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Showing posts from 2009

The Brave New Healthcare Marketing World 2010 And Beyond- Its All About Demand Management

The world as you know it is changing forever, so better for you to face the brave new world of healthcare marketing in 2010 and beyond, than to be on the tracks of an oncoming train like a deer in headlights and be hit unprepared. Assuming healthcare legislation will pass in early 2010, its time for healthcare systems to start thinking and learning about demand management. Not the generating type of demand for services, but managing the demand that will naturally come from 31 million plus people suddenly having access to health insurance and healthcare services. Granted, the reforms will phase in over the next few year until 2014, when the healthcare reform actions will be fully in place. The coming demand for services will be unprecedented. And the current configuration of the healthcare system across the country for care delivery is not ready. Not ready at all. Hospital beds taken out-of-service over the years. ERs strained from over utilization; lack of nurses and primary care phy

The IDC Marketing Operations Holiday Gift List

This month I was delighted to join the Advisory Board of MOCCA: The Marketing Operations Cross-Company Alliance . In this new role I am looking forward to working with a number of current IDC CMO Advisory clients and also many new colleagues as we help to expand the professional capabilities of the important Marketing Operations (MO) role. At the initial Advisory Board meeting, the basic theme of the discussion centered around the complexity and expansion of the MO role. “Our typical member needs so much and the role is evolving so quickly” …we concurred… “That we have a world of opportunity to serve and support them. And so, where to start?” And so, where do we start, to start 2010? First, let’s finish 2009 end enjoy the Holidays. It has been a difficult 2009 for all of us in marketing. But especially so for our MO staff! Marketing’s selfless few who have ignored the hunger-pangs of process improvement so that demand generation might eat ! Our tireless servants-of-spreadsheets who hav

Are You Working in a HiPPO Marketing Environment?

The other day, I was attending an American Marketing Association webinar on “ Your Customers Aren’t Hiding the Answers, You Just Need to Know Where to Look ”, sponsored by Autonomy Multichannel Customer Interaction Solutions. The presenters were Andrew Joiner, CEO and Jeff Westover, VP Marketing. (Note, I am not receiving any payment in mentioning this, but you will see why in a short bit. It’s all about full attribution.) In one slide they presented what really summed up for me what most healthcare marketing is like. And I wish I had thought of it; which bring us back to the original question. Are you working in a HiPPO marketing environment? H Highest P Paid P Position O Opinion Yes HiPPO! It was a moment in time where it all fell toget

Is there hope for hospital marketing leadership?

Is there hope for hospital marketing leadership? A broad question which is really more than just a simple yes or no. And I for one, really don't know if an answer is possible due to the complexity of the question. Here's why...... A couple of weeks ago, I had an interesting conversation with the CEO of a hospital regarding a Vice President of Marketing position, or was it Director? They hadn't quit made up their minds and advertised it as Vice President while their web site indicated Vice President/Director, the HR person said Director while the CEO never committed. Just a few red flags. Another red flag was that the hospital set-up the interview for a specific time and they would call. The day came and yes they called.... 10 minutes late. No apology, no explanation, no initial courtesy to extend any kind of acknowledgement that my time was as equally as valuable as theirs. The CEO and the Director of HR on one end of the phone and me on the other. The HR person never said

Healthcare Marketing Leadership

A short while ago, a very good friend of mine who is the Chief Marketing Officer for an international company was interviewed by The Sterling Report for CMO Spotlight. Ed gave a great interview on marketing leadership. It did give me pause to think about what marketing leadership should be in healthcare. As a service to my readers, here is the link to the article: The Sterling Report CMO Spotlight: Interview with Edward Vesely http://www.sterlinghoffman.com/newsletter/archives/sep09.html http://www.sterlinghoffman.com/newsletter/articles/article509.html Though there are many great examples of healthcare meaning hospital, health system and physician marketing across the country, it seems that these are far and few in-between. This is a shame really because of all the talented marketers that are in the industry. More often than not, we let well meaning individuals who in the end have not formal training or clear understanding of marketing to hold sway over the direction. Now let me be

IDC's 7th Annual Tech Mktg. Benchmarks Study

Key CMO Priorities and Investment Strategies for 2010 2009 will be a year that all marketers would probably like to forget. As a community, tech marketers have had to withstand significant recession-led budget cuts, staff reductions, and organizational disruption. For the full year 2009, the average large ($1b+) IT vendor will have reduced overall marketing budgets by 8.3%. The average vendor has reduced the number of marketing staff by about 10% in 2009. In total, IDC estimates that over 6,000 marketing jobs will be lost in the IT vendor community (worldwide) during 2009. It may seem simplistic to say that "times of great change bring times of great opportunity". But IDC's surveys, interviews, and personal interactions with the best and brightest of tech marketers, validate that many CMO's and marketing leaders are indeed creating opportunity out of the 2009 chaos in preparation for 2010. So how are the best-in-class marketing organizations reacting? First of all,

