Leverage the power of market data to drive marketing and positioning strategies
Is your strategic marketing plan used by everyone as a blueprint for organization-wide growth, or is it perceived as a tool for the marketing department to execute?
When you present your marketing objectives to your Board of Directors and C-suite, you can’t just talk about creative campaigns and tracking metrics. Your plan must encompass the bigger picture of how and where your organization can grow market share given your current competitive landscape (e.g. what your competitors are doing and saying, how you rank in terms of consumer preference, awareness and satisfaction, and so on). When you have this type of insight at your fingertips (and in your presentation), it becomes much easier for board members to grasp the objectives of your creative campaigns, for CFOs to allocate resources to developing authentic brand and positioning differentiators, and for CEOs to address operational barriers to ensure that your strategic marketing plan can be successfully executed.
In a perfect world, the visions of executive and board leadership and marketing professionals would always align. But in the real world, that’s not always the case. If you sense a gap between what you are trying to accomplish and how much is truly understood by your leadership, treat it not as a road block– instead, seize the opportunity to elevate the conversation and go to market with confidence.
Good news: help is available in the form of an innovative product called maps+ (which stands for marketing and positioning strategies+). maps+ rolls the comprehensive suite of strategic marketing services that Dobies Health Marketing has provided for decades into one very robust and insightful product. Expertly designed to help you navigate the nuances of an ever-changing market, maps+ helps your organization make better decisions to increase market share and brand equity.
As a healthcare marketing leader myself, I could have put maps+ to good use time and time again throughout my career. Over the years, I have personally faced the challenge of garnering buy-in from the C-suite for my marketing plans and tactics. CEOs and service line managers have asked me to “work magic” without actually being able or willing to engage in the process of defining “magic.” Consultants have been all too eager to offer help, but many, to my dismay, ultimately offered nothing more than a templated creative approach based on what has worked in other markets.
Through the years, I’ve come to appreciate the power of:
- A brand built on the organization’s ACTIONS, not just a slogan or campaign
- A positioning strategy based on a thorough understanding of local market dynamics AND industry evolution
- Organizational differentiators that are authentic, not just marquee statements on a website
- A comprehensive STRATEGIC marketing plan that is based on detailed analytics and aligned with organizational priorities
- A marketing plan that incorporates measurable goals for selected individual service lines and the organization as a whole
It is only when all of the above has been presented, debated, refined and agreed upon with executive leadership that actionable plans for tactical execution can and should be developed. maps+ is your key to reaching a one to three-year marketing and positioning plan based on a market share analysis, competitive review, market forces study, preference analysis, market insights and more. I encourage my fellow healthcare marketing leaders to explore what maps+ can do for you today.