How Integrated is Your Marketing With Communications?

How much more effective would your marketing campaigns in traditional, online, social, mobile and Public/Media relations be, if you made a conscious effort to frame your messaging in your communications campaigns around the main brand and key messages you use in your marketing campaigns?

More often than not, brand messages in healthcare communications sometimes lack the level of integration and planning needed across vehicles and channels. Little, if any attention, is given to using communications as a strategic and integrative vehicle in the overall marketing effort. With so many different marketing activities and channels required to cut through the clutter, in order to leverage your key messages, you can no longer afford to not have your communications highly integrated with marketing.

Is that lack of integration a missed opportunity?

We are expected by our audiences to advertise, write white papers, create case studies, write impactful sales materials, partner with leading market research organizations to present "groundbreaking" topical surveys and results, as well as produce other materials.

People see, read and hopefully the key messages resonate, advancing the brand, generating sales leads, or in some cases, bring a sense of accomplishment to internal audiences, because in the end, all of these materials are "about us". Activity measurement as opposed to outcomes measurement.

Integrated communications can provide you with a continuous brand presence in the market that you cannot afford through paid efforts. It can successfully build positive impressions and solid opinions which after a while, will come to be believed about your organization.

If you are not integrating your brand messaging into your communication efforts internally and externally, your losing the opportunity of a lifetime, and potentially your markets.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Can Transparency on Outcomes and Quality, Increase Volume, Revenue and Market Share?

Tough economy and getting worse. Hospital volume, scripts and specialty drug orders, flat or down. Little differentiation among competitors in many healthcare verticals. New proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid spending. High unemployment with no end in sight. Political gridlock. Healthcare payment models evolving from production payment focused on care delivered, to pay-for-performance based on quality outcomes. Price competition. And finally, a growing empowered healthcare consumer, taking control and playing an active part in the healthcare decision-making process.

With all this transpiring, most are taking the same past course of marketing action. Advertise services by making claims of world-class service. "Me too" messaging, attempting to driving volume because we focus all of our efforts and resources around you. (Isn't that what you are supposed to do anyway?) Sales forces all focusing on the same a therapy or drug class in specialty pharmacy which, in most cases, is the same as the specialty pharmacy down the street.

But nearly everyone, is missing the most important piece of the puzzle to generate demand, revenue and market share.

Where is the outcomes and quality data?

One area that is greatly lacking in most healthcare marketing, is an intelligent dialogue on your outcomes with your audiences. Payors', pharma and medical device, have recognized this and are leading in the use of quality and outcomes data to drive decision-making. It is time for the rest of the healthcare industry to catch up.

And in my experience, it works. Driving demand, volume, revenue and market share.

I maintain that even in this economy, there are healthcare dollars out there. Healthcare consumers willing to spend those dollars, if only that had a compelling reason to do so. With all other marketing avenues exhausted, healthcare executives weary from being in "survival mode" and facing new revenue pressures, one would think healthcare marketing would be able to answer some of these challenges.

Maybe it's time to give the healthcare consumer be it employer, individual or family, or any other stakeholder you can identify, quality and outcomes data to make decisions?

That's really the only avenue left for healthcare providers, to start talking about quality and outcomes. Engaging in a meaningful dialogue, that goes beyond accreditation logos and quality awards from third parties, to an actual honest-to-goodness quality and outcomes disclosure and discussion.

Few healthcare providers are willing. Most are afraid of this direction. But, it's a strategy and tactic that can break the current cycle of avoidance and loss. Leadership. Courage. The ability to be visionary. Recognizing that your customers, are best served by the healthcare organization that places them first in a meaningful way.

You have some choices here. Stay the course and do what you have been doing. Get lost in an endless paralysis by analysis loop. Mimic your competitors. Talk about quality and outcomes in vague terms. Or, be the first in your market, to establish a clear strategic marketing plan, focused on your healthcare consumers, about your brand in terms of quality and outcomes.

Sooner or later, you are going to have to do this.

If you are not willing to change, then don't expect a different outcome from doing the same old healthcare marketing that you have been.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter:    http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Are You Using Your Patient Educational Materials in Your Marketing Efforts?

When you consider all the time, resources and effort spent, in developing patient educational materials, by specialty pharmacies along the therapies of RA, MS, HIV/AIDS, Oncology and Transplant, payers, PBMs, pharmaceutical manufactures, disease-specific associations and hospitals, one would surmise that an opportunity exists, to use them in broader channel marketing efforts.

