mHealth Marketer

Is shopping for professional marketing help for your digital health business the same as buying a new copier or office furniture?

Many naive businesses have the wrong perspective about the costs involved in hiring a marketing agency. Taking the wrong approach in an effort to find the lowest price, just might be the riskiest thing you can do when hiring a marketing agency. 

Listen and find out why…

About This Show:

Each Wednesday, Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

Show Notes: 

If I own an office furniture business, and you ask me how much it costs for 12 work stations, if you provide the size and product specs, I could tell you. I know the cost of the furniture. I know my labor costs. I know my overhead costs. 

However, when a potential client asks…

“How much does a marketing program for my digital health business cost?”

It’s impossible to answer. And it reveals a lot about you as a prospect.

Here’s why.

If you’re looking for an exact price to write and distribute a press release to a targeted list, most marketing agencies could give you a firm price with asking you a few basic questions.. But they will hesitate to do it.

Why?

Because they know you’re simply shopping around for the lowest price. Most agencies won’t invest much time and energy in this kind of request.

Marketing agencies aren’t products. They are teams of specialists looking to deliver ongoing value. Simply putting out a single press release at the lowest bid accomplishes little, so why would the agency bother?

Here’s the thing…

You’re not looking for a low-price vendor. You want a strategic partner who can deliver ongoing value for your business.

So, to know how much it costs to hire a marketing agency, ask and answer these questions first.

1. How much should I invest in marketing my digital health business?

To answer this question, you must know the answer to two other questions.

1. What is the current cost of client acquisition? Or, how much are you willing to spend… and able to spend… from a cash flow and profit standpoint to land a client?

2. What is the Lifetime Value of clients for your business?

Here’s a simple example of this. Suppose it costs you $25,000 to land one health IT enterprise client. It costs $10,000 a year to maintain and keep this client. Your clients on average stick with you for five years. You bill clients $35,000 per year for your services.

In the first year, this client nets you $10,000, and then $25,000 for 4 years. Total lifetime Value is $110,000.

Without knowing these two metrics in your business it’s impossible to know how much to reasonably budget for marketing. Without knowing this you send the message to the agency:

“I don’t really know how my business works or what to do on my marketing. I hope the agency can figure it out.”

2. Have you pointed and fully assessed your marketing problems?

If you ask a marketing agency to “increase brand awareness”, or are looking[...]

The Right Marketing Agency can make or break your digital health business. The RIGHT marketing strategy and execution potentially leads to a flow of sales and clients. The wrong choice can drain precious cash and put you out of business.

Let’s look at what signs indicate the RIGHT fit for your business.

About This Show:

Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

Show Notes: 

What Are the Six Key Indicators of the RIGHT Marketing Agency Fit for Your Digital Health Firm?

After realizing when you need a marketing agency, and understanding how best to work with a marketing agency, finding the RIGHT agency is no easy task. But you can simplify it. Evaluate your marketing agency choice through the lens of these 6 factors.

1. Preparation- Digital health, health IT, mobile health is a complex, rapidly changing landscape. An agency specializing in digital health knows and understands your marketing challenges. You don’t need to educate them on the market.

In addition, any worthy marketing agency will do due diligence on you and your company. They will visit and read your website, check out your social media profiles, and get a handle on the key players in your firm. They won’t waste time asking you questions like” Who is your VP of Marketing?”

However, they will ask you: “Tell me about your decision making process. When you look to hire professional services for your business, how do you decide who to pick? Who is involved in the process?”

2. Complex Made Simple- Top marketing agencies cut through complex health IT challenges to help make what you’re selling simple without being simplistic.  

As an example, rather than going into all the technology of how iPhones and iPads are used in a closed network system in an Emergency Room, Voalte simply states:

“Reimagine healthcare communications.”

Yes, at some point, you must share the technology with the potential client. But a focus on the technology, rather than simple clear customer focused messages, renders marketing efforts useless.

3. Creativity- You already have ideas on how to solve marketing problems and create opportunities. You’re looking for a marketing agency to surface ideas new ideas that don’t pop up in-house.

