AMA – The future of Health Care Marketing

The future of Health Care Marketing was another informative session from AMA Health Care SIG series. 

Interesting points:

A couple of decades ago health care and marketing were incompatible. Even now, “What is the role of marketing?” is still debated in health care.

In health care, most marketing efforts are focused in the areas where consumer can make a decision, maternity care for example. HealthEast employs 120 physicians and over 450 refer patients to the organization.

Many information systems in health care organizations were designed for financial purposes, not marketing. It creates additional difficulty.

Not long ago quality of health care was not an issue – patients assumed that the quality was high and did not express any desire to “shop” for health care services. Now, 30% of patients claim to be interested in evaluating quality of health care services; most of these patients either have a health condition themselves, or have somebody in the family with health conditions.

A decade ago an internet was used to supplement the primary media sued for health care promotions. Today the Internet is the primary media. “We hardly do anything without creating a microsite.” Microsites are used as an additional call to action and reinforcement of the message that can not be fully communicated on the web site itself. HealthEast had to face constraints of cuts and over last two year cut 43% of staff and costs.

HealthEast promotes some of its facilities as “destinations,” for example; Woodland is positioned as an orthopedic destination. A facility is appropriate as the destination center if it has not only high quality care, but also a high patient satisfaction rate.

The nature of health care will remain episodic and transactional; it is important to establish the relationships with the patient, to become a “partner.”

What kind of improvements patients seek based on the surveys?  A few years ago hospitals were evaluated on a “hotel service” – quality of food, etc. Now, patients changed their views, but the patients requests are still simple:

• need to be acknowledged as an individual
• the treatment needs to be explained to the patient
• the patient needs to be introduced to everybody who will be involved.

HealthEast is trying to fulfill these requirements through recruitment and hiring.

HealthEast pays attention to the architecture to improve the healing process. Research shows that hospital surrounding can speed up healing and reduce the need for pain medication. The interior of the building has soft colors and aesthetically pleasing (including light fixture in the patient rooms). Natural light is used as much as possible and most rooms have wonderful view. The hospital uses wooden elements which were also known to help healing process. The portion of the room with outlets for the equipment is designed as a wooden panel – the outlets hidden in the wall. Patient rooms are private, with space for the family and shortest possible distance from the bed to the bathroom to decrease patients’ falls. 

Marketing News published a detailed article describing the campaign to introduce the new hospital. The campaign is credited for 0.5% increase in market share in October and November 2008; budget for the campaign was $825,000. St. Joseph’s CyberKnife Center received 40% increase in patients during last year – year and a half.

Interesting – the stories were posted both on YouTube and Vimeo, and not surprisingly YouTube videos were more popular.

MIMA – Obama Online – Design View

Even if a presidential campaign can not be compared with normal marketing operations, its lessons are extremely valuable. Last MIMA event  was a great opportunity to hear perspective of Scott Thomas  on the Obama campaign – a perspective from a design standpoint. The campaign truly accomplished its goal to “go where the people are.”

The most interesting ideas from my perspective:

• “Killing the fold” on the home page. The designers decided not to limit themselves by the attempt to fit all important information “above the fold” of the home page and linked it to other portions of the site. Too much of the information was important; the links would be too small and difficult to click. The designers gave more “space” to the information, but abandoned the fold. However, the home page of the site was designed to hint that something exist below, encouraging people to scroll. Site visitors scrolled.
• Importance of collaboration. Designers worked with developers; designers worked with web analysts. The decisions on which web initiatives received more attention were based on traffic analysis.
• At the point when the goal was to encourage people to register to vote, Obama branding became unimportant for the task. The goal was registration, not choice of the candidate at that point.
• The campaign had surprising level of trust… The campaign hired passionate people who were experts in their field and allowed them to do their job without intruding into minor details. The designers, in their own turn, allowed other designers to participate in their efforts – they posted necessary files for local organizations to create their own materials.
• Analytics and testing. The designers tested everything possibly (buttons shapes, colors, wording etc.) and based design decisions on the results of the site use that came from the analysts.
• To succeed, the site should be constantly evolving…

MIMA – Web analytics for people who hate web analytics

Actually, the event attracted those who love web analytics and everything related to it… and sometimes struggle to show others the beauty behind the data.

