Health B2B Marketing

You never know what you're going to get with the #healthcare hashtag.

Apologies to Forrest Gump, but you truly never know what you’re going to get out of Twitter.

Like many of you, I follow some common hashtags for our industry on Twitter: #hcmktg (short for health care marketing), #hcsm (short for health care social media) and #healthIT. Lately, I seem to be posting more to and learning more from #healthIT. Just this morning, I saw a tweet from a handle I haven’t yet noticed: @icd10watch, which is run by journalist Tom Sullivan. ICD-10 Watch promotes a website developed by MedTech Publishing and sponsored by InfoSys. With the HIPAA 5010 transition deadline approaching fast and the ICD-10 deadline not far behind, the folks at InfoSys are smart to position themselves as a visible leader in the space.

The other day, I decided to follow the #healthcare hashtag. Wow. The deluge of tweets was immediate and varied, to say the least. Most of them centered around health care reform, and it was illuminating to say the least to see how much misinformation that’s flying around out there.

Here’s a tweet from @redorgreenpill:

Dis bitch asked to see my medical card I told da hoe #ShutBITCH #HealthCare is #FREE

Truth in 140 characters. If you think that’s a problem, check out this tweet from @TrueSongMedia:

BOTH HOUSE AND SENATE BILLS REQUIRE MICROCHIPPING OF ALL AMERICANS http://bit.ly/arIthv #healthcare #motb

This headline was too good to pass up, so I clicked the link. It went to a blog called “Silver and Gold Outlook” (?) whose anonymous author tries to scare his readers into thinking that RFID chips inside implantable medical devices are paving the way for the “mark of the beast” prophesied in the New Testament. His scare tactic worked: read some of the nearly 300 comments—there’s a lot of fear and out there.

My takeaway: the more specific the Twitter hashtag, the better. Speaking of which, if you’re tweeting about anything related to health care B2B marketing, use the #hcB2Bmktg hashtag. Are there other hashtags for health care B2B?

What is health care B2B's killer social app? I started with a question and what I thought was my answer...

I just had an experience that I often have as a writer, where I start with an article idea but end up writing something completely different.

I fully expected to finish this post concluding that Twitter is health care B2B’s killer social app. It’s not.

I love Twitter. I’m on it every day. I’ve made some valuable connections through Twitter. But it’s not the killer social app, the one site health care marketers need to focus on, exclusive of all others.

Here’s where I started: a health care B2B marketer’s ultimate goal is to help her organization develop loyal, satisfied customers. To achieve that goal, she positions her company as a trusted resource with health care decision makers and influencers, persuading them that her company’s product or service is the best solution (i.e., attraction marketing). But before she can persuade, she must have built and nurtured a relationship between her company and her prospect. I’m a believer that social media can help us build relationships, so what’s the one social site we marketers should use to build strong relationships?

Let’s start with Twitter. The best thing about Twitter is its low barrier to entry. It’s easy to get started and easy to learn. You can make quick connections with the people or organizations with whom you want to connect, since the culture on Twitter lends itself to inclusion, not exclusion.

But finding and making the right connections on Twitter is not easy. I’ve heard people compare Twitter to a gigantic cocktail party. You might be at the party, totally on your game and making great conversation, but the right people may be at the other end of the ballroom. Or they may not be there at all. Most of the health care B2B marketers I talk to are intrigued by Twitter, but not convinced that their audience is there.

What about Facebook? It’s the social app that seemingly everyone is on. In fact, in February, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that there were 400 million users on Facebook worldwide. Facebook has also posted some undated statistics that state roughly 70% of their users are outside of the United States. If that percentage holds true, that means that there are roughly 120 million U.S. Facebook users, which means that roughly one out of every three Americans is on Facebook—a staggering number. That also means there’s a good chance that your audience is on Facebook. Facebook has some decent tools for businesses, as well: fanpages, groups and Facebook’s unique ad formats give health care B2B companies some good options.

