Patients, Grasshopper

We're all familiar with the traditional approach to healthcare marketing. Board certifications, big photos of the providers looking all serious and ready to find the next procedure that will get them published. Strength and stability and expertise are all important qualities, but there are some fundamentals that seem to be consistently missed in most healthcare marketing.

1. DON'T MARKET TO YOURSELF
The majority of healthcare marketing is done from the providers' point of view. Qualifications, looking serious, etc., all of these are internal-facing and have much more meaning to the providers than to the patients. From a patient's point of view, there are assumptions that a provider is qualified to perform the procedures they're promoting. Patients have two goals—to get better, and to be heard. That leads us to...

2. WHAT DOES YOUR PATIENT EXPERIENCE?
Here's a good little trick. Have a friend or a family member go through your patients' process. It's better if that person has a different last name and is unknown to staff. What is their experience? How long does it take to get an appointment? How long do they wait in the first waiting room? In the second? What is the lab experience like? How long does it take to get results? What is the process patients encounter when they receive their results? Remember that you're not doing this in a punitive way—don't look for poor performance by staff. If you find it, of course, address it. The goal is to experience what your patients, what your customers, are experiencing. At most levels, healthcare is tremendously competitive. The only point where it isn't comes from very specific specialists who are either the best in their field, or are alone in their market. For most providers, there are at least two other major competitors, sometimes much more. The ACA has or will open up an enormous market for new patients. These are people who have either never entered the healthcare system, or have used an ER as their primary care provider. In a competitive marketplace, a provider group that addresses wait times, customer service and simple friendliness will have the edge.

3. WHERE ARE THE BOTTLENECKS?
After receiving the data from your trusted source(s), analyze it. Can you accommodate new patients within a 48 hour timeframe? Do patients wait longer than 15 minutes past their appointment time? Remember that the wait time isn't just calculated in the main waiting area. Patients who have an appointment at 10am and aren't seen by a provider until 11, 11:30 will view the waiting period in its entirety. Rightly so. How long does it take to get test results? How long does it take to provide those results to the customer? There are always extenuating circumstances. Providers are busy. There is a shortage of doctors. And being a healthcare provider means tedious hours of paperwork. But from the patients' point of view, waiting for an hour or more after their appointment time is part of the problem.

4. WHAT IS YOUR CUSTOMER LOOKING FOR?
Most patients are taking time out of their own busy lives to come to you. Unless it's a routine physical, they're not coming to see you because they want to—they're coming to see you because they have to. Primary care physicians in particular are the traffic cops of the healthcare system. Much like triage in an emergency situation, primary care will lead to more specialized services. Patients are often scared and confused. The more complexity their symptoms present, the more doctor visits they'll need to endure. Let's face it—a doctor visit is not usually a happy occasion. A patient is looking for comfort, reassurance and most importantly, information. The entire patient care chain, from the initial appointment setting to the final referral, is part of the same experience for your patient. Clearly understanding their concerns goes far beyond being board certified. It requires a human touch.

5. FIX YOUR BOTTLENECKS, AND THEN PROMOTE IT
Putting the patient experience first is often a paradigm shift for a healthcare provider group. Doing so starts from the ground up, and from the top down. Respecting a patients' time, being clear and concise in your explanations, and then clearly explaining the next steps required provide the patient with a level of trust that no amount of letters beside your name can do. You may not be able to provide a 15 minute appointment guarantee. Logistics may not allow it. But promote it. Work as a team to ensure everything moves smoothly, and when the wait time exceeds 15 minutes, give your customers something. A gift card to Starbucks is a valuable commodity. A 15 minute guarantee will draw new patients from the large pool that now exists, let them know you understand their experience, and providing gift cards will offset any unforeseen circumstances. Starbucks gift cards can be personalized with your branding. People will do a great deal for very little. By providing some token as compensation for their wait, you let them know you get it. The patient experience is rough. To the patient, it's not a job. It's their life.

I've seen the healthcare process from both sides. I've worked with providers of all disciplines to help identify and correct issues. I've been a patient, waiting for hours in consecutively smaller waiting rooms. I've read old magazines, listened to piped-in Muzak and wondered why I scrambled to make an appointment time that was completely unrealistic.

