Integrated Branding Blog | Movéo

Driving Patient Loyalty and Hospital Revenues Now

Some conventional wisdom…

1. The healthcare industry fared better than most during the recent recession. 

2. The healthcare field continues to be less advanced, savvy and competent versus others when it comes to technology, marketing and customer focus. 

3. The practice of cultivating existing customers is far more profitable and productive today – or at any time – than seeking new ones. 

While the first assertion (the healthcare industry is healthier) is true, providers and hospitals are not immune from the effects of the current economic condition. Higher unemployment means fewer people are insured, resulting in fewer admissions for non-emergency procedures – not to mention an increase in provider costs for non-covered, indigent care. Nurses are being laid off. Philanthropic donations and state Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are declining, according to the American Hospital Association. 

The second assertion (the healthcare field is less advanced) is also a fact; but this means now there is a great opportunity for the progressive hospital to stand out and gain competitive advantage in the market. The third assertion (it is better to focus on current customers) is correct, too, and relates to that opportunity. 

How to compete and drive results

What can a hospital facing some strong headwinds do in order to improve marketing effectiveness and patient retention? What can a provider do in the short term to drive desired results and in the long term to increase customer loyalty, brand competitiveness and strength?

Today many hospital marketing heads have been forced by CEOs to cut marketing and communications budgets. Many are now focused on immediate, quarterly based, measurable direct and e-marketing tactics. Few may be considering market research, as patient and community studies do not actively generate revenue and there are often issues with speed of execution and actionability.

But a simple, powerful research metric – the Net Promoter Score^® (NPS^®)* – has emerged, which a notable few providers are employing. NPS shows a strong linkage between survey results and the bottom line — hospital profitability, customer loyalty and brand value.

The static, status-quo hospital research

Actually, most hospitals have been conducting patient and stakeholder satisfaction surveys for a long time. But how have they been applying the results? Toward building patient brand loyalty? Improving the care or service? The reality is that very few provider marketers or staff know how – or if – the survey information is applied.

Much of the impetus for patient satisfaction surveying is driven by the federal government’s quality mandate and establishment (HCAPS). Moreover, enterprising satisfaction survey research companies have taken full advantage of the need for hospital compliance to successfully sell ongoing survey products (not consulting) to providers – in effect creating client loyalty to the patient satisfaction survey process. But few employees in a hospital (including marketers and executives) really know how the complex survey reports, tables and data symbols are used or who within the organization owns the program. Does the hospital’s CEO regularly keep tabs on the ratings? Are strategic marketing or customer service plans created based on the feedback? Doubtful.

NPS may even have greater relevance in the hospital, where the customer experience is defined by so many intangibles, touch points over time and people. So a provider that can successfully apply NPS will have a good chance of standing out in the market, driving needed change and building powerful stakeholder loyalty … creating real economic and brand value.

*Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

By Kevin Randall, Director of Brand Strategy & Research Movéo Integrated Branding

Brand Transparency in a Social Media Age

Internet access provides consumers with endless amounts of information at their fingertips. To put this in perspective, let's compare our process of collecting information today to that of 15 years ago. Imagine a grade school student in mid-90's. If this person needed information they would probably start out by asking their parents or another family member. If that proved insufficient, the next stop would an encyclopedia or perhaps a trip to local library.

Image courtesy of flaivoloka on stock.xchng

Now compare that to today. You want to know how to tie a knot, cancer research, book reviews, etc. - it's all a search and a click away. And since this information has become available, we have become much smarter consumers. We care more about what's in our food, what effect our actions have on the environment and so on. If a brand is unethical in any way, we are going to hear about it and hear about it fast. It's the new word-of-mouth and it's much more accessible and viral.

This is why brand transparency has become increasingly important. Brands can't hide behind walls and tell us who they are. We decide who they are by how they act and the quality of their product. Our purchasing decisions will be made with more information at hand. To succeed brands will have to be open and part of the discussion so that consumers are aware of the value their brand has on issues we care about.

We've always been social, we just have the technology now to easily connect with others on a massive scale. Word-of mouth has never traveled so fast. Brands need to remember that with every decision they make.

