Business Change Management

On Oct. 10, 2015,  at the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development (SHSMD) conference in the District of Columbia, I presented a workshop with Mark Clark, Healthgrades Vice President of Strategic Development, called: “Your Data Wants To Talk—How Can You Hear It?”

The focus of our presentation was the enormous challenges hospital marketers are facing as they grapple with how to turn an abundance of data into smarter marketing strategies.

Afterwards I wrote a blog about the intersection of data and storytelling and what it means to healthcare providers, which has just been published in FierceHealthcare and which I'll touch on here.

Healthcare providers now realize they cannot continue to market just patient-centric, high quality care as their brand differentiator!

In my three previous blogs, I explained how digital or inbound marketing is the best way to turn strangers into customers, then promoters, of your business. I showed you how to use the inbound methodology to convert people who are searching for you into leads, and then how to transform those leads into customers (close the deal). Now it’s time for the last, and arguably most important, step in the inbound marketing journey: Delight.

“Delight” is the glue that keeps a customer stuck to your brand, your solutions

By now you’re probably well aware of HubSpot’s graph that illustrates the four parts of a successful inbound marketing strategy: 1) Attract, 2) Convert, 3) Close and 4) Delight.

We have recently been working with clients who are using our inbound marketing methods to capture prospective customers — whether these are students for a college, patients for a healthcare practice or buyers of consumer products. And one of the challenges that keeps arising is: How do inbound marketing and sales intersect in new ways as buyers rapidly change their habits?

Why do we often not see what is right in front us? Recently I've been working with several clients that could grow by leaps and bounds if only they could "see" the business opportunities that are right before them. All they need to do is open their eyes, open their minds, and re-define the way they and their people think about what they could offer consumers that they're not offering right now.

Having written two blogs explaining why Inbound Marketing is the proven methodology for the digital age by attracting interested buyers in an “inbound” rather than an “outbound” way, I’d now like to zero in on Step #3 in the buyers journey: Close.

Of the four inbound marketing actions, “Close” lands your business an actual customer