketing departments lead marketing plans, but when patient-facing and decision-making personnel are not engaged and aware of the objectives, success will be out of reach.

At Dobies Health Marketing, we encourage and often lead quarterly strategic plan reviews with clients. There’s no better way to make sure actions continuously align with the objectives that inspired them in the first place. Give yourself the insight you need to make better decisions and revitalize your marketing strategy today.

Hospital Marketing & the CEO Insights Behind Success

May 16, 2012/in Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Carol Dobies, MBA

In a previous blog post, I discussed responsibilities associated with the evolving role of hospital marketers. Recently, after reviewing Thomson Reuters research involving 100 Top Hospitals® CEO Insights, it struck me how closely the top three hospital success factors align with the three primary marketing responsibilities I mentioned in my blog post. Let’s take a closer look.

According to “strong patterns in guiding philosophies” that emerged from CEO insights in the study, the top three hospital success factors are listed below, each accompanied by my own assessment of its application in marketing:

Unwavering Commitment to Quality. As top CEOs demonstrate a strong and clear commitment to quality, marketing staff must respond by becoming champions of transparency who communicate results and drive healthy patient experiences.

Making Great Relationships with Physicians. Top CEOs recognize that keeping physicians engaged, motivated and aligned is a key success factor. Unfortunately, many of today’s hospitals do not have a dedicated physician relations program. Instead that role is shared by the CEO and other hospital leaders. The future requires a data-inspired, fully committed approach to physician relations that offers support and direction to physicians. The hospital’s marketing officer should be integral to these efforts.

Ability to Overcome Today’s Greatest Challenges: Reform and Reimbursement Cuts. As hospital CEOs face unprecedented pressures to operationalize under health reform, marketing officers need to lead the charge with new business strategies that position the organization to compete more effectively. We see marketing leaders becoming much more focused on shorter-term scenario planning and research and development of new care management programs (e.g. CHF clinics, access strategies, medical home models, etc.) to help the organization excel in a value-based purchasing environment.

If you’re in hospital marketing, ask yourself: do your current responsibilities align with the top three hospital success factors, and therefore, your CEO’s expectations? If not, it’s time to rewrite your job description. Start by thinking practically about how you can drive your organization to greater success using the points above as your guide.

In-Depth Interviews (IDIs): Exploring the Hearts and Minds of Healthcare Consumers

December 7, 2011/in Consumerism, Healthcare Branding, Healthcare Marketing Strategy/by Dobies Health Marketing

Recently, we heard some compelling stories about a client’s brand. We were conducting consumer in-depth interviews (IDIs) to better understand how people make personal healthcare decisions, as well as their perceptions of our client’s brand.

As we listened, we were impressed by the passion and honesty each participant shared—a benefit that’s relatively unique to IDIs. Focus groups, on the other hand, tend to be dominated by a handful of participants, which can skew results. By eliminating the drawbacks of “group think,” IDIs enabled us to garner consumer input that was not affected by the views of other participants.

Other advantages of IDIs include:

They allow us to investigate not only perceptions, but also individual thought processes. Because consumer feedback is solicited and given in a one-on-one dialogue, IDIs help shed light on differences that exist within each target segment.
By design, IDIs give the interviewee significantly more “floor” time, meaning the consumer will speak for approximately 80 percent of the interview. By contrast, focus groups require more speaking and facilitating by the moderator, which leaves less time overall for consumer responses.
IDIs can be adapted to other settings as well, including online and phone interviews.

We value IDIs for all these reasons and more. By taking group bias and external influence out of the equation, we can gather insightful information for our client that may not have surfaced as clearly in a focus group or survey. Probing the hearts and minds of healthcare consumers as individuals enabled us to draw several informed conclusions and build them into our client’s strategic plan. We are confident tomorrow’s consumers will like what they see from this client in the coming years because it will be, by and large, exactly what they said they want and need.