Episode 42: What Digital Health Innovators Need to Know About Selling to Hospital and Health System CIOs with Merritt Group EVP Tom Rice and Director of Healthcare Practice Erin Erban (Part 2)
Part of your social media strategy should also be to boost your KOL’s profile and leverage the content they’re creating.
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In this episode you will discover:
How to make KOLs a part of your strategy
Why you need short, engaging videos
What to budget for marketing
Keep scrolling for a transcript of this episode.
Key Takeaways
The best way to utilize KOLs when reaching out to CIOS is to have them speak at your events. Part of your social media strategy should also be to boost your KOL’s profile and leverage the content they’re creating.
CIOs like videos because they’re short, easily digestible, and engaging. Make short case studies and make your websites and webinars engaging and digestible. Make sure to always demonstrate ROI.
5-10% is the industry standard for allocating a budget for marketing. However, it still depends on what you have to work with or work around based on your company’s size, resources, and how many KOLs you have.
The main responsibility of a marketing team is to understand the company’s specific buyer, get to know how they tick, where they get their information from, and how they like to be marketed and sold to.
Learn more from Carrie and Rebecca:
Healthcare insights (monthly email) | Telehealth/Virtual Care Mgmt Update (biweekly LinkedIn update)
Website | Carrie on LinkedIn | Rebecca on LinkedIn | NGL on LinkedIn
“CIOs are humans, and we all have such short attention spans. So if you’re going to try to get your information about your technology solution in front of them, you need to do it quickly, and you need to do it in an exciting and engaging way.”
Learn More
Tom Rice on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-rice-626717/
Erin Dixon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erindixonmedia/
Get the 2023 Healthcare Technology Marketing Guide: Marketing and Selling to the Health System CIO : https://www.merrittgrp.com/2023-healthtech-marketing-guide/
Episode 36: Understanding Digital Health's ROI with Charm Economics Founder Adam Block, PhD
Read the transcript
Rebecca Gwilt (00:17):
Welcome back to Decoding Healthcare Innovation. I'm your co-host Rebecca Gwilt, Partner at Nixon Gwilt Law. In the last episode, we talked about that essential next step that digital health founders have to take after they create their revenue model and sort of build their product, and that's selling their solutions, especially when it comes to big buyers like health systems. If you missed episode 41, go back now and check it out, so you'll be all caught up for part two of our discussion with the Executive Vice President of the Merritt Group, Tom Rice and Merritt Group's Director of Healthcare, Erica Erban.
(00:52):
The recent survey the Merritt Group put together that collected information from healthcare CIOs on their buying habits is really essential information for digital health innovators. In the last episode, we learned about the main influencers for CIOs when it comes to evaluating solutions like conferences, paid media, social media, podcasting, and I think there were some pretty surprising results.
(01:14):
We're diving back into our discussion where we left off, which was KOLs. If you don't know KOLs, they are key opinion leaders. Now let's rejoin the conversation.
(01:24):
Okay, so my next question is going to be about something related to social media, and I'm going to say the word KOLs, which I have learned are key opinion leaders. Can you talk a little bit just about what a KOL or an influencer is, for folks that aren't familiar?
Tom Rice (01:41):
Key opinion leaders or KOLs, they're typically clinicians or physicians who have developed stellar credentials in the medical field. They're been out there and they've done some amazing work. They're usually pretty prominent at the healthcare conferences that Erin talked about. They author numerous articles and peer reviewed journals on their particular area of interest. They're very important as they can amplify the science associated with a company solution and lend a company a lot of credibility in front of the health system CIO when it comes to the sales process.
(02:11):
We've had a number of clients that use KOLs successfully. They can be found in article searches, in terms of how to find them. They can be found from just asking your network for referrals, certainly by attending their speaking engagements or just browsing social media content and research specific forums. And then to your question, in terms of the best way to utilize KOLs in terms of reaching these CIOs, I think #1 is speaking at events. When putting together submissions for speakers at key industry events, you need to include your KOLs on the strategic panels that will help educate your attendees on the problems your solution addresses.
(02:48):
You can also put forth solo submissions for your KOL to build their eminence in front of terms of your area of focus. The second way I would say is educating marketing and sales, bringing them into your company meetings, your sales trainings, your marketing summits. The KOLs really should be at the top of those agendas to educate your teams on the core issues that your solution addresses for patients. I mean, they're going to be the best way to break it down to the most simplistic level.
(03:14):
In terms of other marketing ways, I mean, certainly as you have videos or webinars, similar speaking events, bringing KOLs into the videos of webinars you create to educate health system CIOs on those kind of real data points can add a lot of credibility. And then certainly when it comes to social media, I mean, again, it should be a smaller part probably of your overall marketing strategy, but part of your social media strategy to be to boost the profile of your KOLs and also leverage the content they're creating on your channels, and that again should enhance your overall company credibility.
