How To Strengthen Your Healthcare Brand Architecture
We’ve had a number of conversations with healthcare marketing teams that go something like this: We feel like we have far too many brands in our portfolio. More than we can probably support. Every time one of our physicians introduces a new service, it becomes another “brand” with another logo. These conversations are indicative of brand architecture getting out ahead of the business and beyond the ability of marketing to support it.
Evaluating Your Brand Architecture
The truth is, not all programs and services are created equal. Not all are “brand/logo worthy.” Particularly in this economic environment, energy and resources must be focused on supporting those health services that best align with vision and business strategy, build strategic and financial value back to the organization, and meet customer/stakeholder current and future needs.
Here are seven portfolio “P”s that you can begin to use to evaluate and strengthen your healthcare brand architecture:
- Purpose. Do each of your brands in the portfolio reflect your vision, business goals and strategies?
- Perspective. What story is the portfolio telling from a customer perspective?
- Place. Do each of the brands in the portfolio have a clearly defined role; are relationships clear; is there sufficient separation between them
- Potential. How do your different brands contribute to building strategic advantage, and to current and future growth and profitability?
- Performance. Do you sufficiently cover the market given the needs of your priority audiences?
- Potency. Does market attractiveness (size and potential growth) merit investment?
- Pink Slips. For those brands that don’t meet this criteria, what is our plan for phasing them out?
Have I missed any “P”s?