For example, you plan to attend a major industry conference, such as HIMSS. A typical agency response might be: “We can help you gain exposure during this event.”

Or, the more creative option… “Have you ever considered a marketing alliance or strategic partnership approach to creating a major impact at HIMSS?” Let’s work together to develop a plan to ride the coattails of a business who already has an audience at HIMSS to drive traffic to your website and generate leads during and after the conference.”

4. Puts Your Interests First- Yes, the marketing agency must make money. But they should never force you to buy what isn’t in your best business interests.

You risk your business and career to do business with a marketing agenc[...]

Technology-enabled collaboration borrows from examples of collaboration in nature. The structure and hierarchy of the beehive results in honey. Ants working together as a colony delivers food.

Technology collaboration is making us all smarter… and enabling us to do things easier. Wikipedia gathers the facts from the hive of the human brain. Airbnb pools living spaces to make travel easier. WordPress, the platform operating this very website, is an open-source collaboration of software engineers.

So, how do you best collaborate with a marketing agency? How do you do it smart? How can working with a marketing agency make things easier for your business?

About This Show:

Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

Show Notes: 

Work Smart and Making Marketing Easier with a Marketing Agency

Just like the worker bee or the little ant, you realize doing it alone isn’t the path to survival and success. The smart choice and the way to making things easier is to get help.

So how exactly can you work smart with a marketing agency?

Here are 7 things to do or keep in mind to get the most value out of working with a marketing agency.

1. Know your Goals and Objectives- Think through what you want to accomplish in your business. Know what you MUST accomplish as a minimum. Examine and understand your business and capabilities to determine what is realistic. Imagine what is possible if everything falls into place. 

Be prepared to share these goals and the rationale behind your thinking with your marketing agency. This enables the agency to understand what you want to accomplish and sets the levels of expectation for the relationship.

2. Research the Agency- Invest time reading the agency’s website materials. Download any white papers or case studies. Read through the blog posts. Follow the agency on social media.Get input from the agency’s clients. 

This homework gives you a sense of how the agency thinks, what they believe, and how they work. 

If one of your first questions to a marketing agency is “Tell me about your firm and the client’s you work with.”, most top agencies sense this as a red flag. They will dismiss you as unqualified.

3. Be Prepared to Do Work- The question I hear most often boils down to: “What should I do to market my digital health business and what does it cost?”

This is strategic planning- and yes, it takes work. Now, if you’ve done the work and have a plan, and you want a marketing agency to execute it, you can probably get an estimated scope of work and a price.

But developing a strategic plan is collaborative between the marketing agency and client. It takes time, research, thinking, and creativity. It needs budgetary and timeline realities.

Developing a strategic plan requires you to do some work. And, yes, you will pay an agency to help you do this work along with you.

Too many businesses believe they can put together an RFP for marketing services and get this done without an investment and minimal work. The best marketing agencie[...]

Timing is everything. In business and in life.

What’s the best time to hire outside marketing help for your digital health business?

It’s really pretty simple.

Yet only a select few get it right.

About This Show:

Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

Show Notes: 

What’s THE key thing you must get right for your marketing to work?

You MUST have a Product-Market Fit.

Your core value proposition that drives your business MUST be clear NOT only to the founder… but everyone in your company…

And especially clear to your target client base.

Without getting this right, hiring ANY marketing agency is expecting the agency to perform an unrealistic miracle.

You see, any money spent on ads, trying to drive traffic to your website with content, connecting on social media results in FORCING a product to market fit on YOUR terms. You’re hoping people buy. Without a Product-Market fit the hard sell approach is required to get any kind of traction. 

Unfortunately, the hard sell doesn’t work today. Buyers are too smart. They have access to too much information. They have lots of choices. In fact, the hard sell is resisted.

Trying to force your Product or Service into the Market makes it almost impossible to gain any sort of traction or marketing momentum. It’s a high-cost low reward way to go about building a business.

When your potential clients experience and validate your product or service, you have a great foundation for business development. Without gaining real live insights directly from your current and potential clients, you’re shooting in the dark. And even the very best marketing strategy and execution will usually miss.

