Enjoy Your Leftovers

Thanksgiving is over. Hopefully you enjoyed all the traditions. You had a great holiday feast. You watched your share of football. You survived Black Friday and maybe even Cyber Monday. And you maybe just finished eating all those leftovers.

Now it’s time for another holiday tradition involving leftovers – spending those “left over” marketing dollars before the end of the year. You know - those leftover dollars you’ll lose if you don't spend them by year-end. Here are some thoughts about consuming these "leftovers."

1. Don't do anything until you know you have authority to spend those dollars, even if you have budget. Organizational profitability requirements may prevent you from spending those dollars.

2. Don't spend just for the sake of spending. Figure out strategically how your money can be best spent. If you can't think of anything, don't spend the money.

3. Here are just a few things you can do:

a. Get all your online efforts for next year in line. Finalize your Website. Optimize it. Get your social media programs going. Get any videos done.

b. Instead of mailing your direct mail campaign just after Jan. 1, mail it just before Jan. 1 to expense the postage. But don't mail it too soon - you'll want it to hit after the first of the year.

c. Have any miscellaneous writing projects initiated in December.

d. Begin the process of initiating a market research project in December, and see how much of it you can pay for up front.

e. Prepay planned 2012 advertising expenditures. You might even be able to get a discount.

f. Talk to other providers about paying them in December with 2011 money, even if your schedule doesn't permit them to start working on a project until after the first of the year.

4. If you are a B2B company, try using this strategy with your clients. Have them commit to spend IT money, buy office supplies, whatever. It works.

What other ideas do you have? Leave them here.

“What Position’s Your Positioning In?”

That thought came to me the other day when I heard the old Kenny Rogers and the First Edition song “Just Dropped in (To See What Condition My Condition Was In).”

I’ve been helping a lot of clients with positioning lately, and was thinking about one of them when the song came on. So the transfer from condition to position was pretty fast and I thought: “hey, great title for a blog.”

I think the reason positioning is becoming so important is that organizations do not have a lot of money to spend, and they want to make sure the money they are spending is being spent correctly. That means understanding what positioning will resonate with their target markets.

Your position in the marketplace is how you want your target audiences to perceive you (as opposed to your brand, which is how they actually do perceive you; and if your positioning and brand are not in alignment, your organization is not in alignment).

So here is what you need to do to correctly establish your position:

1. Know why people want your category. What is the pain that drives them to buy the type of product or service you offer? Sometimes it is easy; “I want to reduce costs.” “I’m having a baby and I need an ob/gyn.” Sometimes it is not. For example, why do people want that room addition?
2. Know the purchase decision drivers. What motivates them to buy from one source vs. the other? There are many possible attributes, ranging from quality to convenience to price to expertise, etc.
3. Know why they do or do not buy from you. This gets right at their perception of you and the competition, and is essential in competitive positioning. It also is essential in aligning your positioning with your brand.

The only way I know of to answer these questions is to go out and ask your customers, your referrers, and prospects. To assume you know the answer is an invitation to failure. But once you know the answers, you can do all sorts of great things:

1. Create your positioning statement. According to Reis and Trout, your positioning statement should build upon your present strengths, search for a niche, or reposition the competition.
2. Rebrand your organization. (We just did this for a client, and the cool thing was the name did not come from one of the names we tested, but from a comment made by one of the people we talked with)
3. Develop a new tagline and logo, even if you do not rename your organization.

So, what position’s your positioning in?

Garbage In, Garbage Out

The other day, an architect client posted on his various social media sites an article on how to talk to an architect. It drew this response from another architect: “I think it would be better if some of us learned how to talk to our clients.”

Good point. Clearly sellers of products and services…be they doctors, financial advisors, car salesmen, architects or marketers, have to know how to talk with clients. Theoretically, it should be more important that we know how to talk with them than for them to know how to talk to us.

But then I got to thinking about the old Garbage In, Garbage Out line. You get garbage as input, you produce garbage as output.

If you receive garbage as input, whose fault is that? Yours! If your client does not know how to provide the right input, it is up to you as a professional to get it.

There are a variety of ways to help your clients give you the input you need. For example, you can provide them with tools. When I first start working with clients, I send them a document called “Let’s Play 20 (Marketing Questions).” Here is a link to an article outlining these questions. http://www.lsternmktg.com/wp_images/articles/20_Marketing_questions.pdf

The document asks a whole series of marketing questions that hopefully entice people to think about what it is they want to accomplish from a marketing perspective.

For very specific marketing projects, I, along with many others, ask clients to fill out creative briefs. These briefs address topics such as;

• Target market
• Positioning
• Core benefits
• Offer
• Desired tone
• Budget

This is not much different than a doctor taking a medical history or a financial advisor asking questions to build a financial profile and financial plan.

