Health B2B Marketing

Catherine Valyi, left, and Charlotte Adams, middle, of HealthPort speak to an ANI 2010 attendee about their new audit solution. Photo credit: HFMA.

Now that the craziness from HFMA’s 2010 ANI is over, I thought I’d take it upon myself to put a bow on ANI from an exhibitor’s perspective.

Moving the entire show from Nashville to Las Vegas must have been a terrific effort, not only for the HFMA planners, but also for the vendors and their exhibit managers. Lots of plans needed to change, but from what I saw, it was a terrific success. Kudos all around.

I was impressed by most of the booths I visited and the marketing and promotional efforts that supported those booths. There were a few organizations that obviously phoned it in, but most seemed to have sound trade show strategies. Even my friends at DaVincian Technologies, whose booth didn’t show up because of a shipping error, told me they had a great show despite their troubles. Tongue-in-cheek, they claimed that the generic label may become their new trade show strategy!

The B2B marketing talent in this industry is impressive. If you haven’t already, check out my interviews with marketing leaders from McKesson, Emdeon, Dell Services, HealthPort, Ormed, ClaimTrust and Lynx Medical. I talked with marketing talent from other strong companies, including Ingenix, MedAssets, Halley Consulting and EHR, but wasn’t able to match schedules for an interview. Look forward to more in-depth discussions with leaders from those companies in the coming months.

Not to end on a sour note, but I do have a few critiques for the exhibit. The Las Vegas Strip is a great place to hold an event, but an awful place to exhibit. Attendees love the destination, but exhibitors can’t compete with the casinos and the glitz. HFMA, your exhibitors pay you hundreds of thousands for access to your audience. Try to give attendees more incentives to stick around the exhibit. And by the way, serving lunch in the exhibit hall isn’t the way to do it. I don’t know of any vendor who thinks that’s a benefit.

But overall, great show. Looking forward to Orlando in 2011.

I interviewed Tom Mitchell, market segment manager for Dell Health Services, at HFMA’s ANI 2010 in Las Vegas. It’s the longest interview of the bunch, and we talk about the Dell booth, outreach to CFOs and Dell Health’s belief in social media.

I also caught Anne Clarke, events manager for Dell Health, demonstrating their fantastic interactive solutions board.

I interviewed Jessica Berens, Marketing Director for McKesson. She mentions a nice idea of polling attendees and posting the poll results in their booth. What she didn’t mention is that they also posted the poll results to Twitter. Great idea; great content.

Had the opportunity to interview Tommy Lewis, the senior VP of marketing for Emdeon. His company had the best promotion at ANI by far, involving a Lamborghini and a racing weekend giveaway. Check it out.

Had a chance to speak with Catherine Valyi, a product marketing manager for HealthPort, who is the marketing force behind the company’s new Audit Pro software. She talks about product differentiation, customer-focused technology and using a customer in the HealthPort booth to promote the product.

I interviewed Maida Kelly, Marketing Programs Director for Lynx Medical Systems, a Picis company, on the show floor at HFMA’s 2010 ANI. She had interesting things to say about working with HFMA and overcoming the reticence of her clients to provide testimonials.

I interviewed Neill Orr, marketing director for Ormed, on the show floor of HFMA’s ANI 2010. The sense I got from Neill is that everything about his presence at HFMA was carefully planned—no stone was left unturned. Well done, Neill!

I interviewed Jeff St. Vrain, a Product Marketing Manager at ClaimTrust, one of the many companies promoting RAC solutions at ANI 2010 in Las Vegas.

In order to perform your best at ANI, you've got to play to the finance crowd. To help you get your mind in tune, here are some previously published tips...

Three more days until HFMA’s ANI: The Healthcare Finance Conference. For companies that specialize in revenue cycle products and services, this is THE show of the year. If you’re exhibiting or networking at the show, you’ve likely been preparing for months. It’s like you’ve been preparing for a staged production: You’ve got the script, the stage, the set and the lighting all ready: now you’re preparing for the curtain to go up.