Get Marketing Help Early

Today, your potential clients are exposed to millions of websites. Access to information is instant with mobile phones. Firms of all sizes operate globally rather than within a defined geographic location. People can connect with thousands of other like-minded individuals through social media.

Because your potential clients are so dispersed, it’s crucial that you know EXACTLY what extremely small list of prospects want your product or service.

This is why Product-Market Fit is the first thing you MUST get right if you want your marketing to work

It’s not about the technology of your products or services.

It’s not about the tools you use to do marketing- email, social media, online events, videos…

It’s ALL starts with delivering what your clients want.

Does your digital health product have the right features?

Do your clients clearly “get” the benefits of these features?

So when should you hire a marketing agency?

As soon as you sense there isn’t a clear Product-Market match.

Chances are you’re too close to your own product… especially in the start up phase to get to market… to know what the problem is. And, how to go about fixing it is a whole other story.

But you sense a disconnect.

Hiring a professional CPA or attorney early on in your busin[...]

For many digital health marketers, especially enterprise B2B firms,  LinkedIn and Google+ are “go to” Social Media networks. Today, we’ll look at these two platforms and explore why you should use them, and share best practices on how to get the most out of your LinkedIn and Google+ efforts.

About This Show:

Each Wednesday, Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

Show Notes: 

First, before we dive into Linkedin and Google+ specifically, let’s talk a bit about…

Selecting Social Media Platforms

What determines where to focus your time and resources on Social Media? It’s really pretty simple. It’s your Buyer Personas. Where do they hang out and spend time online? Who do they trust, who influences them? Where do they go to connect with other industry peers and get information about challenges and problems they face?

Consider these two examples:

Where would a healthcare system Chief Information Officer go to get information about IT solutions to integrate into his or her hospitals? Google search, possibly Twitter, and LinkedIn more than likely. He or she would unlikely turn to family and friends on Facebook for this technical, professional information.

Conversely, a 45 year old manager of the local Applebee’s recently diagnosed with diabetes, probably will explore what his or her friends and family know about smartphone blood sugar monitoring apps on Facebook.

Don’t assume you know what social media networks your buyer personas use. Do some research. Ask customers and prospects where they go to get answers to the problems you solve. 

Keep in mind, social media is a great way to amplify your marketing message and expand your growth strategy. You must have value added content to offer. Social Media, on all the platforms, does not respond well to traditional broadcast push messages.

Even on the platforms that fit your buyer personas, it’s a Listen, Give, Engage… and then Ask approach. It requires a patient, well-conceived strategy.

So, now let’s look at what LinkedIn has to offer your digital health business…

The Case for LinkedIn: The Perfect Platform for B2B Digital Health Marketing?

With over 225 million users, LinkedIn is the premier network for B2B. LinkedIn is nearly 3 times more effective in generating B2B leads than either Twitter or Facebook.. It’s a serious network for real business. The tone is professional, so put on your best suit and behavior. It’s best to avoid the witty Twitter one-liners and funny Facebook photos on LinkedIn.

Without question, if you provide enterprise health IT products and services, you must have a strong LinkedIn presence. 

LinkedIn Best Practices

To grow your reach, increase engagement with your business, generate website traffic, and generate leads and ultimately clients, here’s the LinkedIn game plan.

1. Create a Company Page- The LinkedIn graphic specs for the Company Page Profile are 646 X 220 pixels. As recommended with your Twitter and Facebook Profile and Page, you w[...]

Two of the largest Social Media platforms are Twitter and Facebook. Each of these networks offer benefits and drawbacks for digital health marketing. Today we’ll look at Twitter and Facebook to help you determine if either are a fit for your marketing, and if so, how to get the most out of them. 

About This Show:

Each Wednesday, Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

Show Notes: 

If you roam around any marketing sites online, you’ll find an overwhelming amount of articles, guides, and resources on why and how to use Twitter and Facebook. Today, I’d like to break all this down and simplify it so you can decide if Twitter and or Facebook is worth your time and resources.