We also get input just by talking with people and knowing how to ask the right questions. Just the other day, we had a call with a client for a logo project. We had already conducted research and helped us decide on the name, tagline and positioning statement. But we still spent an hour on the phone with the client asking a series of questions. At the end of the conversation, we were confident that we had the information we needed to create a compelling logo.

So don’t trash the idea of sending clients an article on how best to talk with you. The bottom line is: knowing how to talk to your clients includes helping them to talk to you to eliminate the garbage.

How do you educate your clients on how to talk to you?

Facebook Ads: Annoying or of Value?

I just logged onto my personal Facebook page. I saw the following ads.

• Netflix – makes sense because I list movies as an activity
• Website inviting me to connect with other people from my high school graduating class
• American English concert – understandable because I “like” the Beatles

I didn’t click on any of them, but I did not mind them either. I am frankly a little puzzled about some of the vitriolic comments about Facebook ads. Basically, advertisers can direct ads to people on Facebook based upon the content the users themselves post: profiles, wall posts, status updates, etc. The advertiser does not know the identities of specific individuals who are exposed to the ads. Yet one person described Facebook’s approach in the Chicago Tribune as “a stealth digital surveillance apparatus.” Really? Maybe the Defense Department, CIA or Jack Bauer’s CTU should talk with Facebook.

This person then is quoted as saying: “Facebook users should be cautious about whether the social network giant ultimately has their best interests at heart.”

Get real. In February, more than one-third of all online ads were placed on Facebook. There is a simple reason for that. Facebook has more than 600 million users. Advertisers go where the people are. Advertisers can also target Facebook messages based upon profiles, wall posts, status updates, etc. The key is: advertisers are leveraging information the people themselves are putting out there. There is no prying. There is no stealth.

There is another reason more brands are advertising on Facebook. It works. One of the great things about Facebook advertising, and most online advertising for that matter, is that you can track results. You can track clickthroughs, and often tie them back to actual purchases. We have done some Facebook advertising. Some of it has worked, some of it has not. But we know.

I actually do not mind getting ads on Facebook. Most of the ads I am served are relevant to my interests and activities. I will occasionally click on them, especially if it a deal to a restaurant or retail outlook I like. Those I am not interested in I ignore. But to those of you out there who are offended when you go onto your Facebook page and see advertising, I offer these alternatives.

1. Stop using Facebook. Sure, you will deprive yourself of the many benefits, but at least you won’t be exposed to those “annoying” ads. Of course, if you don’t like to see any ads online, stop going online altogether.
2. You could limit what you post on Facebook. But that probably will not substantially reduce the number of ads you see. It just means advertisers will have less information about you, and the ads you receive will be less relevant to you.
3. Best advice. If you don’t like the ads, ignore them. Maybe operate on the assumption that if everybody ignores the ads, brands will stop advertising. But don’t bet on it.

What are your thoughts? Do you find Facebook ads annoying? Do you respond to ads on Facebook? When and why?

Solve this problem, and you can solve the healthcare problem

Americans love apples. And fortunately, there are plenty of apples to go around. But what if there weren’t?

Let’s assume the average American eats an apple a day (it is actually nowhere near that, but let’s keep it simple). Then let’s say American apple growers produce exactly that amount. Supply equals demand, equilibrium pricing, everybody is happy.

Now let’s complicate things.

First, let’s assume as people get older, they need to eat more apples. So there is greater demand for apples. Unfortunately, apple growers cannot physically produce more apples than they do now. Anybody that has taken high school economics can tell you that if supply stays flat and demand increases, prices must go up.

While apple growers cannot increase the number of apples they produce, they can improve the quality of apples, which makes people healthier and enables them to live longer. That increases the demand even more, causing prices to go even higher.

So what do we do in this state of disequilibrium, now that the price of apples has risen so much that many people cannot afford it? Well, you could try to do a few things.

First, you could focus on demand and tell people they can’t have all the apples they want. But people think eating apples is a right, and you should not ration apples.

So, second, let’s focus on supply. You could try to increase supply by getting more people to grow apples. But people don’t want to become apple growers, because there are big barriers to entry like education and insurance. Then once you become an apple producer, the cost of the supplies needed to grow apples, the cost of paying people to work in orchards, and shipping costs keep going up. Plus, because they are afraid of getting sued, apple growers are doing things they really do not think they need to do to ensure the quality of apples, but do just to avoid lawsuits.

