Five critical roles for healthcare marketing executives
1. Five Critical Roles for
Healthcare Marketing Executives
Karen Corrigan
Corrigan Partners LLC
@karencorrigan
Corriganpartners.com
2. The changing face of competition . . .
and healthcare marketing.
• Restructuring markets and intensifying
competitor activities in anticipation of reform
and other industry pressures
• New reimbursement methods and care delivery
models that require greater emphasis on
customer engagement to optimize profitability
• Transformation of marketing practice through
web, social and mobile technologies
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3. Five critical roles for healthcare marketers
Growth Strategist
Brand Advocate
Digital Change Agent
Experience Champion
Innovation Catalyst
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4. Role # 1:
The marketer as growth strategist
In nearly every other industry, marketing
is valued as a revenue-generating
business competency critical to driving
growth, brand loyalty and better
financial performance.
Now is the time for chief marketing
officers to move aggressively to
transform marketing practice from
promotions-oriented tactics to growth-
oriented strategic leadership.
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5. Revenue generation is the priority . . .
For the foreseeable future, health systems
will be operating with competing and
somewhat conflicting objectives as they
attempt to optimize commercial volumes
for core clinical programs, while
simultaneously building accountable care
systems and capabilities.
Marketing executives must help health
systems transcend the ‘pay for volume’ and
‘pay for value’ markets
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6. Focus on revenue-generating growth opportunities
Building a powerful, relevant, differentiated brand position
Developing a core set of comprehensive ‘smart growth’ service lines
Enhancing access and minimizing ‘leaky bucket’ and out-migration
Creating and leveraging more tightly integrated physician structures
Developing innovative payor/contracting relationships
Developing competencies in population health management
Diversifying ambulatory, post-acute, retail and on-line health services
Creating future-ready models of care
Expanding into new markets and new lines of business
Creating a signature, customer-centric service culture
Leveraging strategic information technologies
Building revenue-generating marketing capabilities
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7. Success requires a growth-oriented culture
Marketing’s partnership and co-accountability
with clinical operations, IT, finance, HR and
other core business functions are critical to:
Driving alignment across the network
(operations, IT, physicians, contracting, etc.)
Understanding changing payment methods
and business models
Delivering on revenue growth and profit
targets.
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8. Role #2:
The marketer as brand advocate
The business of branding: Growth. Innovation. Leverage.
• Brands influence consumer decision-making and
choices regarding health and medical care.
• Brands shape the complex referral and transactional
relationships among consumers, health services,
physicians, hospitals and payers; strong brands create
premium referral, partnering and contracting
advantages.
• Strong brands attract the best talent, and can be
leveraged to benefit recruitment and retention.
• Brands are about growth, revenue, profitability, market
leverage, staff commitment and customer loyalty.
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9. Rapidly restructuring markets require new
approaches to brand leadership
Brand management must evolve to address and handle the complexities of:
Newly developing care delivery models
Hospital and health system mergers & acquisitions
Physician integration and owned medical practices
Ambulatory, post acute and retail diversification
Academic, technology and business partnerships
Multi-market, multi-state expansion initiatives
Enterprise IT/EHR/Website strategies
Co-branding/co-marketing relationships
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10. Brand strength improves competitive performance
Brand leadership has never been more important
– or more challenging – for health systems
Rapidly changing competitive dynamics are taxing
even well established healthcare brands
To date, brand investments in healthcare have
been largely focused on identity systems,
advertising and promotions
Brand alignment builds the brand-
driven culture that transforms an Brand and its interdependency on the operating
organization from one that simply model is a fledging concept in healthcare
‘promotes a brand’ to one that
‘delivers the brand.’ Strategic, operational, clinical, physician and
marketing alignment is essential to creating and
delivering a meaningful, differentiating and
durable brand value proposition
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12. Core competencies of brand leadership
Advanced brand research and analytic techniques
Relevant, defensible brand value proposition
Purposeful, consistent brand experience
Brand-driven growth pipeline
Leveraged brand equity
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13. Role #3:
The marketer as digital change agent
Web, social networking and mobile technologies are revolutionizing business
processes everywhere and marketers can be change agents by helping health
systems better understand how to employ these technologies to:
Reach and engage consumers
Acquire and retain customers
Improve patient-provider relationships
Support patients with care management
Promote better clinical care and decision-making
Facilitate workplace communications and productivity
Build the brand
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14. Building digital marketing capabilities is job one
Invest in digital marketing structures, capabilities
and support systems:
• Integrated, multi-channel strategies
• Integrated web, social, mobile marketing
• Content marketing & management
• Integrated CRM/contact center
• Mobile media development & marketing
• Digital brandscaping
• Social commerce
• Community management
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15. Master the art of digital and content marketing
Harness the power of digital marketing to drive customer acquisition and
retention; digital marketing gives us real time access to the patient at the
very moment they are interested; social engagement gives us deep insights
into consumer needs and wants.