In order to perform at your best, you’ve got to play to your crowd. So, to help you get your mind in tune for the type of audience you’ll be seeing, here are some links to some previous Health B2B Marketing blog posts that deal with CFOs:

Get into a CFO’s head: Want to know what a CFO worries about? It’s really very simple: cash position, cash flow and revenue.

Remember, a CFO is much more than a pencil pusher: Think of a CFO as an entrepreneur on salary. Focus on how your organization help them create value for their organization.

Make sure your CFO pitch is on key: Like every executive, a health care CFO has limited time. Click for three principles on how not to waste his or her time.

Use solid marketing strategy to influence CFOs: CFOs will tell you that they don’t pay attention to marketing. But they do pay attention to a compelling value story, evangelizing influencers, and respected brands.

Prove that a CFO will get maximum bang for their buck: In this economy, it’s crucial to have a value story that includes ROI and cost savings.

If you’re planning on being at ANI, please share in the comments. I’d love to introduce myself. Enjoy the show!

Original photo credit: Algemeen

If you're gathering Twitter info on trade show prospects, how do you nurture them to become qualified leads? By using the strengths of Twitter, of course.

So let’s say you took my advice: you gathered Twitter handle info from your trade show prospects and you grabbed a grundle of other Twitter handles from your trade show re-tweet promotion. Now what?

Nurture your little birds. Chances are, most of the Twitter accounts won’t be held by people who are qualified leads. You’re going to have to nurture these contacts in much the same way that you would nurture any trade show contact. But this type of nurturing won’t be through typical email and direct mail channels. You’ll be nurturing through Twitter. Here are four steps to developing an effective Twitter lead nurturing campaign.

Step 1 – Develop a Twitter outreach strategy. You’ll want to answer some important questions before you jump into the Twitterverse.

• How will you brand your organization on Twitter? Will it be through some variation of your corporate or product brand, or through a named staffer?
• How will you make your Tweets relevant to your clients? Knowing your prospects’ Twitter handles is only half the battle. Getting them to connect with you is the other half. Following someone on Twitter is sometimes all the reason that person needs to follow you. But many will need more reason than that. You’ll need to tweet relevant topics that educate, inform and entertain your audience. What are those topics? What sort of tone do you want to set? What are the main messages you’ll be pushing?
• How will your tweets move your prospects down the sales funnel? The point of any lead nurturing activity is to turn contacts into leads. What type of actions will a Twitter prospect need to take to become qualified?

Step 2 – Find the right Tweeter. It’s crucial to find the right person, whether in or out of your organization, who can Tweet for you. If you have a team tasked to qualify leads, a person from that team may be the right choice. The marketing and PR departments are always dependable resources for people who know how to stay on message. Or someone on your sales team may be the right choice. And there’s always outsourcing. Whomever you choose, make sure that person has the motivation, the discipline and the know-how to move an unqualified contact to a qualified lead.

Step 3 – Start tweeting. Once you have a sound strategy and the right person, get to work. Start conversations. Pay attention to your prospect’s tweets and jump into the conversation when appropriate. At early stages in the conversation, overt calls to action aren’t called for. Develop a relationship and understand prospects’ needs before presenting solutions.http://healthb2bmarketing.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=314&message=10

Step 4 – Take the conversation to another level. At some point in the conversation, a percentage of your Twitter contacts express a need that you can fill. At this point, remember that Twitter is a public medium. Your public response should be general but helpful. A more specific response should be sent to them via email, if you have the contact’s email address. Or even better, through Twitter’s direct message function.

However, a word of caution: I recommend using the DM function sparingly—people are already complaining about direct message spam. Only direct message when a private response to a prospect is more appropriate than a public one.

Thoughts? Other ideas? Please share in the comments.

Photo credit: Dominic’s pics