Building From the Inside Out

Many brand-building efforts begin with development of the strategy and then proceed directly to an external launch. The most important step is ignored — communicating the essence and relevance of the brand among all internal stakeholders — making it the fabric of the organization.

The most successful organizations understand that if employees are aligned with the brand strategy, including the brand promise, they will deliver a consistent expression of the brand to its customers.

Powerhouse brands such as Mayo Clinic and GE are prime examples. Each has dedicated itself to helping its employees understand the power of the brand and have reaped the benefits of a consistent brand expression delivered at every touch point.

Building a brand-based culture is not about creating short-term “buzz.” It is about developing a genuine and ongoing commitment.  To create a brand-centric environment, you have to ensure that employees are living the brand consistently on a daily basis.

Developing a vibrant brand-based culture requires the organization team members to go through three stages:

1. Merely being aware of the brand and what it stands for (“Hearing It”)
2. Understand their role in delivering against the brand promise (“Believing it”)
3. Becoming passionate advocates for the brand (“Living It”)

If the employees are not living this brand every day, it will fundamentally impede the growth and success of the organization. In fact, studies have shown that up to 86% of employees who interface with customers, are communicating inaccurate or incomplete vital information.

How well aligned is your organization with your brand?

B2B Customer Loyalty

Brand loyalty is often associated with B2C companies, although it can be argued that customer retention is just as important (if not more) in the B2B realm.

In the past, we've discussed some of the differences between B2B and B2C in the buying cycle. More often than not, a B2B purchase is much more involved because of technical aspects of the product, higher price and multiple people involved in the decision process. Consider this and that the market for B2B products and services are smaller and you see that retaining customers is a critical component in B2B marketing.

We've recently conducted two studies on this topic. Read the results in our latest article, The Million Dollar Question: How Loyal are Your Customers?

A brand roundtable discussion for Amazon Basics

Image courtesy of FastCompany

Our branding guru, Kevin Randall, recently assembled a roundtable of branding experts to share thoughts on Amazon's newest venture - Amazon Basics. Kevin's colleagues included professors from Stanford, Harvard, MIT and Northwestern, along with strategists from Interbrand. The full list is below:

Jennifer Aaker - Professor of Marketing at Stanford's Graduate School of Business

David Martin - President of Interbrand New York

John Quelch - Professor of Marketing at Harvard Business School

Mark Ritson - Associate Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management

Scott Davis - Senior Partner at Prophet

Alex Goldfayn - Technology Tailor

Tim Calkins - Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management

Jez Frampton - Group CEO of Interbrand

Martin Straw - former President of Interbrand

Scott Miller - Chairman Zyman/Core Strategy Group

Eric Joachimsthaler - CEO Vivaldi Partners

Get details about the group's thoughts by reading Kevin's article on Fast Company.

Customer service monitoring online

image courtesy of Patrick Thibodeau

Online discussions have revolutionized how businesses must serve their current and potential customers. Through savvy tools, companies can monitor what people are saying about their brand, which puts them in a position to have customer service representatives react.

One such tool is a product from Salesforce appropritately named Salesforce for Twitter. An interesting function of this program allows you to automatically turn Twitter mentions (@ replies that include your Twitter handle) into customer service tickets.

Rich Cherecwich explains this well in an article on iMedia Connection: "For example, if a subscriber had a problem with their Comcast service, they could simply tweet at a Comcast account, and that tweet would be turned into an active ticket, similar to phoning a corporate call center."

If you've used any of these products or have others to recommend, we'd love to hear about it.

Additional online monitoring/organization tools worth looking at:

Social Mention

Google Alerts

Seesmic or TweetDeck

Twitter Search

The neuromarketing debate

Image courtesy of FastCompany

In short, neuromarketing is the science of studying how our brains react to marketing messaging. Some marketers are now measuring our brain activity for insight into how and why we act as consumers.

Neuromarketing certainly has its flaws, but so does traditional research. In a recent article, titled Neuromarketing Hope and Hype: 5 Brands Conducting Brain Research, Kevin Randall says, "It is commonly accepted that traditional market research is flawed because consumers don't know, can't articulate, or will even lie in a focus group about their purchase motivations."

