Don’t Let “Back to the Future” Ruin Your Health System’s Chance at Competing in the New Age of Patient Acquisition

Are you on the board of a healthcare organization or health system? 

Are you a CEO, COO, CMO other executive member of your healthcare organization?

Have you been talking about “the value of marketing to your healthcare organization?”

If you have, this piece is for you.

Lately, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the provider space, and I need to call attention to it. Many provider organization Chief Marketing Officers (or SVPs of Marketing) have told me that “leadership is re-evaluating the role of marketing within our institution.” They’ve also said, “leadership is thinking about merging communications into marketing.”

I think this is a very bad idea. Here’s why:

As someone who has sat at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and the patient journey for over 15 years, I have had a unique perspective on what is going on in the industry and how it has changed over time. I have also tracked the changes in the way patients and consumers interact with their care. Some of the biggest changes in patient behavior happened during COVID last year: The pandemic not only forced consumers to expect more from their healthcare organizations, but healthcare organizations, too, were forced to move from their traditional care model of forcing the patient to come to them, and into a place where healthcare comes to the patient. If healthcare organization marketing teams opt to return to the “old” model of “healthcare marketing”, they will miss the opportunity to serve the patient and drive better patient acquisition. Marketing is going to be key in bringing the healthcare experience to the patient. It’s your one true chance to finally be proactive, not reactive, in a post-pandemic world.

Obviously, COVID had a significant impact on the current healthcare model. And these changes are all very exciting:

— Mayo Clinic is starting a healthcare at home practice.

— Telehealth and virtual visits were up 154% YoY in March 2020 and while settling down now, are still a major part of the patient journey.

— 3 out of 4 patients have indicated that they perform online research after receiving a referral (Yext Patient Journey Study, 2020).

— Amazon, Wal-Mart, CVS and Walgreens are disrupting the primary care business. Your primary care business -- the very referral source that supposedly is driving more revenue for your organization.

But you know what isn’t changing? The way healthcare organizations are approaching these market changes.

Early in my Google career, I would meet with healthcare “marketers” — those who had a significant background in television, PR and communications. I put “marketers” in quotations because they weren’t really marketing, per se, but instead were heavily focused on communications and a little bit of branding, while having “marketing” in their titles. This was early on in the digital patient journey: Searching for information on mobile devices hadn’t really become a thing yet, but at Google we were starting to see trends around how people were consulting the internet to find information about their healthcare. Many of the marketing teams we spoke to were pretty adamant that digital patient journeys weren’t important and that they were content focusing on communications as the crux of their healthcare "marketing" strategy.

A few years later, I started to see some changes to organizational marketing teams. Some were becoming a bit more “hybrid” — where marketing leaders were still heavily communications-focused, some organizations were starting to bring in people who were “brand” focused. There was a bit of an acknowledgement that digital and social might actually mean something, so I saw teams allocate a small ½ FTE to digital and social pursuits. The more we shared Google insights about the patient journey and what we were seeing, the more we pressed organizations that they needed to pay attention. Digital patient journeys were going to be a big deal. It was up to us at Google to help educate these teams to showcase just how powerful the digital patient would be. And yet, for years, we encountered resistance.

Fast forward to a few years ago (of course, pre-COVID), I started to witness some more progressive provider organizations see what was going on with threats to the healthcare delivery model, and the patient acquisition opportunity they had in front of them, and how competitive things were starting to get in certain markets. Some recognized the need to start to make a change, and a few even started to look outside of healthcare to bring in some external, non-healthcare expertise to lead "marketing" teams. Some even went so far as to title this role “Chief Digital Officer.” These individuals would deal with communications every so often, but their role was more focused on the digital patient experience. Communicators were on a separate team —maybe closely linked to marketing, but not necessarily owned by marketing. 

Then COVID hit. 

With elective procedures cancelled and things changing on a regular basis, marketing teams (especially those with mandates to drive patient acquisition) found themselves in the role of “communicator” for internal and external comms. What these marketers were tasked to do-- patient acquisition—was set aside in favor of making sure people knew what was going on, and when.

