The war between marketing and sales has been fought in the trenches since the beginning of business, or at least, the beginning as we know it. In healthcare marketing, branding matters enormously, and most CMOs are painfully aware that without brand awareness, personality, and positioning which hits the right note in your community, sales simply wouldn’t happen.
Try telling that to sales, which believes the focus on conversion is warranted and is the only thing that counts. Believe it or not, there is a way through to the other side.
Branding Matters
Healthcare executives may have heard the suggestion that “marketing/branding is unnecessary and a luxury.” That theory has been debunked many times. The objectives of branding (awareness, market share, lead generation, and positive response to the message from the audience) are almost always less tangible than actual sales.
While assigning a dollar value to results is somewhat more elusive, it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. However, this reasoning is to blame for sidelining marketing for many decades. If you take the viewpoint that without brand marketing, healthcare sales wouldn’t exist, it puts things into a whole new perspective.
Conversion Counts
By the same token, conversion is the other side of the same coin. Without sales, revenue would slump and there’d be precious little money to pay for marketing and branding activities. It’s time to look beyond the pale and find ways to align branding and conversion. Fortunately, many healthcare marketers are starting to do just that.
A report from the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) indicates 67% of marketers support the idea of the branding and direct response teams working together for “common good,” but only 35% actually succeed in doing so. This is partly because sales teams often don’t see value in investing in brand-building initiatives that aren’t slated to deliver immediate results.
Signals and Behaviors
The MMA report focuses on mobile marketing, but the principle applies across the board. In healthcare branding campaigns, marketers often identify social signals as indicators of success, such as:
- What consumers are saying about it on social media
- Website visits
- Consumer history
- Online ad behavior
- Customer feedback and reviews
Sales teams may look solely at conversions as indicators of success, based on the number of purchases made by consumers as a direct result of a marketing campaign. They may miss the importance of brand-building for future and long-term revenue.
For more information on finding common ground between your branding and conversion campaigns, call Wax Custom Communications at 305-350-5700 or visit waxcom.com.