The insights that Chris Wexler and Kristen Findley shared were…  “actionable.”    Though as an analytics enthusiast I was ready to scream “yes!!” after almost every statement, some ideas were refreshing.

New insights (or better arguments to achieve our perpetual objectives):

• Share analysis with designers… they rarely receive the information how their creations work
•  How to approach a designer: “I have something that will help you to do cool things”
•  How can analytics help
  • Executive: help to decide where you should spend budget
  • Designer: where to apply your creative expertise
• Questions to get business goals from stakeholders:
  • What do you want people to do? (works!! My favorite   )
  • What would it be if we succeed?
  • What would it be if we don’t succeed?

 To attribute costs better, different conversion points can have different values (visit – 1; creating and uploading a video – 10,000)

Web analytics term is too narrow – we should be channel agnostic – “interactive analytics”  is a better term

Chris Wexler demonstrated a wonderful image to illustrate the difference of insight v. data.

Data can sing…

Era of analytics “post” is changing of analytics “pre,” but as before, we can over-rely on analytics.

MIMA – David Armano, The future of Advertising

The event exceeded my expectations… David Armano was able to articulate ideas that I thought were “hanging in the air” for some time, but were still difficult to see. Marketing world is changing and we have no other choice as adapt… or extinct.

Ideas from the presentation:

The most important now is to provide value through function.

Why agencies have challenges:

• advertising is the creation of the campaign for the mass, while social media is niche
• agencies have silos – collaboration does not happen
• many companies are built on large-scale production of banners…

However, there are changes. Flash microsite is going away… at least from the point of view of the most progressive agencies. The Barbarian Group simplified its web site recently to make it more functional (quite interesting – the portfolio is very functional – it is showing the projects rather than the company’s

ability in “creativity” of the showing process). The idea is that regular people use the web differently. The site is not going to win a award for the agency, but it is useful and functional for its target audience.

 Agencies are competing with passionate individuals deeply knowledgeable in topics of their interest. Typos do not matter – the passion and expertise attract the niche…

Example: Ford created a rather simple site, but gave free Fiesta (plus free gas) to several highly influential bloggers. 100 of people who wanted to participate in the Fiesta movement were selected and now THEY produce original content in the introduction of the new model to the public.

 Me-conomy – life around the “me” in social networking; the user is surrounded by his blog, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc.

Why shouldn’t agencies create products that they can sell?  Not necessarily creating campaigns for clients – but creating apps that will bring money in the future?  Example – IDEO labs. 

Agencies used heavy Flash applications hoping for “engagement…”  But what is engagement?  Leaving a comment on a blog is significantly more “engaging” than waiting for unnecessary animation to load…

The difference: OLD – everything is “thought-through” to the minute detail before launch…  NEW – apps are lunching in beta and modified as needed later – co-created with the users… Product development is mixing with marketing…

Viral video is a gamble – it can not be a part of business strategy.

How the NEW can be approached?  The organizations will need to adapt – and start adapting from the inside.

MDMA Conference 2009

 MDMA 2009 conference was attempting to connect direct marketing with green concepts, internet, and particularly social media marketing. Though I was preoccupied with social media, some green concepts were quite interesting – it is always helpful to explore area a little beyond interactive marketing as a concentration.

 Green Marketing (based on Aveda’s approach)

• Cause marketing isn’t about philosophy, it is about “enlightened self-interest”
• Aveda – cause related marketing and brand marketing came together (and everybody agrees on metrics…)
• Globally, 68% of consumers would remain loyal to brands that support a good cause
• Environmentalism is also a passion of the employees
• “Purpose brand” even if it is a premium brand
• It is wise to pay attention to the generation G (from giving, generosity, anti-greed); generosity is becoming a new status symbol
• Thinking about the future – the next generation is much more environmentally oriented (Disney created a DisneyNature brand  )

Aveda’s approach is a designated department, combining:

• tracking the company’s environmental footprint and trying to reduce it
• employee education (how to reduce personal footprint)
• philanthropy (related to environmentalism)
• employee health and safety

