Healthgrades, Malcolm Baldrige, Thompson Top 100, U S World & News Report and others are making their healthcare quality rankings for various diseases known. And if the hospital or health system is willing to pony up some cash, they too can use those rankings in their marketing and PR efforts.
But beyond the obvious campaigning, what I fail to see is how health systems or hospital awardees are communicating in any meaningful way what those quality awards means to the healthcare consumer. As I have written in the past, what is the value of that information to the healthcare consumer? A nice representation of the actual award and saying are in the top 5 percent nationally in (insert disease here) leaves it kind of lacking. Especially when other hospitals you compete against are making the same claim.
Wasted Opportunity
A shame really. The campaigning I am seeing in its current form treats the healthcare consumer like they are some kind of idiot. It also reinforces what the healthcare industry has been crying about that healthcare is more complicated than a 5 star rating. An inadvertent consequence nonetheless, you are creating the simplistic 5 star rating system yourself by how you are all campaigning the quality award. Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it. It's about the value not to you, but to the healthcare consumer. Instead of talking at the consumer, grab the opportunity to make the award meaningful in the eyes of the healthcare consumer, instead of taking the easy way out and puffing out our chest to say look at me.
Leveraging the Opportunity
The networked patient is one who is hungry for information. And patients are networked today more so than at any other time in the history of healthcare. The future will only make it more so. So why not get ahead of the curve and start making your ads and marketing communications pieces more value driven and providing healthcare solutions to the consumer?
Explain what that award means to the consumer. Define the value. Show how it separates you from all the others. Communicate how it reinforces your brand and brand promise. Use the award to create trust. Define the award experience in the patients terms. Just don't throw it out there and say we are in the top 5 percent or whatever. That is not meaningful to anyone. In an age of outcomes transparency, quality accountability and consumer choice, those ads sorely fail.
Maybe the opportunity is to create that 5 star web site based on those ads? Hmm......
You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views reviewed in over 20 countries around the world. I am a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. You can reach me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations, I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.
Is Your Healthcare Brand Architecture Out of Alignment?
Question...
What has many product lines? A multitude of names? Differing marketing communications pieces describing service lines, technology etc? And wonders why they are in survival mode or losing market share?
Answer....
Hospitals, home healthcare agencies and specialty pharmacies to name a few of the offenders.
Okay, that is probably a little hard but I think you get my point.
Branding as a Misunderstood Concept
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. Field sales teams off and about saying whatever they want too, creating leave behinds that frankly, are amateurish at best.
That really comes from a lack of marketing sophistication characterized by little understanding of basic marketing principles, lack of internal communication, lack of strategic vision and failure to recognize that the world has changed. Old models of how you did things to be successful in other organizations before they were sold out from under you don't work anymore.
The Healthcare World is Changing
Today, nobody flies under the radar screen. Healthcare organizations that understand the importance of brand image, brand architecture and brand equity - its impact dollar wise to the bottom-line are growing organically and venturing into new healthcare services. Using the power of their brand to bring implied program or service credibility because of their brand reputation. They have it under control and guard it jealously.
It's all about the brand
Under the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), your brand is becoming more important than ever. In a dynamically evolving marketplace where the healthcare consumer is or will be making a majority of purchase decisions, they need a clear understanding of and representation of your brand. If you brand is out of alignment then you are losing revenue and credibility in the market. A downward spiral that does not end well.
Marketing Leadership
This is also about marketing leadership. I speak to your ability to influence and change the organization of your employment. Educate. Inform. Teach. Do whatever you have to as a marketer too influence and lead your organization. Too much is a stake. Become a leading revenue marketer by creating a strong and enduring central brand.
Generating Revenue
Marketing is about generating revenue. You can't generate the revenue you need to grow and prosper because your brand or in some cases, multitude of brands are out of alignment in the marketplace.
The clock is ticking. The choice is yours. Fix your brand architecture now, or follow similar organizations to the ash heap of history.
You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views seen daily in over 20 countries around the world. I am a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. You can reach me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.
What has many product lines? A multitude of names? Differing marketing communications pieces describing service lines, technology etc? And wonders why they are in survival mode or losing market share?
