Marketing A.D. (After Digital)

Have you heard that digital is disrupting healthcare? I thought so. However, you may not be aware that we are again entering a new world order for marketing. If you have struggled to drag your organization from traditional to digital marketing you should be prepared for the coming wave of change to marketing—and it has little to do with traditional versus digital marketing. The new worldview marketers need to adopt is what I call, A.D. or “After Digital.”

We have been riding the wave of emerging technology, data, and ongoing disruptions for the last decade. Customers, or in this case, patients, are now entitled. They have digital proficiency, increasing adoption of technology, and the vast majority of people are online, connected, and empowered. Over the past few years, technology has provided an environment in which empowered customers believe they deserve something. Free next-day shipping? 1-Click Ordering? Yes, please.

Marketing Distinctions Dissolve

The distinction between traditional and digital has fully dissolved because now it’s difficult to say what is traditional versus digital. The decades old habits of mass marketing are still prevalent in most marketing organizations and plans today. It’s already moving beyond advertising buys and shifting into advanced targeting based on emerging analytics. It is using social listening and signals to deliver personalized, targeted, contextually relevant messages. And finally, annual planning needs to shift to nimble and real-time engagement modes. You can no longer plan your year and work your plan. Your plan lives in real-time.

According to Forrester Research, three new rules for marketing include:

  • Be human
  • Be helpful
  • Be handy

To be human is to be authentic, transparent, and empathetic. To be helpful is to stop mass messaging and to become invisible and solve problems for the customer. To be handy is to be agile, innovative, and investing in inspiration.

The need to create lifelong, holistic relationships with healthcare consumers has never been more important. Building relationships across the customer lifespan, understanding the person, and establishing a foundation of trust before they need you is the objective.
I know what you’re thinking, “We haven’t even mastered digital. How do we move our marketing to this new-fangled A.D.?”

It’s a combination of actions:

  • Leadership and resilience: You must lead your organization to understanding this change.
  • Intrapreneurs: Locate the change agents in your organization that can become advocates and unleash them.
  • Change Management: Like any change, it requires a plan for change management to drive different thinking, behavior, and actions in your organization.

More specifically, it requires rolling up your sleeves and doing some foundational research to understand your customer personas, the behaviors they demonstrate in their journey better than anyone else. Map and gap their behaviors against your digital ecosystem, develop content and services to fill the gaps, ongoing optimization, and support. You really need to think in terms of high-quality content distribution, share-ability, partnerships with trusted sources and offline integration rather than building new websites and portals.

As a marketing leader, taking this on now you will set your organization up for the future because customers are entitled and this is what they expect. Would you rather be on top of the wave or be crushed under it?

  • Jim Lefevere

    Jim Lefevere is International Business Leader, Digital Partnering Solutions at Roche Diabetes Care. Jim is an award-winning commercial executive with over 20 years of expertise in the consumer-packaged goods, startups, medical device, and healthcare industries. He has expertise in leading marketing, customer experience, and new product development while expanding global markets through profitable growth.

Ads

You May Also Like

Great Science = Great Marketing

In our industry, science is all around us. But it is a science that ...

Healthcare Watch

DC Dispatch Clinical Trial Reform Four Democrats, led by Congressman Edward J. Markey of ...