Mission synergy: business mission and earth and community mission. (It is interestingly close to the concept of Brand Theme)

Social Media

Social media campaigns are infinite – whatever works should be indefinitely maintained (while it works)

Momentgraphic – similar to demographic and psychographic approach – determining the moment when the particular service or product could be most effectively offered

1% of all web sites has mobile-friendly look at this point

Data is valuable; but not for the sake of having data, but for the sake of improving relationships with customers – including mobile

The difference between an employee and a person is disappearing

Employees can show up higher in Organic listing than the company – it can be absolutely anybody, but this person would represent the company… Maybe we should encourage employees list the name of the company on Facebook, etc.?

Different audiences use devises in differently (mobile – 58% males; who likes to follow sports teams)

Rule of thumb (1/5 or 20%), but growing rapidly

• 20% of social media messages are consumed on mobile devices
• 20% of e-mail messages consumed on mobile devices

Employee social media – just an effort of being human…

“badvocate” – opposite of advocate (in contest of social media and beyond)

Best practices of mobile marketing:

• integrate with other channels
• test
• experiment (and test)

Try it!  Play with it!  Fail!  Try again! 

Example: a coupon was posted on Flikr, and the information about it was Twitted through Twitter. It was a test, but it worked very well…  An implementation was almost free…

20% of marketing budget should be devoted to trying new opportunities

Useful resource: http://extendr.com/   Of course, I had to try it – http://vanessabright.extendr.com/  – with one week of free premium service

MN AMA – Six Rules to build Internal Buy-in

The event not only introduced a group of us to Medtronic, but also allowed to learn from successes of great marketing team. The most important revelation for me was the long time and efforts needed to assure buy-in in a large organization, and also the fact that this process worth the struggle.

Tammy Johnson, Senior Global Brand Director, started from recommendation that we need to know our organization and how decisions are made. The speed and acceptance of different decisions may be very different.

Six rules:

1. Know your stakeholders

What are your stakeholders’ issues?  What motivates them?

2. You are a salesperson

• Selling marketing idea:
• define roles (who has power?)
• don’t do it yourself – build champions
• don’t blame others if they “don’t get it”
• find words that resonate
• define your “toll gates” – can not proceed
• make sure your presentations can be understood without presenting (this is a very useful advice, and hard to do…)

Find more “acceptable” and less “frightening” words:
rebrand > refresh
standards > guidelines
mandate > governance
brand > reputation
corporate > global

3. Spot the similarities

Ask worrying parties to highlight similarities

4. De-risk your boldest innovation

Illustrate your ideas; use stories and prototypes

5. Don’t major in minors (pick your battles)

Would you be fighting for the same thing one year from now?

6. Articulate what the success will look like

No level of communication is enough

MIMA – Bob Thacker

Bob Thacker, the legendary person who commissioned ElfYourself.com seem to like to say “yes” to unusual ideas and believes that “it can’t be done” simply means “it has not been done yet.”

Ideas that I found especially interesting:

• “Elf Yourself” was one of 20 innovative web sites created for the season; only one of the sites was so wildly successful
• “If you don’t have big bucks, you need big ideas”
• “Look before you leap, but then leap… do something”
• After “Elf Yourself” campaign Office Max was more associated with holiday season and considered fun
• “Don’t make ads – make news!”
• Fear kills creativity
• “No true pessimist was a true marketer”

Most of the examples – wonderful, spectacular examples – were still an “advertisement on the next level” – an ingenious methods of attaching a brand to something that inherently has no relation to it.

However, one example seemed different – it was an example of including of marketing into the product development process (what is spectacularly illustrated in Meatball Sundae). The product was specifically created for a certain audience – women – and connection of the product to the promotion was more natural. 

 

A great quote for our times:

If you can not decide if the glass half empty or half full – order a double.

MN AMA – How The Right Strategy Can Beat The Un-Economy

Another fascinating presentation by Bruce Tait from Tait Sabler.  In the difficult economic times, is it all about the price? No! 