But let’s be honest: the main reason people are flocking to Facebook isn’t to make business relationships. It’s more for personal reasons: to connect with old school friends (and flames), to stay in touch with family, and, if you’re network is anything like mine, it’s to play those hideous browser games that clutter my Facebook news feed. Ugh.

Don’t get me wrong: health care B2B marketers need to have a Facebook strategy, but it’s not our killer social app.

So, maybe it’s LinkedIn. In terms of why people use it, it’s the polar opposite of Facebook. Professionals use LinkedIn to stay in touch with former colleagues, to make new connections through their current network, to find job leads, to ferret out new business opportunities. It’s a great source for business research, whether you’re looking to hire a new employee or find out more about a prospect or a competitor. Tools such as business profile pages, LinkedIn Groups and LinkedIn Answers can be great ways to promote your business and develop relationships. Honestly, it’s probably the closest thing we have to a killer B2B social app.

But it has its limitations. The culture of LinkedIn is exclusive, not inclusive. You’re limited by the network you have. Sure, your three-deep connections may give you access to 2 million or so professionals, but that’s only theoretical access. Your first level network is really the only group to which you have open access. I’ve been on LinkedIn since 2004, and I have about 350 connections. I like and value all the people that have connected with me, but they’re not all prospects. Answers and Groups are options to give you access to potential prospects, but so much of what I see on these areas is truly spam—sales hacks trying to make a quick buck, not develop real relationships. And there’s nothing that will poison a marketing well faster than opening up a few million cans of spam.

So, in conclusion, there is no one killer social app for health care B2B—no social site that we should use to the exclusion of all others. Rather, health care B2B marketers should develop a comprehensive strategy to utilize the strengths and manage the weaknesses of all these sites, plus others that are continuing to emerge.

And because I wrote this blog, I now know that the killer social app for developing relationships isn’t just one site. The killer relationship-building app for health care B2B is, simply, social media.

The Cerner "Smart Room" exhibit at HIMSS08. Cerner and two other major vendors decided not exhibit at HIMSS10, but that doesn't mean trade show exhibits aren't worth the money.

Now that HIMSS, the biggest health care B2B show of the year, is in our rear view mirror, the HIStalk blog has been abuzz with commentary about it. One recent HIStalk commenter, RJ McMurphy, wrote something I found so uninformed that I feel like I have to respond.

“Vendors representing half of the hospital HIS/EMR systems in America weren’t even present [at HIMSS10]! If you look at the HIMSS Analytics report in Modern Healthcare for Jan. 2009, you’ll see Meditech with 26.7% market share, Cerner with 12.6, and Siemens with 9.5. That adds up to 48.7%. All three chose to opt out of HIMSS. Basically it’s become a hype circus — no buying influence really happens there. It was more important earlier in the market cycle when PowerPoint was the main operating system for EMR vendors. Now almost all buying is done by peer site reference and Internet data gathering. Organizations like HIMSS, KLAS, Gartner are trying to make themselves more relevant with lots of hype about trends, etc.

True: Meditech, Cerner and Siemens decided not to exhibit at HIMSS, and they were conspicuous in their absence. But what about the big names that still exhibit? GE Healthcare, McKesson and Eclipsys all had a strong presence at this year’s show, not to mention Epic, which seems to be growing faster than any of the previously mentioned companies.

In my experience, making money on shows is tough duty, especially if you’re only counting net new opportunities. And trade shows are not cheap, especially for big HIS vendors who show up with a 6,000 square foot booth. While I can’t say with certainty why these three organizations pulled out of HIMSS, my guess is that it was a cost-cutting measure. A HIMSS trade show expenditure is a big target for corporate bean-counters. The economy is still tight. Competition is tough, and when you’re bleeding clients to Epic, you’ve got to stay afloat somehow.

Still, there were 934 exhibitors at HIMSS this year? Why? There are lots of reasons companies exhibit at shows. A strong reason: companies can showcase their brand in a visible and a very personal way. A weak reason: companies may be afraid of how it would look if they weren’t there. But the reason I would generally recommend that health care IT vendors strengthen their presence at HIMSS is this: it’s about relationships. Often, companies are starting relationships at trade shows. But the smart companies are also nurturing existing relationships and moving them along to the next step. Sometimes, they may even be lucky enough to culminate a relationship. Trade shows are a cost-effective—yes, cost-effective—way to get the face time you need to begin, strengthen and advance relationships.