Healthcare providers are providing a service. They have customers, just like any consumer business. The regulations and reimbursements and paperwork are intense, but other industries have similar challenges. Hospital groups and provider groups continue to grow and expand. The competition is intense. A group that decides the patient experience is more important than anything else will win. That fact has been proven again and again.

Your competition will continue touting their certifications and promote their latest machinery. If your message is simply, "we will see you within 15 minutes of your appointment time, or you receive a gift card", you will rise above. Patients are consumers, whether they or you are aware of it. Provide a consistently negative experience and your patients will walk away. But provide a sensitive, timely and positive experience, and you will reap the benefits.

What Obamacare Can Teach Us About What NOT To Do In A Marketing Campaign

Love it or hate it, agree with it or continue to vote against it, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is here to stay. At least until their ill-fated marketing blunders sink the program.

I'm about as liberal as it gets. Personally, I favor the Canadian system. I'm familiar with it, so it's not just a talking point. I have my own issues with Obamacare, but this is a marketing blog, not a soapbox.

We can learn some valuable marketing lessons from the ACA rollout. There was a lot that was done wrong. Here are the top three.

1. NEVER, EVER GO LIVE WITH A BROKEN WEBSITE
Your website is the central hub of any marketing strategy you're building. Even a social media campaign needs someplace to point. The Obamacare website was a complex, convoluted structure that fell victim to the oldest trick in the book—requirements that changed multiple times throughout the build, often changing the entire infrastructure. Everyone's familiar with the Healthcare.gov website jokes, the opposition's continued barrage of attacks, the Congressional hearings, the whole bit.

Here's the thing—the more complex the website, the more intense the testing needs to be. Any website needs to undergo something called User Acceptance Testing, or UAT. A website begins with a set of requirements—what the site needs to do. Most sites are fairly straightforward. A homepage, some product or service information, a contact page, etc. For more complicated sites, such as those involving data, (the capturing of customer information, the dispensation of customer information, product data, etc.), requires a much more involved set of requirements, and therefore a much more involved UAT process. We won't delve too deeply into web development here, but suffice it to say that you want to do at least the following when testing any site:

a) Test on multiple browsers. Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox are the most common and should suffice for most UAT. Make sure you test multiple versions of Internet Explorer (IE9, for example, can throw a wrench into the most well executed and seamlessly developed website).
b) Test on multiple operating systems. Test on both Mac and PC.
c) Allow for operator error. Your clients may not be the brightest bulbs in the box. Is the site foolproof? Is it easy to navigate? Can you find information within two clicks?
d) Try to break it. The more complicated the site, the more errors you should find. Do things the site isn't designed to do—how does it handle these requests?
e) Create informative error pages. The last thing a user of your site wants to see is some convoluted error message that may mean something to a developer but just looks like your site is broken otherwise.
f) If there is an error, provide a clear path out of it. For instance, if you have a user signup page that requires a specific format for information to be entered, clearly explain this or provide a contact phone number or email address that can help.
g) For the love of punk rock, ANSWER THE PHONE and answer your email. Promptly. If someone is on your website and wants to sign up, search for a product, etc., they want to do it now. Don't make them come back. Don't make them wait.

Your website is your virtual front door. Whether you're a retailer, Realtor®, or are simply providing a contact portal, this is your first impression. Never, ever go live with a website that doesn't work.

2. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
One of the key provisions in Obamacare is the inclusion of a robust number of 18-34 year olds. There's a reason why everyone wants to market to this demographic. For the healthcare system to work, it needs to spread the risk across a large pool of healthy users.

These people are what I call The Unmarketable. It's not that they can't be influenced—you've got to know what you're doing. If you want their business, you've got to earn it. They have been sold to their entire lives, and they can see you coming a mile away. Here are the ground rules for marketing to the 18-34 demographic:

a) Don't try to be cool. Using popular catchphrases, current references, etc., will only make you look old. They know how to filter your pathetic attempt to sit at the cool table. Don't even try.
b) Don't talk down. One of the most common mistakes made when marketing this group is giving them the impression you think you're smarter than they are. You might be, but they hate that. Be direct. You're not talking to your insolent twenty-something. You're talking to a potential customer. Give them the respect you'd give any customer.
c) Celebrity endorsements can go very wrong. This is the era of five-second fame. Everyone is famous. If you latch on to some anti-celebrity, you have immediately put an expiration date on your campaign. Remember Gangham Style? Exactly.
d) Don't try to go viral. There are specific ingredients that go into a viral video, post, etc., You don't have them. You don't have access to them. Yes, it would incredible to have your commercial go viral and get twenty million views on YouTube. It would also be incredible to win the Powerball. Setting out to "go viral" is a waste of your time and resources.

