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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay. The new year brings excitement all its own. A fresh start where the calendar resets with a look forward with anticipation of provider and vendor marketing success. Plans, execution timelines, content calendars, and KPIs are in place. Maybe there is a new hire or two completing the build-out on the marketing department for today’s fast-paced and challenging healthcare ecosystem. All well and good, but did you make any new year resolutions? Funny as it may sound, new year’s resolutions can propel organizations beyond the accomplishments of the anticipated goals described in the operational, financial, and marketing plans.  In considering the 2022 market that healthcare providers and vendors face with great uncertainty, I decided to compile a list of ten healthcare marketing resolutions for 2022. Plans change, innovative new entrants disrupt markets, governments change regulations, payers squeeze harder, and public health crises wax and wane. Cha...

Image by Kristin Riemer from Pixabay Where did 2021 go? It was a challenging year for providers with changes in reimbursement, a pandemic that continues unabated, innovations in care delivery away from the hospital, innovative new competitors, and significant declines in revenues. I am glad that it’s ending. I will not go into the litany of good and adverse events for 2021. The news organizations and others will all do their year-in-review pieces. It should be interesting to see what they choose to publish or broadcast. It was a good year from a blog writer’s perspective. I had what seemed to be a never-ending flow of topics. I di start a new feature in some of the posts called “Lessons from the Field,” which were well received. Topics ranged from characteristics of success for mid-sized healthcare vendors, leadership, and operations to new ways to look at markets.  Image by Alexas Fotos from Pixabay I am thankful and appreciative of you for taking the time to spend it with me fro...

I mage by StartUpStockPhotos from Pixabay Well, I am trying something new. Beginning with the end of the month in October 2021, I recapped the posts published in the month, with a post summary and clickable links for each in one place. This way, if you missed a post or wanted to reread one, the months’ published content is in one easy-to-find place. During October, we looked at why providers need to market core values, moving to one view of the patient to the hospital system and vis versa and finished with removing ageism from healthcare marketing. I’ll be honest, and I am not sure if it will be of benefit for you, but I’m giving it a try anyway. As the saying goes, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Image by Peter Linforth from Pixabay. October 5 - Why Healthcare Providers & Vendors Need to Market Core Values https://bit.ly/3DdD6Mz In the latest Healthcare Business & Marketing Insights blog post, I explore why healthcare providers and vendors consider marketing organizati...

  Recruitment image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Employee recruitment marketing using current employees in providers and vendors comes and goes as a marketing recruitment tool. Carefully selected happy and long-term employees tout the culture, work environment, co-workers, etc., and why they have been there so long. It’s not uncommon to see comments about the mission-driven company and how everyone is treated with dignity and respect. I know because I have created and executed in partnership with HR these types of campaigns. Not only do they attract qualified candidates, but it provides employees the opportunity to be an active brand ambassador of the provider or vendor.   Then comes the job candidate’s experience, which may or may not reflect the marketing and brand claims. Best place to work awards, top company to work for, and other awards have people scratching their heads wondering what happened. How you treat the job candidate is as important as what you say in the co...

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.  Change can be good in the leadership of healthcare providers and vendors. Conversely, change, if not managed correctly organizationally, can be debilitating. And the professional sports world is full of examples of good and bad change, from leadership to players. The point is that major professional sports teams in leagues worldwide live in a continuous cycle of evaluation and change regardless of the sport. In the professional sports world, the common saying from GMs and coaches to owners, players, staff, and fans when explaining change is “if you’re not changing, you’re falling behind.” Thinking image by Pexels from Pixabay. When you think about that statement, there is a pearl of intuitive wisdom for healthcare providers and vendors, working in a sea of change coming from all directions. This was never truer as we continue to experience upheaval driven by seismic shifts in technology, diagnosis, treatment, care delivery, and innovative new e...

UGC image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay. User Generated Content (UGC) is the holy grail for healthcare vendors when all is said and done.  It doesn’t matter what vendor segment you’re in; the content and potential thought leadership from clients and prospects turned into customers are worth its weight in gold. Why? Having worked both sides of healthcare in providers and vendors, UGC has far more value and meaning. Providers expect vendors to produce the usual case studies, white papers, research briefs, blog posts, webinars, speaking opportunities,  press releases, media position statements, or any other brand tactical content forms used in a well-designed and executed thought leadership program. That does not mean you throw away case studies et al.,  but what it does mean is that if the vendor is unsuccessful at obtaining UGC, those other activities do not carry the same weight in supporting the vendor’s position. Platform image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay Providers ...

  Image by Gerd Altmann ffrom Pixabay I could have written a rant about how healthcare vendor sales executives are using LinkedIn to prospect. It doesn't matter if it's revenue cycle management, medical device, pharma, information technology, analytics, or any other vendor segment. But I didn't as that would have been too easy.  Unfortunately, there are some common characteristics in prospecting using LinkedIn, causing wasted time, effort, and rejection. But in thinking it over, I decided to provide some helpful tips for using LinkedIn for becoming more sales productive .   And maybe in the process, stop getting useless, poorly targeted, as well as disjointed sales emails and calls. Oh, and this goes for their employing companies too. Now that being said, I get that currency for being on LinkedIn is relationships, connections, networking, and the ability to prospect. I am good with that.   What I am not okay with is the seemingly increased amount of inappropriate ...

  Image by Tumisu from Pixabay I think a critical set of questions is left out of most healthcare provider and vendor business and marketing decisions. We all do our business, marketing, and strategic plans, trying our best to divine where the healthcare business environment is headed. Providers and vendors attempt to account for technological, care, regulatory, reimbursement, patient choice decisions, and unexpected innovation that disrupts an industry segment. We eye our competitors for weakness or emulate in some way. Sometimes we take a strategic decision or take a marketing action simply because Modern Healthcare says so, attended a conference, seminar, or webinar, or a competitor took an unexpected direction and decided you needed to do that too. It could very well be because the CEO said so. Often, we overlook asking the most basic of questions in all of our thinking and analysis, missing answers of strategic importance. While on paper and in our minds, it is all achievabl...