By Jo Davies, Managing Director, VIM Group
The life science and health care industries are experiencing unprecedented disruption, as digital innovations and changing demographics continue to blur the traditional boundaries between sectors and specialisms.
For consumers, the key factors driving this change include the ageing population, the proliferation of online information and lifestyle changes in response to new information. Brand and reputation matter more than ever before as patients make more informed choices about healthcare providers.
For health providers and businesses, mergers and acquisitions are reshaping the industry – in fact we saw a total $2.5trn in healthcare deals cut in the first half of 2018 alone. One example saw GSK and Pfizer announce a joint venture to create a premier global consumer healthcare company.
Overall, these changes have pushed the role played by brand into the industry’s spotlight.
Businesses must also consider a global megatrend that has impacted marketing in all sectors: the need to show your organisation’s purpose beyond profit. As a healthcare or pharmaceutical business, what is your reason to exist beyond profit? And how do you communicate that purpose?
When working with businesses in this sector, like Merck and Mediclinic, on complex brand change and digital transformation, I have been asked key questions: what’s the future of brand in the healthcare sector? And how can businesses adapt to thrive?
Healthcare marketing in the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’
A new era of emerging technology, dubbed the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, is already shaping our lives. Tech like 5G, artificial intelligence and digital realities have the potential to revolutionise how we treat and diagnose illness.
But this technology is also changing the way healthcare providers recruit, interact with and retain patients. Branding is particularly important in private care, where power has shifted back to the patient rather than the provider.
As patients shop around for care services, patient experience becomes a key driver of business performance by strengthening customer loyalty, brand reputation and referrals. In simple terms, consumerisation of the healthcare journey means that awareness, performance and coherency of the brand have become a priority.
One area where we expect to see healthcare innovate successfully is digital reality, an umbrella term for augmented, virtual, mixed reality and immersive technologies. Usually associated with early adopters in gaming and entertainment, this tech has reached a tipping point where cost, availability of content and market reach make them more accessible. Other household tech like voice-controlled and connected devices also present healthcare brands with entirely new brand touchpoints.
Businesses must consider how these new brand touch points can coherently convey the brand’s purpose and tone of voice in a way that fulfils consumer expectations.
It’s also important to remember that healthcare is rooted in the expertise of high-quality professionals with the right skills, training and qualifications to deliver that care. An ageing workforce and higher demand for services are putting pressure on providers to recruit and retain those professionals. Brand can play a role here: improved employer branding, internal and external reputation management, training and referrals are all rooted in an efficient brand organisation.
In reality, however, brand is too often overlooked within the healthcare sector. We see a similar trend in professional and legal services, for example, where sales and client relationships have trumped the strategic priorities that effective marketing can drive.
Our research at VIM Group has shown that business performance in all sectors improves when brand is taken as a strategic starting point – but only a small percentage of organisations take a brand-first approach to strategy. Businesses opting to focus on brand as a cornerstone of business strategy are getting a competitive advantage.
Tips to save millions on brand investment
Whether healthcare businesses are considering an investment in a brand reboot, a post-merger refresh or a complete overhaul, they have two areas of opportunity. Firstly, to save millions through more efficient implementation of the brand change. And secondly, to create a compelling brand experience that drives long-term loyalty and high levels of awareness within target markets.
Here are a few points to consider before any brand investment in the healthcare sector:
1. Stay true to the brand story
Your organisation needs to have a clearly defined brand proposition. The strongest brands ‘promise and prove’: they make an enticing, relatable promise and prove it in every interaction with the target audience. This should be as true for a high street retailer as it is for a healthcare brand.
Staying true to the brand’s promise, tone of voice and its over-arching perception among consumers will ensure it can always be coherently communicated, regardless of whichever marketing technology is adopted.
It’s also important to remember that brand starts from within. It requires attention from everybody within the organisation – not just the marketing team. Practical tech solutions such as employer branding strategies, e-learning and digital brand portals will make it much easier to ensure employees live and breathe the brand.
2. Re-define the brand organisation
Effective brand organisation should be a continual process of improvement and investment – a life cycle rather than a one-off.
Ten years ago, many businesses believed that the key to a strong brand was the consistent application of a corporate identity across all channels. But as the pace of change accelerates and brand touch points proliferate, it’s more about having one coherent and convincing brand promise.
That means putting an end to the ‘corporate style police’ and the silo structure of brand management, while the concept of brand ownership also needs to evolve. Teams with a stake in brand management – IT, HR, Marketing and so on – must communicate and collaborate more effectively, whereby brand managers become more like community managers who aggregate input from a range of stakeholders.
An evolving set of brand principles delivered through a carefully defined brand organisation will put the business on a surer footing to respond to, adopt and take advantage of new opportunities presented by emergent marketing tech.
3. Make brand performance measurable
Many organisations are not clear about the exact value of their brand, how to assess its value or which analytics will best measure its performance. But this needs to be a key consideration, particularly in light of the fact that brand represents an average 18% of any organisation’s total market value.
When undertaking a brand investment, boardrooms require hard data to justify that spend and will expect constant financial updates. Representing the value of the brand in financial terms will make it easier to secure that budget now and in the future.
To make the performance of brand investment measurable, a good brand dashboard that merges different data sets and provides real-time insight will be an invaluable tool.