Notes from Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit

Last week, I posted a video blog on my one big takeaway from the Summit in Orlando. Here’s a snapshot of other things I heard and learned from four of the sessions.

Real-Time Marketing

• David Meerman Scott shared adventures in real-time marketing –– how brands that plan for the here and now take advantage of the opportunities in the present. (Like the Taylor Guitars response to a musician’s viral video about United Airlines losing his guitar.)
• David talked about how we learn about brands via digital media –– web searches, Facebook, and the like.
• This caused a slight ruffle of feathers in the audience, as healthcare marketers, by and large, still engage with senior adults who aren’t as entrenched with the web as, say, a 17-year old high schooler. Some of the crowd felt he was missing the larger conversation about bridging the diverse audiences healthcare must reach, both young and old.
• The talk was also slightly ironic that he publishes printed books and I first learned of him through a printed direct mail piece. But he was good and encouraged us in healthcare marketing to stretch ourselves to where today’s conversations are being held.
• He made an interesting point that the most overused words businesses use to describe themselves are unique, innovative and leading. (Sound familiar to anyone?)

Beyond Health Reform

• Jeff Goldsmith, PhD, gave us a sobering glimpse into healthcare reform –– what’s in those 1,200 pages that became law law year.
• News flash: a lot of the federal law is gibberish, and there’s a lot of head-scratching going on within health systems on how the government wants Accountable Care Organizations to behave.
• Goldsmith did say that healthcare added 1million jobs during the recession. (Apparently, healthcare didn’t get the memo about layoffs like other sectors have.)
• There’s been a lot of crowing about the cost of healthcare. But Goldsmith pointed out that healthcare costs are actually in the decline, and have been in decline for the last eight years.
• Also, patient visits peaked in December 2006.

Rational vs. Emotional Advertising

• Jim Blazar and Marilyn Wilker discussed the pros/cons of how to balance fact and emotion in advertising.
• We know from study after study that people make the majority of their decisions emotionally. The same goes for healthcare. So balancing this truth with internal pressure to rattle off quality scores is an ongoing challenge for healthcare marketers.
• My two cents is that it’s preferred to lead with emotional messages –– make a connection with the audience. Then, use facts to validate your message.
• Blazar stressed the importance of engaging employees during the branding process. According to him, if you can’t get your employees to understand your brand strategy, it’s not going to work out in consumer-land.

Women’s Health Marketing

• Gabrielle DeTora, Merri Alessi and Jane Haas shared very engaging campaigns that drove volume to women’s service lines.
• Interesting facts that I heard during the lecture were:
  • More than 60% of all doctor visits are made by women.
  • 59% of filled prescriptions are by women
  • Every 1,000 deliveries at a hospital translate into $3.9m in downstream revenue.
  • 43.6% of women would ask their doctor to send her to her preferred hospital, and 15.7% of women who have had a maternity stay in the last twelve months would go to another doctor who would admit her to her preferred hospital.

Stephen Reports: HMSS 2011

What do you do when you’re faced with adversity, confusion, chaos and the uncertainty of what tomorrow will bring for healthcare marketing? In this Franklin Street video blog, Stephen Moegling, SVP of Client Services, shares his number one takeaway from the 2011 Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit in Orlando.

Best Practices in Physician Communications and Marketing