Insights

Sep 20 2023

The Biggest Healthcare Marketing Trends for 2023 – Adobe

Healthcare organizations need to adapt to evolving trends in healthcare marketing to reach and engage with patients effectively. In this recent report from Adobe, several key trends are highlighted:

1. Consumerization of Healthcare: Patients are taking more control of their healthcare decisions, viewing healthcare as consumers. Healthcare organizations must market their services to patients as they would to traditional consumers, emphasizing value and transparency.
2. Telehealth: Telehealth services have gained significance, and patients expect options for remote healthcare. Healthcare organizations should promote telehealth as one of several care pathways, emphasizing its convenience and accessibility.
3. Evolved SEO Efforts: Search engine optimization (SEO) has evolved beyond bringing patients to websites; it now includes providing informative content to answer patient questions and improve trust and loyalty.
4. User Experience: Patients expect fast, frictionless healthcare experiences, both in care delivery and online interactions. Healthcare organizations should optimize websites for speed and ease of use, offer online appointment booking, and consider launching healthcare apps.
5. Improved Personalization: Patients want personalized care experiences, and this extends to marketing materials. Targeted messaging and personalized ads can help build loyalty and trust.
6. Social Proof: Patients look for social proof in the form of online reviews and testimonials before choosing a healthcare provider. Organizations should actively manage and showcase positive reviews.
7. Expanded Marketing Scope: Marketing campaigns should appeal to a wider range of prospective clients and integrate multiple channels to target individuals at various stages of their healthcare journeys.
8. Social Media and Video: Social media and video content are vital for engaging with patients. Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content on social media, particularly video, can boost reach and engagement.
9. Marketing Technology: Advances in marketing technology, including multichannel attribution, telehealth, IoT, AI, and automation, are transforming healthcare marketing and improving the patient experience.

Stay up-to-date with these trends to effectively market your services and meet patient expectations in 2023 and beyond. Click here to see the full article.

Jul 01 2023

Navigating the 2023 Marketing Landscape: Insights from Gartner’s Report

Gartner’s recent report, “The State of Marketing Budget and Strategy in 2023,” uncovers some stark realities and key insights for Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). A key takeaway is the growing pressure on marketing budgets due to rising costs and inflationary pressures. This year, marketing budgets have seen a slight dip from 9.5% of the total company revenue in 2022 to 9.1% in 2023. Consequently, about 75% of CMOs find themselves in a situation where they are being asked to achieve more with less, including a push to curtail spending on martech (marketing technology) investments.

Several areas like technology, media, and talent are feeling the pressure, with the technology utilization rate falling 16 percentage points in the past two years and a noticeable decline in digital advertising impressions despite high investment. Even talent acquisition is proving to be challenging, with inflation and competition driving up costs despite widespread layoffs.

In these challenging times, the report lays out critical imperatives for CMOs. A focus on growth, yield, and return should be at the forefront, necessitating regular environmental scans and recalibration of the marketing function’s capabilities and investments. There’s a pressing need to optimize technology and improve its utilization and ROI. CMOs are also encouraged to identify multichannel KPIs directly tied to business outcomes. Budget comparisons with peer organizations could help identify potential areas of increased or reduced spending.

The report suggests that, in a volatile market environment, success hinges on smart planning, agility, and the ability to respond flexibly to changes. With a keen eye on efficiency and a flexible approach to budgeting, marketing leaders can turn challenges into opportunities, driving more value from each marketing dollar spent in 2023.

Download the full report here.

May 31 2023

The Impact of Generative AI on Marketing and Sales Strategy

AI and machine learning (ML) technologies are transforming the marketing and sales sector, with generative AI (gen AI) leading the charge. Gen AI is increasingly adopted by sales-tech players due to its innovative capabilities. As businesses operate in an increasingly digital-first world, these technologies have become essential tools. This is prompting businesses to reconsider their operations, customer connections, and services.

Gen AI is expected to disrupt how both B2B and B2C businesses approach customer experience, productivity, and growth. Around 20% of current sales-team functions could potentially be automated thanks to these advancements.

