They key to managing marketing metrics is to decide early on what is important (ie: actionable) for you to measure, then track results and adjust accordingly. For most businesses, less is more.
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I’ll admit it, I didn’t get into marketing for the analytics of it all. In fact, if truth be told, I had hoped to spend my entire career as far away from facts and figures as possible.

I got jazzed by the creative end of marketing–by figuring out what made people tick, what energized and motivated them, and then working to deliver intrusive campaigns that grabbed an audience’s collective attention and compelled them to take action en mass.

And that, I thought, was done through a combination observational science and divine inspiration. Numbers? We don’t need no stinking numbers! Ah, the folly of youth . . .

As time went on, the harsh realities of the business world sunk in and I realized–reluctantly–that I had to make friends with numbers. That in order to continue to do the things I loved to do, I needed to show that what I was doing was making a difference.

I wasn’t happy about it at first, but the fact is numbers and I have long since become fast friends. Close pals, really. And like all close pals, there are only a few that really matter.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the “vanity metrics” that are floating around as a way to gauge the success of your efforts–things like time on site, shares, likes, repins, comments, pageviews, retweets, impressions, bounce rates, etc.–but the truth is they don’t matter all that much. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with tracking these measures, it’s just that in and of themselves they can’t give you an accurate picture of the overall marketing effectiveness.

The measures that really matter–the ones that will convince your CEO and CFO to continue giving you the marketing money you need to do what you love– are the ones that help you determine whether what you are doing is helping to profitably turn product into revenue.

Thanks to the good folks at HubSpot for putting together a cheat sheet  to help math-challenged marketers like myself focus on the things that matter most.

© 2013 Tom McCall

How are you using mobile technology to reach and influence decision makers today?
Photo by Calabrese Studio and courtesy Welch Allyn, Inc.
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Increasing access to mobile technology is on the verge of forever transforming the way healthcare professionals assess, diagnose, treat, and manage their patients’ illnesses inside and outside the hospital.

In the same way, 24 x 7 real-time access to information about products, technologies, and services that can help facilitate that transformation has already fundamentally changed the way medical marketers reach and influence clinical decision makers.

If you’re not already using mobile technology in your marketing efforts, now’s the perfect time to get started.

A recently published survey of 1,000 U.S. physicians performed by on-line research firm comScore, Inc. showed that more than half of physicians expressed interest in using mobile phones and tablets in the workplace.

“It has never been easier for physicians to access health information digitally in the workplace, which makes it important for health marketers to understand exactly how and when doctors are using online tools to do their work more efficiently,” said John Mangano, vice president for comScore Health and Pharmaceutical Solutions. “With the health industry placing more emphasis on the potential of mobile platforms, marketers must also educate themselves on how physicians are currently integrating – or plan to integrate – smartphones and tablets into their digital work habits.”

The fact that mobile technology enables more personalized and targeted communications is without question. Mobile platforms allow clinicians to access information where and when they they choose, and they allow medical marketers to provide this information in a form that is most meaningful at the moment.

The challenge is to present information in a way that reinforces our overall marketing objectives, uses the technology in a way that maximizes its effectiveness, and that respects the time and access our customers and prospects allow us.

Here are a few quick tips to do just that.

Integrate mobile into a larger marketing framework: This should go without saying, but there are plenty of examples of companies using mobile as a stand-alone element disconnected from the broader marketing effort. To avoid this trap, make sure your mobile content synchs with your entire marketing portfolio and that mobile campaigns are timed to reinforce other on- and off-line efforts. For tips on how to create a library of clinically relevant content to share, please see my earlier post on content creation.

Don’t try to say too much all at once: Bandwidth limitations for mobile devices mean that you need to skinny down the size of your files and videos, while screen size constraints require graphic restraint. These technical considerations coupled with the quick grab-and-go way clinicians will access your data mean that you are not going to be able to say everything you want to say about your product or technology in every element of a mobile campaign. And that’s OK. In a regulated environment, you’re always going to provide a link back to the source data, anyway, to give more detail, provide clinical validation, and allow clinicians to contact a real human. When it comes to mobile content, keep it pithy, keep it focused, keep it relevant.

