On November 24, Law Burks, VP Market Management for the Alternative Care & Hospital Segments of Cardinal Health, shared some key fundamentals for all of us to consider in today’s challenging economic climate.
Here are a few highlights and take-aways from the presentation:
Consider how today’s headlines impact your customer’s business, use them to help inform your decisions, and look for opportunities to capitalize on recent events or trends
Listen to experts and use their positions to help build your business case
Three basics were presented – the alignment, the money and the process
The alignment – know your role and develop relationships throughout the organization, even if not directly related to marketing
The money – build a financial literacy foundation; understand the P&L of your business and of your customers’ business (and what percent of their business you represent); set clear goals that tie to financial performance, and make sure you have the right metrics in place for each customer segment (Are you selling to the right customer in this economic climate?)
The process – develop your strategy, develop your offer, determine pricing (value based, not based on what it costs you to deliver your product or service), promotion, manage offers, engage sales and track success
Use market insights as the foundation – know what you’re investing in and use secondary, qualitative and quantitative market research to support your case
Three case studies were shown to illustrate how to apply some basics to specific customer segments. Evaluate your offerings and narrow focus to those of most value to target customers. Tailor your message to specific customer segments and consider third-party proof to increase credibility. Evaluate customer systems to find ways to help them be more efficient.
Keys to success
Get aligned
Know your company and how marketing fits
Know your market
Know your customers
Use a logical fact base to decide how to compete
Know the ROI of your recommendations
Price on value
Focus, plan and execute
If you attended the program and had an “a ha” moment or if something resonated with you, please share it. Let’s keep the conversation going!
Doug Bierl volunteers for the Columbus AMA chapter as the leader for the Healthcare SIG and is the Founder and Lead Consultant for Stepping-Stone Marketing Consulting (www.ConsultSteppingStone.com). He can be reached at 740-540-7145 or via email at dbierl@ConsultSteppingStone.com.
According to a recent article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, charities in the U.S. have weathered a significant drop in giving this year. Most nonprofits are hoping for a holiday miracle, but a recent survey cited in the article shows they will probably see a decrease in year-end generosity. In fact, a study conducted by Harris Interactive shows that in light of the downturn in the economy, only 38 percent of Americans say they are more likely to give a charitable gift as a holiday present this year, compared to 49 percent last year.
Given this expected downturn in end of the year donations, which are often a critical source of revenue for nonprofits, these organizations are rethinking their marketing efforts during the holiday season. In fact, some nonprofits have completely changed their traditional advertising and marketing campaigns, and boosted their digital and direct marketing campaigns for the holiday season. One organization that is leading this change is the Salvation Army.
The Salvation Army typically centered a lot of its holiday marketing around radio advertising—but not this year. This budget has been pulled and assigned to online communications, according to George Hood, national community relations and development secretary for the organization. This week, the annual Red Kettle Campaign will launch across the country, as bell-ringing volunteers will hit the streets outside select retail locations for the holiday season. In addition to its traditional Red Kettles, Salvation Army is re-launching an Online Red Kettle. Through this virtual kettle, visitors can set donation goals and encourage their friends and family to make donations.
According to Hood, this is the sixth year the organization is using the virtual kettle; however, this year, the organization is heavily promoting it through online banner ads. The promotions are running through largely trafficked news sites such as CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. The organization also runs ads on portals such as Yahoo and AOL, and through sites that the Salvation Army has corporate partnerships with such as Target, Walmart and JCPenney.
In addition to online ads on JCPenney’s Web site, the organizations teamed up to create an online Angel Giving Tree program. This program is traditionally executed in retail and other business locations, and now Web users now can give an angel — or needy child — a gift virtually. Since the program’s launch on November 3, the Salvation Army has listed 125,000 children’s profiles on JCP.com/angel. Since the launch, more than 19,000 angels have been chosen, according to Hood.
“We’re fascinated that we’ve seen such a great response, even before Thanksgiving,” said Hood. “We’re expecting a heavy onslaught of donations on [cyber] Monday, when there’s typically heavy online shopping.”
A Salvation Army bell-ringing iPhone app is also launching this week. Proceeds from the 99-cent app will go to Salvation Army. Hood explained that when users shake their iPhone, they will hear the familiar sound of a bell used by those in-store ringers. The app also links directly to the Salvation Army’s donation Web page.
Hood claims that for “years and years” the Salvation Army was using direct mail as its primary channel for new donor acquisition, but now online community building has proved more effective. “The ROI is much more superior online than off,” he added. “We see this happening as the general public gets more comfortable making donations online.”