Answer....
Hospitals, home healthcare agencies and specialty pharmacies to name a few of the offenders.
Okay, that is probably a little hard but I think you get my point.
Branding as a Misunderstood Concept
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. Field sales teams off and about saying whatever they want too, creating leave behinds that frankly, are amateurish at best.
That really comes from a lack of marketing sophistication characterized by little understanding of basic marketing principles, lack of internal communication, lack of strategic vision and failure to recognize that the world has changed. Old models of how you did things to be successful in other organizations before they were sold out from under you don't work anymore.
The Healthcare World is Changing
Today, nobody flies under the radar screen. Healthcare organizations that understand the importance of brand image, brand architecture and brand equity - its impact dollar wise to the bottom-line are growing organically and venturing into new healthcare services. Using the power of their brand to bring implied program or service credibility because of their brand reputation. They have it under control and guard it jealously.
It's all about the brand
Under the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), your brand is becoming more important than ever. In a dynamically evolving marketplace where the healthcare consumer is or will be making a majority of purchase decisions, they need a clear understanding of and representation of your brand. If you brand is out of alignment then you are losing revenue and credibility in the market. A downward spiral that does not end well.
Marketing Leadership
This is also about marketing leadership. I speak to your ability to influence and change the organization of your employment. Educate. Inform. Teach. Do whatever you have to as a marketer too influence and lead your organization. Too much is a stake. Become a leading revenue marketer by creating a strong and enduring central brand.
Generating Revenue
Marketing is about generating revenue. You can't generate the revenue you need to grow and prosper because your brand or in some cases, multitude of brands are out of alignment in the marketplace.
The clock is ticking. The choice is yours. Fix your brand architecture now, or follow similar organizations to the ash heap of history.
You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views seen daily in over 20 countries around the world. I am a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. You can reach me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.
Marketing the Employed Physician
2:33 PM
Accountable Care Organizations, Brand, Brand Promise, Consumer, healthcare, hospitals, Marketing Physicians, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, tags: Value Marketing, Value Proposition
With dynamic changes occurring in the healthcare industry as a result of the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), employment of physicians is making a big comeback to the hospital industry. Born of necessity, hospitals and physicians are being driven by reimbursement concerns and opportunities. The drive to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) demands a different type of physician relationship. One that is more centralized and controlled to "reap" the revenue benefits of the new healthcare market environment.
With this new opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and recapture what previously before had been an adventure on the part of hospitals with mixed results, its time to discuss how one goes about marketing the employed physician.
First break from the past......
It's easy to look at this and say we'll just do what we did in the past in promoting employed physicians and be done with it. That is a dangerous mistake in the age of healthcare consumerism. Consumers will have choice, are already networked and will be controlling many of the purchase decisions where previously, you drove many of those decisions. So if you're just going to throw some ads out there with a picture of the nice smiling doc with copy in the third person about how wonderful and compassionate he or she is, you can expect much disappointment. Even today there is still too much of that type of physician marketing occurring.
What is needed is a new look at what you are doing and changing to meet the needs of your healthcare consumer, not you.
A new day....
With great change comes great opportunity. That is if one is willing to embrace that change and find new ways of moving forward and creating value.
Your Brand. Your Value. The Healthcare Consumer's Choice.
You need to communicate very strongly your brand and brand promise you are associating with the employed physician. Doesn't matter if he or she is in a Medical Office Building (MOB) you own, Accountable Care Organization (ACO) or Medical Home (MH). Bring your brand to the forefront and brand the doc to you. He or she is no longer an independent practitioner. They represent your brand at an individual level. Capitalize on that opportunity and leverage it.
Communicate the value that this physician brings to your community and the healthcare consumer. Communicate the value that the doctor brings to your brand. Leverage that opportunity. Stop talking at people, talk to them. Talk to consumers with compelling value driven reasons why they should select that doctor, or even why they should even considering switching physicians.