Customer engagement models are evolving as they demand everything, everywhere, all the time. The trend is leaning towards online ordering and reordering. The most successful companies, those increasing their market share by at least 10 percent annually, tend to use advanced sales technology, build hybrid sales teams, and offer hyper-personalized services.

AI technology is becoming easier and less expensive to implement while offering an increasing complexity and speed that outpaces human capacity. Venture capital investment in AI has grown 13-fold over the last decade, leading to a surge in usable data and accessible technology.

Gen AI differs from traditional AI in its adaptability to a wide variety of downstream tasks, including content generation. Traditional AI, on the other hand, needs human supervision and specific data for each new task. Gen AI marks a significant shift in power, sophistication, and utility in artificial intelligence.

Download the full report here.

Apr 25 2023

The Power of Creative Quality in Advertising

Magna Media and Yahoo have unveiled a study that explores the critical role of creative quality in advertising and the components contributing to successful ads. The research, involving more than 4,100 marketers, scrutinized the impact of ad creative on 61 metrics across various sectors including the automotive industry, food delivery services, and consumer packaged goods (CPG). In the test involving 108 display ads with diverse attributes across multiple devices, the results indicated that minor improvements in creative could significantly optimize ad performance, while enhancing brand quality and trust. Moreover, the findings suggested that mediocre creative quality might result in squandered budgets.

Crucial findings revealed that creative quality accounted for 56% of the purchase intent, thereby heightening awareness and molding consumer perceptions. Advertising memorability was shown to depend significantly on high-quality creative, with a substantial increase of over 23% in aided recall as compared to a mere 2% for poor creative. Informative ads were found to keep viewers engaged longer, enhancing on-screen time by over eight seconds, lifting consideration by 32%, and boosting brand consideration by over 27%. Additionally, the data suggests marketers should optimize media across devices, such as leveraging mobile screens with compelling brand propositions and calls-to-action. On desktops and laptops, imagery should be prioritized to captivate attention, and ads should incorporate people to foster more effective consumer connections.

Click here to read the full story.

Dec 06 2022

ChatGPT – Still a ways to go

Everyone, especially marketers, should be testing new AI solutions to maximize efficiencies in delivering better product experience, development, and marketing content. ChatGPT was launched in November and is now the most talked about new AI tool. Ryan Reynolds has even claimed to develop a TV ad with it.  Compared to other AI tools that may focus on writing, video or coding, ChatGPT attempts to take any prompt and deliver a complete solution.  Although the results are pretty impressive, there is a high error rate and quality variance depending on your query.  The attached article from Fast Company provides a good summary.  It’s promising but has a ways to go to be a go-to tool for marketers.

Click here to read the full story.

Oct 25 2022

Toxic cultures: Know how harmful they are and how to fix them.

Most of us have experienced and heard stories about toxic work environments. They are more common than one might think as approximately 1 in 10 workers experience their workplace culture as toxic. This can have a big impact on your results. In fact, 90% of CEOs and CFO in North America believe that improving their culture would boost financial results.  This article from MIT Sloan Management Review identifies key predictive factors such as leadership, social norms, and work design based on multiple studies. The authors also give detailed tips on how to design or change your environment to reduce toxicity.

Click here to read the story.

Oct 27 2021

Economic worries overtake COVID fears for first time in almost 20 months

In this latest study by IPSOS, COVID now ranks as the 3rd biggest concern among the global consumer population behind economic-related worries of poverty and unemployment. This is a significant shift in sentiment and should be considered as we develop messages to our audiences as we get further from the pandemic.

Click here to read the full study 

Mar 30 2021

COVID-19 related social isolation harms cognitive function

As we are now exiting the final major COVID-related safety restrictions in California, it is good to take away any learnings. An interesting study by researchers in the UK published in the Journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology shows that in addition to the emotional damage caused by social isolation, the lockdowns also caused a significant drop in executive function, risk processing and other cognitive measures.  This study is another reason that we should think about reducing isolation when designing marketing team structures and even through the marketing programs to our customers and prospects.

Click here to read the full study.