Make it easy for clinicians to find what they want: When clinicians are accessing information on a mobile device, research shows they are looking to get in, get the information they want, and then get out. Your mobile content should acknowledge that and provide the most relevant information quickly. Think about the old inverted pyramid style of writing: the most important parts of your mobile content should be at the very beginning. That’s because most mobile readers only spend a few seconds on each subject it is crucial to get the message across sooner rather than later.

Test, test, test your campaigns. Then test some more: There was a well-written Mashable article that highlighted some mobile marketing best practices, and the one that really stood out for me focused on the need to test your campaigns and the opportunity mobile gives you to push the boundaries and see what really resonates. Unlike direct mail that has high production and postage cost associated with it, mobile is cheap by comparison. So don’t be afraid to use the tools available to see what works and what doesn’t.

Mobile marketing provides unique opportunities to connect with clinicians on a more personal level. The combination of outbound marketing activities, social media and content-based marketing efforts, responsive design initiatives, and search marketing can give a powerful boost to your business.

Give it a try.

© 2013 Tom McCall

Gone are the days of finding a clinical champion with the power to get your technology adopted by a hospital without going through a formalized process involving multiple stakeholders. You need to be prepared to tell your story effectively across a broad spectrum of audiences.
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Remember the good old days in medical marketing when the key to getting your technology adopted by a hospital was simply finding a vocal, committed clinical champion with the juice to get you a trial just by saying “I want it”?

That’s when you could get by with a clinical and technical sell that focused on how your product made life easier for the clinician or better for the patient. Period.

With healthcare reform, the rise of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), the proliferation of Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs), and the continuing influence of Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs), supply chain professionals, and value analysis committees, those days are long gone.

In this challenging environment, the ability to tell a multi-faceted story about how you can provide clinical, financial, and quality-of-care benefits while appealing to multiple stakeholders has never been more important.

That means that in addition to focusing on what your product does clinically (which will always be the first and most important story), you need to find ways to tie back to specific quality measures related to the patient experience, care coordination and patient safety, preventative health, and caring for at-risk patient populations–as well as clearly demonstrate any cost savings opportunities that may be applicable.

Here’s a quick example of how we recently did this with a new product at ICU Medical.

When we launched the Neutron catheter patency device in 2012, we knew we had a winner–a product that was simple to use, did not require a change in clinical practice, was affordable, and provided a tangible clinical benefit: reducing catheter occlusions (blockages in a catheter) by 50% while providing a safe and effective microbial barrier to help reduce the chance of infections.

While the value proposition was fairly simple, we had to explain it several different ways and develop an impactful communications strategy in order to reach and motivate the market. Here are the steps we took.

Frame the Problem: Unfortunately, doctors and nurses are conditioned to accept the fact that 25% of all catheters placed will become occluded. But absent a viable alternative to the status quo, catheter occlusions weren’t really seen as a big deal. That’s why we needed to educate them about the clinical and economic consequences of occlusions and explain that there was a better way of dealing with the problem. To do that, we put together a solutions-based story that explained how reducing catheter occlusions could be an important step in a hospital’s efforts to enhance patient safety and improve outcomes.

Present the Solution: After establishing the fact that catheter occlusions can result in delays in critical patient care, increased risk of infection, and increased healthcare costs, we had to position Neutron as a solution. To do that, we drew on all of the clinical and laboratory evidence we had to paint a picture of how incorporating the device into clinical practice could provide specific and significant benefits. Our focus at this point was to tell the story from a clinician’s point of view, showing how the device could help minimize delays in treatment, minimize patient discomfort, and decrease clinical risks (quality benefits).

Broaden the Context: Once we had crystalized the clinical story, we moved on to cost savings. We would never have led with savings, but in today’s environment we had to show how our product–which was to be sold at a premium–could reduce system-wide costs despite a higher initial cost. We started by developing a detailed, fully referenced white paper that outlined the direct and indirect costs associated with catheter occlusions. Then we demonstrated how using the Neutron–even at a 3X price premium over the competition–could save a hospital nearly $250,000 each and every year. We then developed an on-line calculator tool that a hospital could use to plug in their own numbers and determine their own savings potential.