There is no single way to market to The Unmarketables. There's no single venue, media outlet, or social media service that will hit everybody. The secret with this generation is that they're compartmentalized. The days of everyone watching a single TV network or visiting a single source for news online, or a single social media venue are gone. The "18-34 year old demographic" isn't a single entity. It consists of millions and millions of individuals. You need to know a whole lot more about your target audience than simply that they're between 18 and 34 years old. If you don't know them, they won't care one bit about you.

3. DON'T LET YOUR COMPETITION DEFINE YOUR STRATEGY
There's a reason you're in business. There's a reason your product or service can compete in the marketplace. And if you're in the marketplace, you've got competition. If you don't have competition, you will. One of the biggest mistakes the Obama administration made in selling Obamacare to the American people was letting the opposition (his competition) define the argument. It's your competition's job to point out why their product or service is superior to yours. That's what the free market system is all about. Your marketing strategy will not be successful if it's simply a reaction to your competition's marketing strategy. No one's interested in why Product A sucks. They want to know why Product B is great. Believe it or not, positive messaging is far more effective than negative messaging. The businesses that are #1 in their fields (Coke, McDonald's) don't spend their time focusing on their competition. The businesses that are #2 (Pepsi, Burger King), do spend their time focusing on their competition. That's one of the reasons these businesses are #2. Not sure how to do this? Here are the basics:

a) Have the best product or service. You can't survive in any industry for any length of time if your product breaks or your service is subpar. Wait, you don't think your product or service is part of your marketing campaign? Pumpkin, it's the centerpiece. You will go out of business if you don't focus on your core products and services. Simple as that.
b) Clearly and concisely explain why you are the best. Is it taste? Satisfaction? Quality parts or ingredients? What sets you apart?
c) Why is it necessary? Neither Coke nor McDonald's products are required to sustain life on earth. Why are they necessary, then? This is what they call in sales selling the sizzle, not the steak. What does your product or service provide, make easier, make better, or help satisfy?
d) Take the high road. You don't need to mention your competition in your marketing. It's your marketing, not theirs. Don't give your competition air time. It makes your business look petty. Product comparisons are for those in second place. First place doesn't need to compare.
e) Solve problems quickly and in public. Let's say your business prides itself on providing service within a 20-minute window. For one reason or another, your service tech was unable to arrive. Your customer complains on your Facebook or Twitter feed. The first reaction by most businesses is to remove the post. After all, who wants anything negative on their Facebook wall? Instead, engage the customer and MAKE THINGS RIGHT in the same post, in the shortest possible time. It doesn't matter that your service tech had a car accident. It doesn't matter that the snow hadn't been cleared off the roads. There are always things that are out of your control. The only thing you can control 100% of the time is how you respond. It's not personal. It's business. Give the client a gift card. Refund their service call. Give them a free service call. Whatever you do, do it in front of everyone.
f) Know the difference between slander and libel. In a nutshell, slander is saying "you suck", libel is writing "you suck". There are tons of legal gray areas, but that gives you the idea. Keep in mind that your competition may engage in nefarious tactics from time to time. We wise in your approach. Overreacting to some slight by your competition can make you look like a jerk. Underreacting to something that is potentially damaging can leave your business exposed to serious trouble. Know when something is business and when it's war. Take a look at my post about when to hire a lawyer. It'll help.

Remember that you need your clients more than they need you. The world will get by just fine without your product or service. When you're developing a marketing strategy, keep in mind that every aspect o your business is part of the strategy. You can have the most vibrant website, the most dependable product, but if your customer service staff is perpetually rude, you will go out of business. Your business is a series of links in a chain. That chain is your marketing strategy. A product that works, built from parts that are high grade, with an easy to engage sales interface, a customer service team that goes the extra mile, and truly dependable service is the centerpiece of your business. Your entire business is about marketing. Break a link, break the business. At least you won't be dragged before a Senate subcommittee.