In addition to a strong Web site and app presence, the Salvation Army launched social media initiatives about eight months ago. These initiatives include a strong presence on Facebook, with 7,771 fans to date, and @SalvationArmy has more than 2,000 followers on Twitter.
Hood explained that, like many nonprofits, the Salvation Army’s donor base is “aging out,” which is why it’s so important to target younger audiences through digital channels. “As new generations are coming in, building relationships online is key,” he said. “The challenge is converting new and younger donors through online strategies.”
So much that I called a trusted friend who is a marketing professional and explained what I wanted to write and asked if he felt the material was too elementary. His response was, “Yes, it is elementary but what you are talking about still happens. Frequently.”
So I forged ahead.
Picture yourself at a national meeting running through the slides of your marketing presentation. You are doing your best to inform the sales representatives in the audience about the features and benefits of your product line. As your seemingly endless PowerPoint presentation trudges along, you see the sales reps begin to fidget.
You panic. Your face turns red. What has gone wrong?
Over the years, I have lived through the good and the bad of marketing presentations. Here are a few tips to help you escape your next presentation unscathed. The tips are somewhat obvious, but, as my former colleague and friend said, it still happens. Frequently.
Educate the reps on your product(s); however, remember that you are actually selling those reps on your products. In this situation, they are your customers.
You are selling to salespeople. Unconsciously, the salespeople are evaluating your presentation as a sales presentation.
Sales reps know that data dumps do not work with their customers. A 50-slide presentation on the features and benefits of your products is not going to work with your reps either.
Most outside sales reps are not used to sitting for long periods of time. They like their jobs because they do not have to sit in a cubicle all day. For many reps, national sales meetings are excruciating. Keep this in mind.
Sales reps want the confidence (from you) to go into the field and sell your product. They want to be knowledgeable but (more importantly) they want to be confident.
Streamline your presentation to the most important points. Keep deleting slides even if you feel physical pain.
Let the sales reps know where to find more information. This is where they will gain confidence in your product.
Those 50-slide presentations? Never again. The reps will not remember 95% of the slides anyway.
Trust your sales management to hire good reps. Good reps will educate themselves if they know where to find the product information.
Consider briefly telling the story of the branding as well as the messaging behind the products. You spent a lot of time and energy developing those ideas. It helps the reps to know some of the history of those ideas to put the product(s) into context.
These tips should help you make the most of your time in front of the sales team and keep your presentation on track.
Fear has played a major role in the current recession and affected many industries. The healthcare industry is not immune to reacting to fear, especially Fortune 500 company, Abbott Nutrition. Columbus AMA President, Nick Iannitto, spoke with Kevin Garleb, Director of the Abbott Nutrition Health Institute at the Columbus AMA November luncheon about how fear plays into marketing health marketing products. What do you think? We’d love to know.
Do you think the biosciences market holds no opportunity for your company’s products or services? You might be surprised.
From the 2008 Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)-sponsored Battelle Memorial Institute Report, biosciences comprise agricultural feedstock & chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical devices & equipment and research, testing & medical laboratories. In 2006, employment stood at 1.3 million with the total employment impact of the biosciences sector reaching 7.5 million jobs. Further, these data demonstrated the biosciences sector still outperforms the total private sector in terms of employment (5.7% biosciences employment vs 3.1%.)
BIO reports that publicly traded biotechnology companies’ total value reached $360 billion as of late April 2008 and those companies spent $27.1 billion on research & development in 2006.
Think you need a scientific background to target this market for your goods or services?
You might be surprised. For example, do you sell packaging? Cardboard boxes? Dry ice? Is your business overnight shipping?
Biotechnology laboratories receive near-daily overnight shipments of reagents, consumables, etc. in cardboard boxes with much of their orders packed in dry ice.
With all of those scientists unpacking their orders, there are plenty of co-marketing opportunities.
Further, the scientists themselves are worth closer examination. Again from the Battelle report, the biosciences sector pays their workers an average annual salary of $71,000 compared to the private sector’s $42,000 annual salary.
These workers tend to be highly skilled residents of larger metropolitan areas, often on the east and west coasts of the country.
From a general marketing perspective, the biosciences sector may seem off the beaten path but opportunities exist for the savvy marketing professional.