Communicate Widely and Show You’re Committed: Now that we had all the clinical and financial pieces together it was time to communicate the benefits of the product as broadly as possible. We created multiple web pages, microsites, demonstration videos, study summaries, product brochures, as well as on- and off-line marketing outreach programs to get the word out.

All this generated broad awareness for Neutron in the marketplace (a 33% technology awareness in less than six months), but as a new product we felt we needed to do more to show that we stood behind our claims. To that end we established a $100,000 Performance Guarantee saying that if a hospital does not experience a reduction in catheter occlusion rates over the first three months of using Neutron, we will pay them $100,000. At the moment, no one has taken us up on the guarantee, but it served to show we believe in our technology and are willing to take a risk to demonstrate that it does what we say it does.

While it takes considerably more time and effort to develop a multi-faceted story when launching a new medical technology, the end result is greater early stage awareness and interest, along with a treasure trove of content that can be repurposed and repackaged to effectively communicate to a broad spectrum of decision makers.

Trust me, it’s worth it.

Good luck!

© 2013 Tom McCall

My immediate reaction was “yikes!” but then I read on.

Unlike a lot of notices that I get on an all too regular basis from banks and retail outlets, this wasn’t an impersonal message about an undisclosed “security event” that led to a compromise of customer data.

I was told specifically what was stolen and specifically what Vudu was going to do for me.

“Our investigation thus far indicates that these hard drives contained customer information, including names, email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, account activity, dates of birth and the last four digits of some credit card numbers. It’s important to note that the drives did NOT contain full credit card numbers, as we do not store that information, ” the Vudu’s CTO Prasanna Ganesan said in the e-mail.

Ganesan went on to explain that “while the stolen hard drives included VUDU account passwords, those passwords were encrypted. We believe it would be difficult to break the password encryption, but we can’t rule out that possibility given the circumstances of this theft. So we think it’s best to be proactive and ask that you be proactive as well.”

Next, he explained that they had automatically expired every user’s password, requiring a new password before a subsequent log-in, set up a full FAQ page on their website to answer customer questions, and provided each and every customer with a free one year subscription to AllClear ID so we can see whether anyone has used our info for nefarious purposes.

With all this, by the time I got to the “we want you to know that we take this matter very seriously, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you” part of the e-mail, I believed him.

So, here’s what I learned from this.

• Be forthcoming. In a cyberconnected world, bad things are inevitably going to happen. I think everybody gets that by now. When bad things do happen and your customers are affected, let them know what happened and what you’re going to do for them to minimize the damage. Quickly.

• Be proactive. Then, you need to anticipate your customers concerns and proactively work to assuage them. In the case of this heist, Vudu didn’t stop at telling me that there was very little risk of my personal data being accessed. They proactively forced me to reset my password and gave me a full year of identity theft monitoring to make me feel better.

• Be sincere. When this kind of thing happens, the best approach is the straightforward approach. Acknowledge the incident, outline your response to it, provide a clear path for customer follow up, and work to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

All in all a good, thorough job of diffusing a potentially damaging situation. Good for the business. Good for the brand.

Well played Vudu.

I think I’ll download a movie tonight.

© 2013 Tom McCall

The short answer is no.

I wrote earlier that by failing to make an emotional connection before diving into the technical/clinical sell, we run the risk of having our messages fall on deaf ears and our marketing efforts fall flat as a result.

But, at the same time, failing to back up our emotional messaging with solid clinical and scientific facts is even worse. If all we deliver is “marketing blah-blah” with no real meat to back it up, clinicians will tune us out, not take us seriously, and not buy our products.

So, what’s the right balance, and how do you achieve it?

Well, in terms of sheer volume, technical/clinical trumps emotional. The communications mix should include considerably more support for the fact that our products do what we say they do than it does emotional messaging to motivate our audience to take action.

That’s because emotional messaging is pithy and visceral. Technical/clinical messaging is detailed and rational.

Think of it as a pyramid where the emotional messaging is supported by incrementally more detailed technical/clinical messaging that is delivered sequentially throughout the sales process, with targeted outbound messaging focusing on the emotional drivers of the sale.

