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Analytics: The King of Health Care Marketing Campaigns

By The SHSMD Team posted 11-12-2019 09:43 AM

  
A group of medical professionals is seated at a table discussing handouts with charts, graphs and tables.

By The SHSMD Team

One of the greatest assets a marketer has is data. Analytics not only provide insights about audience demographics, they also reveal behaviors and preferences that are necessary to guide marketing strategy.

With mobile applications becoming a standard in every industry, analytics surrounding app users is critical for shaping both the app itself and who it is marketed to. Charlotte Wilson, director of digital marketing and analytics at OSU Wexner Medical Center, presented at SHSMD Connections 2019 on how data informs marketing decisions in both app and service line promotion.

Using Data to Leverage Your Investment

Last year, Wilson and her team were working towards launching a new app called the “My Health” app. They wanted to be smart about the way they executed their marketing plan do drive the app’s adoption, but they also needed to ensure they were creating a process that was consistent and repeatable.

“We didn't just want to create one set of targeted personas based upon who is going to adopt the app. We put our data together in a way that we could use it over and over again and really leverage our investment,” she noted.

Balancing Creativity with Analytics

While creativity plays a significant part in developing marketing campaigns, Wilson recognizes that data must remain the core element of any marketing strategy.
“There are a lot of cool, innovative ideas we all have bouncing around in our heads during brainstorming sessions, but, at the end of the day, the way we're going to get to excellent execution, ensure we're feeding people good information and talk to the right people about the right things is to have a good foundation of data,” she explained.
Using predictive analytics, Wilson’s team was able to better understand who is most likely to adopt an app, seek out services or respond to a given campaign.

For Greatest Success, Look to Outside Resources

Gathering all of the appropriate data when marketing to patients can seem like an overwhelming project to take on, especially in the case of a new product or service. That’s when Wilson says marketing teams need to get inventive. She suggests using data that has already been collected and curated in your organization’s customer relationship management (CRM) system.

“Think about ways you can creatively use the data you're already aggregating,” she advised. “Are there unique and different ways you can combine that information?”
Wilson also encourages marketing teams to partner with someone in their IT or information warehouse groups to understand what data sets may already be out there and can be borrowed as a “jumpstart.” While too many cooks in the kitchen can be problematic, it’s often helpful to look for assistance outside the marketing department – especially in areas of expertise that may be lacking.

“Look outside of your team. There's a lot of work we did in this project using outside resources because we didn't necessarily have these capabilities on our team at the time we initiated the project,” shared Wilson. “Relying on outside resources gave us the ability to identify where we needed to perhaps build some skills within our team, so we could continue to do this work in the future.”

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