Third, you could raise prices, but subsidize the cost of apples for people. People would pay middlemen money so that they could get apples whenever they wanted. The amount of money people would pay would depend on how many apples they wanted, and what kind of apples. These middlemen would then pay the apple growers.

Unfortunately, the apple growers still have to pay for labor, supplies, insurance and shipping. Those prices keep going up, so they have to raise prices to the middlemen. The middlemen also have their own business to run and salaries (some say exorbitant) to pay. So the middlemen raise prices to consumers. Soon it would get to the point that people could not even afford to pay the middlemen, so they could not get apples.

At the same time, these middlemen now have huge buying power, so they can actually force the apple growers to provide the apples at sharply discounted prices. So the apple growers are faced with increasing costs, barriers to entry, and now reduced revenues. Clearly, no motivation for people to become apple growers, even though there is clearly a demand for more apples.

That is the core of this hypothetical apple problem (sorry about that). What is your solution? If you can figure this out, congratulations, because you have also solved the healthcare problem.

Enjoy Your Leftovers

We hope you had a great holiday feast.

Chances are, you will be enjoying leftovers as well. Remember, don't eat too much at a single sitting.

Of course there are also some rules about another kind of leftover you may have right now. These are the leftover marketing dollars you have that you lose if you don't spend them by year-end. Here are some rules about how to best use these "leftovers."

1. Don't do anything until you know you have authority to spend those dollars, even if you have budget. Organizational profitability requirements may prevent you from spending those dollars.

2. Don't spend just for the sake of spending. Figure out strategically how your money can be best spent. If you can't think of anything, don't spend the money.

3. Here are just a few things you can do:

a. Get all your online efforts for next year in line. Finalize your Website. Optimize it. Get your social media programs going. Get any videos done.

b. Instead of mailing your direct mail campaign just after Jan. 1, mail it just before Jan. 1 to expense the postage. But don't mail it too soon - you'll want it to hit after the first of the year.

c. Have any miscellaneous writing projects initiated in December.

d. Begin the process of initiating a market research project in December, and see how much of it you can pay for up front.

e. Prepay planned 2011 advertising expenditures. You might even be able to get a discount.

f. Talk to other providers about paying them in December with 2010 money, even if your schedule doesn't permit them to start working on a project until after the first of the year.

4. If you are a B2B company, try using this strategy with your clients. Have them commit to spend IT money, buy office supplies, whatever. It works.

What other ideas do you have? Leave them here.

Social Media and Healthcare Providers - Getting Started

Last time, we discussed how healthcare organizations should manage employee use of social media sites. Interestingly, my daughter just started working for a hospital, and I asked her if they talked about what she could and could not say on Facebook related to her job. She said they told her she can’t do anything. Good for them.

This time, let’s focus on a few things healthcare organizations should do before posting their first item on a social media site. This is not rocket science, but doing the right things up front can maximize the effectiveness of your efforts, and probably save you some headaches too.

1. Social media should be part of the overall online marketing strategy, which should be part of the overall marketing strategy. Don’t get so enamored with the buzz around social media that you lose sight of the big picture.

2. Do your homework.
1. Identify the social media sites your target market visits.
2. Research what the competition is doing in social media.
3. Use Google Alerts or another tool to see what your target market is saying about you.

3. Don’t be afraid. Many organizations are paranoid that if they have a Facebook page, or tweet, or put a video on YouTube, it will invite negative comments. The fact is, if somebody has something negative to say about you, they are going to find a way to say it on Yelp or a similar site (that’s why you use Google Alerts or some other tool). Using social media, you can become aware of these criticisms, and you can take important steps to address them and/or regain control of the conversation.
1. Specifically for Facebook, if someone posts something negative about you on your page, it takes about one second to delete the post.

4. Have a social media plan. That may be part of or separate from your overall marketing plan. But include things like objectives and target markets. Also put together a calendar of what you are going to do, when you are going to do it, and who is going to do it. Then stick to it (yes, obviously, there should be some flexibility to leverage the spontaneity afforded by social media). Part of this plan should also include how you are going to use other social media and other marketing channels to support your social media efforts.

5. Do it right the first time. For example, while it is easy to set up a Facebook page, it is also easy to set it up wrong. What is not so easy is to fix it. While Facebook has different types of pages you can set up, it is pretty inflexible once you have decided what type of page to set up. So hire somebody that knows what they are doing to initially set up the page. The minimal investment will be well worth it.

6. Use technology to help you leverage your time. For example, LinkedIn posts can automatically be tweeted. And tweets can be posted to Facebook pages, etc. Get the technology right up front, and you will be able to spend more time on content, and less time on the mechanics of distributing the content.

