Healthy Conversations
Imagining & Creating New Value For Health Brands & Consumers

Here are ten planning questions that you need to answer to deliver real value for your customers and your organization through your social media program. Note that by real value, I’m referring to important measures of influence, attitude and action (based on engaging on a deeper level and truly understanding what drives your customers) and not the less meaningful ones like page views, followers or fans.

1. What are your business goals; e.g. awareness, thought-leadership, support, prospecting/leads, public relations, corporate social responsibility
2. What are the practices of your audiences and competitors; e.g. who are they, where are they, why are they participating
3.  How well do your audiences know you; e.g. familiarity, frequency of interactions, your reputation among them
4. What is your one thing; e.g. your niche or singular message
5. What’s your big-picture strategy; e.g. thought-leader (influencer), education (knowledge), entertainment (experience), empowerment (involvement)
6. How will you approach your content and conversations; e.g. what type, style, sources; guardrails (frequency, quality, legal implications, authenticity)
7. Type of outreach channels; e.g. what are the vehicles you’ll use to gain maximum participation; and how will you use traditional media to compliment and pull to social
8. How will you/can you marshall your internal resources; e.g. how much internal time and resource do you require; who will be your social face and voice; how will you get employees on-board
9. What policies are in place; e.g. for employee participation, brand consistency, handling of confidential and proprietary information, crisis situations
10. How will you monitor progress and performance; e.g. ongoing internal monitoring, performance criteria, qualitative and quantitative metrics

Are there any questions you’d add to this list?

Does your marketing in and of itself add value to your customer’s lives? Does it help them in some way do more than they can on their own?

If not, why not? Why aren’t you moving beyond traditional one-way tell and sell advertising to actually connect and interact with your audiences (whose expectations are greater every day) in ways they actually value and want?  Why still simply send a fleeting message when you can interact in more meaningful and personal ways, gain valuable insight, spur innovation that helps you and your customers grow stronger, turn customers into brand advocates.

Here are seven ways, along with examples, of how to create greater value for customers (and your organization) through your marketing:

1. Be Considerate. Demonstrate that you understand what they’re going through. J&J’S babycenter.com
2. Motivate Them. Be an inspiration. Nike Plus (Nike + ipod) running.
3. Give Something of Value. Beyond what you’re selling. sanofi-aventis GoMeals.
4. Show You Care. Listen, respond and repeat. M•A•C Cosmetics Viva Glam.
5. Surprise Them. Keep your relationship fresh. P&G’s beinggirl.com
6. Keep Communication Going. Stay in touch. Perricone MD’s DailyPerricone.
7. Spend Time. Create an experience that brings you closer. Olay For You.

What did I miss? I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Your health brand customers can buy reliability, efficiency and convenience just about anywhere.

But what they’re increasingly looking for is the ability to buy from brands that have a healthy heart. Brands that provide other reasons to buy – and create greater value for themselves and others – beyond price and quality.

Signs of a healthy brand heart include appealing to higher values of community, causes and advocacy. Helping people reinforce their own meaning and purpose and helping them achieve what they can’t on their own. When customers align with these brands, they become a statement for what they themselves believe.

Here are four key characteristics of heart brands, along with some examples:

1. Be true to who you are. Your actions must resonate as sincere with your customers. Which means they must already be reflected in your brands’ story and ambition and backed up by your organization’s actions. Luxottica Group’s OneSight Foundation, is a family of charitable vision care programs dedicated to improving vision through outreach, research and education – which grows out of the company’s values of “protecting the eyes of men and women all over the world…to maximize their well-being and satisfaction.”

2. Help customers themselves do more. Help them be proactive, through their purchases, in ways they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do so. Purchasing from The Body Shop allows customers to affirm their commitment and support to the values that guide the company and their everyday lives – Activate Self-Esteem, Against Animal Testing, Support Community Trade, Protect Our Planet, Defend Human Rights.

3. Be selective in your stand. The legitimacy of your brand territory can only extend so far. So better to go deep and make a significant difference through your efforts than try to be everything to everybody. Humana’s CrumpleItUp innovation initiative, exists to come up with creative ways to help people be healthy while having fun.

4. Don’t fake it.  Today’s info-empowered consumers will not tolerate lip service. At some point, too, you always get caught. Unless you’re willing to demonstrate real commitment, transparency and accountability – take a pass. Rather than out one of these brands, I’ll focus on a positive role model. Since 1997, L’Oreal has raised more than $18M to fight ovarian cancer, the deadliest of all gynecologic cancers – thanks in part to sales of charitable products such as those in its Color of Hope cosmetics collection.