The emotional is the bait. The technical/clinical is the hook. You need both to catch a fish.

Start by building a solid technical and clinical foundation of studies to support the product or technology. Then synthesize this information into selling messages that reinforce the foundation, culminating with a series of solutions-based messages that highlight the emotional benefits of the product’s attributes—the “what’s in it for me” messaging that hopefully connects with a clinician on a personal level. This is the hardest part, by the way.

Truly understanding what your product means to a clinician takes time, effort, and money. But it’s worth it.

That’s because although there will be many more pieces to support the technical/clinical messaging—from clinical and laboratory studies, to case studies and clinical reports—the emotional messaging will be communicated more broadly.

And you can’t set the hook if the fish won’t take the bait.

© 2013 Tom McCall

At ICU Medical, we broke the process down into four easy to understand steps, each with its own set of strategies, objectives, and tactics that ultimately led to what we believe to be a sustainable brand that fits who we are today and has flexibility to extend to where we want to go tomorrow.

In a nutshell, here are the steps:

1. Know Who You Are: This is the part of the process where you seek to fully understand and define what your brand stands for and what makes your business different from and better than the competition. Before beginning this phase we conducted a baseline brand awareness and perception study to see what the market thought of us (turns out, not much–or, more precisely, not often). We then engaged RiechesBaird, one of the country’s top B2B branding firms, to walk us through a comprehensive brand development process that looked inside to better understand how we defined ourselves, and then looked outside to better understand how our competitors defined themselves, and how current market perceptions shaped where we had “permission” to go as a brand.

The result of this phase was a fully defined “Human Connections” brand positioning, and a set of brand guidelines that included all of the verbal and visual elements–new logo, fonts, colors, tone-of-voice, photographic style, etc.–necessary to express the brand.

2. Be Who You Are: Now that it is defined, it’s time to consistently express the brand at every point of customer contact. For us, that meant blowing up everything we had and starting from scratch. We created a completely new website, all new literature and sales support materials, a new ad campaign, and–with a new logo–all new building signage, packaging graphics, even trade show shirts for the sales staff. Everything was different. Everything was better. And everything reflected our “Human Connections” brand positioning.

This is where having a top-notch in-house marketing communications team really paid off. In the course of a single year, we developed and produced more than 1,000 individual marcom pieces in-house–from brochures, to ads, to web pages, to integrated lead development programs, to computer animation and product videos, to trade show signage and presentations, to social media content–that would have cost us in excess of $2.5 million had we bought it all on the outside. We never would have been able to “Be Who We Are” as quickly or as completely without having been able to do so much of the heavy lifting ourselves.

3. Show Who You Are: After building the branding infrastructure, it is time to reach out and show the world. Our goal is simple: find out where our customers get information about products in our category and actively engage with them in as many of those places as possible. This is in itself an ongoing and evolving process, but suffice it to say the process is considerably more digital and social than it has ever been. The best communication is personal communication, and we are trying to be as close to the customer as possible. That’s why in addition to our awareness and lead generation activities, we made sure that at the point of sale, our sales team had the tools to carry the branded message through to the customer with confidence.

Each member of our direct sales and clinical support team has an iPad fully loaded with all of our marketing materials, product videos, competitive comparison pieces, and clinical support tools that allow them real-time access to the most up-to-date content they can present and share with customers.

4. Grow Who You Are: The brand development process helped sharpen our focus. It’s now time to use that focus to build our business by expanding into adjacent markets or categories that align with our brand strategy. The great thing about a focused strategy is that it helps us decide what not to do. Too often, companies without this focus venture off into non-aligned business segments that don’t make sense for them. Not a good thing. More on this later.

If you’ve never been through it, the brand development process can seem daunting, full of strange-sounding jargon, and requiring the services of creative types who can be, well, lets just say different.  But if you follow a framework like the one I outlined above and connect with the right resources, it can be one of the most personally and professionally rewarding experiences of your career.

Just remember, brand development is an ongoing process, not a static exercise. Lather, rinse, repeat . .