(03:50):
And then finally, in terms of publishing articles, in addition to the journals that your KOLs already submitting to, there's a wealth of other contributor article opportunities out there at the publications like Erin mentioned. So you could submit your KOL for an article or create a joint submission from your KOL in a key company subject matter to get a nice placement in a publication like that. Yeah, that's the key points I would bring up there.
Rebecca Gwilt (04:16):
First of all, that was pause, listen, rewind, listen again, write all of that down. That was a jampacked full of really actionable things that you could do. I will just say that this seems pretty huge. This is a 90% a statistic in this report that 90% of your buyers are very or somewhat influenced by KOLs and influencers. So this seems like a really good use of these companies. Time is sort of developing these relationships and leveraging them. The other piece that was sort of jumped out to me is super important is that videos and case studies and your website and webinars, things that Tom just mentioned that those are the most impactful content. Erin, how should companies think about leveraging these things? Is it important to have variety? Should they focus only on the most impactful? What is the approach that the companies should take?
(05:19):
Erin Erban: Yeah, well, I think it's always important to have or leverage a variety of vehicle marketing vehicles in your strategy. I mean, sure, we know from the survey results that CIOs like videos. That was one of the statistics we pulled out. So we know videos are particularly effective, but if we put a little bulb behind this, why is that? What about all of these pieces of content that can make them resonate with CIOs? Well, I think it's a few things. The first being that the reason why we think CIOs like videos is because they're short, they're digestible, they're engaging. So if you can make short case studies and an engaging website and webinars that are engaging and digestible, CIOs are humans. We all have such a short attention span. So if you're going to try to get your information about your technology solution in front of them, you need to do it quick and you need to do it in an exciting and engaging way.
(06:14):
So I think there's that, and another important sort of through line into using all of this content effectively is demonstrating ROI in all of it. Again, it's tough economic times. Hospitals last year had one of the worst years on record. They're struggling, and if you're going to invest in a technology, you need to know that you're going to get your ROI. So I think those are the two things that you need to keep in mind no matter what content vehicle you're using, whether it's video, website, again, to keep it short, digestible, engaging white papers we know didn't perform very well. I think it's just not exactly a content type that's resonating well. It's just maybe too much, a little bit too dry for CIOs right now. And then also demonstrating that ROI. It's another way to make any piece of content more impactful.
(07:11):
Rebecca Gwilt: As I'm listening to all of this, it seems like it would be easy for one of your clients, for companies, especially early stage companies, to become pretty overwhelmed with the amount of options and the amount of channels that there are and the amount of content they have to produce and make sure that sort of spoken in their voice and is accurate. This is a lot, right? The big picture sort of PR and media strategy seems like a good amount to take on. What does this look like practically for a company? What kind of lift is this as they're building their product and they're trying to get investors and they are troubleshooting all the things that regular businesses do from finance perspective and hiring and all of that? What does this look like to take on a strategy like this on top of all that?
(08:08):
Erin Erban: Well, I can jump in here, ( mean maybe this is self-serving, but I think this is where working with an agency partner is really valuable.
(08:16):
Rebecca Gwilt: I swear I didn't set that up for that, but go me. Okay. Yes, I hear you.
(08:23):
Erin Erban: I think the goal of all agency partners is, or certainly what we do with all of our customers, is at the beginning is making sure that we're aligned on our key messaging, and sometimes we do entire messaging projects with our clients to reestablish what are our key pillars in, or that we want to be aligning all of these activities too. Other times we join forces with clients that have maybe already put some thought into that and we make sure that we're on the same page. And then it's really your agency partners job to have their hands in a million different things or moving in a million different directions.
(09:01):
I mean, we know how to juggle all of these things at the same time.
(09:05):
Rebecca Gwilt: Is there a percent of budget that makes sense...If I was starting up a company and I said, okay, well here's my legal budget and here's my payroll budget and here's my development budget and here's my travel budget, here's my media budget. How should companies be thinking about setting side money when they put together their proforma for media? Because I've seen them, I've seen the amount set aside wildly range, especially for direct-to-consumer companies as opposed to B2B companies. But do you ever talk to clients about that when they come to you and they say, well, I don't know I how much we need for where we are?
Tom Rice (09:49):
Yeah, it's a good question. Erin. I'll let you chime in too. I mean, I wouldn't say that on the media side, we get that too much. I think on the broader marketing side, which media falls out of, typically we see anything from a five to 10%. That's kind of some industry standards, but that's typically what we point to.
Rebecca Gwilt (10:09):
Okay. I love that. Paired numbers.
