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Jennifer Foster Marketing

Jennifer Foster

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“Me Too” Messaging: How to Stand out in Healthcare Marketing

In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.”
– Seth Godin, Marketing guru and author of The Purple Cow and Tribes.

Many of us are embarking on our 2015 marketing plans with renewed vigor (and freshly approved budget.) The challenge most of us face is how to make our message, and therefore our products stand out from the crowd.

I was reading an article earlier tonight about an HIMSS attendee who walked the trade show floor and found it hard to find anything unique.  “Partnership” “Value” “Outcomes” in the healthcare industry these are the buzzwords that everyone uses — the trouble is that when everyone says the same thing, no one really says anything.

In order to create a Unique Selling Proposition we have to again revert back to our marketing roots and dust off the theories that make marketing different than advertising.

Here are 3 quick ways to help your messaging differentiate you on the next trade show floor.

1. The WIIFM

Your customer needs to know what’s in it for them. We’ve all heard this and yet, we try to make it harder than it has to be. At the end of the day your product should solve a problem for your customer (if you don’t know who your customer is see #2). This should be a “10-words or less” statement. If you can’t define the WIFFM in 10 words or less, you probably don’t understand the problem well enough.

2. Know Your Customer

No product can be all things to all people. You have to know where your product is going to be the best received. Then you need to know how to reach that customer. Whether it’s attending a trade show or delivering online content knowing how to get front and center with the decision-makers is key to your success.

3. Focus on the Message not the Image

Sure a picture is worth a thousand words but  it can also lead your audience astray. If you have a succinct message you’ll only need a few words to begin with.  Do this by making the most of your headlines and subtitles.

“We are the only….”

“The first to ….”

You can even go a little extreme here and enlist a headline that makes your skeptipcal passers-by want to know more.

“We grew revenues by 25%”

“We decreased readmission for 5 of the nation’s leading health plans”

Once you determine your message, then enlist your design team to select an image that supports it. We all like pictures of smiling happy retirees, the problem is that you could be selling financial services, a progressive retirement community or cutting edge telemedicine. The image can’t be relied on to get attention — you have to use a meaningful message.

Standing out will always be a marketer’s challenge, starting with these fundamentals will help you show your potential customers that you understand them. Then you’ll truly be able to break through the clutter.

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The Problem with Competition: Creating Abundance in 2015

Like most people I found myself veg’d out in front of the television last week watching hour after hour of college football which got me thinking about competition. From the time we’re little kids we try to be the fastest runner, the highest jumper, the best drawer and the highest test scorer. In our adult world not much changes as we now compete for praise from our boss, a promotion or raise, and the coveted corner office.

I grew up in sports, but my sports (swimming and tennis) were mostly individual. I was no Michael Phelps, but I still had a time to beat regardless of where I finished in the actual race. I might be 3rd, but if I had my best time, then there wasn’t much to complain about.  I could measure my individual improvement. Conversely, I could actually win the race but if my time wasn’t good I could count on extra workout time the next morning.

In sports competition is celebrated – even revered – and sadly while it may drive us to be better athletes, as adults it generally brings out the worst in us.

“Do more.”

“Work harder.”

“You need to be better at  ____________.”

It’s exhausting actually and very hard to measure.

These competition “tapes” probably play in your brain all day long. We talk to ourselves in ways that we’d never allow our friends or peers to talk us (at minimum they wouldn’t be very fun friends or very welcome peers.) What if for 2015 we change the tapes?

The problem with competition is that it  assumes there isn’t enough for us all.  But what if there is enough for everyone and what if we could use the tapes to eliminate competition and encourage each of us to look at the world from a position of abundance?

“I have what I need right now to do ________.”

“That feedback was harsh but really is meaningful. “

“I’m better than expected at _____________.”

What do you want to have more of this year? As you set your goals for 2015, think of how your current situation can help you get there.

Perhaps you’re challenged to get funding. The first instinct is probably to run (and re-run) your balance sheet and see the deficit in several different ways. You look at other companies as competing for the funding you think you deserve from that Angel network. I’d encourage you to flip the message, reflect on the past year or so and objectively determine what you know now that you didn’t know before. Then figure out who (or what) can help you learn that much more in the next 12 months. Keeping what you’ve done right at the forefront encourages the universe to send more positive energy to you. And if you need energy in the form of capital investments, you’ll likely get it.

