Apr

Bon Secours Virginia Health System’s Nick Dawson: the future of health brands and social media

As part of our “Insider Insights” series, I feature the personal perspective of a health brand marketing, digital, social or innovation leader. I’m pleased to have Nick Dawson, Community Engagement leader at Bon Secours Virginia Health System, as this month’s participant.

Here’s what Nick has to say about the future of health brands and social media:

1. The organizations and brands that will thrive in the future are those that…
….take pride in serving people. The web, and technology in general have afforded us an amazing amount of connivence of choice. We can compare the price of flights across multiple carriers, check the best rating on a dishwasher and buy music for pennies, all before getting out of bed. When selection and price make things commodities, service is the one thing that becomes a differentiator. However, if I have a choice between two providers and the quality of care is equal, I am going to pick the one that treats me the best. I often think about The Experience Economy by Pine and Gilmore and the Cluetrain Manifesto by Loc, Searls, Wineberger and Levine as both ahead of their time. They are prophetic works that suggest that when organizations value their relationship with customers and provide excellent service, the reputation of the organization markets itself. At Bon Secours, we have seen a clear path from employee engagement to world-class service to market share.

2. Specific to social media, how has it impacted the way your organization conducts business?
We are becoming better listeners. I do not think we are unique in that regard; savvy companies are moving away from information push and embracing pull. We will continue to do what we do well, and rather than simply tell people about it, we are asking them. What do you think about this facility, this new procedure, this doctor? We also spend a lot of time online just listening. What are people saying about doctors in our service areas or about healthcare in general? What can we learn from those conversations that we may not know, or which may validate our assumptions? An additional note, which is great news, is we are revenue-positive in our efforts.

3. What are the key challenges your organization is grappling with as it considers participation?
There are two distinct challenges. The first is spreading the word. Ironically, the best social media still seams to be a face-to-face conversation. We are working from both ends of the organization to spread the word about what we can do with these tools. For senior leadership it is about building their comfort level with participating as individuals; (a welcome change from where many organizations were a year ago in developing a comfort level about even using social media.) We are doing the same thing with individual employees by encouraging them to think about our social media efforts as having an unlimited bandwidth to tell any story. When we hear about team members or departments doing neat things, we approach them about a blog post, or video.

The second challenge is in fostering the creativity and encouraging participation. Many people have singular exposures to these tools. Facebook is for sharing baby pictures with friends, twitter is about what you had for breakfast and Youtube has cats playing piano. Others perceive a time requirement as a barrier to entry. I try and encourage people to think about the conversation, not the medium. There are online spaces for any way someone feels comfortable telling their story; it is our job to support that.

4. What are your top lessons learned for implementing a social media strategy?
The biggest lesson was one of cohesion. Our organization believed in our work, but was unclear on our direction. Our communications team was together on the vision. Crafting a formal strategy helped us learn how to present our successes and sell our services to our leadership and throughout the rest of the organization. It was a cathartic experience to whittle our plan town to three simple goals: service, advocacy, and market share.

Apr

Does your health brand social media program create value for all your potential fans?

How social is your social media program? Beyond your current and prospective customers, consider whether you’re creating something of value for:

1. Employees: such that they are more/fully engaged; proud of your/their collective contributions; are more aware of the world around them; and seeing new and different opportunities to help make lives better
2. Shareholders: are you engaging the ones who care not only about financial return, but about the long-term (sustainable) impact of that return; and who increasingly are investing in companies that are balancing purpose with profits and making a difference in the world
3. Society: are you creating value for society at large at the same time that you’re helping customers move forward; hopefully, melding these two (increasingly compatible) concepts together
4. Company: beyond your financial worth to creating value such that the whole of your contribution exceeds the sum of your individual parts

Challenge yourself to think more expansively about your social media program. You have the opportunity to create new value for audiences you might not otherwise be able to engage through traditional channels.

Apr

Follow-up healthcare post about creating new value: Patients Like Me

I wrote a post last month about PatientsLikeMe, a wonderful organization dedicated to making a difference in the lives of patients diagnosed with life-changing diseases after they were recognized by Fast Company as #2 on the list of the top ten most innovative healthcare companies.

It was co-founded by Ben and Jamie Heywood after their brother Stephen (who has since passed away) was diagnosed with ALS. At it’s core, it is “an ingenious website where people share and track data on their illnesses – and where the collective data has enormous power to comfort, explain and predict.”

Here’s a video of a talk by Jamie last October at TED. It’s about his brother, their company, the community they’re building/have built, and the possibilities for the future. Above all else, it’s a wonderful and inspiring story.

Apr

Beyond the core: five ways to create new value for health brand customers

Beyond the core lies more value for your customers and your organization.

Fueled by a powerful brand idea, you have more opportunities than you think to create new and greater value for your health brand customers beyond your core product and service offerings. To introduce marketing innovations to drive sales as much as new product development.

Here are five pathways (along with some examples) to generate new brand-led growth through marketing-led innovation and to add more value to your customer’s lives – along the way introducing new dimensions for distinguishing your brands.

1. New Experiences: If you’re a high-end spa brand like Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door Spas, and your target audience just happens to be well-to-do females, how about creating the Red Door Spa wedding experience?

2. New Audiences: If you have a strong foothold in the weight-management category like Atkins Nutritional, why not help fight obesity by working along with schools to assist school-age children to eat healthier meals?

3. New Partners: If you’re Octane Fitness, committed to making the best elliptical machines in the world, how about partnering with Apple (another brand committed to “best in the world”) to build readers into your machines?

4. New Channels: If you’re Glo Professional, a beauty company with products that are supposed to be great for post surgery skincare, why not pursue the professional healthcare channel?

5. New Dialogue: If you’re an everything-bicycle retailer like Performance Inc. – how about creating an online social community among bike enthusiasts and asking them to contribute their favorite bike routes across the United States, thereby creating tremendous value for riders through your brand.

What have you done today to surprise and delight your customers through marketing innovation? Please share.

No Related Posts

Apr

Creating greater value beyond your healthcare offering

Your market is changing all around you.

Traditional competitors are evolving. New ones are forming. Market forces are redefining customer expectations and challenging your traditional definition of “value.”

So how are you responding? What’s the idea that drives your brand and gives you permission to imagine and create new value for your healthcare customers and your organization? Success, today and in the future, requires you to take this idea and translate it into adding more value to people’s lives beyond your core products and services.

Virgin takes its passengers to and from the airport. Cirque du Soleil gives its audiences theatre with (and redefines) their circus. Mayo Clinic is creating lifestyle products and mobile apps for its patients and expanded customer base. Fairmont gives its guests a BMW with their hotel stay.

How about you. What do you do to surprise, delight, and add more value to your customer’s lives?