America's Healthy Future Act 2009

The following link will take you to the 223 page proposed U.S. Senate Finance Committee healthcare reform bill released today entitled America's Healthy Future Act 2009 . This will be introduced to the Senate Finance Committee on September 22, 2009. Happy reading it if you really care about what is going on. http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/leg/LEG%202009/091609%20Americas_Healthy_Future_Act.pdf

The Product Marketing Reporting Structure Dilemma

Where should product marketing report into within a technology organization? Marketing? Business Units? Product Management? The CEO? IDC's 2008 Tech Marketing Benchmarks study indicated that product marketing reports directly into marketing at approximately 45% of technology companies. This is by no means a clear trend to be replicated by every company. In fact, based upon years of research at IDC in this area as well as my own experience in the product marketing function, I continue to believe that the correct answer for product marketing's reporting structure is. . . . it depends. Yes, this may seem like a cop-out initially, but there really is some support for my opinion here. The first question to consider is what is your definition of product marketing? IDC's official definition is as follows: Marketing professionals accountable for developing and executing the strategy to increase market share for specific products. Activities include market sizing and opportunity ass

IDC's Sales Enablement Framework

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Sales enablement continues to be an area of opportunity for marketers to improve their credibility in the organization and their impact on the bottom line. IDC defines Sales enablement (SE) as: "The delivery of the right information to the right person at the right time in the right format and in the right place. . . to assist in moving a specific sales opportunity forward." I'd like to invite Rich Vancil, VP of IDC's Executive Advisory Group, to share with you the sales enablement framework that our team (Rich Vancil, Lee Levitt, Seth Fishbein and me) has developed: "Thanks Michael. Sales people are knowledge workers and their preparation time is all about building their knowledge so that they can have the most effective interactions with their customers. We like to refer to these interactions as 'conversations'. A sales-person's conversations can be actual or virtual; written or oral; one-way or interactive; one-dimensional or multi-media. IDC's

Social Media Guidelines

I've posted a couple of blogs recently about the rise of the social media function and how BtoB companies can best leverage social media. A common theme has been the need for marketing to provide guidance, guidelines and infrastructure without stifling the power of this new channel to reach customers, prospects and influencers. To help with your journey, I've included below a list of social media guidelines that several companies have published: Adobe Acrobat Users: http://www.acrobatusers.com/blog_guidelines Cisco: http://blogs.cisco.com/news/comments/ciscos_internet_postings_policy/ Dell: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/policy/en/policy?c=us&1=en&s+corp&~section=019 Mayo Clinic: http://sharing.mayoclinic.org/guidelines/for-mayo-clinic-employees/ BT: http://richarddennison.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/bt-social-media-guidelines-mar09.pdf eBay: http://ebayinkblog.com/2009/03/06/new-social-media-guidelines-for-reporting-company-information/ HP: http://w

Comparing Healthcare Service Advertising Back-to-School Physicals

Its back-to-school time again, so everyone in their brother is touting those specials for school and sports physicals in various ads or direct mail pieces. Same day, next day, comprehensive, call for an appointment or just walk in. Multi-specialty group practices, hospital ambulatory centers, solo practitioners and retail clinics are all offering the same essential service. What caught my attention were three ads in the local paper from three different channels for these services in the market. It raised the question is anyone paying attention to their advertising message and how it compares to what can be viewed as competitors? The multi-specialty ad - same day but you had to call for an appointment and gave no price but mentioned pediatricians implying a doctor will see you. The hospital ad - call first for a next day appointment, take advantage of our discounts, offer ends soon and gave a price. The retail clinic ad - same day, just stop by and gave a lower price. Thankfully, thr

How Social Media Helps Enterprises During Hard Times and Layoffs

In my last blog, Rise of the Social Media Function , I focused on how companies need to best organize their marketing team(s) to leverage social media to connect with prospects, customers and their markets. I'd like to add another dimension to this discussion: social media within your own corporate community. I've invited Caroline Dangson, IDC's Social Media Research Analyst, to provide her insight and perspective on this important area. "Thanks Michael. Hardly a day goes by without a company announcing layoffs. The U.S. jobless rate in February marked a 25-year high of 8.1%. Organizations are scrambling to hold on to business under incredibly limited resources. The workloads of 651,000 jobs lost last month are now being picked up by the workers who remain. This means an incredible shifting of roles and responsibilities within American businesses. And with that, a shift that is disrupting information flow within the enterprise. Information is money, and the loss of

