The Doctor Will See You Now Lessons for Marketing in the Healthcare Industry
IN THE WORLD OF MARKETING, healthcare has always been a bit like Luxembourg. Everyone knows that it exists and, occasionally, significant things take place there (a bank transaction, a diplomatic summit). But it s far from a global power, never mind a hotbed of marketing innovation. Why is marketing often somnolent in a giant industry that accounts for nearly 20% of our GDP? It s largely due to the complexity of engaging with physicians healthcare s primary target audience. Physicians famously have no time. Less widely appreciated is that their profession is rapidly, and often unpredictably, changing. In many industries, the target persona generally does not wake up each morning and wonder whether the government changed the rules for getting paid overnight, for example. Physicians do. Suffice to say that marketing to the healthcare industry can get a bit complex.
At CareCloud, a solution that enables medical practices to run their operations in the cloud, we are up against a lot! These factors, plus a competitive market and our broad solution set, make it essential that CareCloud leverage tools like marketing automation to sharpen our marketing and accelerate sales cycles. We use custom content, personalization, extensive testing and tracking to effectively market to doctors, scale our revenue engine and steadily wrestle America s healthcare system online. Taken together, these approaches form a marketing infrastructure that generates more than 95% of our leads. While CareCloud focuses on healthcare, our strategies can be useful in nearly any market where decision makers and influencers are hard to reach. In this ebook we will go over some of the techniques that we use that have been very effective in the healthcare industry.
capture Landing Page Optimization It is important to A/B test your landing pages for conversion along every dimension imaginable, including: video v. non-video; headlines; features v. benefits; long form v. minimal text; and patient image v. product shot. Sometimes, the results confirm your initial hypothesis but you may often find out something new. For example, at CareCloud we were surprised when features beat out benefits in one test, and the conversion rate of a product shot outperformed a patient image by 2-1 in another. We ve been able to test our way to whitepaper landing page conversions that range from 15-40%, with steady improvement in purchase-ready pages. We also use progressive profiling to collect more data as prospects download additional content and build out their lead profiles. So always be testing! VERSUS A B
follow-through email automation At CareCloud, to help our business development reps (BDR) reach out to online leads as fast as possible, we have automated their initial emails so they are able to focus on valuable phone calls and follow-up conversations. Using marketing automation tokens, we are able to send personalized emails from the BDR. In fact, we automate as much as we can for the BDRs, including triggered emails and large batch announcements. The fact that most marketing automation software integrates with your CRM makes it easy for BDRs to be alerted to leads that have warmed and display cookied activity prior to conversion, for a fuller understanding of the lead. We also publish emails from our marketing automation solution in our CRM, so that sales people have ready-made, on-message templates they can send to prospects as they advance through the sales cycle.
making the sale lead nurturing Not every lead will be ready to buy when they first enter your system. Lead nurturing helps you create relationships with potential buyers as they self-educate through the buying process. At CareCloud, we implemented lead nurturing last April to leverage our large base of leads that did not respond to our first round of sales follow-up. Using the dynamic content functionality of our marketing automation solution, we created a basic track that customizes emails based on interest, which is self-identified in the first email by a whitepaper download. That first track then diverges into 3 tracks based on product interest. The 3-month track revived over $400K in revenue last year that would have not come in otherwise. Tokens and dynamic content allowed us to customize a nurturing experience for leads and alert BDRs when leads re-engaged. 3 MONTHS $400K REVIVED
The demands placed on doctors means that CareCloud s focus on high-quality, custom content, presented at the right time to the right audience not only plays to the strengths of a marketing automation tool, but also helps us scale an infrastructure at the core of our company s growth. Our goal is to take an industry in which marketing used to mean faxes and visits from pharma reps and bring it to the forefront of its marketing peers.
About CareCloud CareCloud is a leading provider of cloud-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR) and medical billing software and services for medical groups. The company s products are connecting providers to one another - and to their patients - through a fully integrated digital healthcare ecosystem that can be accessed on any browser or device. CareCloud is helping thousands providers increase collections, streamline operations and improve patient care in more than 45 states. The company received over $20 million in Series A funding from Intel Capital and Norwest Venture Partners in 2011. To learn more about CareCloud, please visit www.carecloud.com. Marketing Software. Easy, Powerful, Complete. Marketo, (NASDAQ MKTO) uniquely provides an easy-to-use, powerful and complete marketing software platform that propels fast-growing small companies and global enterprises alike. Marketo marketing automation and sales effectiveness software streamlines marketing processes, delivers more campaigns, generates more win-ready leads, and improves sales performance. With proven technology, comprehensive services and expert guidance, Marketo helps thousands of companies around the world turn marketing from a cost center into a revenue driver. www.marketo.com blog.marketo.com Contact Marketo: +1.877.260.MKTO sales@marketo.com