Last week, I attended and spoke at the first Health IT Marketing Conference. Great job to John Lynn and Shahid Shah for assembling such an amazing group of people, booking a completely inspiring space at the InNevation Center, and showing up most of the more established conferences in the industry.
Now for my top 10 takeaways…
1) The conference started with a keynote from Warren Whitlock – the guy who wrote the first book on Twitter. He encouraged social messaging that has 3 elements:
- Simple – zero in on one memorable phrase
- Sharable – a story others can share
- Serendipity – find what works and repeat
And marketing is all about “listen and love”. Love your clients, and respond promptly. Great advice.
2) Sam Stern of Modallic gave an uplifting presentation on storytelling. Too often, tech marketers just regurgitate features and functions. They fail to tell a memorable story.
Structure of a good story:
- The opening – mood, tone
- Introduce real and authentic characters – how your product changed a real-life person
- The place and the setting
- How your product or service helped customers overcome obstacles
- Triumph of human spirit – how you overcame the problem
As Tom Peters so correctly pointed out, “story is more important than brand.” Prospects remember stories!
3) It’s still really hard and complicated to prove ROI on social marketing in this space.
4) There were some great examples of using humor in marketing to stand out in a crowded field. From NueMD.com’s videos to Studio North’s CDW’s IT heroes campaign to Craneware’s Revenue Integrity Rock Tour, there were inspiring examples of creativity (and really enlightened leaders who supported these efforts!).
5) There was a great panel of health IT company executives. There was a definite trend and affinity towards video production. Podcasts were pointed out as effective in reaching physicians. The best marketing breaks the complex into the simple.
6) Thomas Knoll gave a spirited presentation on using emotion in marketing. There’s no more B2B or B2C, effective marketing is human to human. Create a personal emotional connection with your targets and community. Remember, Starbucks writes your name on the cup to personalize things, not just for efficiency! When people trust you, they are really loyal. Boy, we see this every day at our agency. Thanks @thomasknoll.
7) Brad Dodge of Dodge Communications gave a really useful presentation on getting the most out of trade shows. The steps outlined before, during, and after the show were excellent. If you plan shows and want them to be successful, watch for Brad’s presentation deck which will be up on the Health IT Marketing Conference site soon. I found it really interesting that Brad thought you could go to HIMSS with a 10’x10′ booth and get ROI if you followed all the steps he outlined.
A really useful tidbit that came from the audience during this session was to on setup day, send gift baskets to partners or companies you want to engage with at the show.
8) Shahid Shah led a workgroup session on how to “influence the influencers”. Good stuff, but really common sense. Be respectful, don’t waste their time, etc. Watch for that presentation as well if you deal with influencers.
9) Most social marketing folks are using HootSuite, but aren’t happy with limitations in regards to insertion of graphics in Tweets and analytics.
10) Jeff Walker of Content Carnivores gave an informative presentation to anyone who outsources copy writing. He highlighted the differences in writers’ abilities, breaking them down into specialists, generalists, etc. He also gave some ballpark rates, for example, expect to pay $300-$500 for 500-word blog posts written by someone with some knowledge of your industry. If you outsource writing, look for his presentation.
For anyone interested in learning more or networking with some smart healthcare marketing folks, there’s a post-conference LinkedIn Group. My apologies to those speakers whose presentations I missed given the breakout sessions.
Author: +Chris Slocumb