RJ says HIMSS is a hype circus. Sure it is. He says that no “buying influence happens there.” I would say that it does. The numbers I’ve seen show that decision makers and influencers did attend the 2010 show. Vendors with a good strategic plan reached and influenced their critical audiences. I agree with RJ that site references and publicly available data sources play a big role when companies choose a vendor. But if he’s saying that face-to-face meetings at HIMSS don’t influence the buying process, he’s wrong.

As I’ve mentioned here before, succeeding at trade shows takes much more than showing up. It takes strategic pre-show outreach, extensive planning, thoughtful booth draws and a good lead nurturing program. Not to mention adequate investment.

All together now: trade shows are what you make them.

Marketers, what do you think? Was HIMSS a good investment for you?

When customer portals are true destinations, they become a B2B marketer's dream.

I just took the time to read Ben Dillon’s new white paper on patient-centric communications. Ben’s company, Geonetric, is in the business of building patient portals for hospitals. His paper got me thinking: are health care B2B leveraging all the online tools available to them?

The point of Ben’s white paper is that hospital organizations need to consider all the tools at their disposal to solve their patient communication challenges. I appreciated the way Ben categorized the types of online tools available to marketers and communicators: broadcast tools, dialogue tools and community tools.

• Broadcast tools facilitate traditional one-to-many communications, including websites, email newsletters and video sharing.
• Dialogue tools are for one-to-one communication, and include patient portals, personal email and online chat.
• Community tools support many-to-many communications, and encompass social networking, online reviews, blogs, etc.

Health care B2B organizations are heavily into broadcast communications, utilizing websites, microsites, email blasts and, increasingly, video to communicate about their brand. These organizations are just starting to use community tools, especially in the social networking arena. Twitter is a growing destination for the B2B community. Online review organizations such as KLAS Research and MedicExchange are becoming more and more important. B2B destinations like blogs, Facebook fan pages and specialized Ning communities seem to be popping up more often.

But what about one-to-one dialogue? That’s an area that we marketers may not be leveraging the way we should.

I know of many B2B organizations that are using portals for their customers, but I haven’t seen many effective ones. On the health care B2C side, patient portals are at their best when they feature clinical and financial information that patients can use. In health care B2B, we can take a page out of the hospital playbook by sharing personalized information that helps customers do their jobs, financial information such as invoices and even payment options, when appropriate. Ultimately, customer portals will be effective and successful if they feature business-critical functionality that makes them a destination.

And marketers are all about destinations. Getting customers to log-in to your portal and engage in information sharing can also give you opportunities to engage them in your brand. A branded portal experience will help your customers understand and trust your brand, and know how you can be an essential part of their success. It also gives you a forum that you can use to educate your customers on other products or services that could help them, which makes you more valuable to them and makes them better customers.

Any health care B2B portal success stories? Please share in the comments…

Mr. HIStalk and Inga have had a few things to say about marketing, and me.

I caused a minor kerfuffle last month when I expressed my opinion about HIStalk’s advertising options. Mr. HIStalk took some exception when I wrote that Inga “claims to be female and sports a sultry avatar”. Here was his response:

An online article suggests that perhaps Inga is a man writing as a woman. I couldn’t wait to tease her about that, but she had already seen it and responded back that a couple of readers have e-mailed her with the same suspicion. Let me forcefully allay that speculation: Inga is most definitely female, and a quite striking example if I may say (not only at least as cute and charming as her avatar suggests, but darned smart and caustically funny in our offline e-mails). So let’s treat the lady with some respect, OK? She’s the queen around here.

Obviously, I don’t want to offend such high-powered thought leaders, so I emailed both Mr. H. and Inga a mea culpa. I will never again doubt Inga’s femininity. And, for the record, Inga asked my opinion about how they could improve their ad options. I don’t think they plan on changing their format any time soon, but it was kind of them to listen.