That is fine in an emergency situation. And 2020 was just that: an emergency situation.

But this is also why I am writing this piece. Because we cannot look to 2020 as a bellwether for what the marketing function in healthcare needs to be.

Communications in healthcare is largely a reactive role. It’s a very important role. Over the last year, it was the most important role in communicating the impacts of the pandemic to the community and to internal stakeholders. But, communications is all about reacting and projecting. It is not about patient acquisition and will not keep your institution financially afloat.

Marketing, on the other hand, is your opportunity as a healthcare organization, to be proactive about driving patient acquisition, adapting to the competitive pressures in your markets, and ensuring patients and consumers are having an experience that mirrors what they have outside of healthcare.

COVID taught all of us a few key things:

1. How to rely on digital channels for everything in our lives — including our healthcare. When people searched for symptoms or a provider, it was important for them to find the right information and answer questions quickly, especially in times of emergency. In our analysis, we saw a 100% YoY increase in visits to health system websites in 2020 vs 2019. People needed health information and it was important to make sure this information existed everywhere.
2. We leaned on digital experiences everywhere - from ordering groceries to working out at home to ordering home delivery for, say, sushi. If someone didn’t have a digital expectation pre-COVID, they certainly have one now. And that translates into expectations for healthcare, as well. Healthcare doesn’t get a pass “because it’s hard.” Healthcare needs to work much harder to make the patient and consumer experience commensurate with what people have become used to outside of healthcare. The future of marketing in healthcare means that a healthcare marketer needs to solidly position him- or herself at the intersection of patient experience and technology to ensure that a bad experience doesn’t cause a consumer to opt for care elsewhere.
3. Organizations like CVS, Wal-Mart and even Amazon have made it much easier to find care conveniently. CVS made it easy to get a flu shot. Wal-Mart made it easy to find prices of healthcare treatment and also primary care visits. Amazon made it convenient to get your pills delivered right to your door. These organizations are focused on the consumer journey and the experience, and they have massive amounts of data to analyze and use to continue to drive consumer loyalty. They are also taking over your primary care business. We will watch this take shape over the next few months and years. The vaccine delivery through many of these organizations will also drive a disruption in driving patients to you. You should be scared of what this might mean for your business in the long run.

In light of these trends and what the patient and consumer has become accustomed to, healthcare leadership needs to think about where marketing fits within this newly competitive space — a space where consumers have choice, have high digital expectations and where highly funded and educated companies outside of healthcare are creeping into your space.

Today, healthcare marketing is not about communications or branding.

It’s about Experience.

Communicating is communications.

The marketing role may not even need to be called “marketing” any more. Maybe it should be called Digital Experience Office.

• Your marketing team needs to pivot toward digital and digital experiences ASAP. There is no such thing as a demarcation between “marketing” and “digital marketing.” Let’s now (finally) accept that all marketing is now digital.
• Your marketing leader needs to focus on consumer and patient acquisition, and your executives need to help your marketing leader remove barriers to building consensus and driving digital experiences to drive acquisition.
• Your marketing leader needs to report to the CEO and serve on the executive team.
• Your marketing leader needs to work closely with your CIO or your CTO to ensure that marketing initiatives to drive patient acquisition are actually supported by the technology your system has today -- and if not, work collaboratively in selecting technology that will fulfill this mission.

If your health system is going to compete in the new, post-pandemic world, marketing needs to fundamentally change into a role that focuses on digital experiences. You cannot and should not pivot back to the marketing functions of the 1980s and 1990s, and even early 2000s. It needs to adapt to the new world order, one in which digital experiences are front and center and where the digital consumer experience drives how someone perceives brand and opts for your organization to get care.

If you are in one of those leadership positions where you are “evaluating the role of marketing” in your organization.

Stop.

Instead, evaluate the changes in the industry that are dictating the new world order, and construct a team that accurately reflects how organizations market outside of healthcare. It’s the only way you will compete and survive in the future.