Pharma and disease-specific associations have great and innovative marketing programs around patient education. After that, specialty pharmacy's, PBMs, and hospitals, not so much. I think that their use in marketing campaigns will depend greatly on the quality of the materials. And in some cases, they are pretty poorly written and designed. Sometimes lacking all together.

But are all healthcare segments, especially specialty pharmacies, missing an opportunity to truly differentiate themselves in a lookalike marketplace?

I know. We all think we are the best at what we do, offering considerable expertise, advice and education to improve the health, compliance, adherence and healthcare IQ quotient of our patients. Is that really the case, or, is it just to show payers that you are engaged in direct patient education, supplementing the investment in out-bound call center infrastructure, using computer based clinical information systems, etc.

Patient education is a great medium to reinforce your brand, your brand promise and create customer evangelists. But that of course assumes, that you are doing original work in patient education. And not, just throwing together one-page disease information sheets, or using information from associations or pharma. Just because you throw some patient education materials in a med box, pass them out at a health and wellness fair, or use another other channel for distribution, doesn't mean that you are accomplishing anything. Other than your materials possibly reaching the recycle bin.

This is by no means a knock on any association or pharma materials, for they are great sources of information and advice. They just lack an organizational imprint of who you are, your brand and brand promise, to be able to showcase the breadth and depth of your knowledge and expertise. And that imprint doesn't mean putting your logo on the materials.

Besides the pervasive fear of competitors seeing what you are doing, patient education materials need to be on your web site, in easily accessible and downloadable formats. You can use QR codes in your mobile marketing, that take individuals to the patient education section. Reference them in your communications programs. Build a marketing strategy around them to differentiate you from other providers.

Be the first and everyone else looks like a "me too".

Sometimes, the simplest marketing strategy is the one that creates customer evangelists, improves health and well-being and positions you as a leader in your healthcare vertical.

Don't discount the importance of patient educational materials in your marketing and what they can do for you.

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Are You Engaged in Disruptive Healthcare Marketing?

This is not about guerilla marketing. I am writing about engaging in what I call Disruptive Healthcare Marketing (DHM). DHM is a process that moves you from looking like a "me too" in your healthcare marketing, to forcing competitors into changing their game, reacting to you.

If for the sake of argument, you can agree that there is little meaningful differentiation, healthcare is becoming a commodity, price competition is beginning, and the healthcare consumer is becoming more empowered and taking control, then why would you continue to market the same old ways and play follow the leader in your industry vertical? Isn't that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Disruption is occurring across healthcare on a daily basis and well into the foreseeable future. So why isn't healthcare marketing keeping pace?

Much healthcare marketing is like Lemmings in a herd, falling over the cliff because everybody else is. If your marketing is so effective, then why do executives, especially in hospitals, talk of being in survival mode? Sounds like what you have been doing isn't working.

Disruptive Healthcare Marketing is contrarian in nature.

That's right, DHM is contrarian in nature, because you don't follow the leader and change a few things in an effort to look different, with the same essential message. It's about finding those meaningful points of differentiation that your consumer is looking for that will resonate. You ask the hard questions. You do the grunt work. You challenge conventional thinking. You challenge the culture and beliefs of the organization. You look at why someone is taking a particular strategy path, and understand why they aren't doing something else. You lead. It's about going in a different sustainable directions that builds volume, revenue and market share.

Everyone is chasing the same healthcare consumer and looking the same in the process.

Really, is your customer/patient satisfaction that much different from your competitors? Are your hi-tech medical devices so amazing that healthcare consumers and purchasers will flock to your doors? Can your valet service "out customer experience" the healthcare provider on the other side of town? Can your specialty pharmacy clinical sales tell you, without a 50 slide deck, in 25 words or less, how you are better than a competitor? Can you do a presentation to an insurer that that's not 80 slides of, all about you?

Are you saying to your marketing department, look what they did?

If yes is the answer to any of the questions, then you are not engaged in Disruptive Healthcare Marketing.

A Disruptive Healthcare Marketing model can look like this:

Disruptive Healthcare Marketing utilizes marketing in a strategically focused plan, to provide meaningful differentiation, positions you as the leader and create a brand story with lasting marketplace presence. It is highly integrated, sustainable and focused. DHM changes the organization. It will make you uncomfortable. But then, if you're not uncomfortable, then you really aren't changing.

Insert any audience in the center of the model and you have Disruptive Healthcare Marketing. Integrated, coordinated and not based on what your competition is doing, but upon you, your brand and your differentiable, sustainable message points.

Change or be changed. You decide.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- :michael@themichaeljgroup.com or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Have Direct-Care Healthcare Providers Become a Commodity?

