MARkETINg
• Analyze the Patient Journey. The
“patient journey” is a technique for
understanding a patient’s complete
experience with an illness and with
the healthcare system.
• Segment, target, and position.
Understand market segments, target those that best align with your
product strategy, and position your
product as an appropriate solution.
Then continually refine that strategy to get closer to an understanding of the individual customer.
• Fully integrate customer data.
The better you can coordinate
customer interactions across all
channels, online or in person, the
more effective your overall communications strategy will be.
HOW COMMUNICATIONS
JOURNEYS DIFFER FROM THE
TRADITIONAL APPROACH
Once you’ve gained a solid understanding of your customers and
goals, you can use those insights
to engage them with well-orches-trated communications journeys.
Like a patient journey, a communications journey tells the story of
how each step in the process adds
up to an overall experience. You
want to understand the sequence
of communications that will be
most useful and engaging for your
audience, delivering them at the
right time and at the right pace to
achieve your marketing goals.
This journeys-based approach differs from the traditional approach
in a number of ways:
Microsegmentation—rather than
applying the same tactic to everyone or breaking a campaign into
fixed streams for two to three basic
segments, this approach involves
creating more personalized experiences based on the mix of data
points and interactions with each
customer. This can include classic
demographic and psychographic
segmentation elements along with
other data points such as channel preference and past campaign
response. Representing an extension of (and enhancement to)
traditional market segmentation
strategies, these microsegments are
iteratively refined and improved
based on new data as a campaign
is executed.
Differentiated messaging—
creating a range of messages that can be
deployed to address the microsegments you’ve created rather than a
“one-size-fits-all” approach.
Orchestration across channels—
centralized management of all the
touch points a customer receives
so they fit together into a coherent
experience, expressed in one voice
from the company.
Two-way, iterative delivery—A
communications journey also
breaks from the pattern of communications flowing one way only
– from the marketing and sales
professionals out to their customers. The customer journey is created as an initial framework, a plan
designed to accommodate change
based on bi-directional communications. By systematically gathering customer feedback and observing customer behavior, you can
make course corrections as your
understanding of the market and
the individuals within it improves.
For example, you might have initially planned an email campaign
but your data shows customers
with certain characteristics respond better to text messages.
Use of branching and business
logic—campaigns that involve
many segments, messages and
channels are by definition much
more complex than traditional
campaigns. Managing these more
individualized customer journeys
requires using business rules that
control the cadence of messages
across channels over time and
adapt what the customer receives
next, based on how they respond.
INCREASING DIGITAL
SPEND:
The Top 30 Promoted
Brands increased their
digital spend by 277%
from 2009-2014 (Ref:
Cegedim Strategic Data, 2014)
JOURNEYS DRIVE
ENGAGEMENT:
Well-coordinated,
personalized delivery
increases engagement
by up to 44% (Ref: IMS
Health Case Study 2015)
TRADITIONAL APPROACH COMMUNICATIONS JOURNEYS APPROACH
Limited segmentation of campaigns Microsegmentation based on data
Mass distribution of common message Differentiated messaging by segment
Decentralized, tactic-based delivery Centralized orchestration across channels
Static, one-way delivery flexible, iterative delivery based on behavior
Basic campaign flows Sophisticated branching and business logic