(10:12):
Erin Erban: Yeah, I think what I would add, just that it's not necessarily I don't know, size of company to marketing spend. It's really what you have to work with. I mean, I think that's what the questions we ask when we're betting a new client to work with. It's, well, let's talk about what we have to work with and what we can build this program around in terms of what you have in terms of case studies that we can leverage in the media who you have for KOLs already. A big company with no KOLs is going to be challenging to build a media program around, whereas maybe a small, smaller company with sizable amount of KOLs for the company we can do more with or a more compelling story. So anyhow, all this to say, I don't think it's squarely company size, marketing size.
(11:02):
Rebecca Gwilt: Sure. Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Okay. So given all of this, the results of this study, how has this, if at all, changed how you advise your clients Tom. Are you modifying your tried and true strategies? Did you learn something that that's going to be more effective than what you thought before? Was any of this surprising to you?
Tom Rice (11:30):
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I would say it confirmed a lot of our thinking, honestly, and our current recommendations to our clients. It's still about having a balance, I think, and not going all in on just one or two channels, having some prioritization there. I think as pertains to the CIO, as we mentioned, we're seeing a gravitation right now toward more traditional channels, honestly. But there still needs to be diversification. I think you can't take this, the results this survey and say, Hey, media, that's all we need to focus on right now. You still have to have a focus on all these areas. So it is about just having some prioritization in all these channels. So socially, it's certainly a lower priority, but still deserves some focus, especially LinkedIn. I think long form content like white papers clearly are as popular as they used to be, but maybe instead of doing six a year doing one or two and just do them really, really well. So they are going to have an impact. But I think certainly when it comes to content, prioritize those shorter forms of content like video and video is always part of our recommendations. And that was, I think, proven to be true that came out of these results.
Rebecca Gwilt (12:39):
Yeah, definitely variety was an impression that I got. Variety being important and yeah, I guess video, it's just so much harder to produce, so much harder to produce. I'm sure there's a big groan across the listener population, but I can tell that I prefer to watch a video on a client website about how their product works. It used to be that you didn't have that. You had to set up a demo and you had to schedule a meeting and you had to sit down and that they would show you the product. And frankly, now, there's two minute videos on a lot of these websites that are just made from existing technology that has all of the graphics and everything. You tell it what to do. The lift seems lower, and it is, than it used to be, and it is, at least for me as a buyer of tech for my firm and the podcast, it's certainly compelling to me. It feels like it saves me some time.
Tom Rice (13:41):
Certainly the power of a well produced video goes a long way, but we're seeing the industry move toward less produced videos, more kind of off the cuff. Maybe not something where you're just holding iPhone in front of you, but things that are easily produced, right?
Rebecca Gwilt (13:57):
You're doing a lot of TikTok these days?
Tom Rice (14:01):
That's definitely part of it. Right? Yeah. I'm not sure the CIOs will go there, but yeah, certainly that's part of the mix, right?
Erin Erban (14:08):
Yeah. We heard a lot last week at the conference about everyone being excited about TikTok. Despite being a healthcare technology marketer for years, I am not in healthcare technology marketing TikTok, mainly just dogs on my feed.<laugh>, right? It's the future. Who knows what healthcare IT and technology TikTok will look like in a few months or years.
(14:32):
Rebecca Gwilt: Yeah, well, I mean, better to be mindful and ready to pivot when needed. So, okay, so the other thing I'm curious about, and I don't know if you all were in attendance at HLTH in the fall, but there was a lot of discussion about how health systems and payers are sort of overwhelmed by the number of solutions that are coming at them, that are being marketed to them, and that there was a feeling that there were other buyers that companies needed to start thinking about.
(15:07):
I heard education is going to be a new buyer for health tech, sports franchises, things like that. Employers and health plans and health systems are always going to be big buyers, but I'm interested in your thoughts about how the insights that you got specifically from the health system CIO population is going to translate to other buyers of healthcare tech. Yeah. Do you think it'll be same? Do you think there'll be nuances?
(15:40):
Erica Erban: Yeah, I can jump in here. Well, I think because the survey was quite high level, a lot of these insights do carry across buyers. I mean, obviously everyone wants to see demonstrated ROI before they invest. I mean, that's understandable, and I think the insights about short content being effective, I think at a human level, no matter what sort of type of company you're working in, again, we all have short attention spans, so I think that translates to a degree.
(16:13):
But yeah, I mean for large employers, many of whom are making big cuts or doing big layoffs right now, it's hard to go out on a limb and purchase a new health technology that may improve your healthcare offerings. If you don't know, it's more of a sure bet in terms of ROI. Obviously the conversation is very different with health plans, who in contrast to, again, health systems, which are many ending the year or ended last year in the red and struggling mightily, many health plans are seeing continued record profits. So if you have a technology that you can sell into health plans, that's good strategy, that's good business. Unlike health systems, they probably have more money to spend.
