Dodge Communications

Intangibility. The absolute biggest challenge of advertising in the field of healthcare.

I feel for the marketing folks at healthcare technology companies. They’re consumers, they see the Coke ads, the Nike ads, all the slick auto advertising, and they want something cool too! And they deserve it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start talking budgets. I’m also not going to start using intangibility as an excuse. It is possible to do great ads for intangible services and products (within a budget too!). It’s more of a creative challenge, but it is possible.

I guess you could argue that technology products aren’t completely abstract. You could use a computer to represent technology. Of course, we’re not selling PCs, we’re selling software, middleware, systems, portals, whatever, so let’s fill the screen with a big blurry screen shot of 3pt type or show a group of administrators pointing and smiling at a computer screen. Obviously, this doesn’t work, so we focus on the benefits.

So the next challenge of healthcare technology advertising is that just about every competing company touts the same benefits. Increasing revenue is a big one, especially for a Clearinghouse. So let’s show a giant dollar bill or a big stack of money. Our audience is smarter than that. This type of advertising might seem to work in a focus group due to its obvious message, but what is it really doing to your brand long term? It cheapens your brand. It lacks intelligence. So what is another benefit of many healthcare technology companies? Let’s say Electronic Medical Records is the “product”, then the benefit is often efficiency which hopefully leads to better patient care. Is this a stretch? And even if it’s not a stretch, how do you show “efficiency” in an ad and still stand out from the competition? Happy patients are often seen in healthcare advertising and we used to be able to get away with that, but the stopping power just isn’t there without some kind of creative spin in this world of advertising overload. It’s too common.

So what’s the answer? The answer is dig deeper. (more…)

Dr. Neil Baum is a nationally recognized urologist, speaker and author. His most recent book, Marketing Your Clinical Practices: Ethically, Effectively, Economically, Fourth Edition, is an updated and revised edition of the best selling guide to medical practice marketing, including new topics and advanced techniques. Dr. Baum also provides thoughts on various topics through his blog.

Times are tough for doctors. Reimbursements are decreasing and overhead costs are escalating. As a result, doctors’ incomes are declining. There are no signs that the current administration is going to resolve this situation to the benefit of physicians and their practices. So what are doctors to do? I suggest implementing a marketing strategy during these difficult times.

Here’s a little historical perspective:

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Qik: We talked a few weeks ago about lifecasting and tools such as Ustream that allow users to stream live videos from their computers, so the next logical step would be live streaming from a phone. Qik is a mobile video platform that can stream live video to the Internet right from a cell phone. Now anywhere you go, you can share your experiences live at the click of a button with any friends or strangers that happen to be tuned in. The service can be linked into e-mail, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, and there are already mobile apps available for Android phones.

Past Words of the Week
Posterous, Ning, API, Lifecasting, Crowdsourcing, Meme, Social bookmarking, Trackback, Twitter Grader, Authority, TweetBeep, Compete, Astroturfing, WEGO Health, BackTweets, PDR.net, socialmention, Twazzup, Health Exchange, Health Tweeder, DIDGET, Thoora, Google Buzz, bit.ly, E-patient, Alltop, mHealth, Augmented reality, OpenID, ROI, #hcsm, Medpedia, Almost.at, Hashtag, FollowFriday, Beta, Microblogging, Sidewiki, Meta tags

A few weeks ago, I was in Massachusetts visiting a sick family member. This is the area where I began my healthcare sales career back in 1983, and I had a great time remembering those early days. I was a sales manager at a ComputerLand, kind of an old version of BestBuy. One of my customers developed software to manage medical practices, and they bought their PCs from my store. (By the way, just as a point of reference, these PCs either had two 5 1/4” floppy disks—one for software and one for data—or had one floppy disk and a built-in 10 megabyte hard drive. The de facto standard of the day was the IBM XT.) I quickly became enamored with software, and a short time later I took a sales position with the software company. Their name was National Medical Systems, the application was called Med-1, and they were ultimately acquired by Misys.

My territory included Worcester and Springfield, so I spent a lot of my time visiting physician practices around the large BayState Health System in Springfield and University of Massachusetts Medical Center, an up-and-coming teaching hospital in Worcester. Whenever I was in Worcester, I liked to frequent a popular diner called the Parkway. Great food, friendly employees, reasonable prices. It was at the Parkway that I learned one of my earliest, most valuable sales lessons. As I sat down at the counter for breakfast one day, lo and behold, one of my “A” prospects was sitting right next to me. What a coincidence!

After a bit of small talk between gulps of coffee, I said something like: “So, Dr. Patel, can you see how this practice management solution will make your office run more smoothly and make your office manager’s work so much easier?” I felt if I could use this time to convince him of the overwhelming merits of our application, I might even walk out of breakfast with a sale!

He replied, “I have very little interest in making my office manager’s life any easier. I already pay her well, and she should work hard for the money.” Ouch! After a little more awkward conversation, I agreed to follow up with him later, and as I was leaving the diner, I realized I had blown the sale. But I had learned a valuable lesson: I can only make the sale if I a) KNOW what the prospect’s pain points are and 2) can ease said pain. And in the software business, sometimes the market doesn’t even know they HAVE the pain your product will ease. If they DO know, do they also know there are products available to ease the pain? And if they know that, do they know that your company offers those products? And if they know that, do they know the unique value proposition that makes your product a leader in the field?

Too often, we assume we know what our prospects want, need and what will motivate them to buy. We can’t take that for granted. We need to do the research. Ask the tough questions. And gear our sales presentations to those exact needs.

On the bright side, the eggs were great.

