mommyjenlin

We all greatly enjoyed our time together at the CMO Advisory meeting in Santa Clara last month. The level of participation and feedback was all very positive and we would like to thank everyone who attended for bringing their "A" game with them. One of the topics we talked about was Agile marketing. We keep coming back the Agile project management concept as we triangulate the issues of career path development, sales and marketing integration, and automating sales and marketing processes. Agile has something to offer on all three fronts, and may prove to be an essential catalyst for success. First, a Word About Agile Very briefly, Agile is a method for managing projects that is based on small teams delivering discretely defined outputs in very short time frames. It is characterized by frequent fifteen-minute status meetings (called "scrums") in which 3 to 7 team members answer three questions: What did I do yesterday? What am I doing today? What is in my way? The p...

A short while ago, I had a conversation with a colleague who relayed his conversation with a hospital executive around business development, innovation and growth. Hence the comment "We are in survival mode here." My colleague also brought up the point to this same executive that somewhere, a group of entrepreneurs was looking at the process of care and have come to the conclusion that a hospital admission is a defect in the process of care. Now that one stopped me dead in my tracks. Think about it. The hospital admission as a defect in the process of providing care. An attitude, much often too common in hospital executive leadership that we are just trying to survive. This is sad really, when innovation, growth opportunities and new business development initiatives are being left on the table because hospital executives can't get out of the "we're just trying to survive" mentality. Yep, leave it to the Walgreens, CVS/Caremark and Walmarts of the world to f...

How much more effective would your marketing campaigns be if you made a conscious effort to frame your messaging in your Media Relations (MR) and Public Relations (PR) campaigns around the main brand messages you use in your marketing campaigns? More often than not, brand messages in healthcare PR-MR rely on the "about us" statement to carry that weight. Little if any attention is given to using public and media relations as a strategic and integrative vehicle in the overall marketing effort. And that is a missed opportunity. As healthcare organizations, 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 other materials. That is a given. People see and read, they (hopefully) advance the brand, maybe generate some sales leads or in some cases bring a sense of accomplishment to in...

So what is Tapestry Marketing? Is it an analogy? Maybe, depending on how you look at it. Tapestry Marketing is a new way of looking at stand-alone hospital and multi-hospital system marketing. It encompasses the “traditional” aspects of marketing, but acknowledges the special needs of hospital, the interplay of physicians and their influence on the process, patient insurance coverage and limitations, the needs of the consumer and the healthcare organization. Tapestry Marketing is new. You will not find it in any text books. It is not taught in graduate school. It is a concept. A philosophy of marketing that is designed to cut through the clutter and bring a hospital or multi-hospital system out of the run an ad, hold a community program, send a newsletter marketing mentality. Tapestry Marketing is learning how to weave a colorful, comprehensive, integrated multi-channel marketing program that drives brand, generates revenues and dominates the competition. A methodology to achieve ma...

The future belongs to marketing specialists, not generalists. If I were starting my B2B marketing career today I would think about becoming a specialist in one of two areas. These are areas of marketing execution and measurement that may seem narrow, but will be deep enough to be the foundation for a specialized career. Narrow and deep is the key to success. Be the one person at your company that really knows how to provide: 1) "Forensics". Be the specialist in how to data-mine the activity inside a B2B sales force automation system. Become your company's expert in turning those data into analysis, and then turn the analysis into actions on how to change the marketing activity that impacts all phases of that sales pipleine. OR (not AND !) 2) "Measurement Agility". The traditional execution of a marketing program or campaign follows a long arc of time from concept to content to production to media execution to response and to results. Digital and social media a...

Why do we need marketing? I can see it now, CFOs and other senior managers in hospitals and health systems around the country going … “Tell me again…why do we need marketing? After all by 2014, millions of uninsured will be insured. Sure we face reimbursement cuts, but we can weather that” and the conversation goes on…… Marketing will be more important than ever! As we enter the brave new world of healthcare reform, several significant events will take place over the coming couple of years for which most healthcare organizations are not prepared for: Transparency Bundling Value purchasing Demand management Consumer choice What will be required is a refinement of marketing strategies, tactics, integrated messaging and excellence in execution for the brave new healthcare world. Marketing needs to be closely aligned with the organizational strategic, business development and financial plans The new marketing environment. Competition is not going by the wayside. It will only increase a...

Twenty percent of tech vendors $1b or greater in revenue are now reporting that they have experienced some form of organizational "mash-up" between marketing and sales over the last 12 months. This is the C-level effort to adddress the long-standing mis-alignments and costly points-of-friction between sales and marketing. Lots of thoughts on this...but the most important is a "heads-up" to expect more organizational pressure and change in 2010. IDC forecasts marketing expenses (investment) to rise by 3.5% this year. We expect sales expenses (investment) to rise by 4.7%. Finally, we expect average revenue to to rise by 3.2 %. So, the math is not hard: operating margins will be under continued pressure. My sense is that the C-Level will respond with more brute force re-drawing of organization charts.