Maybe your challenge is to determine a feasible way to grow your business. You know you can’t hire a team of operations and marketing experts and the person you were relying on to help you has either stopped returning your calls or won the lottery and run off to Bali. Have you taken advantage of the mentors around you?  What resources to do you have to help fill the gap left by your partner? Creating abundance isn’t about getting a paved road to success; it is keeping the challenges that are presented to you in perspective and seeing them as rungs in a ladder meant to propel you forward.

Finally, perhaps your company or idea is at a crossroads. Let’s face it, not all ideas are going to change the world. There’s still no reason to see the situation as hopeless. You’ve likely learned a lot in the process of developing your idea(s). You’ve inevitably gained experience from the research and development you’ve done. Your contact list should be much bigger than it was when you started. As painful as it is to mourn the death of an idea, seeing how it changed you and created new space within you should ultimately be invigorating.

As we go into 2015 I find the idea of changing my tapes and reducing competition to be a wonderful challenge. Can it really be true that there is enough room for us all to succeed?  I think so and I’m excited to prove it. I’m incredibly excited to see what I can create and share with you all.

I wish everyone the best of luck with whatever you’re going to try to create. I’d love to hear about it!

Happy 2015!

Jennifer

 

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Who says social media doesn’t pay? My lucky tweet!

Lucky horseshoe in clover
My lucky Tweet got me a ticket to the 2014 Dallas Digital Summit

My personal Facebook post today went something like this:

The odds of needing an umbrella in Arizona is low. The odds of me having an umbrella are low. Yet, somehow, despite the odds, these too events came together this morning. #luckygirl

Then, just as I was still basking in my luck, I learned that I had won a ticket to the Dallas Digital Summit (#DDSUM14!) simply by retweeting a LaunchDFW tweet about the event. Now, in reality I’ll happily retweet Rachel and  LaunchDFW any day of the week, but to win a fairly expensive event ticket  is a great way to get my Twitter ROI up.

So here I sit, doubly lucky… now to take advantage of it, right? If it’s true that “The harder I work the luckier I get” then how about testing the hypothesis that  the luckier I am the harder I need to work?

For a newly-minted marketing consultant this is the equivalent of going to Disneyworld! I mean really look at some of the folks who are going to be here:

Matthew O’Neil | Senior Director of Brand & Media, Dallas Cowboys 

Matt Wallaert | Behavioral Scientist, Microsoft/Bing

Sameer Khan | Product Manager, Digital Optimization, IBM

Erik T. Bahr | Client Partner, Global Marketing Solutions, Facebook

Rand Fishkin | Wizard of Moz

And that’s just a few!

The topics on the agenda range from SEO, digital marketing segmentation and product development, to user experience trends. No doubt many of the speakers will have cutting edge perspectives on how their connections and engagement with customers is changing in the digital environment.

I’m not going to lie, I’m hoping to use this conference to make connections and to add to circle mentors. I doubt I come away as a digital marketing expert, but I’m going to do my darnedest to learn a few new tricks and find a few clients to try them out on! (If you’re interested in serving in the role of either, or if you’re attending the event as well, I’d love to hear from you find me on Twitter at @jrfoster75231.)

Anyway, thanks again, LaunchDFW!  I’ll be sure to add more to my post after next week’s event!

Best,

Jennifer

 

 

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Why Data Matters to Marketing

I’ve been thinking a lot about data-driven marketing the past few weeks, most recently I’ve been thinking about how hard having bad data makes our lives. I’ve come to 3 realizations:

Bad Data Makes Your Customers Crazy

Somewhere along the way I missed the exit to the “creative side” of marketing (1). Instead, I seem to constantly be in the midst of a project focused on figuring out how to build and manage data. Companies today acquire and store customer data at lightning speed, often different teams use and manage the data in different ways, sometimes creating their own separate repositories.

marketing with out dataIf you think of some of your most recent experiences that left you frustrated with a large company, it was likely due to mismanagement of your information.  Most recently for me this was the rental car counter.  I have few expectations of the rental car company. 1. Take the reservation and 2. hold the reservation (Bonus points if you got the Seinfeld reference.) Honestly, my expectation is that I have a car and that I be able to pick up and return without stopping at the rental car counter.

Two weeks ago upon my “preferred” rental car company’s big red board which normally directs me right to my space instead said the dreaded CTR (2 & 3).  As I trudged to the counter, I was informed that my credit card had expired. Easy fix, gave them new card, came out from under my cloud of doom, and went on my merry way. This week, upon arrival at the same airport, I was again summoned by the big red board to stop at the dreaded counter instead of proceeding directly to my pre-reserved, mid-sized chariot. (4) The gentleman at the counter proceeded to inform me that my American Express card wasn’t able to be processed. To which I said, “Um, yes but I gave you a NEW MasterCard 2 weeks ago at this very counter.” Bad data makes your customers crazy.

