CHICAGO - Useful marketing tips from the conference floor of "Strategies in a Dynamic Healthcare World," sponsored by The Alliance for Healthcare Strategy and Marketing held here last month, looks at Medicaid marketing strategy, building a smart Web site, and lessons learned from a Medicare Risk HMO campaign.
@ Medicaid marketing strategy was a hot topic. Seasoned Medicaid marketers, Marsh Church Herring, director of medical center marketing, and Mary Maryland, coordinator of community health programs for The University of Illinois at Chicago; Linda McAleer, president of The Melior Group, a Philadelphia-based market research company and David Brown, president/COO of Beach Advertising (Philadelphia), highlighted key Medicaid marketing do's: segment marketing, focus groups, and using straight-forward, consistent messages to communicate campaign strategy as well as the don'ts: written surveys, stereotypical assumptions about lifestyle (welfare is a way of life), and lack of marketing savvy.
@ Jeffrey Nemetz, president of Chicago-based Face Communications, Inc., an online consulting company unleashed the seven marketing elements of an effective healthcare Web site: company strategy, personality, content, graphics and interface, navigation, innovation and marketing. Anticipating a 40 percent surge in healthcare Internet commerce usage, Nemetz stressed the importance of having focused marketing expectations when creating a site, especially since 68 percent of online healthcare surfers are dissatisfied with content.
@ And, speakers Terri Goren, director of marketing for Cleveland Clinic Florida (Ft. Lauderdale) and Marianne Eastwood, marketing manager for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida (Orlando) didn't hold back in sharing some of the stumbling blocks they encountered in co-marketing a successful Medicare Risk HMO campaign, like which company should pick up the marketing budget tab and differences in strategic marketing approach (process-oriented vs. project-oriented).