A growing number of companies use social media sites to post job opportunities, search for candidates, screen applicants, connect with customers and engage employees, and our industry is no exception. Yet, while many industry employers have a presence on social media sites, how they use it for varies greatly. Some post jobs, new hires and promotions. Others create social groups to target specific audiences based on their job function (media designer, copywriter), interests (job seekers, alumni of a college) or geography (west division, northeast territory). The more progressive actively use social media sites to identify frustrated customers who require attention, drive traffic to their websites and screen potential job candidates.
With the pool of potential employees growing larger, how can managers seek qualified candidates in a timely manner? Pamela Williams, executive director of the Cable and Telecommunications Human Resources Association, outlines the following reasons for using social media to boost your recruitment efforts:
Reach Passive Career Seekers: In some industries, there are some jobs that require specific and unique skills sets. The chances that an ideal candidate is employed and not actively searching out job opportunities is very good. In this case, a job posting isn’t going to reach that person. Fortunately, many employers have successfully leveraged social networking sites to find these elusive candidates. One industry employer actively searches social media sites to identify discussion forums for attendees at an upcoming or recently held professional conference. Often, the conference host will post the attendee list to spur ongoing professional networking among the participants. Finding a list like that is like hitting a gold mine as it yields contact information for a specifically skilled pool of candidates who may not be actively conducing a job search.
Screen Candidates: In addition to posting jobs and identifying potential candidates, many employers also use social media sites to gain insight into their job candidates. In fact, a CareerBuilder® June 2009 surveyof 2,600 hiring managers found that 45 percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates—more than double last year’s results. Industry employers have gained some interesting insight about candidates simply by visiting their online profiles—everything from illegal drug usage to how the candidate really feels about his former employer. But that sword can cut the other way, as 18 percent of the employers in the CareerBuilder survey reported they had hired a candidate based on insight gleaned from a candidate’s social networking profile.
“Social networking profiles often provide an employer with additional information that didn’t make it onto the candidate’s résumé due to space constraints. Examples include participation in community service organizations and extra-curricular activities. That information may be the extra something that separates one candidate from another in the selection process,” said Karen Bennett, Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Turner Broadcasting System Inc.
The bottom line is that if you aren’t using social media sites to recruit, you may be losing quality candidates to companies who are. And for those of you who are posting jobs on social media sites, consider expanding your usage to reach passive career seekers or screen candidates.
Wish you could read the minds of your latest market research participants?
Some of the latest research into the human mind may allow you to do just that. By combining brain scans with pattern-detection software neuroscientists now have a window into the human brain.
Called neural decoding, over the last several years, researchers have been able to use patterns in brain activity to successfully predict what pictures subjects are viewing, their location in a virtual environment and what decisions they are poised to make. At the recent Society of Neuroscience meeting in Chicago, scientists Jack Gallant and Shinji Nishimoto demonstrated that they could recreate moving images that volunteers were viewing and make guesses to what they were remembering.
How does neural decoding work? In Gallant and Nishimoto’s research, they mapped different patterns of activity in the visual cortex through brain scanning in study participants while they watched movies. A computer program then mapped different visual aspects of movies, such as shape, color, and movement. The program was fed more than 200 days worth of YouTube video clips to help program predictions for brain activity that each clip would produce in a viewer. When the participants then watched another movie while being scanned, the computer picked YouTube clips it predicted would create similar brain activity (as what was being recorded by participants) and merged these clips. The result: crude, blurry footage of a movie that the person was actually watching.
Other researches presented data showing that neural decoding could be used to read memories, future decisions and even to diagnose eating disorders. In research done by John-Dylan Haynes and colleague Ida Momennejad, they were able to use brain scans to predict intentions in subjects planning and performing simple tasks. While other researcher could predict which nouns, for example ‘celery’ or ‘airplane’, a subject was thinking.
Of course technology that could give such intimate details into information that you only you are thinking and could know is raising ethical concerns. Of specific concern is that advertisers, the government, or our employers might exploit this technology. Fortunately, neural decoding is currently limited in its abilities and applications. It only works if someone’s brain has already been scanned multiple times under very specific and controlled circumstances. However, if practical implications become more than just a figment of our imaginations – or brain activitiy – the ethical concerns should be considered now. We need to carefully consider what the technology can and cannot do and how it can be put to best use. For example, if the technology comes to fruition, we may be able to decode the thoughts of patients with neurodegenerative diseases, but we may also be able to deny employment based on an employee’s thoughts.
So, about mind reading the thoughts and decision process of your likely customer – for now, market research is still the most reliable way to gain information about a product or its newest advertising campaign, but maybe someday, all we will need are a few brain scans and the latest neural decoding software.
Want to know more, please check out these links about neural decoding and brain imaging:
