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Health IT Marketing Content
Effectiveness Survey
A look at how
hospital executives
use health IT
vendor-generated
content for
decision-making
The health IT marketplace is a unique, dynamic and highly
competitive environment. Very few target audiences are as
skeptical and disillusioned. Very few products have a life and death
impact. Very few markets or solution offerings are as complex.
Health IT companies generate a ton of content for prospects and
customers along a very long sales cycle. Considering the budget
and resources allocated to creating all this content, the big question
is: how effective or compelling is any of it? With little room for
waste in today’s marketing budgets, it’s time to take a hard look at
the content we spend so much time and resources developing.
That’s why Quiddity conducted a survey with 100 hospital
executives on LinkedIn, through online surveys and telephone
interview to better understand the perception and role of vendor-
generated marketing content in decision-making, as well as identify
key challenges and opportunities. The results are interesting, and
the trends very strong and consistent with larger research studies in
other industries.
Randi Rossman Founder & Chief Marketing Officer, Quiddity Marketing
Introduction
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What You’ll Learn in This eBook
OVERVIEW
I wish more vendors would focus less on all the marketing hype, and instead provide us with material that will help set priorities, build internal champions for initiatives and understand best practices for mitigating risk and successful change management.”
Hospital CIO
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Brochures
Website
White Papers
Conversations with Sales &Executives
Case Studies
What vendor generated marketing material
most influences your Health IT
purchasing decisions?
Hospital executives do not find most
marketing collateral useful or
relevant for making purchasing
decisions. The reasons why were
investigated in this survey.
The leading vendor-generated
influencers for health IT purchasing
decisions are executive/sales
conversations and case studies,
followed by the vendor’s website and
white papers. Note that not one
hospital executive were influenced by
brochures.
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What You’ll Learn in This eBook
HEALTH IT VENDOR
COLLATERAL
I don’t understand how so many vendors say the same thing and think they are so different. If you are different, then give me an example of what I can do with your solution that I can’t somewhere else . . . And don’t make me work so hard to get the picture of the value of taking on a new initiative.”
Hospital CEO
Why don’t brochures influence
your purchasing decisions?
“Brochures a credible source of information for purchasing decisions? Not at all. Who writes these things anyway, and why do they bother?”
CIO
Brochures
The key reason that brochures do
not influence health IT purchasing
decisions is that the messages and
content are undifferentiated – they
all sound the same.
Hospital executives also believed
that brochures are so broad and
vague that they don’t provide any
valuable information, and
particularly called out vendors for
their “marketing hype.” 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
They are marketing hype
They all sound the same
They make unsubstantiatedclaims
They provide no valuableinformation
66%
CASE STUDIES DON’T PROVIDE MEANINGFUL INFORMATION
32%
CASE STUDIES SORT OF PROVIDE MEANINGFUL INFORMATION
2%
CASE STUDIES DO PROVIDE MEANINGFUL INFORMATION
“I do skim over health IT vendor case studies. Most don’t provide much useful information, but they do at least tell me who their customers are.”
CMIO
Case Studies
In spite of being considered the
most influential tool in the
marketing collateral toolbox, case
studies don’t deliver meaningful
information for purchasing decision-making.
Do case studies provide you with
meaningful information for
decision-making?
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Nothing, vendor materialis never credible
Focus on what theproduct does differently
Best practice focusinstead of product
Focus on the customerinstead of the product
Case Studies Case Studies
Hospital executives overwhelmingly
agree that case studies that focus
on the customer and best practices
instead of the product help them
make purchasing decisions. Very
few found product differentiators
helpful.
The good news? Hospital
executives do believe vendor
marketing material can be credible
and valuable.
“””If you want me to seriously consider taking on a new initiative, then I’d like to see more peer-to-peer content, like we see at conferences.”
VP Patient Safety
How can health IT vendors make their
case studies more useful for
purchasing decision-making?
White Papers
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Understand the product better onceI've narrowed the field
Understand how I can be successfulimplementing a solution
Form the strategy and/or solutioncriteria
Understand the need for consideringa particular type of solution
Think about a problem in ways Ihaven't before
“I’m hungry for knowledge, but don’t expect me to plow through 20 pages of dense writing that doesn’t teach me anything new.”
CMIO
While many vendors create white
papers in the hopes of generating
demand or leads, hospital
executives tend to find them more
useful much further in the sales
cycle.
Hospital executives tend to view
vendor white papers as long-form
brochures that do a decent job of
providing deep details of a product
or solution.
They typically don’t find vendor
white papers make an effective case
for changing the status quo nor do
they use them for developing their
strategies.
White Papers
Vendor white papers provide
information that allows me to:
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HEALTH IT VENDOR
WEBSITES
I would think that vendors have an incredible opportunity to build a valuable source of online information. After all, they seem to spend a lot of money on their websites, and they should have a good view of what’s needed and how to address challenges from their customer base. But it’s all the same stuff. And I often have to hunt to understand what they offer.”
Hospital CIO
Very valuable
Very valuable
Very valuable
Very valuable
Very valuable
1 2 3 4 5
Not Valuable
1 2 3 4 5
Not Valuable
1 2 3 4 5
Not Valuable
1 2 3 4 5
Not Valuable
1 2 3 4 5
Not Valuable
Yes 62%
No 21%
Maybe 17%
How valuable is the online information vendors provide for the following purposes:
Define a previously unrecognized need
Identify the right type of solution to meet that need
Determine the criteria for choosing the solution
Research which vendors offer the solution we decided to invest in
Determine which vendors will be considered for RFP
Would you be more likely to engage a vendor that’s provided quality online information?
“I am well aware that any content on a vendor website is biased. Still, I would imagine they could be a valuable source of information. Yet most
vendor websites all sound alike, and provide very little thoughtful insight.
VP Operations
Hospital executives believe they
would show preference for a vendor
who delivered quality online
information.
But are not often finding quality online
information from vendors. Just as
with vendor white papers, most
websites are too product focused.
Websites
Websites “Most vendor websites are overwhelming and do not tend to provide any
relevant information. I’m not going to hunt for the information I need. It makes me wonder – if the usability of their site is so bad, how could the
technology they are selling be much better?”
CIO
What challenges do you find with
health IT vendor websites?
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Hard to get the big picture of thesolution
Overwhelming amount ofinformation that is not put in
context
Does not provide me with tools tochampion solution in my
organization
Often seems more focused on beingclever than providing me with
information
Health IT vendor websites present a
confusing array of content that is not
meeting the information needs of
hospital executives.
Websites “Vendors don’t seem to understand what it takes to start an initiative internally. I need help championing solutions.
CNO
What would you like vendors to do with their
websites to provide more value?
Executive prospects would like to see
vendor content on their websites
organized better.
An additional opportunity for vendors
is to provide tools that allow
prospects to champion change and
new solutions within their
organizations.
Focusing on how existing customers
have addressed the risk and obstacles
inherent in implementing the solution
is top on the requested content list,
yet very rarely provided. 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Showcase how they mitigate riskand overcome obstacles
Provide tools that help me make thecase within my own organization
Organize the information better
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HEALTH IT VENDOR
SALES ENGAGEMENT
The best vendor salespeople fight for me, and bring together all the people and information required to help us move forward with a decision. That said, those folks are few and far between. Too often the people that contact me from vendors are really off the mark. I don’t need someone who so obviously doesn’t understand my needs in my face pushing products.”
Hospital CMIO
Sales Engagement “In all honestly, vendor salespeople would be better off putting down the
PowerPoint and just talk to me.”
CMIO
Do you feel vendor salespeople meet your
needs during your buying process?
The perception of sales effectiveness
was inconsistent among hospital
executives – it depended on the
vendor and the particular salesperson.
The chief complaints about vendor
salespeople were lack of knowledge
about the prospect’s needs, and often
a lack of knowledge about their own
company’s products.
A key complaint was the inconsistency
across different vendor
representatives – they could get
multiple stories, facts and advice,
depending on who they talked to
within the vendor. That raised red
flags with the executive prospects.
53%
SALESPEOPLE OFTEN DON’T MEET OUR NEEDS
31%
IT DEPENDS, SOME SALESPEOPLE DO AND SOME DON’T
SALESPEOPLE OFTEN DO MEET OUR NEEDS
16%
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CONCLUSION
Most vendors are falling short on providing relevant, meaningful
content to their prospects. Chief complaints include:
• Too much marketing hype
• Information that was too vague
• Loss of credibility due to so many vendors making the same
claims of “uniqueness”
• Lack of relevance
• Lack of truly educational and informative content
• Not meeting the informational needs of all the members of the
buying team
• Information is too long
• Content does not address the questions they need answered to
make effective purchasing decisions.
NEXT STEPS:
Want to know what you can do about addressing these challenges?
Quiddity Marketing will be releasing a series of PLAYBOOKS that will
improve your Health IT marketing effectiveness. Subscribe to the
Story to Sale blog to be kept informed about the release.
Conclusion
Health IT vendors currently have
a huge opportunity to
differentiate themselves by filling
the gap between the information
healthcare executives would like
to receive during the buying
process vs. what they are
receiving.
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What You’ll Learn in This eBook
ABOUT QUIDDITY MARKETING
Randi Rossman
Randi is Founder and Chief Marketing Officer for Quiddity Marketing. With over a decade of in-depth Health IT experience as a marketing leader at McKesson and Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group, Randi combines a passion for the promise of health IT with marketing excellence. Randi's career is defined by her relentless search for fresh marketing strategies that solves business problems. With a background in both marketing and sales, Randi takes a broad approach to building strategies and programs that accelerates the sales cycle, builds bridges between sales and marketing teams, and encourages audiences to take action.
About “Randi is a talented marketer and strategist with a wealth of experience in the healthcare IT industry.”
Zach Mortensen (formerly) Product Manager, Microsoft Amalga
©2011 by Quiddity Marketing LLC
Quiddity Marketing develops marketing strategies,
programs and content that connects the dots
between the story and the sale.
Through messaging that resonates, persuasive
content, sales enablement and demand generation,
Quiddity accelerates revenue generation by
engaging the customer in the right way at the most
opportune time.
For more information, email
[email protected] or call 425-591-2612.