Bad Data Makes Your Processes Inefficient

In my former corporate life, one of my biggest responsibilities was overseeing the team responsible for hundreds of different letters. The letters were highly dependent on data from upstream systems. In addition to standard demographic information there were generally very sophisticated calculations which would derive content and then populate personalize content into the letters. Very often the data was wrong… or it broke along the way. This lead our letters to be wrong. Which created calls to the call center. Which created complaints. Which created issue logs and break-fix projects and correction letters. Which created testing environments. Which created…you can see where I’m going here (5). We were in a constant state of fixing our bad data.

Not uncommon until you think about the time it took to actually do all that, in the meantime the error continued to churn out incorrect information. So we created quality assurance teams to check the data, strip it off and send it back for correction. We hired teams of people to shore up weak data going through unstable processes. Those teams took time to do their work, which slowed down our timeliness. A horrible case study in efficiency for the sake of accuracy. Bad data makes your process inefficient.

Bad Data Renders Your Marketing Materials Irrelevant

One of the recent start-ups I have seen present (Meet Me@) uses an example of sending a frozen yogurt coupon to an ice cream lover.  While a relatively simplistic example of the impact of bad data, if you are the yogurt company you’ve wasted the cost of the coupon. The chances of the yogurt company having their own data is low so I’m really more concerned if you’re the agency who provided the “qualified” lead: you’ve wasted your client’s money on the coupon, and lost a bit of your own credibility on delivering qualified leads. (6)

Now we can take 2 paths with this, right? As a marketer, perhaps I want to try to convince my ice-cream loving targets to TRY my frozen yogurt.  Something along the lines of “Think you don’t like frozen yogurt? We bet you a free cup we can change your mind!” THAT is relevant and meaningful. However, as it stands simply sending coupon with a save money message will be effort wasted. Bad data renders your marketing materials irrelevant.

What is the solution to all this?  If you missed last week’s blog check out the role of Marketing Technologist (Read it here).  If your company doesn’t have a marketing leader who understands your database management systems you likely need one. It’s becoming truer every day that Everything is Marketing, your data powers your relationship with your customers from customer care to welcome letters/emails. You need to get it right the first time

1. The land of logos and PMS color matching… you know, where the unicorns, leprechauns and Super Bowl ads live.

2. I’m preferred, dagnabbit, my card says so!

3. The company shall remain nameless but whose claim to fame is that they “Try harder!” Which is a whole other blog topic what a horrible tagline!)

4. Friggin’ fracking… grrrrr!

5. This is actually the best case scenario where it actually got fixed; generally it went into an IT queue and was schedule sometime in 2017

6. And sullied the good name of marketing

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The Future of Marketing Depends on Marketing Technology and Operations

Marketing has always been thought of as a creative industry. “Marketing” folks are generally known for their ability to create and launch brand identities, their keen skills in developing the perfectly crafted sell sheets, advertising and leave behinds for their sales teams,  and lest we forget their awareness and ability to capitalize on trending social media topics.

However, in this day and age more and more marketing is becoming data-driven which is creating a new class of marketer: the Chief Marketing Technologist.

Sales collateral is not just customized, it’s personalized and tailored to its target.

Messages are automated based on an action (or inaction) with web sites or customer care centers.

Data-base marketing is becoming the standard by which teams deliver relevant content to customers.

Finally, all of these data-driven projects rely on even more aggregated data to create solid measurements when it comes time to budget for next year.

Wikipedia defines Marketing Operations as:  the function responsible for marketing performance measurement, strategic planning and budgeting, process development, professional development, and marketing systems and data.

Scott Brinker wrote an article in 2013 citing the need for a Chief Marketing Technologist who would sit within a companies’ marketing organization but serve as a technology expert for the purpose of improving the efficiency and accuracy of the organization. Some even go so far as to see marketing operations leader as a “Chief of Staff” because they are often responsible for handling so many aspects of the company’s success.

(Personal story: I remember dramatically lamenting to one of my former bosses who continually sent me on fact-finding and resolution missions with technology teams, that I wanted to work on things that “weren’t broken” — had I only known to simply dub myself a Marketing Technologist!)

Marketing-Driven Process Improvement
Marketing technology leaders quickly find themselves being experts in process modeling and improvement. Because they identify gap, and in my case propose and drive resolution, we are then tapped to create training and staffing plans. Then, we are responsible for incorporating metrics to prove the processes are better and the process starts all over again.

