mommyjenlin

New Year's Resolutions , for the most part, play an important role in most everyone's life. To lose weight. Live life more fully. Be a better husband, wife, or significant other etc. Value more what we have in our family and friends. And many more that I have missed. But have you ever considered New Year' Resolutions as a part of your business and managerial life? So my last Healthcare Marketing Matters blog for 2012, is about New Year Marketing Resolutions. My own Top 10 list to get things started. What are yours? 10 . Educate my organization about the value of my department and work. I will lead and prove my departments ROI . 9. Continue to scan other industries for their marketing successes. I will learn about them, adapt them to my industry, and implement successfully. 8. Expand my marketing education through webinars, seminars and conferences. There is always something new on the horizon to learn. 7. I ntegrate traditional, online and social marketing strate

Sometimes, another organizations PR missteps, are an opportunity to learn how not to handle a PR crisis. Just ask the Chicago Bears , who historically have mishandled every PR crisis of the last 10 years, including the one the week of December 12. Yes that right, this one went on for a whole week, because they messed up right from the beginning. Is your response to dive for under the desk? Do you send out poorly prepared underlings, to face reporters and the public? Does leadership, make proud pronouncements at the outset, that could come back to haunt you because at this point, you just don't know? Do you react as an arrogant organization with the, "How dare you question us response"? Do you think that it can never happen to you? Do you have a crisis communications plan in place? Every healthcare organizations will face a PR crisis. How you handle the communications, will determine the amount of brand damage, and length of time people remember. In this age of social medi

B2B Buyer behavior is undergoing an extraordinary sea change triggered by Internet technology. Tech marketing and sales teams haven't caught up. They still rely on a 112-year-old sales funnel model. IDC introduces a new Customer Creation Framework better suited for the way customers really buy. The Internet tsunami has radically changed B2B Buyer behavior. Before the Internet, the B2B buyer making a complex decision had few sources of information. Vendors leveraged that knowledge gap. The vendor sales person was the primary gateway to information the buyer needed to decide – a tremendously powerful position. Fast forward to today. The Internet and social media have triggered a turbulent change – the rich dialog has shifted on-line and away from the sales person. As a result, the B2B Buyer in a complex sale is now an expert buyer with very different behavior and expectations. Buyers are constantly on-line. IDC research shows that IT buyers find online search and the vendor website m

The other day, I asked the question about hospital and health system debt as being the next financial crisis on several groups on LinkedIn. The response has been a resounding thud. The reason for the question was based on an article in Crain's Chicago Business , Monday, December 5, 2011, " New hospitals building debt", by Kristen Schorsch. It really got me to start considering the broader hospital and healthcare debt question in general, as healthcare continues to change in such dynamic ways. And I believe that the 800 pound gorilla in the room, locally and nationally, is hospital and other healthcare provider debt. It is no longer just a question of having an individual AAA rating. When you view the changes in the healthcare reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid . Declining admissions. Changes in reimbursement from production-based to quality-based. Payers introducing pricing competition, though user-friendly tools, which allow healthcare consumers to compare price

Customer Generated Media (CGM). It can be a great unknown. It can be helpful. It can be harmful. It can be your best friend, or your worse nightmare. It has the power to influence thousands, if not millions, in this mobile social media aware society we live in. CGM can make your brand the greatest on the earth. It can send you to the ash heap of history. Anybody can blog. Anybody can do a video. Anybody can start a viral email campaign. Anybody can create a facebook page. Sorry to say this, but not everyone thinks you doing the great job that you think you are. If your marketing department is not monitoring CGM and your customer experience from a brand perspective, then you and your specialty pharmacy, payer, hospital, physician practices, or any healthcare organization is at risk. People are not afraid any longer to say things publically. It means that in the age of the Internet, disgruntled consumers and patients , unhappy employees, media, anybody, can opinionate about their

It has been a most interesting year of change for healthcare in 2011. Medical Homes, final regulations on ACOs, patient- centered or centric care focus, payment models beginning to move from production of care to payment for quality care and at least in some places, a growing understanding of the importance of healthcare marketing and branding. But, none of this will be successful unless you have an engaged patient. In anticipation of still more change and continued progression to a fully reformed healthcare model, (regardless of what the Supreme Court of the United Sates rules), healthcare will never be the same. And it hinges in large part, on an engaged patient. Engaged in diagnosis and treatment. Engaged in wellness. Engaged in health plan selection. Engaged like they have never been before. As you set your strategic marketing plans and tactical budgets for 2012, a key component is how you will begin to engage the patient, aka healthcare consumer. And it's not just wellness