First, let’s look at Twitter…

Why Use Twitter for Digital Health Marketing?

Currently, it’s estimated there are 550 million Twitter users. Twitter is the ultimate platform for sharing and promoting links, and short burst real-time engagement and interaction. It offers the opportunity to build an engaged and relevant community, and can drive targeted traffic to your website. Think of Twitter as an listening, engagement, and connection platform.

Twitter is a two-way conversation. To use it effectively, you must first listen. Plug in mhealth, Mobile health, digital health, health IT,  in Twitter Search to find out who is talking, and what they’re talking about,in your industry. 

According to Gary Vaynerchuk, Twitter works best for business when you adopt a Give, Give, Give… then Ask approach. It’s an attitude of caring. Care about what your prospects and clients are thinking and talking about. Give them answers and deliver value rather than first pushing your solution upon them.

Twitter isn’t a broadcast medium. It’s a two-way real-time engagement network. If you want Twitter to deliver value for your business marketing efforts, this is the key mindset.

Twitter Best Practices

1. Listen First- Use Twitter Search to determine the conversation relevant to your business, and uncover prospects and influencers to Follow.

2. Follow Smart- Think Quality, not Quantity. Follow relevant people in the mHealth, health IT, and healthcare industry. Follow back those who Follow you so you can Direct Message them.

3. Profile Basics- Cover Image Graphic Size – 520 x 260 pixels. Logo- 80 x 80 pixels. Use a professional image and logo that presents your business brand. On the Bio, use keywords to describe what you do, who you help, and problems you solve.

4. Best Time to Tweet- 1-3 PM Monday-Friday

5. Always Reply to: Questions and negative comments.

6. Use a Tool- Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, to schedule Tweets throughout the day.

7. Sharing Ratio Guideline- (10-4-1)- 10 Engagements/Shares of other Sources and Links, 4 links to your blog posts, 1 Call to Action- link to your Landing Page. Remember, not push-Engage. You’re attempting to slowly build a “transfer of loyalty”, from prospects and industry influencers who don’t know you to turn them into Fans who will h[...]

Today  we’ll explore the three “T’s” of social media marketing: Time, Team, and Tools.

To make your digital health social media marketing efforts pay off for your business, you must devote the right amount of Time, without wasting time. You must have the right Team in place, either in-house, or outsourced to perform the social media functions and activities.

And third, it’s smart to use the right Tools- to save time and give you the information you need about your social media marketing activities to make your efforts as effective as possible.

Ready? Let’s go..

About This Show:

Each Wednesday, Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

Show Notes:

Time for Digital Health Social Media Marketing

Typically, most digital health entrepreneurs either don’t have any time for social media, so they ignore it completely, and miss the marketing benefits social media can deliver…

Or, they spend WAY too much time on social media.

In a recent study of 460 entrepreneurs and CEO’s, 63% said they spent 1-5 hours per week on social media. The rest are spending 21+ hours each week on social media.

If you, the leader of your business, are spending half of your time on social media, you’re wasting time. Others, can probably do it better, more efficiently, and certainly less expensively than you.

The vast amount of time spent on social media is unproductive. Hand over tasks to either in-house or virtual assistants to handle social media.

What is the right amount of time to spend on Social Media?

Your business goals drive your social media marketing decisions. If, for example, your business goal is to attract 5 new enterprise software clients within the next year for your digital health services, you will need a certain amount of visitors to your website. These visitors will turn into leads, and eventually into sales opportunities, and then clients for your services.

Content, such as blog posts, podcasts, free download guides, webinars, emails, will be needed to drive traffic to your site. Social media is one of the tools you use to promote and amplify your content.

As the leader, founder, or CEO of your firm, your time is your most precious asset. You must protect it and use it wisely.  Your social media activities must support your short-term and long-range business goals. At the end of the day, investing time, energy, and resources must produce a ROI. If not, it’s simply not worth your time.

Realize also that not all social networks are worth your time. If you provide enterprise software solutions to hospitals, you’ll probably find Facebook a waste of time. However, connecting with and personally engaging decision makers and industry influencers on Twitter and Linkedin could be worth spending 1-2 hours per week.