Give your customers something to believe in. Everyone wins.

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 John Marzano, Vice President, External Affairs at Orlando Health, as this month’s participant.

Here’s what John 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…
…. engage with their customers.  This means listening, responding and tailoring products, services or processes to align with consumer wants, needs and desires – how does your brand integrate with your customers experiences?  In addition, brands that can develop genuine relationships with their customers and consistently deliver on their brand promise will be able to attain long-term loyalty.

We’ve started listening and developing relationships with our customers through our Facebook page and have had a great experience. Our customers have insight into our organization and listening to them through social media is already changing the way we do business.

2. Specific to social media, how has it impacted the way your organization conducts business?
Social media has made us rethink the way we communicate with our customers. Traditional marketing practices were about sending messages, controlling messages. The new thought is more about engaging people in messaging and participating in ongoing conversation. That new mentality involves being willing to lose some control, being open to criticism, and doing a lot of internal education to get the right stakeholders at the table. Participating in social media means it’s not business as usual, yet it’s important to remember it is still only one tactic/tool in the overall marketing mix.

3. What are the key challenges your organization is grappling with as it considers participation?
In the healthcare industry we have both a commitment and a legal obligation (in HIPPA) to patient privacy. We’ve been very intentional about the policies and procedures we use to protect our patients personal information in every piece of our business – including social media. We took the time to conduct research, evaluate risk with our legal team and develop a strategy before launching into a social environment. That was the key to a successful launch and working within patient privacy challenges.

4. What are your top lessons learned for implementing a social media strategy?
That taking the time to develop a strategy was worth every minute. That strategy has given our team focus and purpose to the work of implementing social media, as well as the ability to set and achieve goals. A key piece of the strategy development was getting Human Resources and Information Services at the table with the Marketing Team. We each have a vested interest in social media tools and because we came together early we were able to launch into a social media environment in a thoroughly measured manner that had vast support from leadership in all areas of the organization.

Additionally we’ve learned that we have to stay the course. There are so many things that can happen in social media – some not so positive – that can easily become distracting and destructive to our efforts. It’s critical that we accept the things that come our way and respond appropriately – but it’s equally critical that we stay true to the strategy and direction of the effort.

Imaging and creating new value for your audiences starts with your brand positioning.

Sramana Mitra, strategy consultant and Forbes columnist, just ran an interesting series – Blogosphere on Positioning - that captures some interesting and complimentary thoughts on positioning from some pretty smart people: Steve McKee, Tom Asacker, Susan Gunelius, Rober Bly and David Meerman Scott.

Here are a few highlights:

• grow your appeal by targeting fewer people
• evaluate whether your positioning passes six key tests
• instead of trying to occupy a unique “position”, develop a unique attitude
• make internal changes to meet customers’ needs, which will lead to the brand experience and perception you want your brand to convey

Have a read. There are good insights here that you can start to incorporate into your efforts right away.

This is TrendsSpotting’s third annual prediction report following major trends in six categories. What I found really interesting was that for 2010, as part of their “Influencer Series” they adopted this “tweet style” format.

Across many of the predictions, they identified these trends they suggest will influence consumer behavior:

• Healthy, Value, Stability, Disclosure, DIY

Enjoy. The report is a quick read.

For ISITE Design’s 2010 Web Strategy Report, they surveyed 268 organizations (from startups to Fortune 100; executives, marketers and web experts) on their outlook and approach to the web.

Here are the results of one of their key survey questions:

Key insight is that organizations are placing more of a priority on interacting with their customers in ways they value and want versus merely talking at them. Results bear this out, as 73.5% of respondents indicated that “Social media” was either a new priority or more of a focus, followed by customer measures including user experience and rich media.

Would your answers to this question track with what’s reported here?

How can your healthcare organization create new and greater value for patients and expand the role of your organization in their lives? Climb the engagement ladder.

There are five steps:

Step 1: Converse. Though it’s the first step, you’ve acknowledged that to engage a patient, you need to move away from what your organization wants to say to what they want to hear and achieve. You understand that it’s not your story that matters, but theirs. To this end, you’ve integrated social media platforms alongside your traditional (talking at them) media.