Social Media and Healthcare Providers

An employee at a hospital in Michigan posts negative comments about a patient on Facebook. An ER nurse in a Los Angeles hospital posts pictures of a stabbing victim on Facebook.

How healthcare providers should leverage social media is a hot topic these days. This is my first Marketing Musing on this topic, and it discusses the issue of what healthcare provider employees should and should not do. My solution is simple. Employees of healthcare organizations, with few exceptions, should not use social media to communicate anything about their jobs, including their patients or their employers. Period. Break the rule; lose your job.

The attorneys can determine if the actions cited above constituted HIPAA violations. But common sense needs to rule here. You don’t post negative comments about your customers or your employer online. You have to assume the entire world will see your posts. I would not say any negative thing about my clients online; I can’t understand why employees of healthcare providers would post negative comments about patients or their employers.

So here are my thoughts on governing your employees’ social media behavior.

1. You need a comprehensive social media policy which all employees should sign. There are several examples you can access online simply by googling “social media policies for healthcare organizations.”
2. Any “official” organization pages on Facebook and any LinkedIn groups need to be controlled through the Marketing Department. I really do not see the need for nurses, residents, etc. to have their own official pages or groups (i.e., Sisters Hospital Nurses or Sisters Hospital ER). If a department has a party and wants to post photos, that can be coordinated through the Marketing Department. If a patient wants to have a photo (or video) taken with a member of the staff and permits the photo (or video) to be posted, that can also be run through the Marketing Department.
3. As mentioned before, no information about the organization or patients should be permitted on personal pages. There should be no tweets about the organization. This should be zero tolerance, with loss of job resulting from violations. Even if it is something as simple as saying you had a great day at work today. The problem is once you start, it is hard to determine where to draw the line.
4. There are some exceptions. One deals with LinkedIn. Employees should be allowed and even encouraged to have LinkedIn pages. They should be allowed to have profiles, post updates, join groups and join group discussions. They should be allowed to communicate job openings. There are a few exceptions.
1. No patient information
2. Nothing critical about the organization
3. Postings regarding organization sponsored research should be approved by the organization
5. One other exception is employees should be allowed and encouraged to share postings from the organization, including posts on the organization’s Facebook page, tweets, and information communicated through a LinkedIn page. This, of course, will leverage your organization’s ability to use social media and reach an exponentially greater number of people. However, these items should be shared without comment.

Interested in your thoughts, experiences

So You Think You Can Write?

Are you in the market for a “full service solutions provider?” How about some “cost-effective end to end solutions?” Or a “provider of value-added services?”

Well, somebody must think you are. Because those three phrases show up on Google searches between 47,000 and 600,000 times, according to Jason Fried in a recent issue of Inc. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100501/why-is-business-writing-so-awful.html. And you know that if these phrases are showing up on the Web, they are showing up in brochures, print ads, direct mail pieces, etc.

Who writes this stuff? People who often want to save the company money, and think they are qualified to write. These, of course, are the same people who rightfully think nothing about investing in information technology, paying a professional to do their taxes, or hiring graphic designers to make the drivel they write show up on a great looking Website, or in attractive printed materials.

Here are a few of the things these people believe qualify them as a writer:

• They have a great deal of subject matter knowledge, and do not believe anybody without that knowledge is qualified to write about the subject.
• They have frequent interaction with customers, and may be able to “talk the talk” with them.
• They may be smart.
• They think writing is easy. They’ve written their entire lives. And it’s not like you need a degree or have to pass a special test to be a writer.

What are the results of poor writing? Well let’s ignore for a second the obvious poor grammar, incorrect sentence structure, typos, etc. What you also get are the following:

• A monotonous recitation of features, technical details and processes that demonstrates how great the product or service is, but that completely ignores the customer benefit.
• Infatuation with flowery words and phrases that sound cool and cutting edge and oh so businesslike, but which nobody understands (i.e., end to end solution).

Best case, you end up with writing that is so poor that you do bring in a professional to fix it. This ends up costing you time, money and opportunity, but at least you now have something cogent and engaging. Worst case, nobody fixes the writing, and you end up with a Website or printed materials that do not resonate with anybody, and reflect negatively on your brand.

Some of you actually may be reading this and thinking, OK, give me some tips so that I can become a better writer.

Sorry. Good writing is not about tips. It is about years of experience honing the craft.

Want a tip? Hire a professional.

How’s that for a full service solution?

Healthcare Providers Need to Market

Last week, there was a segment on NPR on hospital marketing. (http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=126537953&m=126899947). In this segment, James Unland, editor of the Journal of Health Care Finance, speaks out against most hospital advertising. As much as I disagree with much of what he said, the good news is this is a wake up call for hospital marketers to make sure they can justify their marketing investment.