In a most robust discussion on LinkedIn, in the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development group page, regarding meaningful differentiation in healthcare, a question was posed by one of the participants, that received no comment, but is very important.

Has healthcare become a commodity?

If we look at the definition of a commodity as I remember it from my graduate econ classes, a commodity has the following properties: It is produced and sold by many companies; There is generally uniform quality between competitors' that sell or provide it; There is demand for the product or service; And it is supplied without qualitative differences between one company's products and services from another.

Sounds like a hospital, doctor, home care agency, infusion center and specialty pharmacy company to name a few.

When you think about it in this light, I would maintain that the majority of healthcare providers can be considered commodities, with a few notable exceptions, such as the Mayo Clinic, The Cleveland Clinic, M D Anderson and a few select others. Maybe not to patients at this time, but to employers, insurance companies, the self-insured and governments to name a few, that healthcare providers are commodities.

In the absence of qualitative data on quality and outcomes, that would generally available and understandable to consumers, then how does one tell the difference between direct-care providers?

For example, hospitals nearly all have the same clinical programs and services, JACHO accreditation, technology, insurance contracts, community- based medical staff's, MOBs. surgical-centers , ERs etc. It's the old a hospital, is a hospital, is a hospital argument.

A consumer really can't tell on the face of it, meaningful qualitative differences between providers. And I don't think it is because they can't or don't have the ability, but because they simply don't have the right information. Since healthcare consumer's can't identify and hence don't know, what those differences are, the direct-care providers in the healthcare industry are allowing their healthcare vertical to become commoditized. Everyone looks the same.

With the introduction innovative tools from payers, (Are you ready for price competition?) where insurance plan members at Aetna's Payment Estimator, WellPoint's AIM subsidiary and United Heath with its Innovation Center , allow members to compare and shop on price and determine their co-pay or deductible for their out-of-pocket expense, you have the introduction of consumer shopping behavior. And these tools are not just limited web site use. They have mobile applications as well in most cases. What we see is that these tools, interject a new level of commoditization to hospitals, physicians and others. The assumption is that quality is equal across providers.

Say what you want about the quality argument. Until you can qualitatively define your quality as better than a competitor, just saying you provide quality care is a hollow argument.

As consumers become more price conscious and take more control in the decision-making process, it behooves direct-care healthcare providers to become more market differentiable, based on qualitative data. You may not like it, but the sooner you get ahead of the commoditization spiral, if that is even possible, the better off you will be.

Healthcare is rapidly changing, from a provider-controlled and dominated decision-making model, to a consumer-controlled, decision-making model. And in a consumer-controlled model, absent meaningful and understandable qualitative differentiation, healthcare services become just another commodity. One that is in the end whose purchase will be based on price.

Now there's real healthcare reform.

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Is Meaningful Differentiation Lacking in Healthcare Marketing?

The other day, I was reading my local community newspaper, the Herald-News and a national publication, The Wall Street Journal. Yes, I am kind of old fashion that way, reading a newspaper where you actually have to touch and turn a page, and move your head to read a story. In both papers, I saw several healthcare advertisements and a placed story.

Normally, one would probably would scan the ads or the story, make a fast determination of usefulness, and move on. Especially, if you don't need that particular service or clinical capability at the time. The placed story led with "A spa like atmosphere". Really.

But when looking at all the placements, I asked myself, what were the distinguishing differentiation characteristics, that separated everyone? What was the brand promise? What were the key messages? And most importantly, what, as a healthcare consumer, did you expect me to do?

Sadly, I could not find any clear and unambiguous differentiation.

This is not a challenge to be overcome, to be politically correct. It's a marketing problem. Period.

And it goes on in markets all across the U.S.A. on a daily basis.

What it reflects, is an old way of doing business. In a dynamic and rapidly changing healthcare market, where the consumer, is beginning to assert more control over the decision-making process, healthcare providers need to begin paying more attention to what they are, and are not saying. Just saying we provide quality care, have the best physicians, treat you with the latest high-tech toys, or provide an exclusive hotel-like experience doesn't work.

Those messages do not differentiate you. Everybody is saying the same thing.

The healthcare consumer of today, is looking for meaningful information upon which to make a reasonable and rational decision.

They are looking for answers to such questions as:

Why should I choose you?

What makes your doctors different, from the physicians in the other hospital, office or clinic down the street, who by the way, practice medicine in your hospital, and as your physicians do, admit to that hospital too?

How are your high-tech diagnostic and treatment tools, so outstandingly different from the ones in other settings. How do they make an outcome difference?