Public Realtions and Media - Leveraging the Obvious

This is a test. Quick, what is the fastest way for you to build your brand in the community? Well, besides providing outstanding patient service and support, high quality care and so forth. Try proactive media relations! Each morning, someone in the marketing department should be scanning the newspapers, news wires such as the PR Newswire and the Business News Wire and other media outlets to see the hot healthcare topic of the day. Once identified, look to your medical staff or your internal employees to see if you have any content experts. Find the angle about why this is important. Develop some materials such as a news release or statement, get some times the physician or hospital spokesperson is available and pitch them to the media. Put the materials on your web site. Use the news wires for a regional release. It's all about speed, reaction and first to the media. It's summer and that means a slow news period! Two articles in the WSJ today worth commenting on. Outpatient

Rise of the Social Media Function

Many opportunities exist for B-to-B marketing organizations in the social media space. . . .and they're not all limited to what you can do with Twitter, Linked-In and YouTube. Just a few of these opportunities include: Establish a direct, relevant connection with your customers as a source of voice of the customer for new product development (e.g., through an on-line community) Improve customer satisfaction (e.g., enable customers to share experiences on-line by creating a self-running community where customers can interact with and learn from their peers) Increase the speed for troubleshooting and R&D by reducing the distance between customers and engineering Join the on-line technical conversations about your products that your customers are already having, by either leveraging your own community or listening to and participating in other companies' communities Best-in-class organizations are adding a new social media role to their organization to capture these opportunit

Battle Lines Are drawn

With the Senate yesterday introducing a HC reform bill, its clear that the battle lines are being drawn between a government insurance option vs big insurers. Expect the Obama PR team to hammer big insurers and enhance the public already aving a strong dislike of healthcare payors. What does that mean healthcare providers ? Watch the battle closely, you will have to choose. What to do. LEVERAGE, LEVERAGE, LEVERAGE... Marketing departments should be working with senior leadership and in their communities to get a pulse from all constituent groups, not just favorites on the topic of healthcare reform. As issues develop create media statements for local press on why you do or do not support. Consider offering your facility as a town hall meeting place. Find out where your docs are at. Help them understand the issues and develop PR/Media kits for them to use. Consider web site updates and links to various organizations. Become the local expert source for commentary and opinion. Get leaders

News Flash, Healthcare Reform

House Democrats have just introduced a 1,000+ page healthcare reform bill. Buckle up, Life is going to change as we know it. Healthcare marketing departments now is the time to start proving your worth and doing some serious marketing. Otherwise, don't need you in the new environment.

Pharma, hospital, healthcare reform and marketing

Saving money? Okay, who is kidding whom? Pharma gives up $80 billion for healthcare reform for Medicare Part D. Hospitals get on the bandwagon and give up $155 billion in Medicare funding. Total savings $235 billion. Is it real savings or just slowing the growth? Medicare and Medicaid programs are never really cut, just the rate of spending growth slows. Its just the gov doing their own cost shift dance. You, me, we all pay for these "savings". Biologic drugs for diseases under reform? Pharma now wants legislation passed giving them a 13 year exclusivity on biologically derived drugs before biosimilar generics can be introduced. Granted they are complicated and expensive to produce, but really, 13 years to recover costs? Nonsense! I say 6-7 years max and then bring on the generics. Its not reform, just the same old game with different clothes. Hospital marketing departments, time to tack action! So hospital marketing and pr departments, what are you doing to drive chan

Question of the day- Mayo Clinic and marketing

Mayo Clinic has no marketing budget, only PR. They have never done a direct mail campaign, print or electronic media advertisements or any other traditional types of marketing. Yet everyone knows who they are and what to expect in the way of customer service and quality. So Quality + Reputation + PR = Success . So on a local level, why do hospitals spend endless dollars on misleading ads and claims when the answer to market success lies before their very feet?

