- October 9, 2024
- Posted by: growth@locutushealth.com
- Category: Healthcare IT, Industry Articles
Is reliance on word of mouth holding you back from growth in the enterprise healthcare tech market? It’s time to shift your perspective.
Word of mouth (WoM) is a double-edged sword in marketing. Yes, it can be incredible in early-stage programs, but all that success can be obliterated by a new market entrant, a shift in technology, or a change in the healthcare winds—leaving you and your team starting at the bottom of an uphill battle.
The good news is that if you’ve relied on word of mouth (or its cousin, direct network relationships of your executives and sales staff), you can slingshot off that reputation to inform a stronger, more productive, and more intentional marketing program.
I’ve run across three broad categories of enterprise healthcare tech vendors that struggle here.
- Legacy vendors who’ve been around 15+ years and are now playing “catchup” with competitors who are more intentional about their marketing
- Sales-driven vendors who now need to grow and scale, finding themselves “behind” in the minds of prospect buying groups who’ve explored deep competitor content in their buying journey
- Tech vendors who experienced early success because of enthusiasm around a certain technology or government incentives/pressures to adopt
These vendors eventually run up against a wall—a time when it becomes clear they need to grow and drive increasing revenue. But they’re effectively stuck because they haven’t developed an intentional approach to marketing that leverages content as a relationship-building tool. Remember these three stats:
- By the time sales makes contact, your buyer’s are almost done with their decision-making. Your buyers reach out when they’re already 70% through their buying journey.
- You don’t control when or how your healthcare buyers engage. 84% of your buyers land on the first firm they contact (because they’ve already done a lot of independent research before their first point of contact.)
- The buying journey is significantly longer than any sales cycle you’re measuring. Healthcare buying cycles can run 18 months or more (I’ve seen them get up to 5 years or longer with hospitals.)
The answer to turning this around lies in understanding what word of mouth really is and taking action on the potential you have today.
Inconvenient Truths About Word of Mouth in Enterprise Healthcare Tech
The first step in turning WoM into a competitive content marketing advantage is shifting your team’s mindset and accepting some realities of modern healthcare tech marketing.
WoM and Content Marketing Aren’t Enemies
Word of mouth is only a problem if it’s a replacement for intentional content marketing—the kind that fuels relationships with enterprise healthcare decision makers.
The fact that any of these highly busy professionals have ever taken the time to mention your solution to one of your peers is a clue that you’re in touch with value in this highly complex space. So, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Instead, look for opportunities to leverage what you have.
Over-reliance Means You’re Early Maturity
Since I work with early stage programs and small teams, with every client I work with, I plot their position on the Gartner Content Marketing Maturity model. If WoM has been a primary driver of your marketing results, you’re likely in stages 0-2, meaning you’ve got a ton of opportunity to grow and mature in your content marketing results.
WoM Can Be Deceptive…and a Source of Wisdom
If your solution is so strong that healthcare decision makers organically talk to each other…that’s great, but it can also contribute to apathy in your marketing and sales departments.
The good news is that there’s a ton of information to be gathered if you dig into why they started (and why they might have stopped).
Those Channels Are Still Valuable
A lot of marketing and sales leaders come to me because they’ve seen their results from WoM fall off. It’s temping to completely abandon these channels and allocate resources to PR and expensive branding, but know that it’s not that simple.
Certain enterprise healthcare leaders place a ton of value on the opinions of their peers. CFOs are a great example. Ask how you can incorporate and reinvigorate these conversations (especially in terms of equipping these titles with content they can share along with their recommendations), not whether you should be using them at all.
Your Content Marketing and Brand Should Be Informed by WoM
A well-executed value prop is your North Star in enterprise healthcare tech…and the reasons behind WoM successes should inform not only your content strategy, but your value prop itself.
Leveraging Word of Mouth in Enterprise Healthcare Tech Content Marketing
When it’s time to mine your WoM experiences to inform productive content marketing, you should consider this basic path to progress.
Start With Listening
Customer listening exercises can be incredibly valuable in understanding why any leader took the time to recommend you to a peer.
Beyond this, look into market research and Evidence-Based Listening to determine key data points such as levels of brand awareness in your market and what features, results, and outcomes pique leader interest and get them talking.
Beef up Your Value Prop
If you’re listening well, you’ll have key information in shaping the language around your value prop. Too many vendors know the factual value and outcomes they provide, but fail to relate this through language that’s native to healthcare decision makers or incorporate this value into a brand that resonates and frames their relationship with the market.
Test on a Content Campaign
Once you’ve developed a viable iteration of your value prop, it’s time to test it. Consider a minimum viable funnel for one product or a particular content theme. If you have a decent content bank, you might also have opportunities to repurpose and recycle your content through the lens of your new WoM-informed value prop. Most importantly, make sure to get your strongest content out to the people and positions who’ve been your advocates in the past.
Since we’re testing word of mouth, this is a great place to lean into case studies and testimonials, being intentional about which customer stories you choose to highlight and how you frame them.
Turn Stagnant Word of Mouth Into a Competitive Advantage
From a program perspective, word of mouth can be tricky to navigate since it’s often a source of pride for leaders in your organization. If you need outside support in applying a critical and industry-sensitive lens to your past success and future potential in the healthcare industry, grab some time on my calendar for a brief Diagnosis & Discovery session today.