Any number of healthcare organizations are looking to increase admissions to drive revenue and volume by physicians. Some providers are returning to the days of employing physicians, and that seems to be making a big comeback for health systems ACO development. Anyhow, sales staffs are popping up all over like weeds-in-a-field, complete with goals and objectives, territories and sales quotas for specific docs, along identified disease-states. In most cases, they are managed by people who have never sold anything in their life. The first time the sales person comes back to the organization with, "This needs to change" request, it all breaks down, because nobody internally wants to really change anything. Besides, with all the Stark considerations, we really can't do too much anyway. What's wrong with this picture? If you are really serious about growing revenue and volume, you must, not need too, you must, make changes in the physician experience in your organizat

Can you believe that the sales funnel is 112 years old? Hmmm. Seems like a lot has happened since then. No wonder the ole’ funnel is showing signs of wear. IDC research shows that the time it takes for tech companies to create a B2B customer has increased by 15% in the past year. Is it time for a fresh approach? The sales funnel first appears in a 1925 book by Edward K. Strong called The Psychology of Selling and Advertising. Strong attributes the funnel’s invention in 1898 to Elias St. Elmo Lewis , a sales manager for National Cash Register (NCR). St. Elmo Lewis, who later helped found the Association of National Advertisers , called his sales funnel AIDA for the four stages of “awareness, interest, desire, and action”. The traditional funnel uses an industrial era paradigm that treats a buyer like a widget. With the right machine, a vendor can manufacture that widget into a product called a customer. In the industrial model, the marketing team works awareness at the upper funnel wh

Have you considered the question of your brand, or brands, the ACO brand you may create, or as an ACO participant? This is really a much more important question than you may think. For some healthcare organizations, it won't be, as they have a highly developed brand architecture and strategy. For others, that haven't been paying as much attention to their brand architecture and strategy, it will. I would surmise that large healthcare systems and payers will be ahead of the branding game, and able to seamlessly create and launch an ACO under their current brand umbrella. I think the brand challenge for healthcare systems, will be when they have to contract for services outside of their traditional system. In those organizations that have more brands under the sun than stars in the galaxy, it will be a challenge supreme. That is what happens when there is no clear marketing leadership in most of these healthcare organizations. If you did the brand market research as well, you w

Now that the final rules for ACOs have been released by CMS , it seems that there is more positive interest in the ACO model first proposed under PPACA . The basic premise remains the same, to engage the patient, aka the healthcare consumer, in the care and treatment decision making process. Medicare ACOs remain open networks, meaning that members can go outside the ACO for service. The marketing challenge before you is to attract members to your ACO, engage and retain them. You must be prepared to deliver an individualized experience that meets the needs of that patient. A mass customization, of your patient experience process, down to the individual level. One size does not fit all. In entering the brave new world of ACOs, here are some things that you need to consider for marketing: 1.) Clear and easily stated Value Proposition . Not a mission statement, this is crucial for communications and focusing the message to members, employers, payers, government and community. Not flowery

The last two years have been hard times for tech marketers: there has been major pressure to transform execution, coupled with a significant reduction in the rate of budget growth. This is truly the "We are being asked to do more, with less" situation that marketers casually complain about. But this time, it is reality. Despite the headwinds, I have been very impressed with the major brand campaigns that Dell and Xerox have been able to execute. Both Dell and Xerox have spent billions for a major make-over of their product portfolios: acquiring and developing significant Services and Software capabilities. So much has changed at these companies that the brand perception no longer matches the product reality. Brand perception simplified is: "What do you think of, when you think of Dell?" And, "What do you think of, when you think of Xerox?". When I think "Dell", I think of several cardboard boxes of new PC gear lying in my driveway, fresh off the

How often do you call in from an outside landline or cell phone, to your organization too experience what a customer does when calling? This isn't such a strange question. We all go through the evaluation process, seek the system we believe will reduce our cost, improve response and service, which will hopefully result in less dropped calls, increase customer or patient satisfaction and revenue. But you know, sometimes we make the system so complicated, that we forget why someone calls us. For this I have coined Mike's Law: "The smaller the organization, easier to use is the automated answering solution. The larger the organization, the more complex and harder the automated answering solution is to navigate." Use is very different than navigate. One implies simplicity, the other complexity. Let me give you a couple of examples. In calling a local hospital when a family member was hospitalized, it was really very straight forward. Dial in, hear the message, dial the ex

