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hello this is dr eric bricker and thank you for watching a healthcare z today's topic is digital health sales and marketing now i work with a lot of digital health companies and i talk to a lot of digital health companies and i am astounded by actually the fantastic value propositions that many of these digital health companies have however there's an issue and that issue is sales and marketing because sales and marketing in healthcare specifically for digital healthcare companies is actually pretty complicated and it's really important to get it right because if you don't get it right you will essentially waste all of your time and all of your money what do i mean by waste all of your time and all of your money so digital health funding has gone through the roof so the biggest year by far was the most recent year of 2021 where there was literally 29 billion dollars of investment in digital health startups and companies now that was in 729 deals for comparison's sake in the previous year 2020 there was only 15 billion dollars for 484 deals so 15 billion 20 it almost doubled in a year and if you go back 10 years to 2011 it was only 1.2 billion dollars of investment in digital health companies for 94 deals so look in 10 years it's gone from 1.2 billion to billion if you add up all the years in between and i'll leave a link in the show notes to the rock health source of this data it's fantastic if you add up all the money that has been invested between 2011 and 2021 it adds up to 85.6 billion dollars that has been invested in digital health companies now one might argue that individual patients have not necessarily reaped the benefits of this 85.6 billion dollars of investment because that's ultimately the point right the reason i'm doing this is to help patients like i'm not doing this to like i don't know twiddle my thumbs like the point is is that you can ultimately improve people's lives through the solutions that many of these digital health companies are offering so one might argue have patients lives really been improved to equate to the 85.6 billion dollars that has been spent i mean just to put that in terms of let's say you didn't spend the 85.6 billion dollars on digital health companies let's just say you spent it on insulin and it's like fifty two hundred dollars a per person per year in terms of insulin costs for somebody that's got diabetes okay that literally means that for this 85.6 billion dollars you could have supplied the insulin for 1.5 million people over the course of this 10-year period of time so you're like okay well maybe to like help people instead of investing the 85 billion dollars in digital health companies maybe we should just pay for everybody's insulin for 1.5 million people that would have been a much better use of the money maybe but the point is is that let's not waste digital health investment just because we don't get the sales and marketing right so let's talk about what i've seen work not only within the my own digital health companies that i've worked with and i've worked in three now and what i've seen with other successful digital health companies and that relates to obviously you gotta talk about the sales and marketing funnel and what i have here is actually three funnels because part of the problem is is that sales and marketing in digital health isn't just one funnel it's actually three now what you have here is a marketing and sales funnel for employers you have a marketing and sales funnel for brokers consultants and insurance carriers and then you have a marketing and sales funnel actually for the members themselves because once you enact or implement the solution that doesn't mean there's adoption in fact utilization historically for digital health solutions is super low and so if you do these first two funnels and sell the deal but forget about this last funnel with the end patient the end member then you're totally hosed so let's go through each of these three funnels now at the top of the funnel is actually the marketing so it's not the sales and marketing flow it's actually the marketing and sales funnel right and what is marketing marketing is getting people's attention because you can't sell somebody anything until you get their attention and getting people's attention takes two forms it always takes two forms there's inbound and outcome so inbound marketing is essentially content marketing where you create information that is educational and or entertaining that people will then find to then be educated about your product or service and then there's outbound marketing which is interruption-based marketing and that can be advertising that can be emails that can be text messages that can be um you know a booth at a conference there can be all sorts of ways that you're uh that can also be cold calling using the phone right so phone email also messaging people through linkedin conferences et cetera so you've got these two areas okay now one's not better than the other they're complementary and you got to do both now once that gets you into the sales funnel and it's super important that when you're selling and this is the miller hyman approach which i have seen first hand time and time again which is you're not just making one sale you're actually making three sales to three buyers for each individual customer and those three buyers are the technical buyer the outcome buyer and the financial buyer now the technical buyer is the person who has to interact and use this thing on a frequent basis typically that's going to be the benefits manager or the benefits director at the employer they've got to interact with your solution you've got to sell that interaction you're going to make their life easier not harder you're gonna make them look good so that they get a promotion not cause them risk in their job so that they get fired okay then there's the outcome okay like so arguably for a um an employer-sponsored health plan like the whole point of employee benefits is to