Speaking of Inga, she questioned the wisdom of some HIT vendor’s PR tactics a few days ago:

I’m still wading through the endless number of e-mails and need some PR person to answer me this: why does every single vendor feel the need to issue press releases during HIMSS? Don’t companies realize their news is more likely to be overlooked because of the sheer volume being churned out by companies, PR people, and media outlets?

As a journalist, she’s got a point. Surely vendors must know that releasing their bit of news during HIMSS increases the chance of getting lost in the shuffle. My response is that news releases aren’t really for journalists, anymore. The biggest benefit of news releases is how they can strengthen your search engine marketing. Services like PR Newswire and Business Wire get a lot of link love from Google and other search engines, and when content from their news release links to your site, that’s golden.

Sure, news releases are often the right vehicle for announcing new products or some newsworthy happening to journalists. But the real work happens on the follow-up. When a corporate PR manager or PR agency has healthy working relationships with health care journalists, they’re more likely to be able to get your organization the publicity they want during heavy traffic times such as HIMSS.

One HIStalk respondent—”Beastly”—shared some best practices for PR that are worth repeating here:

A true PR professional knows the difference between [what is] newsworthy and [what is] wasting a journalist’s time. We also have an ethical responsibility to advise our clients if and when their perception of news doesn’t merit coverage. Issuing press releases about non-news compares to the ‘boy who cried wolf,’ syndrome.

I’ve had to tell vendor leaders that their “news” doesn’t merit a news release. Those conversations are never easy.

Your turn: Are news releases relevant to your marketing efforts?

I sat down for a few minutes last week with MedicExchange.com at HIMSS to talk about what was happening on the show floor. The video interview lasted about four minutes, and they used about half of it in their HIMSS edition of MedicExchange TV. My bit is about 30 seconds in.

Alex van Klaveren and his team have billed MedicExchange as a place where providers can go to research health care technology. Their initial niche was with radiology solutions, and they’ve built a strong community of vendors and an impressive search engine presence. They are now making a big push in the broader health care IT space.

When I first met Alex about a year ago, my impression was that his site was another online buyer’s guide. I’ve got to admit, I didn’t look close enough. The site also includes a growing social network, where health care vendors and providers can interact. And MedicExchange TV is their newest offering, and highlights the latest HIT vendor news. Their greatest benefit might just be the search engine bump they give to their clients. They may be worth checking out.

My final interview at HIMSS10 was with Saverio Rinaldi, CEO of Clarity Healthcare Solutions. His product is a consumer health application that engages the patient and the family in the process of care, and extends the EMR outside of the care environment.

Health B2B Marketing interviewed Lisa Johnson, the health care marketing manager for Hyland Software, who markets Hyland’s OnBase enterprise content management solution. It’s a shorter interview (my camera’s battery was about dead), but I think it’s packed with good stuff. Lisa talked about how she leveraged her booth, which is one of the most recognizable in the industry, and she talked about how she positioned her non-EMR product at a show that is very focused on EMRs.

Thanks to Kaitlin Maurer, PR specialist for Hyland, for making the interview happen.

Another HIMSS10 interview with a healthcare IT marketing leader, this one with Tracey Schroeder, vice president of marketing and sales support for Healthland. Healthland has a strategy for HIMSS that is opposite of their competitors. In Tracey’s opinion, bigger booth does not mean better presence and doesn’t match the Healthland brand.

I interviewed Gina Sandon, the vice president of marketing for Initiate Systems, an IBM company, at HIMSS10 in Atlanta. Gina was forthcoming about how Initiate made sure they were getting their money’s worth out HIMSS, and she also gave us a peek into how Initiate is using social media. Initiate utilizes podcasts, tweets, LinkedIn communities and Facebook to help them connect their employees, their customers and partners. She says the effort has been successful “because it’s not forced, it’s not contrived, it’s voluntary and people want to participate in the conversation.”

Thanks to Maria Diecidue, Initiate’s director of corporate communication, for making our conversation happen.