Aug

What The Grateful Dead can teach health brand marketers

Zig (meaningfully) when others Zag.

This is the one big lesson for health brand marketers to take away from David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan’s book “Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band In History.”

Early on in their careers, The Grateful Dead decided the best way to grow a religion-like following and legacy was to jettison the traditional rock band business model. While others focused on selling albums, they made their money from concerts. This led to a cascade of business-model breaking/money-making decisions: unique concerts each night, fans wanting to experience this uniqueness on consecutive nights, approval to make tapes of the concerts and freely share them (and more concerts equaled more tapes, more people exposed to the music and more people paying for concert tickets).

According to David, The Grateful Dead let their audience define the Grateful Dead experience. Concerts were a happening, where all 20,000 or more audience members were actually part of the experience. Making fans an equal partner in a mutual journey, The Dead teaches us that our community defines who we are. By studying the competition and doing the exact opposite, they created a brand that has stood the test of time and has outlived the competition.

It seems the Grateful Dead saw the value in “community and co-creation” long before the rest of us, along with the importance of zigging (meaningfully) while others zag.

Aug

The benefits of your blog to your healthcare organization (and audiences)

The future of marketing is about doing things and saying things with people. Building relationships that are collaborative, helpful, personal and honest. Requiring your healthcare organization to expose a lot more of its humanity, because customers trust each other/trust people more than they tend to trust your organization.

Blogging gives you that ability. The ability for a searcher to enter a keyword phrase, land on your post (written by a real person), which can lead to dialog, and a connection beyond what other social vehicles can provide.

Here are seven specific benefits of your blog to your healthcare organization:

1. Creating Attraction (starting with search)
2. Creating Value For Your Audiences (on their terms)
3. Building Trust (sorely lacking yet vital to building strong healthcare brands)
4. Creating and Strengthening Brand Relationships (between you and your audiences)
5. Energizing Employees (which leads to happier customers)
6. Building Transparency (a highly sought after characteristic)
7. Creating Separation Vs. Others (community building, access to customers, volume and revenue)

Are there other benefits that you’d add to this list?

Aug

Entering the blogosphere: the nucleus of your healthcare social media strategy

How can you contribute to making a meaningful difference in the daily lives of your communities and patients? Your blog, through your content, your insights, your stories, your solving of problems, is a means to do this.

I had the pleasure of delivering this presentation – Entering The Blogosphere: The Nucleus Of Your Healthcare Social Media Strategy – at IQPC’s recent Strategic Social Media for Healthcare Summit in NYC. Given the feedback (fortunately very positive) and the follow-up conversations I’ve had, I thought it would be of value to socialize the presentation.

It covered why and how healthcare organizations should enter the blogosphere, the important strategic and tactical considerations it takes to get up and running; and offered tips to how organizations who are already participating might improve upon their current efforts.

I hope you find value in the presentation. Any questions, comments or suggestions to share with me and others?