Stop wasting your money putting ads in papers that expect people to take action simply because the doctor is on your medical staff or in one of your buildings. That treats the healthcare consumer like they are idiots. They're not. They are demanding value and acknowledgement that they have a say in what's going on. If you won't meet their needs they will go somewhere else.
Consumers now have more power than they have every had as a result of PPACA. They are and will be paying more of the medical bill as time goes along. If you're not communicating value and what's in it for them for selecting your physicians, then you can put it in the bank that the healthcare consumer is will pass on by and go where they perceive the value to be greatest for them in line with the price they are paying.
You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views reviewed in over 20 countries around the world, and is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. I can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive or for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.
With this new opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and recapture what previously before had been an adventure on the part of hospitals with mixed results, its time to discuss how one goes about marketing the employed physician.
First break from the past......
It's easy to look at this and say we'll just do what we did in the past in promoting employed physicians and be done with it. That is a dangerous mistake in the age of healthcare consumerism. Consumers will have choice, are already networked and will be controlling many of the purchase decisions where previously, you drove many of those decisions. So if you're just going to throw some ads out there with a picture of the nice smiling doc with copy in the third person about how wonderful and compassionate he or she is, you can expect much disappointment. Even today there is still too much of that type of physician marketing occurring.
What is needed is a new look at what you are doing and changing to meet the needs of your healthcare consumer, not you.
A new day....
With great change comes great opportunity. That is if one is willing to embrace that change and find new ways of moving forward and creating value.
Your Brand. Your Value. The Healthcare Consumer's Choice.
You need to communicate very strongly your brand and brand promise you are associating with the employed physician. Doesn't matter if he or she is in a Medical Office Building (MOB) you own, Accountable Care Organization (ACO) or Medical Home (MH). Bring your brand to the forefront and brand the doc to you. He or she is no longer an independent practitioner. They represent your brand at an individual level. Capitalize on that opportunity and leverage it.
Communicate the value that this physician brings to your community and the healthcare consumer. Communicate the value that the doctor brings to your brand. Leverage that opportunity. Stop talking at people, talk to them. Talk to consumers with compelling value driven reasons why they should select that doctor, or even why they should even considering switching physicians.
Stop wasting your money putting ads in papers that expect people to take action simply because the doctor is on your medical staff or in one of your buildings. That treats the healthcare consumer like they are idiots. They're not. They are demanding value and acknowledgement that they have a say in what's going on. If you won't meet their needs they will go somewhere else.
Consumers now have more power than they have every had as a result of PPACA. They are and will be paying more of the medical bill as time goes along. If you're not communicating value and what's in it for them for selecting your physicians, then you can put it in the bank that the healthcare consumer is will pass on by and go where they perceive the value to be greatest for them in line with the price they are paying.
You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views reviewed in over 20 countries around the world, and is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. I can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive or for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.
Marketing the Re-emerging Center of Excellence
10:27 AM
ACOs, Centers of Excellence, Consumer, healthcare, hospitals, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Value Marketing
Previously, I authored a couple of blogs on the Re-emergence of Centers of Excellence (CoE) due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), as well as starting a most interesting discussion on LinkedIn in the American College of Healthcare Executives Group. Those blogs and discussion really focused more on the operational and quality of care characteristics of a CoE than marketing. The point being that with the rise of healthcare consumerism driven by many factors outside the control of healthcare providers, that you could no longer look around and just say that you have a CoE in a particular service-line or disease -state.
So, if as a leader in your healthcare organization you have come to realize that the healthcare consumer deserves more than just the old ways of doing things, you have really looked at your self-described CoEs and beefed them up to true reflections of organizational and quality of care excellence, then just maybe you are ready to begin marketing a CoE. If not, it will come back to haunt you in the end, influenced by PPACA and demands of the healthcare consumer.
Marketing the CoE
This is really a reintroduction for most healthcare organizations. That being said, the opportunity immediately before you is to corrects some past mistakes. Mistakes I would like think were made with the best of intentions, but reflected a lack of understanding about the organizational brand, brand messages, and brand equity that was lost.
Probably the most important correction or for starting out with a new CoE is- scrap the new logo, color palette and messaging for the CoE. Too many organizations went down the path of we need a new logo, tagline, color palette, etc., from what is the already established brand of the organization. Shame on the marketing departments for not exercising the leadership to stop the madness.
