Next week, long-time colleague Candace Quinn (Brand Equals Experience) and I will present a keynote address at the New England Society for Healthcare Communications Spring Conference in Newport, Rhode Island.
Our session – Preparing for a New Era of Healthcare Marketing – kicks off at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, May 20. Here’s a sneak preview of the talk:
Five Forces Changing Healthcare Marketing
- The new economics of health care reform – the industry is transitioning from ‘pay for volume’ to ‘pay for value’ through accountable care systems and risk reimbursement models.
- Market restructuring and emerging delivery models – consolidation and alignment through mergers, acquisitions and strategic partnerships will change competitive dynamics in local markets.
- Evolution of brands in physical and virtual environments – healthcare is getting smart about brands as competitive assets that drive business performance, and the importance of brand experience.
- Technologies that disrupt and transform – digital technologies are revolutionizing business processes everywhere, and profoundly changing the way patients and providers interact.
- Growing, changing, graying, connected consumers – aging baby boomers will be a driving force for healthcare services in the coming decades – not just for ‘what’ is delivered, but ‘how’ it will be delivered.
Five Critical Roles for Healthcare Marketers
- Growth strategist – revenue generation is the priority; adopt a strong P&L mindset, drive clear alignment of brand, marketing and sales investments to the health system’s growth strategy.
- Brand advocate – invest in the brand; create a powerful, differentiated, competitive brand position, and lead organizational change to deliver brand value, not just promote it.
- Digital change agent – web, social networking, search marketing and mobile capabilities – integrated with clinical IT systems, are no longer optional for providers that want to remain relevant.
- Experience champion – advocate for customer-centered decision-making and design systems and services that transform customer experience.
- Innovation catalyst – bring creative thinking and fresh solutions to systems, programs, services and products that attract, serve and retain customers.
Five Bold Moves to Transform Healthcare Marketing
- Change the marketing culture – this requires an organizational shift in thinking about marketing as tactical communications to a discipline that is strategic, cross-functional and bottom line oriented.
- Reconfigure the marketing organization – establish a vision, role and scope for marketing as a revenue-generating capability, then restructure marketing operations to support growth goals.
- Acquire new competencies, capabilities and skills – acquire expertise in business analytics, R & D, brand building, customer acquisition/retention, CRM/PRM, digital, search and social marketing.
- Create a compelling case for change and bias for action – focus marketing investments on strategies that grow revenue and improve business performance.
- Communicate new roles, new rules, new expectations – create co-ownership and co-accountability for marketing outcomes across administrative, clinical and business operations.
We hope to see you there. If you can’t make it and would like a copy of the slide deck, just let me know.
When I was a VP of Marketing for a hospital system in the midwest it seemed everyone wanted our sponsorship support. Every employee and every physician had their own pet project, activity or child’s sport team they wished to have the hospital system sponsor. While everyone claims their sponsorship offers “good PR” – the reality is that many of these efforts have little PR value, and likely no marketing value. Yet often, politically it seemed we were in a tight spot to say yes. 
