team on tandem bike
By John Lavey, CEO/President

One trend that influences the solutions we bring is the evolving marketing operations we see with our clients. I’ve been seeing more and more companies develop a leaner marketing team, perhaps even led by a fractional CMO, supported by a team of key outside partners.  
 
That model makes sense, and here are what I see as the five factors that go into making that a successful operation, supporting your growth and communication goals.

  1. A solid marketing plan—It all starts with a plan, supported by company leadership, that articulates all the channels and what will realistically define success for those channels. This plan also helps align partners toward a common goal. 

  2. Dashboard for activity and performance—Being able to successfully manage all the marketing channels that support a company’s growth means having visibility into all the activities that are taking place, and performance, too. 

  3. A lead strategic partner—One who understands your company, your industry and your audience is best positioned to be the general contractor, with the other marketing functions serving as subcontractors. You might be able to do this role yourself, but a lead partner can support your efforts. 

  4. The ability to pivot and iterate—With a dashboard to assess performance, and a strong strategic partner, you can honestly look at what’s working and what’s not working and make decisions to change course. 

  5. A commitment to the commitment—Being restless and wavering every time the market looks slightly different, or when you face sales obstacles, is not a good way to run your marketing. You should build a plan to focus on a span of time that looks critically at performance, but trust in the solution you are providing, and don’t just walk away.

Changing marketing operations structures are the new reality. The principles above can guide your approach and help you succeed. Where are you with your marketing operations?  

 
Image: Getty Images

 



About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.

 

 

By John Lavey, President and CEO 
 
Helping customers be more successful at solving a problem or pursuing a passion is good marketing. Being able to share information that no one else has access to, or hasn’t taken the time to aggregate in a meaningful way, is particularly powerful.  
 
Some of our clients have access to large data sets that can be mined to share trends, like payer trends related to claims reimbursement. Others have packaged publicly available information in a way that is specifically helpful, such as a monthly update on the status of every state’s CMS waiver. 
 
It’s a valuable asset to be able to inform insights with data sets that can help guide a customer’s decision making, and help them be more informed and more successful. When that data is shared in an engaging format, it positions you as a leader, with real authority in your industry. In some instances, healthcare companies have such valuable information, the communication of that data and those insights can become its own product, and it creates a revenue stream. 
 
For other companies, the key might be focusing on the insights at the core of your expertise. Is there publicly available data you can organize in a way that creates value to your customers? Or do you have access to data that you can share on a recurring basis to capture trends? 
 
If you are focused on establishing yourself as a thought leader in your part of the healthcare industry, or providing helpful content to your customers, consider the golden opportunity provided by data-supported insights.

 

 

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About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here

 

 

By John Lavey, CEO/President
 
There is a well-known story about William Wrigley Jr., founder of the chewing gum company. 
 
Wrigley attributed the success of his chewing gum business to its massive investments in advertising. A young accountant for the company asked the boss whether the brand wasn’t well established enough to divert that investment into profits instead of continuing to feed the spend. They happened to be on a train.  
 
Wrigley asked the accountant, “Why doesn’t the railroad remove the engine and let the train travel on its own momentum?” 
 
Today’s equivalent is investments in content marketing. More than 9 in 10 B2B marketers use content marketing as a primary marketing tool, with estimates that it generates three times the number of leads as traditional marketing channels (Demand Metric).  
 
Yet, right now, many companies are being very conservative with their spending, sitting on their hands and holding off on investments in marketing. 
 
It’s as if they decided to “remove the engine” and hope that they can succeed and grow on the power of any momentum generated from prior investments.  
 
We see it differently. We know that removing the engine means losing ground quickly to competitors. In my own business, there was a day when Hammock was known as one of a few firms in Nashville to go to for certain work. Now we have to think about competing against the world, and we have to focus on constant content generation to stay relevant. 
 
How’s the trip going for your business? Are you fueling the engine, or trying to operate on fumes? 
 
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About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.

 

 

By John Lavey, CEO/President

I’ve spent much of the last few months, like most people in my industry (and like most people in any industry), trying to make sense of artificial intelligence tools that have the potential to upend or optimize how we work. ChatGPT is the best known, but there are others.

I think AI is a powerful tool. But when I asked one tool, Jasper AI, whether writers were going to be replaced by AI tools, it told me we would not be replaced.

While we might be thinking our robot overlords are being clever, here’s what I can learn from AI on this very topic. Some of the content below was actually assisted by Jasper AI (I also wanted to test my editors to see if they could tell the difference between my writing and a machine’s) and also reflects conversations with colleagues and clients.

  1. AI tools don’t replace the real value that humans bring to content marketing. Writers excel at storytelling, understanding emotions and perspectives, and creating authentic and relatable content. AI tools may be able to mimic these qualities, but they lack the creativity and empathy that human writers possess.