Having worked on marketing in the hospital, healthcare group purchasing and IT vendor side in Radiology Information System , (RIS) , Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR), the marketing challenges of selling into two spaces simultaneously, against a bevy of competition, seems to be increasing exponentially. Just an observation, but everyone may be starting to look the same. It's easy to lose that differentiation every company craves, when selling similar products and services . In respect to all, the Healthcare IT space is beginning to look a little commoditized with a lot of product sameness. So why is this happening? Lots of reasons. Let's take a short look at some common marketing techniques and what could be done to break the log jam. Less is more. Key Messages Leading provider, reducing cost, improving quality, reducing medical errors, innovative, next generation, improving productivity and efficiency, easy to use, interoperab

This may seem like a silly question to ask, or even to write about. But truth be told, beyond the customer or patient satisfaction numbers, chances are, your employees may not like your customers or patients all that much. I am not saying that your employees are treating customers and patients with open disdain or contempt. But, the lack of employee enthusiasm, concern and caring, communicated verbally and shown non-verbally in the workplace, with average to mediocre employee satisfaction surveys, may be a pretty good indication that your employees may not like your customers or patients a whole lot. And that doesn't really help your efforts to improve the patient or customer experience. When little differentiation exists to tell hospitals, doctors, specialty pharmacies, home health care and other providers apart, employees, liking their customers and patients, can set you apart from your competition. And with little opportunity existing now, and in the future, to differentiate you

IBM released the findings of their Global CMO study yesterday and one of the primary conclusions is that CMOs feel unprepared to address key challenges. The most surprising thing is how consistent the feeling is across regions and vertical industries. CMOs generally face the same issues and report very similar levels of "unpreparedness" in the face of them. Top challenges include: data explosion, social media, growth of channel and device choices, and shifting consumer demographics, among others. The findings are based on 1,734 structured in-person interviews with CMOs in large organizations conducted between February and June of 2011.Regional and vertical representation was reasonably well balanced. The sheer scale of the effort and the willingness of so many CMOs to participate indicate a role under siege. In our research, IDC has learned that marketing is undergoing fundamental and painful transformations on several levels: new and expanding datasets, new channels and form

On Monday, October 10, 2011, Deloitte released their latest Issue Brief, The Public View of Health Care Reform . I would also recommend highly that you read the 2011 Survey of Health Care Consumers in the United States . Anyhow two items caught my attention from the Public View report out of many. The first is that and I quote: "Consumers perceive a complex, wasteful system sensing a lack of value for what is spent". "Consumers are critical of the U.S. health care system performance: 22 percent give it a favorable report card grade of "A" or "B" while 36 percent of consumers give it a grade of "D" or "F". In the second report, 2011 Survey of Health Care Consumers: " Satisfaction with U.S. health care system is low. 8 in 10 consumers see no system improvement and 3 in 4 believe other countries' systems are better. " When you look at these consumer perceptions, one realizes very quickly that healthcare organizations ar

Marketo announced a new sub-brand called Spark targeted at the SMB market. It's a testament to how successfully Marketo has transitioned from SMB to the enterprise space that it has to go back and offer a new brand for what used to be its primary market. The demand for marketing automation at large enterprises is driving rapid growth for all marketing automation companies, and Marketo is no exception. So much so that smaller prospects are starting to perceive the company and its target market as having outgrown them. Not so. SMB is intrinsic to Marketo's heritage and the company has no intention of walking away. The Spark offering is more than just a "lite" version of its flagship product. The idea behind Spark is that it is a bundle of software and services to help small companies quickly adopt and become expert in the use of modern marketing automation technology. Marketo is dedicating expert staff to offer training, support, and mentoring for its Spark customers. T

In a day and age, when consumers are bombarded from all directions and media for attention, it would seem, that marketing should play a more important role your internal organization and culture, than it may appear. No intent is made to downgrade your activities and internal communications about what marketing is accomplishing. But rather, asking a thoughtful question to consider. Is marketing at the table then the Finance Department is staring to develop the annual financial plan and budget assumptions? Is marketing at the table when the yearly business plan is in the initial stages of development? Is marketing at the table when the product managers are deciding new product enhancements, new products, features and benefits? Is marketing at the table when Human Resources is putting its headcount budget together and recruitment strategies? Is marketing at the table when the annual sales plan is developed? Not simply yes or no. I think it is more a question of perception and opport