Tom Rice (17:03):
Yeah, I would add on to that. I mean, I think that certainly there's some great healthcare marketing and PR going on and out there right now, beyond certainly our clients, of course, in the broader industry, but I think that with the feedback you heard at HLTH, I think there's a lot of just maybe just folks going from a generic playbook out there in terms of healthcare marketing. So it is really about getting in there and understand your buyer. This report really, really gets to understanding the CIO, and whether your buyer is at an employer or at a sports organization, really understand that specific buyer in that sector and getting to how they get their information from how they like to be marketed and sold to. That's really, I think the job of marketing folks is really get in there and understand that specific buyer
Rebecca Gwilt (17:57):
And speaking of marketing, so sort of raising conversation from a 10,000 foot view, we already know TikTok is the future. What else is changing in general in the world of healthcare marketing? Any secrets that you can share?
(18:16):
Erin Erban: Yeah, I think one topic that's hot right now and hot universally is the rise of Chat GPT. Oh, yes. A lot of talk last week about what Chat GPTis going to mean in terms of content marketing and direct the creation of a huge volume of new content, and whether Google is going to be able to differentiate between well written human content versus Chat GPT, and how we need to entirely rethink our strategy. I think the jury's still out on what this will really mean. I think what the people that I was with last week seem to agree is that Chat GPT isn't going to totally take over the need for well-written content, but who knows?
(19:09):
I mean, this is a conversation that's really only sort of popped up in the last month and a half or so. So, to be determined on what this really means for marketers.
(19:20):
Rebecca Gwilt: I have spent way too much time this since the beginning of 2023, asking questions of Chat GPT. I'm like blown away, and I absolutely believe that content marketing is going to change in some way. I'm interested in whether, so you seem to be saying that Chat GPT, that for instance, if you did content marketing, that you would want to make sure that Google's algorithms recognize you as a person. If they recognize you as not a person, they might push you down in the SEO.
(19:55):
Erin Erban: Exactly.
(19:56):
Rebecca Gwilt: Ah, okay. Okay. Okay. Because I'm just wondering if Chat GPT is going to make Google obsolete altogether.
(20:03):
Erin Erban: Oh, okay.
Tom Rice (20:05):
I mean, that's why, yeah, Google's going to get in the game too, right?
Rebecca Gwilt (20:09):
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we'll have to invite you back in a year to give us an update because I think this tech is moving really, really fast.
Tom Rice (20:19):
Yeah, big time.
Rebecca Gwilt (20:20):
Okay, so this has been a really insightful discussion. I am so glad we got to some practical, tactical tips. I think the last thing that I will ask is, in your opinion, what can digital health companies do right now today to supercharge their success?
Tom Rice (20:42):
And I'll start, and Erin, I'll turn to you. I mean, for me, it goes back to what I said earlier. It's really sitting down and developing those buyer personas and understanding how your specific buyer ticks. I mean, I think if you're looking for a kind of 'go with more of an elephant gun approach' in terms of what's going to work for the broader healthcare technology market, it, it's just not going to resonate. It's really getting down to that buyer specific level.
Erin Erban (21:04):
Yeah, I think my thought would be to get out there, I mean, I'm a firm believer in thought leadership, have something to say and have something new and different to say. I think that's one surefire way to supercharge your success and stand out in the market, is to bring new, edgy, different insights to the market, how you stand out.
(21:26):
Rebecca Gwilt: Love it. Love it. Okay. Well, Tom and Erin, thank you so much for spending time with me today. To break this down, where can our listeners go to learn more about you both and about Merritt Group?
Tom Rice (21:39):
Yeah, so MerrittGrp.com/2023-healthtech-marketing-guide, and that's the how to get to the link itself. We'll send that to you as well, Rebecca, so you can put it on the show notes.
Rebecca Gwilt (21:53):
Yeah, absolutely. I've got it. We'll include it in the show notes so people can click on it. And if they're interested in a conversation with one or both of you about the work that you do where should they go?
Tom Rice (22:07):
Yeah, there's a Contact Us link on the Merritt Group website, or certainly they could email one of us. My email is rice@merrittgrp.com.
Rebecca Gwilt (22:17):
Wonderful. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I hope you have a great rest of your week, and do wait for me to ask you back a year from me now to talk about the AI chat bots.
Tom Rice (22:26):
Yes. Thank you so much for having us on, Rebecca.
Rebecca Gwilt (22:29):
Thank you so much, Rebecca. This is great.
Outro (22:33):
Thank you for listening to Decoding Healthcare Innovation. If you'd like the show, please subscribe, rate and review at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like to find out more about Carrie, Rebecca, or Nixon Gwilt Law, go to NixonGwiltLaw.com or click the links in the show notes.