Brinker (@chiefmartec) includes a Forrester-created a diagram of how this role functions under the direction of the CMO.

The Marketing Technology Office

Breaking Out of Old Patterns
Companies who fail to understand this will continue to struggle. Several that I’ve seen firsthand, keep data tucked neatly away in the technology department without understanding how the data will even be used downstream, let alone understanding the consequences if it’s not correct. Marketing and communications staff will generally avoid understanding the complicated systems and their mysterious codes that generate the data.

This push-pull between departmental staff, over time will degrade the effeciency of how data moves through the process. Without anyone measuring the impact the organization slowly slides into a spiral of bad data, delayed activity and inaccurate measurements. Any data integrity projects are competing with mission-critical IT projects and its not hard to predict who will win if there isn’t an undertanding of the value of  marketing-driven initiatives.

The Future Relies on Marketing Technology
Marketing technology teams must become the biggest influencers within a company, and to do that we have to build our own accountability. At a recent client meeting I was faced with a very skeptical client who didn’t understand how marketing could measure itself. The short answer is probably that marketing can’t measure itself, however, it should definitely measure its effectiveness by the performance of its peers and vice versa.  The effectiveness of a marketing operations strategy and culture yields an increase in marketing efficiency and reinforces marketing in areas like customer care and information technology.

Building a successful marketing technology department is less art and more science, some data-driven industries like healthcare and finance, are definitely on the hook to adopt this approach sooner rather than later. But building it is only the first step, the operational intelligence that the team yields will need to be synthesized into meaningful priorities. Through continuous measurement, research and communication, a marketing operations team will stimulate ideas and internal discussion, provide cross-functional collaboration and give the entire executive team the tools they need for effective decision-making.

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All Marketing Needs to be Relationship Marketing

Last week I ended my post with a revamped headline that All Marketing needs to be Relationship Marketing. Marketing can no longer simply be about selling to a customer and hoping for repeat business. It’s about building and maintaining a relationship with customers and to do that, you need data. And it needs to be good.

01ce61b1ed79bbbe34864843fae0c270c7852e3167
Venture Spur held their annual Pitch Day yesterday, at Gilley’s Southside Ballroom.

Yesterday, at Venture Spur Pitch Day the audience heard that a common problem retailers and restaurants are facing is competing for our consumers’ attentions. I listened to several great presentations from BrandFitters, JoopLoop, JoinMe@ and HostSpot which all endeavor to help businesses and brands connect in very meaningful ways with customers. These entrepreneurs understand that it’s not enough anymore to simply know that a 24-year old female from Dallas, TX purchased from you 3 times last year.

Brandfitters has created a geo-target based platform that encourages in-store, peer-to-peer engagement. It allows customers to have two-way communication with the brands that matter to them in a real-time setting. Because this social interaction (and it inevitable data) is valuable to the brand, the customer can then receive a coupon for their next purchase or some other item of value.  This is basic advertising except now, we’re paying the consumer to do the advertising. Brilliant. And Meaningful.

JoopLoop is helping small businesses measure the ROI of their social media efforts. According to the presentation yesterday, marketers will spend $4.8 billion on social media this year alone and $8.22 billion in 2015 and not have a way to measure the ROI. JoopLoop’s patent-pending software solves this by assigning a value to customers based on their individual influence. This is meaningful data to a marketing exec who is trying to defend her social media request.

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Social Media ad spend continues to grow, yet ROI is nearly impossible to measure.

JoinMe@ has a similar premise as Brandfitters. The idea being that as a consumer, I can influence my peers. Using this app I can share exclusive deals to my network and then I get even better deals. It will launch soon with LeeHarveys, for all the Dallas locals.

Hostspot offers for brick-and-mortar restaurants and retailers the opportunity learn and measure the needs and behaviors of their customers similar to that of online stores.  Their software uses location sensors, smart phone wi-fi tracking, and social media data to provide quality data about what is happening in their stores. The clients can learn the most common traffic patterns as well as offer wifi greeting to repeat customers.

Relationships matter. Making them meaningful matters more. Several years ago there was a thought that we’d soon buy everything online. That the traditional brick-and-mortar store couldn’t compete with the discounts offered by online giants. And, as those giants began leading the way developing a relationship with customers, the doom indeed did seem certain. However, these 4 particular technologies are giving the power back to the small business on the corner by helping them use data to create relationships with customers.