Mr. Unland spends most of his time criticizing “huge expenditures on TV and broad-based media advertising (which also includes radio and billboards) that’s very, very expensive.” He actually goes on to suggest that regulators say to hospitals: “You have a charitable mission. Don’t throw this money down the drain on expensive TV ads.”

Mr. Unland especially has problems with hospitals doing this type of advertising in large metropolitan areas because “the problem in metro areas is each hospital only serves a tiny percentage” of that market.

While it is true that television advertising is not for everybody, there are several problems with Mr. Unland’s argument.

• While I am a huge proponent of CRM activities to engage patients, I firmly believe that people need to know and trust a healthcare brand before they engage. Television when used appropriately can play an important and powerful role in the branding process, since the visual and audio impact of a TV ad can be quite powerful and memorable in generating awareness and creating positive perceptions. This is the first step toward brand selection.
• While it is true that broadcast TV advertising may not make sense for a community hospital because it can only realistically draw patients from a small percentage of a large metropolitan area, that is not true for systems (in Chicago, think Advocate) or brands that are so powerful that they draw from the entire metropolitan area (think Northwestern). The entire metro area is their service area, and for them TV can make abundant sense.
• Additionally, issues such as declining populations to enhancements in services may dictate that traditional “community” hospitals redefine their service areas beyond traditional geographic boundaries
• Finally, you don’t have to buy the whole market. That is what cable advertising is all about. Cable allows you to focus on a specific geographic segment of a larger metropolitan market, not to mention its ability to target a very specific demographic.

As mentioned, Mr. Unland also lumped billboards into the mass media tactics he thinks are wasteful. Billboard advertising generally is local. Interestingly, a recent article in the Journal of Healthcare Management discussed the impact of billboard advertising on visitors to an urgent care center (http://www.ache.org/pubs/jhm552.cfm). Not only did the billboards increase awareness, but a majority of the respondents said the billboards either moderately or highly influenced their visit. So billboard advertising certainly can work.

Mr. Unland suggests using Public Service Announcements (PSAs) as a way to market screening and events, and that “the media is almost always receptive.” While that is nice in theory, as one person noted in a LinkedIn comment I saw: Mr. Unland apparently hasn't tried to place one lately as media tries to sell every second and column inch.” It is just not realistic to expect PSAs to get your message across.

Mr. Unland strongly recommends using the Internet as a way to market services. He says: “The unit cost of telling the story of the hospital and what services it has is minute.” No argument there. But the Internet should be part of an integrated program. And I would not necessarily say the cost of developing a compelling Website, driving people to it through online marketing and social media, and then monitoring it, is necessarily “minute.”

Finally, Mr. Unland says direct mail is an appropriate way of marketing to the service area. True again, but direct mail is but one element of a comprehensive CRM strategy. And indeed, an effective CRM program must be an integral part of a hospital’s marketing efforts. But that CRM strategy will work much better if it is implemented by a healthy brand.

Unfortunately, many hospital executives and their Boards of Trustees will have heard this segment and may question their organization’s marketing expenditures. So hospital marketers will need to be even more adept at marketing the need to do marketing to their management. So your marketing program needs to be well thought out. Here are some thoughts on how to do that.

• A good plan starts with insight. Do your homework. Conduct research and analyze data to determine:
• What your brand stands for in the eyes of your target market
• How to best communicate your brand promise (messaging and media)
• What you should promote (and why) to attract and retain patients, as well as to maximize physician referrals, through your CRM program
• Who you should be promoting it to (and why)
• What your positioning and messaging should be in your promotional messages
• How to best deliver those messages
• Include reasons to believe. Describe your own successes. If you are just starting, ask your agency and/or CRM partner to provide success stories from similar organizations
• Discuss how you are going to demonstrate value
• For your branding initiatives, this can be challenging, as branding initiatives in and of themselves will not directly lead to quantifiable revenues.
• For your CRM initiatives, it is much easier. You can demonstrate ROI from CRM activities (like Mr. Unland’s direct mail)

In conclusion, a well executed marketing program can:

• Strengthen your brand by creating awareness and enhancing perception so physicians will want to refer to you and patients will want to utilize your services
• Increase revenues through promotion of the appropriate services to the appropriate target markets via the appropriate delivery mechanisms
• Increase marketing efficiencies, since you will not be wasting marketing resources on programs that do not have appeal to your target market
• Improve the healthcare of the community you serve, helping you achieve your healing mission. After all, your efficient marketing program will educate people to engage in programs to improve their health

Marketing (including advertising) is an essential part of the business of running a hospital. I know it. You know it. Don’t be shy about letting your peers know it.