Opening a second front in your marketing war
I had one of those nightmare moments as a speaker last week when I was prepping for my talk at the ISHMPR conference in Chicago. I was slated to deliver the ever-popular “Joe Public Doesn’t Care About Your Hospital,” and was packing my bags for the trip Thursday when I happened to glance at the agenda for the Friday conference. It was only then, less than 24 hours before the gig, did I notice that my time slot was two hours, not the one I had assumed. Other than talking reeeaaallly slow, how could I stretch a one hour presentation into two? My solution was to offer to lead a group therapy session with attendees, so we could talk in the open about all the things that drive us off a cliff as healthcare marketers. (I knew I could fill hours of time with that topic, right?)
So after my planned presentation, we dove in. As you can imagine, many of the topics we’re all familiar with raised their ugly heads: convincing leadership to use social media, dealing with negative blog comments or tweets, how to reach your own physicians with your message, etc. But the one that came up most of all was dealing with those leaders – both physician and administrative – who make poor marketing decisions based on ego-driven needs. “Clinic X is running ads about this, so should we” or “We need to promote the fact that I’m board certified (and the ad needs to include my face, because EVERYONE knows me)” or “We’re going to promote this new award and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it (despite the fact everyone else is promoting some other award, and most consumers don’t care).” (For more on this phenomenon, check out this past post, “Healthcare marketing’s secret (and unfortunate) raison d’être.“)
One attendee offered a suggestion that made me think of a strategy we’ve advocated before for helping to deal with the ego-driven marketing request. She mentioned that when a doctor was crying for an ad to promote an accolade, she worked with him to create a small print ad, letting him contribute ideas, copy changes and approvals along the way. The ad was small, so the expense was low. But she said the result was the physician was happy, and she was able to limit the time/money/energy suck a larger effort would have entailed.
This fits with a strategy we’ve tossed around before, that of opening a second front in your marketing war. The main battle line in that war is all you do to drive significant business success, build brand, increase volumes, create patient loyalty and more. But often, the ego-driven marketing request runs counter to these goals. Some marketers try to fight the good fight, and with some patience, the right leadership and the right approach, you can overcome ego-driven marketing requests most of the time. But in many cases, you can only say no so many times before you’re marginalized or run out on a rail. So while we still advocate fighting the good fight, consider opening up a second front, where you pull away as few of the supplies, ammo and soldiers as possible from the main front to placate the ego-driven marketing requests. By placating these requests, but minimizing their impact, you may still be able to fight that main battle effectively.
In some ways, this sounds underhanded, or like your playing a game with your leadership. In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to – they would trust your marketing expertise and you could drive marketing strategy the right way. But it’s not a perfect world, and your choices are often to give in, or fight until they grow frustrated with you and find someone else who will give in. Instead, while you fight the good fight, and try to educate leaders about the right way to market, consider opening that second front.
What do you think? Too political or unethical? Ineffective? Or are you already working two fronts?
Chris…as always, you get me thinking. While I don’t completely warm up to your war analogy, your points are relevant fodder for the healthcare marketer. It is not easy being the one holding back on expensive promotion generated from well-intended ego maniacs. Holding the line on the difference between marketing and promotion is challenging and sometimes, the data is just not available to drive the point home. So, your idea of moving resources to flank your front-line approach (to extend the military theme) is worthy of consideration. I wonder if using that flank to generate a YouTube video with your physician akin to this example from Stanford (http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/archives/2009/11/new-h1n1-tips-f.html) adds additional value to the maneuver?
Great post, Chris. And oh so true. What you are calling the “second front,” I’ve always called, “Advertising as PR.” Meaning you don’t employ advertising to do what advertising is meant to do. You advertise as a PR strategy to shut someone up so the marketing team can stay focused on the driving the marketing plan.
As you well know, you either pay in dollars or time. And, sometimes, it’s cheaper to run the ad. (This tactic also opens the door for the marketing department to begin aggressive sales visits to the requesting party’s office asking for increased patient referrals.)
Great comments from both Suzanne and Keith (by the way, check out Keith’s blog post, up today, with a different take on the same theme, that the greatest marketing sin is when you’re marketing is about you, not the customer):
http://keithjennings.typepad.com/marketingmyopia/2009/11/the-greatest-marketing-sinever.html
One concern in opening a second front is that it may encourage more of the behavior? I like Suzanne’s concept of using “high profile” but inexpensive tactics, such as video-interviews, or newsletter features, etc. to help satiate the ego-driven. Wonder what other ideas people have for this..
Chris – great post, and great comments from Keith and Suzanne. I understand the analogy, and also feel that by opening up another front, you may encourage more of the bad behavior (and don’t hospital marketers have way to many battle fronts already to deal with?).
I am reminded of a time when talking to the CEO for a big hospital system who kept insisting on seeing a particular marketing message EVERYWHERE – on billboards, in the newspaper on TV. He didn’t care the cost, as long as he saw it every day!
Of course, this was not aligned with the marketing strateg (but the marketing manager wasn’t able to respond – for political reasons, primarily).
Luckily, I as the “outsider” consultant quickly offered a suggestion – we’ll print out a poster to hang on the wall of his office, so he could be sure to see it daily.
This achieved the desired effect – namely, to highlight the outlandishness of his request. Of course, this is a very dangerous approach (even Sun Tzu advised against it in the Art of War), so I wouldn’t suggest it to everyone…