Engaging the right audiences, in the right places, at the right time to drive
revenue and brand loyalty is the goal of digital marketing.
Success requires a thorough understanding of how consumers discover,
consume and share information on-line; and the role of search and social
interaction across the buying cycle.
Make digital brandscaping a priority – deliver a positive, consistent brand
experience in both virtual and physical environments.
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16. Lead the change . . .
• Develop fluency in digital and social media -- use the tools
personally & professionally
• Establish a vision and plan for digital and social marketing;
restructure marketing and redesign marketing processes
• Educate the organization as to how web, social and
mobile are changing consumer behaviors, and how digital
and social tools can enhance brand experience, improve
health and facilitate business processes
• Provide education to increase digital & social media skills in marketing and
across the organization
• Facilitate adoption of digital – web, social and mobile -- from top tier
executives who may be entrenched in outdated ways
• Make it easy for staff to do the right thing – help them understand the brand,
understand the rules, understand the platforms
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17. Role #4:
The marketer as experience champion
Be a champion for customer-centered decision-
making and innovations that transform customer
experience.
Drive understanding across the health system that
customer experience is more than HCAHPS scores
and patient satisfaction . . . it’s about meeting
customer expectations every day in every
interaction through DESIGN – administrative
systems, appointment scheduling, meeting and
greeting, clinical processes, customer engagement,
billing, follow-up, etc.
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18. Experience happens by design; not by accident
People Processes
• Culture • Scheduling
• Beliefs • Registration
• Values • Treatment
• Behaviors • Hand-offs
Brand-Driven
Experience
Performance Framework Marketing
• Service • Segments
• Quality • Products
• Lean • Channels
• Six Sigma • Brand
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19. Help others learn from the “Elite 8%”
A Bain & Company study found that 80% of surveyed companies felt they
delivered good experiences; when their customers were interviewed, only
8% truly delivered. What sets the ‘elite 8’ apart?
They understand their customers and design the right offers and
experiences for those customers.
They deliver experience by focusing the entire company on customer
needs with an emphasis on cross-functional collaboration.
They develop capabilities to please customers again and again—by
such means as continual innovation, training people in how to create
new customer experiences, and establishing direct accountability for
customer experience. Source: Harvard Management Update; Three D’s of Customer Experience; 2005
20. What can marketing do?
Employ innovative research techniques to generate rich insights into
customer needs, wants, expectations . . .
Bring customers and providers together in planning and design sessions . . .
Articulate the link between brand value proposition and experience . . .
Keep experiences authentic…authentic to your brand value proposition,
authentic to customer expectations, authentic to capabilities . . .
Champion use of DESIGN to hardwire experience . . .
Become a fan of demonstration projects; experiment, learn, apply . . .
Educate, educate, educate . . .
21. Role #5:
The marketer as innovation catalyst
Transformation of care delivery systems, business
processes, and market strategies are top priorities
for health systems:
Innovations advance strategy, build brand
equity, and produce a better bottom line.
Innovation rarely happens by chance; it
happens more through the purposeful creation
of innovation competencies and processes.
Innovation demands alignment of culture,
capabilities and structure, as well as a laser
focus on value-creation.
Transformation cannot happen without
innovation.
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22. Marketing’s role has never been more crucial
Creating new markets, moving market
share, developing new sources of revenue,
building brand loyalty, improving
profitability, and sustaining competitiveness
are all goals of innovation.
Marketers can help by creating a focused
customer-centered approach to innovation
and developing the platforms to drive
creative solutions.
Success stems from creative thinking, fresh
solutions, and relevance to customers.
That puts marketing front and center as the
curator of customer intelligence.
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23. Align innovation efforts to strategy
• Needs driven innovations - emphasis is market research to
better understand customer needs and discover market
opportunities that can be addressed in unique ways; R & D is
the core competency.
• Relationship driven innovations - emphasis is mass
customization as a competency to create one-to-one
relationships, enabled by sophisticated, enabling CRM
technology that recognizes, supports, and delivers customized
solutions for valued customers.
• Market driving innovations - resetting the rules of competition
through value innovation; radical, disruptive moves that create
new markets, transform customers into fans, and build such
distinct points of competitive advantage that they are difficult
to duplicate.
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24. Promote less talk, more action
Healthcare consumers are frustrated by the
complexities of access, fragmentation of care,
lack of communications, and other aspects of
their experiences.
Most of the industry is woefully behind in
providing on-line conveniences such as
scheduling and customer communications.
Opportunities for innovations that take the
hassle out of healthcare are sizable.
So why aren’t more marketers driving changes in
the customer experience realm?
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25. The business enterprise has two and only two
basic functions: marketing and innovation.
Marketing and innovation produce results;
all the rest are costs.
Peter Drucker
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