Why Your Old Healthcare Marketing Strategy Isn’t Working | E. 111

The Healthcare Leadership Experience

Marketing effectiveness has fallen by nearly a quarter since 2020. Ian Baer, Founder & Chief Soothsayer at Sooth, offers his insights on how healthcare organizations can respond, with Jim Cagliostro.

Episode Introduction

Ian shares how 90% of today’s marketing decisions are emotional, and 80% are made on impulse, and the challenges of ‘’marketing by the pound.’’ He also explains why a regulatory environment means healthcare often stays in the shallow end of the marketing pool, how data unlocks empathy between brands and audiences, and advises everyone to ‘’bring your soul to work every day.’’

Show Topics

• Making emotional connections in marketing

• Sooth helps brands to understand the truth

• Healthcare has unique marketing challenges

• ‘’Marketing by the pound’’

• The roadmap of healthcare marketing is the most complicated

• The power of patient stories

• Leadership tip: Bring your soul to work every day

08:13 Making emotional connections in marketing

Ian said 90% of the decisions people make when spending money are emotional.

‘’AI, it's very buzzwordy, but what it does for us is it allows me to take what used to require one or two years of custom research that might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, into a methodology that we can execute in a few weeks to give a brand a very clear understanding of the emotional journey of the individual that they're trying to reach. Now of course, the impact in healthcare is huge because look, 90% of all the decisions people make when it comes to spending their money are emotional. It's a big mistake marketers made for decades upon decades in thinking there's a balance between the rational and their emotional. No, there isn't. People make emotional decisions, and then they seek rationale to back up where their heart has already gone. And Harvard did some brilliant work that they published in 2016, an article I recommend to anybody and everybody get their hands on, called The New Science of Customer Emotion. .. And what they found was, of the thousands of different emotions we all experience, it's been estimated that people experience 34,000 different emotions. … But what they found is there are actually only 10 things that we feel as humans that have a positive correlation to the way we spend our money.’’

14:54 Sooth helps brands to understand the truth

Ian explained the background to his company name, and its purpose.

‘’So, I went looking through my LinkedIn profile, just going through all my experience and, "How can I describe what I do?" And I found a LinkedIn recommendation from a former client in which he referred to me as, "Soothsayer." And it reminded me that very often, when we were at a time of crisis for his brand, he would pick up the phone and call me and say, "Oh, soothsayer." And that would very often start our conversations. I thought, "Well, that's a really interesting word." I always thought a soothsayer was somebody who predicts the future. It's not. Soothsayer is somebody who tells the truth. The word sooth literally means truth. It just went obsolete in the English language about 400 years ago when Shakespeare got done with it, which is what enabled me to actually trademark it as the name of a business. It's pretty hard to get a vernacular word as the name of your company. So, when we decided to name the business Sooth, because in reality that is exactly what we're doing is helping brands understand the truth, then it just followed suit that I should be the soothsayer, that we actually have two practices at the company. We have the soothsaying practice, which is determining what the truths are, and then our client partnership practice, we call those people ‘’soothsolvers’’ because what they do is actually take the truth and put it to work in really smart marketing recommendations, and work in partnership with senior leaders on the client side.’’

17:23 Healthcare has unique marketing challenges

Ian said the regulatory environment means that healthcare is averse to taking marketing risks.

‘’Because of the regulatory environment, healthcare marketers have learned to play it extremely safe, and it's understandable. The last thing you want is a slap on the wrist, or much worse, from the FDA when you've spent countless millions of dollars, let's say, bringing a drug to market. But the result is most healthcare marketers have become conditioned to stay in the very shallow end of the swimming pool. And where that becomes unfortunate, we spoke earlier about no industry really needing empathy in their marketing more than healthcare. Well, we now have the ability through use of data, through use of technology, through one-to-one connection and interaction, through experience design, to create a really special personal experience. And yet, data privacy is a scary thing. Engaging with someone, one-on-one, whether it's through social media or other, that's a scary thing because you may wind up having to capture adverse reaction information that you then have to report to the FDA, that a lot of people would prefer not to get their hands up. So, the result is you have too many brands that don't say enough to really be helpful to people, and they're holding back way too much. And one of the biggest challenges there is the unregulated side of the healthcare space, the area that a lot of healthcare marketers might not want to acknowledge as legitimate, companies selling nutritional supplements, companies selling devices that don't really have any medical benefit, but they're claiming, "Just put this on your wrist. Just put this on your knee. Just sit up against this thing." They're not operating under the auspices of the FDA. They're making outrageous claims, and almost daring consumers and competitors to sue them. And because we live in a world now, where it's very hard for anyone to find one truth in any area of marketing or the news, consumers are somewhat in the crosshairs here. So, if healthcare marketers play it too safe and continue to stay in the shallow end, the ones who lose are the very patients and families that they're trying to help, because they'll chase false promises that really are leading healthcare marketers can fulfill in a much more meaningful way.’’

21:35 ‘’Marketing by the pound’’

Ian said marketing effectiveness is down by nearly a quarter since 2020 and 80% of people make decisions on impulse.

‘’Yeah, marketing effectiveness overall is down 23% since 2020, as a global practice, across all industries. Marketing is significantly less effective than it was 20 years ago. So, we have more data than ever, more technology than ever, more access to people than ever. And we're getting so bad at this that most brands have now shifted much more to managing the economics of marketing, how much they're spending. It's become somewhat of a marketing by the pound model because if we can't get it to produce more, then we just have to spend less on it. And everyone has gotten to settle for this reduced level of performance. How did we get here? Well, impulse is a huge issue. The extent to which people make purchase decisions, and a decision to seek out a certain medication, that falls into the category of purchase decisions. The extent to which people do this on impulse has doubled in the last 10 years, and the amount of money people spend on impulse purchases like that, "I'm going to click twice on this Facebook ad and get those gummies and throw out my metformin." That's happening faster than ever. So, when 90% of decisions are emotional, when 80% of people are making decisions on impulse, which means they're not gathering the facts, they're not gathering information, they're not calling their doctor, they're not asking other people who are suffering with the same condition. They're just saying, "Yep, that's for me." That's how we got here.