Do you really think that I care that you have a "spa like setting", big screen HD TVs, or internet access and will use that information to make one of the most important decisions in my life?

There are no easy answers.

The answers do require, that healthcare leadership and many marketing departments, begin to admit, and recognize, that the old way of healthcare marketing doesn't work anymore. Your brand messaging and advertisements, direct mail, web site, social media efforts etc., will have to become clearer. Much more clear on the benefits of, and reasons for, choosing you. That means treating the new healthcare consumer not as an idiot, but as a partner in the decision-making process. It means becoming transparent and open about outcomes. It means educating the healthcare consumer, about what the value is of an award is and what that award means to them.

It means changing attitudes toward, and practice of, marketing in your organization. Understanding that the old ways of healthcare marketing just don't work anymore.

To the major health system, that ran the cardiovascular ad in the Wall Street Journal, placing the Thompson Reuters Top 100 logo for excellence in that service-line, pay attention. The date on the logo of the award is 2008. It's 2011.

Since that award is bestowed annually and it's two years old, do you think that maybe the consumer, is asking what happened the last two years that you didn't receive the award?

Never let a consumer think of, or ask a question you don't want to answer.

Repeat after me: Brand. Price. Value. Differentiation.

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Are You Ready for Healthcare Price Competition?

The game is changing. Rapidly.

That's what I call Aetna's introduction to its members, of its easy-to-use, out-of-pocket payment estimator. Simple really, know the cost of a test, visit or procedure; know what it will cost you. But it doesn't stop there, it allows the healthcare consumer to compare the cost across multiple network providers. You can compare costs across 10 different hospitals and doctors.

WellPoint through its AIM subsidiary has shown where it was possible to incentivize physicians and plan members, to shop for radiology services and choose the lowest cost provider. It's reducing healthcare costs; while maintaining quality.

United HealthCare, though its Innovation Center , is empowering its clients and 70 million members across a broad array of data driven products and services, for the healthcare consumer to better understand their healthcare utilization, and make cost effective choices.

And these are just a couple of the price and cost decision-making information that the healthcare consumer is starting to receive. (I receive no remuneration from mentioning these three companies. As a matter fact, they didn't even know I did this.) How long do you think it will be, before everyone else plays follow- the-leader?

As I have written in the past, healthcare is rapidly changing from a provider-dominated and controlled model, to a consumer-dominated and controlled model. And these changes are further evidence of the change. Nothing like having higher out-of-pocket expenses, coupled with the ability to obtain pricing information, then combined with the ability to estimate your own costs, to get healthcare consumers to pay attention. Shopping for care.

Member co-pays and deductibles are rising. Healthcare consumers are facing the economic reality that they now have some "skin-in-the-game". Can you really think of any better way to control healthcare costs and introduce a level of price competition, by providing information which really up until now, was essentiality unattainable?

Forget the quality argument.

Just because you charge more doesn't mean you have higher quality. The healthcare consumer already assumes quality. And they assume that it is equal across multiple providers. Saying you have high quality when you are unable to differentiate yourself in the market, because you won't use outcomes data, is a claim that falls on deaf ears. It's a given. It's the business you are in.

Pricing begins to rear its head in the healthcare consumer's decision-making process. And when all other things are equal, in the mind of the consumers, price wins. Quality is assumed. Caring is assumed. It's what you do.

Your marketing needs to change. Now.

Most healthcare organizations that are consumer facing, have never really had to deal with the pricing equation on a competitive basis. For insurance, medical device, pharma and other suppliers to healthcare, price competition has been a requirement in their markets since the beginning of time.

Now, doctors, hospitals, and others will need to change their marketing operations and begin to deal on price. Your brand and brand reputation, takes on new meaning, when price and choice become a critical component in the healthcare consumer decision-making process. High price, undifferentiated quality, won't cut it anymore.

Competing on price vs. claims of quality, requires a different set of marketing skills than what you have traditionally found in most healthcare marketing operations. It requires more than a communications skill set, or senior leadership thinking that they know how to market. This is a game changer, and if marketing is not at the senior management table now and involved across the organization, then you are already in deeper trouble than you think.

Change is never easy. Eespecially old attitudes towards the value of, and need for, healthcare marketing. With an industry changing as rapidly as healthcare. With price competition now entering the equation. I prefer to think that a potential golden age of healthcare marketing is upon us. One where the old attitudes are going away. Highly trained, experienced and professional marketing people will take their place at the senior management table. And in the process, healthcare becomes more accountable to the consumer in ways never imagined.

Repeat after me: Brand, Price, Value.

Exciting times we live in. Game on.

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com/

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.