Fortunately, with the right Team using the right Tools, Social Media can be handled either with in-house staff or outsourced virtual assistants, usually cost effectively.

Your role is to show the team the map, the path to getting to the end[...]

Social Media offers a powerful opportunity for Digital Health marketers to connect with health IT influencers, key decision makers, and end users. Social Media offers the opportunity to amplify your marketing message. Social Media is your tool to create relationships with prospects and customers.

But without a plan that connects to your Vision, Brand, and Market Positioning, Social Media can be an expensive waste of time… and actually hurt your marketing efforts.

In this first episode of four on Social Media for Digital Health Marketers, we’ll explore how to create a rock solid Social Media plan to fuel your Social Media Marketing activities.

About This Show:

Each Wednesday, Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

Show Notes: 

Why Social Media for Digital Health Marketing?

Social Media is now more than a tactic or platform. It’s here to stay. It’s where your prospects, clients, and industry influencers spend time and connect online. Social media is your opportunity to break through all the noise, earn attention, and add value to your prospects.

To achieve digital health marketing success, you must learn to leverage Social Media. Social Media is your avenue to meet your prospects and clients online.

 It positions you to:

Listen to the market- Learn what problems your prospects face, the language they use to describe these problems, and the solutions they seek.

Build relationships- With industry influencers who can help spread your marketing message and add credibility… With the right prospects for your digital health products and services… Deepen relationships with clients, turning them into advocates who help spread your message and awareness of the value you deliver.

Promote Your Content- Using Social Media, you have the ability to promote and amplify your marketing message with value-added content.

Today, the marketing process and how buyers engage with sales is vastly different. In the past, a B2B prospect engaged with a salesperson to get information about a company’s products and services. Marketing was focused on brand building using mass advertising, trade shows, Public Relations, and print media. Sales people opened up opportunities with direct mail and cold phone calling to a targeted audience. Marketing passed all leads, both hot and cold, to sales for aggressive follow up.

Now, thanks to online research and the ability to tap social networks easily online, buyers are in control of the sales process. Most of the research is done prior to meeting with the sales person, so the sales person is no longer the source of product and service information. Today brand building is accomplished through social media engagement. Today marketers must learn how to tell their story in formats and on the social media platforms where their prospects spend time.

Harness Social Media: Create a Social Media Marketing Gameplan

Effective Social Media Marketing begins with a solid foundation. Your strategy is the building block of this foundation.

 In an earlier series o[...]

Nearly five years ago, shortly after the launch of the original iPhone, four guys appeared at my office with an idea. A big idea. A huge vision to grow a billion dollar business in healthcare IT using mobile technology.

Here’s what happened…

About This Show:

Each Wednesday, Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

 

Show Notes: 

Voalte: a Digital Health Success Story (and how Modallic helped) 

Fast forward five years…

These four guys have built a 150 plus employee business with more than 10,000  iPhones installed in over 30 hospitals nationwide. The Voalte Voice Alarm Text system using iPhones is transforming communications in hospitals.

How did it happen?

As a serial entrepreneur in the marketing consulting business, I get frequent visits from folks with big ideas. The trick is to sort out the flat out crazy ones from those with real promise. 

The vision these four guys had sounded intriguing and seemed to have promise, but they had a problem. While they had a big idea and vision, they lacked a solid brand strategy. So, we agreed to work together. 

Here’s how we helped these four guys go from an idea to 30+ hospital clients using 10’s of thousands of iPhones to improve communications and efficiencies.

When we started working together, there was idea, no working product, no software.  Innovus (the original company name) truly was only an idea. We helped Innovus develop a brand plan, a communications and roadmap designed to make them look like a real business. Innovus needed to look legitimate so they could open doors to talk to leading hospitals about their idea. Branding and positioning was required. Innovus became Voalte. (Voice Alarm Test, pronounced “Volt”) A website was created. Tons of press, both local in Sarasota and the industry trade publications was generated. Dressed in pink and green, the founders make a splash as different at the HIMSS conference in Chicago. Voalte was one of the first to talk about using iPhones in hospitals.  A brand was born.