© 2013 Tom McCall

If it weren’t for the business-oriented social media site, a headhunter working for my current employer never would have found me. And I wouldn’t be happily working for an innovative medical technology firm that lets me wear flip flops and jeans to work while I gaze (occasionally) at the Pacific from my office in sunny San Clemente, CA.

But marketers who think of LinkedIn solely as a job search tool are missing point. And missing a great opportunity in the process.

Integrating LinkedIn into your social media marketing efforts may be the most important step you take. Why? Simple. Because that’s where the people are. Real people with real jobs in your category who you can identify and connect with today.

And by connecting with a large network of like-minded professionals who share your market space as well as your personal and professional interests, you get a chance to communicate on a personal level with people who can make a difference in your life and in your business. Not bad, huh?

So how do you take advantage of the world’s largest global network of business professionals? Here are four simple steps to take to get started.

1. Become real. Too many people on LinkedIn don’t take the time to fully flesh out their profile with a professional looking photograph and relevant information about their experience, accomplishments, training, and interests. This is a mistake, because as you begin to share content, advertise, and otherwise engage with folks who click back to see who you are, you won’t look real. And as a result, your content will lose credibility.
2. Reach out. Unlike Facebook, your LinkedIn contacts should extend way beyond personal friends and family. Use the Advanced People Search function to find people in your industry with whom you want to connect, and reach out and ask them to join your network. Make sure to include a personal note (not LinkedIn’s generic request) to let the person know where you know them from, how you’re connected, or what common interests you share. Then check out their contacts to see who you know in common. Join appropriate groups and connect with other members. Repeat. It won’t take long to get a meaningful number of contacts if you do it right.
3. Create a company page. If you don’t have a company page yet, start one. If you do, join it and work to enhance it. It can be an important place to start a content chain, and a great common ground for employees. Encourage everyone (especially your marketing and sales teams) to create his or her own LinkedIn profile and connect with the company page.
4. Create and share content. Now that you’ve built the basics, it’s time to build visibility and relationships by creating sharing meaningful content—and have others in your company and in your network share what you’ve created. Don’t forget to take advantage of the many tools LinkedIn has for connecting with other members—like SlideShare Content ads, for example—to extend your reach and amplify your message. But remember, this is a social media. You don’t want to be so fixated on your commercial messaging that you lose the opportunity to connect on a deeper level with your network. Share other people’s relevant content. Make comments. Start group discussions. Engage!

There’s a reason that the fastest growing companies are flocking to LinkedIn and abandoning Facebook as their go-to marketing vehicle.

Maybe you should too.

© 2013 Tom McCall

In that time people have paid me to write—among other things—newspaper and magazine articles, business proposals, marketing plans, video scripts, print ads, radio ads, TV ads, websites, press releases, and pithy tomes to help new brides choose the right silverware pattern to suit their busy lifestyle.

No matter what I am writing, the goal is the same: to get an idea from my brain into another person’s brain using the fewest number of words possible.

Sometimes the need for brevity is dictated by time or space. A thirty-second TV ad or a quarter page magazine ad can only contain so many words. Sometimes it is dictated by a short attention span—mine or my audience’s.

Regardless of the reason, achieving brevity is never easy. It takes work. Here’s three things I’ve learned over the course of the past thirty years that help me when I write. They might help you, too.

• The best writing isn’t written, it’s re-written. No matter how many times I sit down to write, I always use too many words at first. So I have to take some out. When I do, I realize they weren’t needed to begin with. One of my first editors when I was an aspiring journalist handed me back a story I had written and said “I love it. Now give it back to me with 50% fewer words, but don’t lose the detail.” The result was a much better story and a front-page placement.
• “Be prepared to murder your babies.” This odd bit of advice comes from a college journalism instructor whose name I have long since forgotten but whose words have stuck with me all these years. “Murder your babies” means that, as you re-read your writing and come across a passage that you feel is extremely well crafted and elegantly detailed, you should probably eliminate it. Chances are it’s extraneous to the flow of the piece or somewhat off topic, or both. As eloquent as it may be, give it the axe.
• Stop when it is finished. Sometimes the hardest thing to do when you’re writing something is to know when you’ve said enough. The temptation is to give one more example to support your thesis. One more anecdote. One more citation. Once you’ve made your point, stop it already.

