February 19, 2009

Recession Marketing: Investing in Two Audiences At Once

Wayne Glowac

The healthcare industry is under stress, there’s no doubt about it. Not only are providers trying to deal with an expensive and ineffective system, they’re doing it as their budgets tighten and consumers cut back.

That’s why smart marketing (and marketing spending) is even more essential. We see a lot of providers struggling to decide where to focus their marketing dollars – Employers? Consumers? Men? Women? Families? Boomers? It’s not always an easy question to answer.

But one approach is reach out to employers and consumers together using a combination of sales and marketing tactics. Let your sales staff set up relationships or maintain them with employers. Then, use marketing to reach out to them, and work with employers to educate their employees. It’s a great way to better educate the employers you already have a relationship with, because they, in turn, are looking for solutions to their healthcare problems. They want their employees to become better consumers of healthcare because it saves money for them too.

It’s a unique opportunity to be the employer-ally, at a time when they are struggling the most. Think about it as a business-to-business-to-consumer strategy. B2B2C!

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