A Preview of IDC's 2009 Tech Mktg. Benchmarks: A Focus on Marketing Automation

As discussed in my last blog entry, Are you Ready for Marketing's 2010 Annual Planning Process? , the IDC CMO Advisory Practice is “in the thick” of collecting surveys for our 2009 Tech Marketing Benchmarks study. We expect to collect detailed marketing investment data from nearly 100 hardware, software, and services vendors. With this is hand, we will be well prepared to provide our insight and guidance to tech marketers for their annual planning process. I'd like to invite Seth Fishbein, a senior IDC analyst on our team, to provide a preview of some of this research, focusing on CMOs’ marketing automation priorities for the coming year. A more comprehensive analysis of this topic will be included in IDC’s 2010 Marketing Investment Planner, due out in late September/early October. "Thanks Michael. Based upon interviews with leading tech marketing executives over the past month, the following three areas represent some “low-hanging fruit” in the marketing automation space

Back to basics and de-marketing services

With major cuts in funding coming for hospitals, the only way to survive is to get back to the core. Meaning, what are those core services and programs that regardless of what happens in the world of healthcare, will pay the bills and create market strength and position for you. Its hard to exit programs and services. I have been saying for years that hospitals can not be all things to all people anymore. That means hard choices. It also means a de-marketing program for all those classes of trade that you exit from. It will require organizational strategic planning, a willingness to tackle the scared cows, close collaboration with your physicians, intense internal communications and a solid de-marketing and communication plan to sell it to the community. You will be required to collaborate with your competition. Hard to admit you can't do all things well. If you want to survive, you have too. Find the expertise to assist you along. De-marketing is an area where hospitals have littl

Thoughts for the future

Video releases Next year how about your healthcare organization producing some video release of with docs explaining what happens when a firecracker goes off in your hand. Use a crash test dummy. Great visual for media. Put it on your favorite public access channel too. At the very least place it on your web site. Hospital pay raises I know lots of people who are not getting raises in hospitals this year. But somehow there is always money for the CEO and senior team for a job poorly done. Can you say like, do the right thing and not accept a raise? Time for a new marketing book Your marketing is making you look stupid . How is that for a title? Starting on the next great healthcare marketing book and consulting tour. Its time for the industry to wake up and do it right before healthcare reform comes along and the playing field is leveled. How do you spell differentiation? Healthcare Reform Speaking of healthcare reform... any clue on how you attract those individuals who can afford to

Are you Ready for Marketing's 2010 Annual Planning Process?

Have you started planning for your 2010 fiscal year yet? Our best practices study in planning – people, process and technology indicates that the average marketing planning cycle begins about 6 months before the fiscal year end. (for CMO Advisory Service clients, refer to "Marketing’s Planning – People, Process and Technology, IDC Doc. #216134 ) If you're one of the more mature organizations, planning will be part of the fabric of your weekly, monthly and quarterly team meetings. Regardless, a significant part of this annual process is assessment of your current "operational" metrics and development of next year's projected investment strategy. I define "operational" metrics as those metrics that track your marketing investment strategy, including: 1. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – such as Marketing Budget Ratio (marketing spend as a % of revenue), Program to People KPI, Revenue per Staff, Staff Throughput (program spend per marketing staff), Centr

Sales Enablement and The Year of the Sales Rep

I've spoken about sales enablement quite a bit in this blog, and I'll continue to do so as marketers improve their ability to better enable the sales process from an internal as well as an external perspective. With this in mind, Clare Gillan, IDC's SVP of Executive and Go To Market Programs, will share some of her insights in the sales enablement area. . . Thanks Michael. At IDC's recent annual Directions event, I gave a presentation titled "The Year of the Sales Rep." In response to The Year of the Sales Rep notion, an SVP of sales asked me, "Why does this year have to be my year?" "Precisely," I responded. Let me explain. . . . never have we more needed our sales reps to be successful and never have they needed us more — those of us in sales, marketing, and executive management. The crisis in sales is driven not by the economy alone but by an evolution in how buyers buy. Sales organizations, in general, have not kept up. The econom

BtoB Marketing's Response to Social Media: Have we Lost all Control and Impact?

For decades marketing has been desperately trying to connect with their customers in a controlled, one-way fashion. We had control of the brand, all marketing content as well as the traditional channels that were used to communicate with the market. And even on occasion, we cautiously exposed our executives and engineers to our customers while all the time holding our breath that they didn't say the "wrong thing" that would hurt our image, costing us millions of dollars in marketing investment and countless hours including nights and weekends executing our marketing strategy. It reminds me of a time when I was a product marketer in the semiconductor industry. I would visit customers quite frequently with our lead engineer. In one meeting this engineer exposed our greatest product flaw to one of our key customers. As I cringed in my seat, I expected the ROI from millions of dollars of investment into the brand value of this product to be instantly destroyed not to men

A Few Gold Nuggets from BtoB's NetMarketing Breakfast(5/14) – Interactive Marketing