26:33 The roadmap of healthcare marketing is the most complicated

Ian explained why patients and professionals walk one path, with multiple points of view at every step.

‘’Here, every step of the way, there's an advisory relationship going on. There are certain things the consumer can do without the professional. There are certain things they cannot do without the profession, and it really is a pathway that needs to be curated. We need to understand where they come together and the information they need to reach the right decisions, and where they're going to be off on their own, exposed to different information. So, I think starting with the fact that there is no differentiated journey between the patient and the professional, but actually it's one journey, it's one path, and they're both walking it. They just enter and exit at different times. I think that's the most critical truth to understand, to start to do this thing the right way and to see every one of the decision points through multiple sets of eyes: the patient, the professional, often caregivers are involved. Sometimes you have primary and specialist professionals, institutions, payers. There are multiple points of view at every stage that need to be considered. It is the most complicated roadmap of marketing that exists.’’

30:32 The power of patient stories

Ian said there’s no substitute for hearing people’s ‘’data-rich’’ real stories.

‘’There's a lot of things a drug company can't say, that a patient can. And I think the more drug companies get comfortable giving voice to the people who are actually on the journey with that disease or that illness, it's really going to help bridge the gap between this kind of odd mix of old school branding and clinical detail. But within all of that, I have a hard time finding the humanity, and I think the more brands get comfortable, letting people tell the story of what it's really like to experience the uncertainty of disease, the hope that comes with treatments. I had a heart attack six months ago, a massive heart attack, the type that has a 96% fatality rate. It was the first cardiac event of my life. It changed my perspective on everything. I've learned a lot about my body, about my health, about what it's going to take to live a good healthy life for as long as I can. I've got a story to tell. There's millions of people like me who have stories to tell, and I would love to see more healthcare marketers be brave enough to let people tell their own stories. I think that would make a dramatic difference. Through the work we do here, we try to approximate that. We do a very good job of creating data-rich stories that represent people's beliefs and fears and tendencies. There is no substitute for hearing people's real stories. And when I see healthcare brands step up and tell real stories, I applaud them…… People retain information 30 times more when they hear it in a story.’’

34:41 Leadership tip: Bring your soul to work every day

Ian shared an encounter with journalist Jimmy Breslin.

‘’If you've never heard of Jimmy Breslin, you should find out who Jimmy Breslin was, because in New York in the 1970s and '80s, he was the most important voice in journalism. He told the stories of this city. And I got to meet him. And in a conversation in which he talked me out of a career in journalism, which is a story for another day, the advice he left me with was... the last thing he said as I walked out of the room, "Hey kid, don't be a suit. Whatever you do, don't be a suit." Now, nothing wrong with suits. I own a few. I wear them occasionally, but what it really meant to me and what I internalized and have carried as a mission is, "Don't ever give up who you are in the pursuit of business success. Don't ever give up your integrity. Don't ever give up your identity. Don't ever let a company tell you what you're really about as a human being." That has never let me down. It has defined both my good and bad career choices, but I think as much as you can stay true to yourself, that's what the world needs from you. AI is going to move in and automate a lot of the things that we don't need humans to do for themselves. So, more than ever, really bring your soul to work every day, and everyone that surrounds you will benefit from that.’’

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You’ll also hear:

Ian’s mission at Sooth: ‘’There's nothing more we can do as marketers, as a noble mission, than to help people live better, longer, healthier lives, protect families against the economic crisis that healthcare represents in our country right now. And that endless money pit, and homes and savings being lost, chasing solutions….. Our mission at Sooth is really all about being able to quantify and leverage a very deep level of understanding and empathy to solve people's problems. And gosh, doesn't healthcare need that?’’

Disease is the #1 cause of bankruptcy in the US: ‘’People don't talk about that enough. It is more than just selling drugs. So much more than that. When you talk to people whose lives are being impacted by these diseases, it changes everything.’’

What Soothsayer offers to healthcare organizations: ‘’What we do as a practice is give brands a highly robust understanding of all of that intricate emotional decision-making that they can literally wire their brand's marketing into. There is no category where empathy matters more than healthcare because everyone's journey with an illness is unique. …we're able to see all the way through, see where those emotions collide, see where they might cause people to sort of go into their own camps and how the brands can bring them back together.’’

Why brand equity is occupying the wrong place in the timeline: ‘’Most brands still are too focused on the moment of truth, whether that truth is a click, whether that truth is a purchase, whether it's making an appointment, whether it's a visit, whether it's an order, whether it's a script. And what they're not focusing on is understanding who that person is before those transactional moments take place, and solving their problems, or at least giving them a pathway to a solution before they ever reach the moment of impulse. Because once you let them get to that moment of impulse, it is Dodge City.’’

Data unlocks empathy: ‘’…my whole business is about using data to unlock empathy between brands and audiences. So, there's a huge role for data to play, but data is not just about targeting and segmentation and managing the numbers side of things. We are all, really, walking data vaults. Our data includes experiences, our data includes our emotions, our impulses. These are data points too, and they're every bit as valid and important, and drive 90% of the impact of marketing effectiveness.’’

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