Some critics find the research to be bogus, while other opponents fear that marketers are doing to much to try to control how we act. It's just the beginning of debate that is sure to grow as research continues. What are your thoughts on the issue?

More articles by Kevin Randall:

This Five-Letter Word Is Key to Marketing Success: B-R-A-N-D

Does Branding Pay Off for Colleges? Harvard Thinks So.

3 social media marketing tools that track your brand

As a company, it's important to know what others are saying about your brand. Thankfully, there are tools to help us keep track of what is being said and who is saying it. Here are three tools to help discover these online conversations:

socialmention
This site allows you to create alerts, just like Google Alerts. You'll receive e-mails of the latest mentions of your company on blogs, bookmarks, comments, images, events, news, videos, audio and Q&A.

TweetDeck
Download TweetDeck and you can keep track and organize conversation on Twitter and Facebook that involve your brand. You can also save searches and see who is replying to your Tweets. Best of all, it's all in one window that you can customize.

Keotag
Search for tags that mention your brand (or any keyword). It's simple to use - just type in the keyword you'd like to search and then click on the engine you'd like to search through. There are a number of engines available including Technorati, del.icio.us, MSN, Digg, Reddit, Yahoo! and YouTube.

Know of any others? Feel free to mention them in the comments.

What’s everyone Tweeting about?

If you don’t believe Twitter has any marketing value, get this. You can use Twitter as a research tool even if you don’t have a Twitter page. Would you like an example? I thought so.

Let’s take one of our friends - Stericycle. This company offers an array of product recall services. If they want to know what the Twitter community is tweeting about in regards to the keyword ‘recalls,’ they can go to search.twitter.com and find out. See for yourself: recall-related Tweets.

The search results mentioned above show all the Tweets that mention the word ‘recalls.’ Savvy companies have used this to see who’s talking about their brand and counter it with positive PR messaging. Companies with a Twitter account can reply directly to the user and try to resolve issues, thank them for being a patron, or whatever makes sense. There are endless creative ways to use Twitter. I suggest you start by searching to see what the community has to say about your company. This is similar to Google Alerts, which we’ve mentioned in a previous post, but it only involves people on Twitter.

How have you used Twitter for your company?

I like the taste of Pepsi, but I’ll have a Coke - neuromarketing revisited

It’s been hard not to notice the massive branding efforts that Pepsi has put forth in the past few months. New cans, new logos, new ads. I’m intrigued to see how this affects their place in the market.

Image courtesy of Adrants

It's not the first time that Pepsi has made dramatic strides to gain market share from it's biggest rival (no, not RC Cola) - Coke. The classic example of neuromarketing research involved the Pepsi Challenge campaign of the ‘80’s. Researchers wanted to know why taste tests showed that most people preferred Pepsi, while Coke dominated the market share.

In short, we don’t always rely on logic to make our decisions. Many of our product purchases are triggered by emotion and how we feel about a brand. Therefore, you can say that many of us choose Coke, not because we think it tastes better, but because of its brand or the marketing behind it.

Before neuromarketing, this argument may not have carried much weight. But by using brain scanning technology, neuroscientists found that in the blind taste test, subjects were using the front lobe of their brain to logically decide which drink they preferred. However, when subjects were asked to choose a drink knowing which was Pepsi and which was Coke, the large majority chose Coke and used a different part of their brain to make that decision.

But who says our decisions and purchases have to be logical? Pepsi was assuming that taste is the only influence that drives a beverage purchase. As if there’s a large database in our brains that ranks the order in which we like the taste of a soda and that’s how we claw through the clutter. The fact is that many of our purchases are driven by emotion and that is why branding is so vitally important. In a market with many similar products - the best branding is sure to come out victorious.

I mean, is there really that much difference to a typical consumer between laptops such as Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, etc? Not really. One person might buy a Sony notebook that lasts them for years and the next person might buy the same notebook and have it bunk out in a year. The difference in who wins the market share is branding.

If you’re interested in reading more about neuromarketing, I suggest picking up Buyology by Martin Lindstrom. It's full of terrific examples.

Will Pepsi's new brand efforts make them more competitive with Coke? What are your thoughts on neuromarketing?