Short-term decisions can destroy value.  “Emotional” benefits is not that important… “Utility” is important… but – what if you have value, but it is not perceived as value?

Decisions are made emotionally and then justified rationally. Value is often perceived as: value = functional benefit / price. But is it all? Leadership brands pay attention to value part of the equation.

It is important to “find an enemy of your brand” (not a competitor – an issue (not enough time, etc.)

Wal-Mart “out positioned” Target:
Wal-Mart: pay less > live better (more time/money for what you love)
Target: pay less > expect more (inexpensive upscale products)

People pay more for high-status item when they feel powerless…

Badge Model starts with functional benefits (what the product does), moves up to the external badge (how to appear to others), move up to the internal badge (reinforce positive self-image), and culminates with the transformational benefit (what the consumer hopes to become through the badge).

The most important – relevance and differentiation. Comparing on price leads to commodity. #1 reason why brands fail is lack of differentiation. This is the area where creativity is important.

HYUNDAI – now has 18% of the market. It was the first company that was able to connect its strategy with the most obvious fear of the times: if you loose your job, you can return the new car you purchased.

Why Obama won the competition with Hillary?  Branding!
Hillary – functional. Obama – movement.

Human brain does not change during “un economy.”

MN AMA – How Twitter Fits Into Today’s Business

Another great AMA event with Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Pioneer Press technology editor and author of “Twitter Means Business”

Julio’s book “Twitter Means Business” is the required reading for one of University of Minnesota classes…

Some notes from the event:

• What is Twitter? Twitter is Web publishing…  Blogging is time consuming, twitter is not.
•  Twitter is a big water cooler.
• Twitter is good for meeting new people. Facebook is better to communicate with people you know.
• Twitter is something new…

Companies on Twitter:

• Comcast is on twitter; the company scans the twits and contact people who are having difficulties with the service. Comcast is “helping itself.”
• Sears is not on Twitter; unsatisfied customers are free to express their disappointment without any intervention from the company’s side. Sears is “blissfully unaware” about unhappy customers.

Separate Twitter account can be created specifically for press releases – interesting…  and very reasonable.

Company can set up Twitter account to do one thing, but the effort can morph into something completely different…(similar to blogs)

In a company, managing Twitter account has to be somebody’s job…

MIMA – Content Strategy

Wow!  Before I could thin about typing my notes, the presentation and the video was already posted!  The event was as great as usually, and it was a pleasure to hear from a friend that I lured to attend how much she liked the event.

Kristina Halvorson impressed my friend (and probably everybody else) with wonderful information and exceptional delivery.

Points from the event:

• In most cases, brands are now evaluated for their “usefulness” rather than “preferability.” Brands are expected to be functional.
• Offline: passive engagement (we hope to capture attention)
• Online: people are active (getting attention is not enough) ; the brand must be
  • Useful
  • Usable
  • Enjoyable
• Content strategy plans for creation for useful, usable content
• Content should “support” for business goals and needs of the user

Example: Ford Models

Web content allows the modeling agency to create a new successful business model – the agency uses beauty tips and other beneficial for the target audience material to attract attention (and sponsors) to its videos. The agency is keeping careful balance of authenticity of the advice and product promotion.

Business case study -  Ford Models YouTube Channel

 Web content is different from the print – it is permanent and requires maintenance; the company needs to

• Plan
• Create
• Publish
• Govern 

 

 

Example: Money management software

 

Example of content not as useful form the user standpoint (I would simply call it product centric this malady does not affect online content only… )

 http://quicken.intuit.com/

 

 

Example of content that is more beneficial from the user’s standpoint (I would simply call it customer-centric approach – but marketing was struggling with it for a long time not only in the area of web content)

http://www.mint.com/
Brands are looking for functionality and usability that can bring measurable results online.

From the questions:

• people do read online after they finished scanning
• newspapers are dying because we are going online to read
• however, we need to support pre-read activities

An exercise to “put the stakeholder into user’s shoes” – offer the stakeholders to “shop” for  car insurance online (for example).  Start with the list of questions that they would like to answer, then visit several sites trying to answer these questions…  The exercise should help stakeholders to view their site from the point of view of the users.