Posterous: Posterous is a site that allows anyone to post any item of interest to the Web at any time, then provides the user with a custom URL that they may then share via their social networks. Acting as a sort of hybrid of a blog and Twitter, all a user has to do is send an e-mail with an attached photo, video, MP3, or other file, to the generic inbox. The site instantly responds to the user’s e-mail with a custom URL that will host whatever file that was sent. Similar to services like TwitPic, Posterous users’ information can be shared instantly and publicly.

Past Words of the Week
Ning, API, Lifecasting, Crowdsourcing, Meme, Social bookmarking, Trackback, Twitter Grader, Authority, TweetBeep, Compete, Astroturfing, WEGO Health, BackTweets, PDR.net, socialmention, Twazzup, Health Exchange, Health Tweeder, DIDGET, Thoora, Google Buzz, bit.ly, E-patient, Alltop, mHealth, Augmented reality, OpenID, ROI, #hcsm, Medpedia, Almost.at, Hashtag, FollowFriday, Beta, Microblogging, Sidewiki, Meta tags

While the contractual details of basketball player LeBron James’ signing with the Miami Heat have been completed, we are now witnessing the public dissection of how the move was made, which is sure to continue for some time.

A quick recap: Last Thursday, ESPN hosted the LeBron James show, dedicated to the announcement of where James has decided to play in the upcoming season. Dan Gilbert, spurned majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, issued a public letter decrying James’ decision. Which then led to Jesse Jackson’s inflammatory quotes disparaging Gilbert’s letter. On Monday, the NBA announced that it was fining the Cavaliers’ owner $100K for his “ill-advised and imprudent” words. While many have railed against ESPN for the announcement show spectacle and criticized James for his lack of communication with the Cavaliers’ organization throughout the process, many parties are now lambasting the Cavaliers’ owner even more for his response – not only for the content but also for the non-traditional font he chose for his public letter. Dan Gilbert’s visceral, seemingly impetuous reaction letter was met with the same criticism as James’ decision. The truth is, communication errors are continuing to be made by all sides.

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Ning: Ning is a site that allows anyone to create a fully functional social network for as little as $20 per year. This is a great tool for people who share similar hobbies, interests or ideals to get together on the Web. With features such as groups, photos, chat, RSS feeds and forums, along with each member’s unique profile, a Ning network has many of the same capabilities of the social networking giants Facebook and MySpace. Ning is also a creative tool for companies to use to disseminate information and recruit new employees.

Past Words of the Week
API, Lifecasting, Crowdsourcing, Meme, Social bookmarking, Trackback, Twitter Grader, Authority, TweetBeep, Compete, Astroturfing, WEGO Health, BackTweets, PDR.net, socialmention, Twazzup, Health Exchange, Health Tweeder, DIDGET, Thoora, Google Buzz, bit.ly, E-patient, Alltop, mHealth, Augmented reality, OpenID, ROI, #hcsm, Medpedia, Almost.at, Hashtag, FollowFriday, Beta, Microblogging, Sidewiki, Meta tags

A recent global survey by Marks & Clerk, the UK patent firm, suggests that big pharma is rapidly approaching a “patent cliff” and will be more dependent than ever on its biotech brethren for the development of successful and profitable drugs in the years ahead.  The survey found that bio/pharm may be entering an even cozier relationship than they already have, resulting in a slew of mergers and acquisitions. 

Conducted among 400 biotech and pharma execs in the U.S., UK, Europe and Asia, the survey revealed a pessimistic view of the innovation capabilities of big pharma. Fully 82% of executives had little faith that big pharma would be able to innovate sufficiently to replenish shrinking drug development pipelines, resulting in a marked increase in acquisitions to augment that deficiency. Nearly three-quarters predicted substantial merger activity within the next two years, with increased activity beginning as early as next year.

These predictions suggest that the environment for biotech companies seeking partners or exit strategies has greatly improved. So In addition to shoring up balance sheets, tightening operations and demonstrating the clinical value of compounds and drugs, there are numerous actions to be taken on the marketing and communications front to ensure that a company is putting its best foot forward.

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API: API (application programming interface) is an interface that allows one software application to interact with another. In social media, the API is what allows sites like Twitter to be used through desktop applications such as TweetDeck or mobile applications like UberTwitter. Shared APIs also allows users’ Twitter updates to display on their Facebook page, and vice versa, and it’s how YouTube videos are able to be embedded on other sites and blogs. As long as developers can take advantage of public APIs, the number of new social media tools and apps will continue to increase, and the capabilities of the most popular networks will continue to amaze.

Past Words of the Week

Lifecasting, Crowdsourcing, Meme, Social bookmarking, Trackback, Twitter Grader, Authority, TweetBeep, Compete, Astroturfing, WEGO Health, BackTweets, PDR.net, socialmention, Twazzup, Health Exchange, Health Tweeder, DIDGET, Thoora, Google Buzz, bit.ly, E-patient, Alltop, mHealth, Augmented reality, OpenID, ROI, #hcsm, Medpedia, Almost.at, Hashtag, FollowFriday, Beta, Microblogging, Sidewiki, Meta tags

Guest post by Robert Meyer, vice president of marketing for Chamberlin Edmonds (Atlanta)

A public relations program is not an undertaking that typically correlates one-to-one with sales.

Strategic PR is intended to increase brand awareness and market exposure. Position an organization as an innovator and thought leader in its market niche. Educate target audiences about industry issues. Inform clients and prospects about products, services, value and benefits.

Without a doubt, the long-term objective ultimately is to boost sales and produce the “green” of revenue. But that’s not to say PR can’t bear fruit in the short term as well.

Not long ago, Chamberlin Edmonds worked with our Dodge team to place a case study in an industry publication. And it caused the phone to ring. We received three direct leads from the story.

Why was this particular story so effective? Because it adhered to time-honored tenets that characterize strategic PR:

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