3 Trends That Will Disrupt #HealthcareMarketing in 2014
Healthcare is a $2.8 trillion industry, and it’s currently in a state of chaos. The Affordable Care Act is reshaping the sector. Patients are more mobile than ever, and turnover in the C-suite is skyrocketing, with the average lifespan of a healthcare CEO lasting just three and a half years.
Many of these new CEOs have no healthcare background, making the impact of the turnover even more dramatic. And when new CEOs take the helm, there’s an 87 percent chance they’ll replace the company’s current CMO.
With a shifting landscape comes a restructuring of paradigms, particularly for healthcare marketing. How can we not only survive these changes, but seize the opportunities they present?
Invest in Owned Media
As marketers, increasing advertising rates don’t exactly calm our nerves. Google’s cost-per-click, for example, jumped 10 percent last year. Suddenly, attracting customer attention is more expensive.
Owned media — a conference, video channel, blog, or webinar series you control — has always been a powerful way to establish industry-wide thought leadership. It isn’t cheap, but unlike online advertising, the cost remains constant.
Given the tremendous potential impact of owned media on branding, more companies are getting serious about thought leadership. For example, HealthStat RX, the medical adherence leader, operates in a world in which, according to the World Health Organization, half of all patients prescribed medication today fail to take it correctly.
That’s a lot of waste in an economy where healthcare costs consume one-sixth of every dollar spent. Education is the cornerstone of how HealthStat RX is making healthcare more accountable, affordable, and effective. The year, the company is investing in thought leadership pieces, proprietary studies, and educational webinars, according to Marketing Director Kristin Lindsey.
She’s not alone. Andrea Busse, CEO of IntelaText, a mobile engagement company, says that consumer activation has moved beyond marketing and into patient care. “Our consumer action mobilytics are currently being implemented with our B2B clients in healthcare, both on the patient care side and the preventative side, to track everything from how many steps patients took that day to drug compliance and regimen adherence, thus reducing provider liability.”
The point? This is the year to dive into owned media to build a community of consequence around your solution. If the prospect of running an industry-wide summit this year seems daunting, start smaller. An educational blog, a quarterly piece of solid trend data, a study, or a newsletter can go a long way toward bolstering a professional community.
Get Ready for the Voice Search Revolution
In the movie “Her,” we get a glimpse of the technology that will soon be available. It’s no spoiler to reveal that mobile keyboarding will soon be a thing of the past — especially in cars.
Where’s the nearest drugstore? Where can I get new contact lenses? Help me deliver this baby! If you’re driving a new Volvo or Ford, ask it aloud, and your car will respond.
“People searching by voice tend to be more conversational and ask the search engine lengthier questions, rather than typing in a short list of keywords. That means marketers…should provide plenty of context and not focus so much on exact keyword matches,” says Stacy Williams, CEO of Prominent Placement, Inc., an Atlanta-based search engine marketing agency.
Voice search technology is set to spread like wildfire. When it does, it will throw a major wrench in healthcare’s approach to SEO. As with any new technology, it’s difficult to predict how the market will react to the voice revolution. Thankfully, data analysis can provide you with valuable end-user insight to help shape your approach.
“We’re able to profile and test different online marketing options so we find the highest-quality, best patient for our customers,” says Deborah Fisher of Response Mine Interactive. With a strategy informed by hard numbers, you can venture into uncharted territory with confidence.
Bring in the Social Healthcare CEO
In the face of high industry turnover, now’s the time for healthcare CEOs to embrace social media. If 2014 seems a little late in the game, consider the fact that 70 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have no social media presence at all. In fact, less than 2 percent are active on Twitter.
Those who do have a presence, such as Michael R. Anderson of UH Case Medical Center and Akram Boutros of The MetroHealth System, have established a distinct voice and mission in the eyes of the public, which makes them more accessible to journalists, talent, and investors.
The healthcare business is talent-starved in many key areas; social media is a strong way to create a competitive advantage. People want to work for people they like and trust, and social media is a great way to put a CEO’s charisma to good use.
Where to begin? If you’re working with a less-than-social-savvy CEO, try installing Buffer. The app enables marketers to compose tweets for their executives, but gives the CEO the final say in what gets posted, keeping the voice authentic. It also enables your CEO to repost content she finds valuable with the touch of a button.
This volatile year may well be a time of transition for your company. A social CEO is better equipped to communicate changes to your vision or structure with the outside world.
Capitalizing on Chaos
This is an exciting and confusing time for healthcare marketers. It would be one thing to deal with high executive turnover in isolation, but combine it with watershed legislation, shifting insurance paradigms, and new technologies, and it’s tempting to wait until the dust settles. But savvy marketers are taking the shifting landscape in stride by investing in new media trends. Staying on top of a tumultuous industry takes work, but it opens up a world of opportunity.