I don't care that a CNO or director likes to "dabble in marketing". Except in some circumstances where the CNO or director has marketing training and education, CNOs, directors of Nursing etc., are clueless about brand, brand equity and marketing for that matter. How about I dabble in nursing?
In the Age of Healthcare Consumerism, your brand is everything.
The only logo that matters is your brand logo, color palette and messaging. Period. Change it at your own risk. Leverage what you have because it makes life a lot easier and more cost effective.
Do create a value proposition that shows the benefit to the healthcare consumer that your CoE brings to the market.
Do talk to the healthcare consumer not at them.
Do integrate the CoE campaign into the broader organizational marketing efforts.
Do use patient and physician testimonials if available.
If you have Joint Commission CoE certification or the Blue Cross Blue Shield CoE certifications or others, use them, but explain the value of what that means. Just don't throw it out there.
Talk about your outcomes and why they are important. Be transparent in your use of data.
Use all communication channels, print, direct mail, billboard, radio, email, social media, web site, call center, etc. Integrate those efforts.
Make your marketing efforts sustainable. Fund them accordingly to last a long period of time to be in front of the healthcare consumer for months at a time.
Be creative. Be interactive. Start and maintain a conversation with the healthcare consumer.
Evaluate constantly. Change on the fly. Show ROI.
Take a market position of superiority along either the product, price or service offering and dominate. Pick one, set meaningful benchmarks in the others.
Don't overpromise and under deliver.
You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views reviewed in over 20 countries around the world, and is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. I can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive or for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.
So, if as a leader in your healthcare organization you have come to realize that the healthcare consumer deserves more than just the old ways of doing things, you have really looked at your self-described CoEs and beefed them up to true reflections of organizational and quality of care excellence, then just maybe you are ready to begin marketing a CoE. If not, it will come back to haunt you in the end, influenced by PPACA and demands of the healthcare consumer.
Marketing the CoE
This is really a reintroduction for most healthcare organizations. That being said, the opportunity immediately before you is to corrects some past mistakes. Mistakes I would like think were made with the best of intentions, but reflected a lack of understanding about the organizational brand, brand messages, and brand equity that was lost.
Probably the most important correction or for starting out with a new CoE is- scrap the new logo, color palette and messaging for the CoE. Too many organizations went down the path of we need a new logo, tagline, color palette, etc., from what is the already established brand of the organization. Shame on the marketing departments for not exercising the leadership to stop the madness.
I don't care that a CNO or director likes to "dabble in marketing". Except in some circumstances where the CNO or director has marketing training and education, CNOs, directors of Nursing etc., are clueless about brand, brand equity and marketing for that matter. How about I dabble in nursing?
In the Age of Healthcare Consumerism, your brand is everything.
The only logo that matters is your brand logo, color palette and messaging. Period. Change it at your own risk. Leverage what you have because it makes life a lot easier and more cost effective.
Do create a value proposition that shows the benefit to the healthcare consumer that your CoE brings to the market.
Do talk to the healthcare consumer not at them.
Do integrate the CoE campaign into the broader organizational marketing efforts.
Do use patient and physician testimonials if available.
If you have Joint Commission CoE certification or the Blue Cross Blue Shield CoE certifications or others, use them, but explain the value of what that means. Just don't throw it out there.
Talk about your outcomes and why they are important. Be transparent in your use of data.
Use all communication channels, print, direct mail, billboard, radio, email, social media, web site, call center, etc. Integrate those efforts.
Make your marketing efforts sustainable. Fund them accordingly to last a long period of time to be in front of the healthcare consumer for months at a time.
Be creative. Be interactive. Start and maintain a conversation with the healthcare consumer.
Evaluate constantly. Change on the fly. Show ROI.
Take a market position of superiority along either the product, price or service offering and dominate. Pick one, set meaningful benchmarks in the others.
Don't overpromise and under deliver.
You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views reviewed in over 20 countries around the world, and is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. I can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive or for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.