  2. Content marketing is not just about high-quality writing, it’s about communicating and empathizing about a problem, and then sharing human stories of how someone solved that problem.

  3. Successful content requires strategic planning, research and identifying the right target audience. A human writer can use intuition and experience to make these decisions, while AI may be limited by data inputs and algorithms.

  4. AI doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. There is a power in human experience told through story that is missing with AI. It may be capable of analyzing user behavior data, but it cannot truly empathize with the audience and build a human-to-human relationship.

I think there are lots of ways AI can optimize content successfully for SEO or higher open rates. I think AI and machine learning will be a great tool for the tactical aspects of content marketing. But the strategic value and human storytelling value aren’t yet being replaced.

Image: Getty Images

 



About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.

 

 

By John Lavey, President and CEO 
 
One of the great opportunities when you work with many different healthcare clients is to continue learning. No area has provided more opportunities for our team to learn than what we call “engagement.” 
 
We often think of engagement as a marketing activity. And, in part, it is. Engagement is about activating a patient, opening a channel of communication and then nurturing positive behaviors that drive positive health outcomes.  
 
But engagement is really a bigger discussion—and a more challenging problem—than simply marketing. Healthcare organizations can’t truly improve patient engagement without focusing on health equity. True engagement requires addressing health equity issues throughout your entire organization—not just in your marketing communications.  
 
Individuals from all walks of life—regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identify or disability—must be considered when we’re thinking about patient engagement. For example, mistrust in the healthcare system persists among many Black Americans because of a long history of mistreatment by the healthcare industry. And patients and family members with limited English proficiency often have trouble accessing healthcare services and suffer worse outcomes because of language barriers. Healthcare organizations must first address equity to truly engage patients.  
 
Some of our clients are tackling health equity head on—and finding solutions. I would challenge you to think about engagement and equity more broadly within your organization. It’s not strictly a marketing issue. So, what are you talking about when you are talking about engagement? 

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About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here

 

 

By John Lavey, CEO/President

One thing worth evaluating in your marketing is the degree to which you expect content to drive leads, and to what extent you view its role as brand support. While some companies rightfully invest in both, others are more confused in what they expect.

My perspective on content marketing (after close to 30 years in the business) is that we shifted about 15 years ago to a harder emphasis on content as a lead-generating tool. There were a couple of significant reasons

  1. The iPhone, which came out in 2007, changed everything. As adoption of this mobile content consumption device proliferated, we had entered a new era. We all saw the opportunity to push content to someone and then, as a result, see them purchase our products or services. We became interested in immediate gratification.
  2. The 2007–2008 financial crisis made marketing budgets evaporate. When content marketing budgets came back, they were often smaller amounts of investment, and marketers wanted to see successful results. The ability to tie those investments to sales became the coin of the realm
There’s nothing wrong at all with lead-generation content, but we lost the habit of, and emphasis on, creating high-quality content that didn’t have a CTA driving the audience to engage in a sales process. In general, we as healthcare marketers stopped creating content that positions our brand as an authority.

There is still a role in high-quality content to support your brand by delivering proprietary research, unique insights and distilling complexities to help your audience make sense of their challenges.

If you’d like to talk to someone about helping you with that kind of content … (Just kidding, no CTA on this one!)

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About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.

 

 

By John Lavey

Most healthcare companies, small or large, are hard at work on marketing to customers, whether those are consumers or B2B customers. But are they raising awareness or acquiring customers? Are they better at one than the other, or are they doing both equally well?

This excellent piece by Christopher Girardi breaks down the differences between efforts to raise awareness and efforts to acquire customers. His post is primarily focused on marketing efforts by health systems and how important it is to do both awareness and acquisition marketing. And, where possible, to blend them. 

At Hammock, we have worked with large health systems that are marketing to consumers, as well as small B2B healthcare companies seeking customers—and we have seen separate, but similar, challenges between B2C and B2B players. 

Newer, smaller B2B healthcare organizations tend to be anxious to generate leads and keep them coming in, and think of all marketing efforts as sales support. They are focused on acquisition. Some of those companies overestimate awareness of their brand. And they are underinvested in awareness. 

Larger organizations, like health systems, often have siloed departments. One department buys all the media to raise awareness, and there are separate efforts to generate leads. There isn’t a lot of coordination between those efforts. What Girardi’s article shows is that acquisition efforts flourish in markets where there has been adequate attention to awareness. And correspondingly, where efforts to raise awareness sometimes fail is in the lost opportunity to drive awareness directly into an acquisition effort.

What is your organization doing on awareness and acquisition? Are you stronger at one than the other? Do you have lost opportunities?