How do you get busy marketers in a room for 2 hours to discuss some of their interactive marketing practices? One way is to offer them breakfast, exposure to several leading marketing organizations and industry experts, and introduction to a couple of digital marketing vendors. BtoB did just that this morning in Waltham, MA. Panelists included John Smits, Global Dir. Dbse. Mktg. and Segmentation, EMC; Leigh Day, Sr. Dir. Corp. Comm, Red Hat; and Paul Gillin of Paul Gillin Communications. Vendors included Brightcove and ZoomInfo. Here are a couple of key takeaways from the meeting: How do you avoid "campaign collisions" [EMC insight] Problem : multiple BUs and regions were sending communications to the same individuals (e.g., CIOs) about different EMC events on the same day Solution: "Deliver the most appropriate information, to the most relevant audience via the user's medium of choice" [sounds easy, no?] - "Centralized Demand Center" created a couple

Leveraging Video for B2B Digital Marketing

B2B marketers have not been well known for their advertising creativity and innovation in the past 10-15 years. Yes, there are a few great examples; especially from the multi-billion dollar companies that have large advertising budgets and can afford those large agencies. However, this is certainly one area that we lag behind our consumer marketing counterparts. After all, we're marketing to engineers, software developers, CIOs, CTOs and other "left brain" people. Think "logical", "sequential", "rational" and "analytical". They won't be fooled by our flashy marketing tactics and colorful images. Right? Well, maybe this is another area that we need to rethink as we shift into the age of digital marketing. What are some key drivers of this shift? The cost to create video and more advanced graphics has dropped considerably. We've learned that video and other graphical communication methods can be powerful in communicating c

Marketing's Role in Sales Enablement

The Sales Enablement (SE) role is fast taking root at many of our client companies. But it is interesting to see that its position on the organization chart is somewhat fluid. Does the role take root in sales? In marketing? Does it have to make an effective straddle across both functions , or is it bound to get hung up on the fence between the two? Our IDC marketing and sales research teams are surfacing many good techniques for improved sales enablement. Here are some practices specifically for marketing's side of the sales enablement challenge as presented by Rich Vancil, VP IDC Executive Advisory Group. "Thanks Michael. Depending on your resources and ambitions, these SE practices are noted as: easiest, harder, and hardest. Easiest: IDC defines Sales Enablement as "Delivering to the sales representative (direct or channel) the right material at the right place, at the right time, and in the right format, to move a specific opportunity forward." Yes, there are a lo

Tracking Marketing Budgets - Use it or Lose It?

There are many ways to track the success of marketing's planning process. One metric that is often mentioned by marketing operations teams is the percent variance of actual vs. budgeted marketing investment. One of a few good metrics to track if your processes and systems have matured to the point of being able to do this. . . even if you use Excel today. What variance is acceptable? I've seen targets range from 2 to 10% variance. 2-3% variance of actual expense vs. budget would be considered "very good" for a 1B+ revenue company. Assuming that marketing budget allocation is optimized throughout the year, it makes sense that managers should motivate their staff to spend all monies that they are allocated; including ensuring that certain percentages of budget are targeted to specific segments, campaigns, etc. This leads to a "use it or lose it" mentality if not an official guideline. The problem with this strategy (or culture) is that market shifts requ

Swine Flu and the Media Equals Opportunity

Okay, are the hospitals and health systems paying attention ? With the media creating a panic about swine flu and the chances of a worldwide pandemic , now is the time for the healthcare system to step forward. Get those PR and Marketing departments off their chairs and into the media, on your web site and into community with health, prevention and treatment options on the swine flu. Leverage the opportunity to do some good for a change instead of waiting for things to happen. Okay, free consulting follows: First, get your docs together in rapid order and get them on board. Second, link your web site to the CDC, WHO, etc., and make a big deal out of it. Third, prepare some material for distribution in the community. i.e., grammar schools, high schools, private grade schools, senior centers, community groups, local employers etc., and such with tips and ideas for prevention, health information etal. That is what you do! Four, write a series of press releases and get them out

The Fruits of our MRM Investment

Five or six years ago I was frequently asked the question "What is the one key metric to track the impact of our marketing investment?" Without even breaching the open-ended topic of what is ROI, I typically responded with my own question of "Do you even know how much you're spending on marketing, let alone what the return is?" In most cases the response would be a simple "no". After working with 100s of companies on analyzing their investment as well as seeing the progress that marketing operations and marketing finance people have made, I can comfortably say that as an industry we have matured significantly in our ability to track marketing investment . . . at least at a high level. (e.g., Marketing Budget Ratio (mktg. spend/revenue), Program-to-People KPI, etc.) I consider these to be operational metrics as opposed to execution metrics. ( refer to past posts for more details re: execution metrics ) Greater sophistication in investment management, wh