mommyjenlin

Given the upcoming ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) expected on June 28, regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), how will that change healthcare marketing? In the end regardless of the ruling, healthcare providers still need to reduce cost, improve quality, coordinate medical care inside and outside of the provider, integrate with physicians, manage chronic illness, reduce readmissions, etc. Government driven or privately driven, these issues and market momentum to change will remain regardless of the laws status. Just my opinion, but healthcare marketing has been slow to adapt to this dynamic environment. Fee-for-service will continue in some form. ACOs, medical homes, bundled payments, value-based payment and various P4P programs will continue. It's really a question of who is driving the change bus, private industry or the Federal government. There is really no choice in the matter anymore. Healthcare organizations will have to ...

IT leaders making enterprise-level technology purchases report that their buying cycle has increased by more than 20% in the last three years, according to IDC's 2012 Buyer Experience study. They are not happy about this fact and were not shy about telling IDC about how vendors can speed things up. IDC's 2012 Buyer Experience Study reveals that CIO's making enterprise-level technology purchases report that their buying cycle is now longer than five months when multiple vendors are competing for their business. I find several things interesting about this fact. 1. The length of the B2B tech buying cycle continues to increase.  In 2009, the buying cycle was about 4.5 months and is now 5.4 months. It has increased more than 20% in three years. 2. IT executives have consistently told IDC that they would like their buying cycle to be shorter. Three months seems to feel about right to them – which is 40% less than what they currently experience. The CIO's readily admit that t...

The IDC CMO and Sales advisory services held their most recent client leadership meeting in Santa Clara on June 5th. One of the key topics of the day was sales enablement. The ensuing dialog between the sales and marketing execs in the room was as impassioned as it was ineffective. Many of the usual themes were expressed (in the nicest possible way): "marketing leads are crap", "sales doesn't follow up", etc. etc. Whenever I hear this conversation it always sounds like the two sides are talking past one another. Neither really understands how to express their frustration in a way that has any meaning to the other. What's missing are some basic table stakes: Sales  1. Train marketing on sales process. It is impossible to effectively contribute to, much less consistently improve, an unknown process. No marketing team should be expected to deliver effective collateral or leads to a sales organization until they have been fully trained on sales process and met...

Nokia's CMO Jerri DeVard is out of a job today, hitting the screen at 18 months. (See: http://tiny.cc/crz3fw ). We have seen this many, many times in this role. Why is CMO job tenure often so short? CMO's come in three basic flavors. There is the Mar-Comm CMO, who has skills in branding and messaging and corporate communications. There is the Product CMO, who has come up through the product line or LOB ranks, with a successful background in Product Management and Product Marketing. Finally there is the Selling CMO, who has come up through sales and has run revenue centers for major geographical units. So if you are the CEO and you need a new CMO, which flavor do you choose? You are not likely to find this three-fold capability in one person. The best you can do is to optimize your hiring spec for the strengths that are most currently needed. And then make sure that the CMO surrounds herself with strong colleagues who bring complementary skills. Back to Nokia. If there was ever ...

What has many product lines? A multitude of names and logos ? An undifferentiated brand combined with a confusing brand architecture? And different looking marketing communications pieces within the same organization describing service lines, technology and clinical programs? Hospitals, home healthcare agencies and specialty pharmacies to name a few. Managed care, medical device and pharma have it under control. Hints it's a major contributor to profitability; that ability to have a clear differentiated band in the market. Too many times in healthcare, especially in hospitals, home healthcare agencies and specialty pharmacies, I have seen an absence of brand architecture. The logo and name of the hospital or other provider in multiple colors in different places in marketing communication materials. No standardization of key brand messaging. Today, nobody flies under the radar screen . Healthcare organizations that understand the importance of brand image, brand architecture, brand ...

Living in two worlds is never easy. One side of the healthcare marketing coin is generating demand to put "heads in the beds" for fee-for-service payments. The other is managing demand to keep people out of the hospitals in a value-based payment model. Care delivered in the most cost efficient and effective setting which may not be a hospital or hospital-based outpatient service. Accountability, transparency, price and value are the new expectations. And your time for adapting is running out. By 2016 an inflection point will be reached where value-based healthcare payment passes fee-for-service healthcare. You will be managing demand instead of generating demand. And that is a very different skill set than what most healthcare organizations have today. Here are some ideas about what healthcare organizations need to be doing too live in two worlds. Managing the Patient Experience Patient experience means just that- understanding what that patient experiences is at all touch po...