All of this initial branding and positioning enabled  Voalte to land an opportunity to test their big idea in Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

“Without a doubt, Voalte would not be here without Sarasota Memorial,”  Trey Lauderdale, Voalte Founder and President, said. “They were willing to take a chance on a start-up.”

The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build – the thing customers want and will pay for -as quickly as possible.With the Sarasota Memorial test opportunity, Voalte entered the lean Build-Test-Learn phase and the firm’s product and marketing message began to take shape. The value and growth hypothesis of the founders vision was proven. They had a product that delivered value to customers and knew they could build a sustainable business.  

Was the initial branding and positioning work crucial in landing the Sarasota Memorial opportunity? I haven’t asked Trey, but I’d like to think his quote regarding how Modallic helped Voa[...]

Walking the entrepreneur’s path is often a lonely journey. Sometimes, even with brilliant ideas and a burning vision of what we want to build, we end up making and doing some really brain-dead things. I know I have…

That’s why this James Altucher article at Techcrunch grabbed my attention…

About This Show:

Each Wednesday, Sam Stern, founder and Chief Marketing Technologist at Modallic, an mHealth marketing and brand development firm reveals his winning Mobile, Digital and healthcare IT marketing strategies, shares real life Mobile Health marketing success stories, and offers breakthrough marketing tips and tactics so you can lead the field with your Mobile Health and healthcare IT solutions.

Discover how to craft compelling stories to open doors with key health care system decision makers. Understand how an agile marketing mindset and approach positions you to create a profitable, sustainable business.

Gain insights into Mobile Health and healthcare IT marketing strategy, how to tell your unique mHealth and healthcare IT marketing story, creating your mHealth buyer personas, how to integrate an agile marketing process, mobile health and digital health brand development and market positioning, and learn what really works in attracting and landing mobile health and healthcare IT clients.

 

Show Notes: 

Five Things Healthcare IT Entrepreneurs Should Never Do

In his post, serial entrepreneur James Altucher shares a story of his attempt to help a software developer friend. Altucher sets the software entrepreneur up with a very profitable billion dollar plus revenue company who he believes could use the software.

His friend makes five basic, yet critical, mistakes:

1. He was late- Altucher needed to call and remind him a week later to deliver the demo that the software entrepreneur said would only take him minutes to knock out.

2. He was focused on raising money- He didn’t take time to create the demo because his focus was on building a prototype to attract venture capital.

3. He under-delivered- His response was to fit his solution into his product rather than delivering what was wanted.

4. He didn’t solve his own problem- More of not really responding to want the customer wanted.

5. He didn’t offer new ideas- More of not really including some basic things that fit what the client wanted.

Altucher’s solutions to these five mistakes are brilliant in their common sense. And, they re-confirm the need to adopt a customer-focused lean approach that includes testing that we talked about in the past two week’s podcasts.

1. Be on time- enough said.

2. Your customer is your audience, not venture capitalists. When you have an opportunity to deliver for a potential customer, find out what they want and if you can profitably deliver value, do it.

3. Over-deliver- Give the customer what he wants… and then some. Go the extra mile. Altucher is right: so few businesses actually do this. 

4. Be proactive in solving customer’s problems- When you spend time to deeply learn what problems your customers face and what they really want, you add tremendous value. You’re no longer a vendor. You become a valued business partner. 

5. Providing new ideas does position you as a business partner- Not as a bullshit vendor trying to squeeze money out of them, as Altucher calls it.

Using a continuous lean Build-Test-Learn feedback loop provides you with a system to deliver what the customer truly wants.

Altucher’s quote pretty much sums up the lean approach in real non-corporate speak language:

“All you can hope to do is get close enough to what the customer wants so that they then notice you. If you look good and they ask you to dance, then you better be light on your toes or you will fall.”

A lean, agile approach allows you to be light on your toes. 

When a prospect says “Let’s dance!” to your healthcare IT solutions, you’ll know the right [...]