Healthcare Brand And Digital Marketing Organizational Effectiveness: Put Five Ducks In A Row — John G. Baresky
Organize, Strategize, Optimize Digital Marketing Efforts To Increase Effectiveness And Sales…
Digital marketing initiatives are a mainstay in healthcare industry commercial organizations and sales generation activities. On the surface, they are aesthetically engaging and smoothly functional. Underneath, there is a wide array of organizational, financial and technical resources paddling furiously to develop and deploy them. How well business units collaborate, share assets, define objectives and understand the customer journey before digitalization of business cases occur can make a tremendous difference in the customer experience, a company’s competitive advantage, sales performance and ROI.
…Based on survey data from Adobe, 41% of senior digital marketers believe their departments don’t interface well with other departments; only 65% believe they are fully proficient in their functions and 55% admit they are struggling to keep up with ongoing digital trends…
By putting their ducks in a row first, organizations have the long term fundamentals aligned to develop and launch deeply successful healthcare digital marketing / sales initiatives despite ever-changing marketplace undercurrents.
Leadership Commitment Is Essential To Maintain Digital Marketing Momentum
- Consistent forward-thinking by present and future senior company executives to fund and optimize healthcare digital marketing initiatives as something as integral as managing payroll
- Realization by upper management that digital marketing is never completed; changes in technology, regulations, information-sharing practices, marketplace forces and social media fluidly impact each customer segment and respective customer journeys
- “Be in it to win it”; outdated, under-funded approaches are quickly revealed to customers by who else but competitors seizing the opportunity to better align with customers with the more strategic, assertive deployment of digital marketing assets
Effective Customer Connection Is A Pivotal Goal Of Digital Marketing To Generate Revenue
- Key company units understand and account for the importance of reaching out to customers and with equal or greater importance; monitor how customers reach the company and its products / services through their journey and make decisive buying decisions via digital / social venues
- Expectations / limitations for digital marketing initiatives are established; internal stakeholders understand one digital marketing initiative, no matter how large, does not necessarily align with all customer journeys
- Digital marketing resources must be strategically aligned and deployed to engage customers (consumer, patient, nurse, physician, pharmacist, payer, institution, trade partner and other entities) and demonstrate effective sales performance and ROI for the company — striving to blanket all of the social media and digital venues dilutes the customer experience budgetary effectiveness and is not a sustainable strategy
…A Marketo study found marketers focus on an average of six different channels to attract customers, conversely; consumers typically use just two channels for building a brand connection and business customers typically use only four channels…
Brand Marketing, Digital Marketing And Sales Alignment Deliver Optimum Results
- Brand Marketing and Digital Marketing units, along with Sales, must share common goals and objectives otherwise they separate to serve their own agendas and become jointly dysfunctional; they should be equal stakeholders in how customers perceive, engage and choose the company’s offering and the overall customer experience
- Effective Brand and Digital marketing teams inter-operate as a multidisciplinary business unit coupled with Sales; they are an integral hub with direct conduits to product management, managed markets, market research, trade relations, regulatory, corporate communications, IT and other departments
- Primary, binding objectives of the integrated marketing units is achieving sales goals, cost effective development / execution and positive customer experience
…A study from Econsultancy, in collaboration with IBM Marketing cloud, found marketers don’t pay enough attention to measuring cross-channel data; 51 percent of client-side respondents did not have right the metrics system in place between different online channels…
Technical Resources To Support Digital Marketing
- Technical resources will be continually assessed, upgraded, discontinued and replaced due to innovation, improved cost efficiencies and impact on the strength of maintaining the optimal customer experience and ROI
- Internal company stakeholders and external outside vendors are synchronized in the technical approach to avoid functional gaps which degrade organizational focus, erode customer experience and run up costs
- Brand and digital marketing teams, along with multidisciplinary counterparts, take ongoing technology changes in stride while maintaining focus on customers and business goals — effectively rotating tires on a carload of innovation rolling down the information highway
Partnership With Sales Teams And Company Sales Strategy
- No matter the level of “buzz”, “feel good” factor or volume of content, digital marketing initiatives must swim in the direction of the company’s bottom line and ultimately Sales
- Sales is a beast, the “Transactionator”, which must be well fed; if it goes hungry, it weakens and so does the company that surrounds it; digital marketing initiatives must contribute to feeding the Sales beast either through direct transactions, lead generation production or other means
- Brand and digital marketing teams need to partner with Sales to verify strategy, tactics, funnel alignment, messaging, call to action and targeting are directly supportive of Sales objectives, needs and goals
Effective Healthcare Brand And Digital Marketing Swim Upstream And Downstream
…According to Oracle, the most successful organizations have established ongoing meetings, metrics with marketing and sales that assess the whole customer experience from the first touch to final sale; they adjust their methods / strategies as they identify the best practices that lead to a close…
Strategically developed and deployed healthcare digital marketing initiatives can assertively generate sales despite the undercurrents of changing customer journeys, competitive threats, technological and marketplace changes. Uncoordinated efforts deplete resources, obstruct organizational focus and degrade the customer experience. By strategically aligning and managing organizational ducks in advance; companies avoid swimming in circles while maximizing customer experience, sales performance and ROI.
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Learn more about the healthcare industry; read my articles about its medical and business trends, content marketing and digital strategy, brand and product management, mergers and acquisitions, consumer wellness, managed care and market access strategy.
About me
Hi, my name is John Baresky ( pronounced “ buh — ress — key “) and I have over 25 years of experience in healthcare.
Throughout my career, I have been writing about healthcare while developing and sharing important information with physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other clinicians plus consumers, patients, healthcare business professionals, investors and other stakeholders.
Healthcare is a vast industry. I organize its clinical, business, academic, technical and consumer topics into precise messages and stories that are easily understood and immediately useful. The content I write resonates across audiences with objective accuracy and clarity.
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Duck photo in honor and memory of “Chelveston” and Ray Rayner