I was going to write more, but I won’t. I’ll stop now.

© 2013 Tom McCall

It’s no different from nurturing any other positive long-lasting relationship. Building meaningful social media relationships with your customers requires respect, consistency, patience, and time. You have to listen, learn, and react to what’s important to them.

At ICU Medical, we began to seriously integrate social media into our marketing mix a little over a year ago. Before that, it was hit or miss, inconsistent, and—quite honestly—ineffective. Since taking it seriously, though, we’ve learned a ton about what works and what doesn’t—and we’re learning more every day.

Among the things we’ve learned:

• Talk to people, not at them. Customers are people, so we treat them like people. We speak in the first person and talk to them like we know them. Instead of saying things like “ICU Medical helps clinicians address hospital acquired infection and patient safety issues,” we say “we can help you reduce infections and improve the safety of your patients.” Be human and—to steal a line from one of my former employers—talk human.
• Listen and respond. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to use social media like they would traditional paid or earned media—as a one-way conduit from them to the marketplace. The beauty of social media is that you get to engage customers in a conversation. We respond to every comment on Facebook, every retweet or mention on Twitter. Personally. And we learn from the feedback we receive to make our interactions more meaningful.
• Make time for show and tell. Part of being respectful is understanding that people don’t have a lot of time to devote to your messages. That’s why we keep ours short, pithy, and as visual as possible. Makes it easier to “get” what we’re saying, and more enticing to share with others.
• It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We’re in this for the long haul. We know that what we’re doing now is not what we need to be doing in the future, but the fact that we’re doing it at all makes a difference. It’s a beginning. If you’re going to wait until you know you have the absolute perfect strategy, you’ll never start. We may not be doing everything right, but, to paraphrase DL Moody, I like our way of doing it better than your way of not doing it!

So, what are you waiting for? Get started . . . and keep at it.

© 2013 Tom McCall

But, as the cover story of the current issue of the AMA’s Marketing News magazine points out, the results are worth it.

“More B-to-B marketers are finding that cutting through the technical talk to communicate in more human terms can help build stronger customer connections,” explained AMA staff writer Christine Birkner.

As a guy that leads the marketing efforts at a medical technology company with the tagline “Human Connections,” I wholeheartedly agree.

The reason is simple (naturally): people buy stuff from people. The more of a personal connection you make, the more your message will resonate, and the more likely the person to whom you are communicating will take action.

“We get to thinking that corporations, as a nonhuman entity, make the purchase. Even within the corporation, a human being is buying the product,” explained Joe Chernov, VP of Marketing for tech firm Kinvey, Inc. in the AMA article. “There is always a thistle of consumer marketing even in B-to-B marketing because you want to appeal to an individual.”

Because even with a very complex technology, it’s an individual, and not a corporation, that will first be exposed to your marketing message, and take that first step of considering whether or not to do business with you.

In an earlier post, I encouraged my colleagues in medical technology marketing—where having a detailed technical and clinical evidence base steeped in hard data is crucial to success—to humanize their data by turning statistics into stories. It’s not that you are “dumbing down” your content to appeal to a less well-trained professional.

You’re simply getting their attention by treating them like a person, appealing to their emotions, and communicating in a way that shows you completely understand their problem.

But you’re always backing up the emotional pitch with a data-rich set of supporting documentation for when you need it. In fact, that’s where you start—with a solid, detailed, and compelling technology that fills a real need. The steps, as I outlined earlier, to turning this data into messages that resonate are pretty straightforward:

1. Start with vetted, cleared, and clinically rich solution-based content.
2. Break it into bite-sized bits.
3. Humanize the data—turn statistics into stories.
4. Bring each story to life with strong visuals.
5. Communicate consistently across a broad range of platforms.
6. Always provide a way back to the source data.
7. Repeat.

“Regardless of which side of the marketing spectrum you’re on or what industry you’re in, the goal is, of course, to build strong connections with customers and potential customers, and that often starts by communicating clearly and simply,” the AMA article concludes.

Pretty simple, huh?

© 2013 Tom McCall