Step 2: Transact. This rung is defined by event-driven characteristics. Your care (their care) is segmented, and the relationship is reactive (they get sick, you respond). This relationship is of limited long-term value to your organization, as it limits your business opportunity to one-off situations. It also limits the value to patients, as you’re merely providing just what they need.

Step 3: Support. Still on the 50 yard line, but closer to where you and your patients want to be. And closer to creating value together. Information and education is available to patients. Communities are formed around specific conditions. And you’re beginning to capture “customer” data beyond the patient.

Step 4: Enable. Your relationship gives patients what they want, when and how they want it. It’s more proactive as you understand the person beyond the patient. It’s not limited to a brand or therapeutic line. Instead, it’s organization-wide.

Step 5: Empower. Patients get exactly what they want, as you solve their jobs to be done. You maximize your business opportunity, become their trusted resource and earn their loyalty. The relationship is collaborative, open and evolving. It’s the ultimate win-win, as both patients and your organization grow stronger.

This article – Just Shut Up And Listen? – originally appeared in the October issue of Accenture’s Outlook. It contrasts the recent past when life for marketers was far more simple (i.e. we talk and you listen), with today’s conversation-based practices.

The article also provides eight actions that you can take immediately to more meaningfully engage, and create more value for, your customers:

1. Monitor and measure sentiment. Gauge your customers’ needs, how they feel about you, their level of satisfaction, what competitors are up to. There’s absolutely no reason anymore to wait for the “annual market survey” to find this information out.
2. Embrace video as a communications medium. Chances are that you have a ton of instructional and procedural material that never gets read. Much better to be able to show them than tell them.
3. Create an online community of friends, fans and fanatics. Let them converse with you, and with each other through you. Facilitate, but don’t dominate, the conversation. This kind of third-person publicity is also more genuine and credible than any ad campaign you can run.
4. Cultivate brand ambassadors. The bigger your community, the more vulnerable you become. Brand ambassadors will proactively sing your praises, criticize if they feel its deserved, but also defend you when you’re back’s up against the wall.
5. Turn your people into a marketing asset. Enthusiastic customers want to hear from the people who create and design your products and programs and deliver your services. They humanize your company and strengthen the connection between you.
6. Credibility and authority are not necessarily linked. An important dynamic of communities is that credibility does not automatically accrue from authority. People want to hear from customer service, the engineers, the designers. Those people who are better equipped and more genuinely able to address their comments.
7. Generate traffic beyond your website. It’s no longer their portal to your company. Instead, reach them through social media – when, where and how they want.
8. Don’t forget your investors. Beyond your disclosure requirements, be their trusted, neutral and transparent source of relevant information about customers, competitors and trends.

Healthcare brands that are fueled by a powerful core idea, and managed with a delicate balance of imagination and precision, have the ability to transform both organizations and their audiences.

Here are six tips for driving brand-led transformation:

1. Step outside of your box. Consider what you might be, and not what you are. Perpetuate the status quo and you’ll never see beyond what you already know. Question deeply held assumptions, consider the business from a new angle, and generate innovative ideas and ways to change consumer behavior. Consider Humana, a health insurance company that’s breaking the mold through their Crumpleitup innovation initiative designed to come up with creative ways to help people be healthy while having fun.

2. Get different. Rewrite the rules of the game. Zig when others zag. Follow the same path as others, and you’re limited to the same gains (or losses) as others. Consider Hello Health, a new healthcare organization that’s reframing the relationship between patient and physician.

3. Drive from a powerful idea. Every great business is built on a great brand. And every great brand is built on a great idea. An idea that’s simple, unique and compelling. An idea that can sustain the business for years down the road. Unilife is a rapidly growing medical device company, passionate in its quest to help its pharma and healthcare partners enhance and save lives through the reduction of needle stick injuries.

4. Get everyone on board. Transformation can only happen from the inside out. Paint a compelling picture of the future. Establish a sense of urgency. Let everyone participate in the journey. Ground change in your culture.

5. Execute meticulously. Sweat the details. Great brands get that way based on brilliant execution. Ensure your brand shines through across all its touchpoints – from products, to behaviors, communications and environments.

6. Be an open book. Open up your brand to participation. Let people contribute their own stories. Let them share their stories with others through you. Create a more powerful story together. After all, there’s always a new chapter in the works. Consider the support and participation through GSK’s Alli Drug community www.myalli.com.