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About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here

 

 

By John Lavey

You can find a lot of marketing content making the claim that human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish, but this seems to be unscientific research used by marketers to help pitch video as a replacement for text-based content.

But we do know getting audience attention is a huge challenge for marketers. Whether the problem is a shorter attention span, a general failure to provide engaging content, or both, a solution is needed. 

One place to start is by creating websites that work. Websites often fail at answering one basic question: “What do you do?” That’s because, in part, the story is spread across different sections of the site, and the format that we have become used to expects us to click across a top navigation bar to get the answers we need.

One content tool that cuts through the clutter is explainer videos. Explainer videos are perfectly named. They explain what you do. This is particularly helpful if your solution is complicated or abstract. You don’t need an explainer video to market Coca-Cola, but you might need it to sell an SaaS platform that addresses a critical niche problem.

Here’s a test. Try to explain to your kids or to a casual acquaintance what you do. If you find yourself struggling to make an elevator pitch that is super clear and concise, you probably need an explainer video. If your kids’ eyes glaze over, then you need an explainer video. (Note: It would be highly unusual if your kids showed that level of interest in what you do, so you need something easy for them to remember.)

Explainer videos are usually 45 seconds to 90 seconds long. They often use simple animation with illustrations or photography, typography, music and voice-overs. You can build the imagery from scratch or use stock imagery creatively to tell the story. They have energy to propel the narrative, and when done well, they convey the problem the audience faces, what the solution looks like, and what the outcome will be.

Putting explainer videos on a prominent place on your website can go a long way toward making it easier to understand the value of your offering. Even if the attention span is closer to that of a goldfish (whatever that might actually be). 

Image: Getty Images



About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.

 

 

By John Lavey, President

In June, Forrester released its 2022 Customer Experience (CX) Index. Forrester revealed that CX quality fell for 19% of brands tracked across 13 industries in 2022. It was the largest one-year drop in the history of the survey. 

What happened? Forrester suggested a “waning attention on customers, even though customers expect more from digital and hybrid experiences.” 

Healthcare can’t afford to drop its attention to customers. In September 2021, Press Ganey—a renowned leader in patient, member, employee and consumer experience across the healthcare ecosystem—surveyed more than 1,000 adults to evaluate consumer preferences and expectations for healthcare. What Press Ganey found and published in its 2021 Consumer Experience Trends in Healthcare Report echoes what is true in other industries: A digital-first mindset is the ticket to a positive consumer experience. 

So, how can digital content help?  For starters, organizations should focus their attention on creating trustworthy content. 

According to Press Ganey, 51.1% of patients turn to the web when choosing a new primary care provider (PCP). Even more specifically, consumers rely on search engines (22%) almost as much as they do doctor referrals (24%) to find a PCP. 

When considering content, think about these areas:

  1. Website: When patients visit your organization’s website, what do they find? Do they find stale content, stock photos, and an outdated list of services and physicians? Or do they find engaging blog posts from healthcare providers, educational material about conditions and treatments, and content that empowers them to participate in their own care?



  2. Social media: “Social media holds more opportunities than just advancing an organization’s brand and marketing strategies; it can also do a lot to help boost patient engagement,” Sara Heath wrote in a 2016 article for Patient Engagement HIT. Social media—specifically Twitter, TikTok and Facebook—can help connect prospective and current patients with patient education tools, develop a sense of community, and improve patient satisfaction.  



  3. Video: One of the best ways to build trust with prospective (and current) patients is through video. Video can make an organization seem more personable and approachable—which is important in an industry where people are often intimidated. 

How is your organization using digital content to improve the consumer experience?



About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.

 

 

By John Lavey, President

We view helpful content as one of the highest forms of marketing. Helpful content is superior marketing to content that hypes a solution.

Sometimes the most helpful kind of content, particularly for B2B marketing, is educating your customers and creating resources that they can use to do their jobs more effectively. 

Helping educate your audience to help them be better at their jobs can take many forms. Here are three ideas:

User conferences
Many of our clients host user conferences, assembling a curriculum to introduce customers to the latest and best ideas about their job. These two-day or three-day events are big lifts for companies to put on, and they can be expensive, but they are viewed positively by customers. 

Client universities
Some clients we’ve worked with have adopted the idea of themselves as a university, continually teaching their customers how to be better at their job. When the customers are a channel seller of their solution, it’s not only helpful but also savvy. The university model differs from the user conference model to the extent that the teaching and the messaging last beyond the three-day span. The investment in that kind of marketing spans year round.

Library of resources
This kind of content marketing offers clients a library of resources to help them do their jobs. Providing presentation decks, e-books, videos and more, marked with their branding so they can use them in their marketing or sales to clients, is good content marketing.

How can you help teach your client and sharpen your content marketing?

 
Image: Getty Images



About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email |
This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.