This is not about guerilla marketing. I am writing about engaging in what I call Disruptive Healthcare Marketing (DHM). DHM is a process that moves you from looking like a "me too" in your healthcare marketing, to forcing competitors into changing their game, reacting to you.
If for the sake of argument, you can agree that there is little meaningful differentiation, healthcare is becoming a commodity, price competition is beginning, and the healthcare consumer is becoming more empowered and taking control, then why would you continue to market the same old ways and play follow the leader in your industry vertical? Isn't that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
Disruption is occurring across healthcare on a daily basis and well into the foreseeable future. So why isn't healthcare marketing keeping pace?
Much healthcare marketing is like Lemmings in a herd, falling over the cliff because everybody else is. If your marketing is so effective, then why do executives, especially in hospitals, talk of being in survival mode? Sounds like what you have been doing isn't working.
Disruptive Healthcare Marketing is contrarian in nature.
That's right, DHM is contrarian in nature, because you don't follow the leader and change a few things in an effort to look different, with the same essential message. It's about finding those meaningful points of differentiation that your consumer is looking for that will resonate. You ask the hard questions. You do the grunt work. You challenge conventional thinking. You challenge the culture and beliefs of the organization. You look at why someone is taking a particular strategy path, and understand why they aren't doing something else. You lead. It's about going in a different sustainable directions that builds volume, revenue and market share.
Everyone is chasing the same healthcare consumer and looking the same in the process.
Really, is your customer/patient satisfaction that much different from your competitors? Are your hi-tech medical devices so amazing that healthcare consumers and purchasers will flock to your doors? Can your valet service "out customer experience" the healthcare provider on the other side of town? Can your specialty pharmacy clinical sales tell you, without a 50 slide deck, in 25 words or less, how you are better than a competitor? Can you do a presentation to an insurer that that's not 80 slides of, all about you?
Are you saying to your marketing department, look what they did?
If yes is the answer to any of the questions, then you are not engaged in Disruptive Healthcare Marketing.
A Disruptive Healthcare Marketing model can look like this:
Disruptive Healthcare Marketing utilizes marketing in a strategically focused plan, to provide meaningful differentiation, positions you as the leader and create a brand story with lasting marketplace presence. It is highly integrated, sustainable and focused. DHM changes the organization. It will make you uncomfortable. But then, if you're not uncomfortable, then you really aren't changing.
Insert any audience in the center of the model and you have Disruptive Healthcare Marketing. Integrated, coordinated and not based on what your competition is doing, but upon you, your brand and your differentiable, sustainable message points.
Change or be changed. You decide.
You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com
For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- :michael@themichaeljgroup.com or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.