attract and retain employees so can you actually achieve the outcome of attracting and retaining employees whether it be through just a better benefits package or healthier employees or you know all sorts of things right to be able to attract and retain those employees like that's really the vp of hr who's like looking to make that happen and then there is the the economic or the financial buyer which obviously healthcare costs are super high it's oftentimes the company's second largest expense after payroll so those are people within the c-suite typically the ceo and the cfo that are the financial buyers okay so you've got to make all that happen in order to get a buy decision and you're like okay great and we're done no that's only one of the three funnels you've got the whole funnel over here related to the broker consultant and the insurance carrier because really there is an ecosystem there's an employee benefits employer sponsored healthcare ecosystem and if you think you're just going to win by getting the these folks on board at the employer without getting their broker consultant and the carrier on board then i have seen that fail over and over again you've got to win over the ecosystem and that involves a guess guess what getting the attention of the ecosystem through marketing through inbound marketing and outbound marketing to the ecosystem of brokers consultants and carriers next you then have the analogous technical buyer outcome buyer and financial buyer per the miller hyman methodology at the broker consulting carrier now what are the analogous positions in those areas okay so the temple buyer is like the account manager because they've got to interact with your product or solution to like make it happen you have to make their job easier you have to make them look good so they can get promoted right then you have the really i would say then the outcome buyer oftentimes is the smee or the subject matter expert within the brokerage within the consulting firm within the carrier what is this me so it might be the head of population health it might be the head of analytics so there's typically some sort of strategic area within their benefits that they have often times many of these brokerage and consulting firms they have sort of a department that is responsible for that again oftentimes is analytics or cost containment or population health or it could even be wellness it could be uh well-being it's all sorts of stuff so you got to make them you have to be like look we offer consulting services that achieve the whole reason that me as a sme exists and then finally there's the financial buyer which is actually the producer or the end consultant or the uh the people with financial responsibility at the carrier whether it be sales or the cfo of the carrier because you want to then increase the income for this organization not necessarily by extracting more dollars from each employer but maybe you add value to this organization by increasing their sales maybe by off by your digital health solution being integrated with embedded with exclusively offered with xyz broker consultant carrier then they're able to go out to the marketplace and they're able to win more customers and therefore you're of value to the producer you're of value to the sales team you're a value to the cfo because you're helping them win business so you can't just be like oh hey we're this awesome digital health solution that improves patients lives and improves members lives yes you need to do that but that is not enough you need to answer the question why is the broker consulting firm carrier financially interested in promoting your product in the first place and if you can't answer that question there is a high likelihood that you will not be promoted listen we live in a pragmatic world i'm not here to be cynical i'm just here to be pragmatic these people have kids they need to send through college as well they're thinking about that now finally so funny here you're not getting a buy you're getting a buy in okay so you need to get a buy and then you also need to get a buy in and then i have engagement here which is essentially the marketing and sales to the end user to the employee the plan number right so this is where we talk about okay well health digital health is actually b to b to c right so it's b to b you the business as the digital health company to the business i.e the employer to the business i.e the broker consultant carrier but then it's to the then the end customer is the actual plan member that you're supporting and you have to recognize that that in and of itself is its own sales and marketing funnel where you have to do inbound and outbound marketing to the end uh consumer where you have to do whether it be through now inbound marketing is where okay the person has a problem and the member has a problem and they're out looking for a solution and so what do they do they might call customer service at the carrier so maybe your solution is embedded into customer service at the carrier or maybe this is what we did at compass we were the health navigation solution we intentionally fixed people's problem medical bills gave people comparative pricing information scheduled appointments for them so that as people encounter these pain points within the health care system they're like could you help me with this and we wanted to be like nine times out of ten the answer of yes we can help you with this because we want to be the whenever you're contacting us we want to say yes we can help you and oh by the way here are some other ways we can help you as well and then finally you also need to do interruption-based marketing now you can't just do it and be like oh we'll just email all the employees that's interruption-based marketing we'll just email all the employees and then we're done no that's not enough that's part of it listen maybe you need to text them maybe you need to call them maybe you need to talk to them during open enrollment maybe you need to engage them with an app maybe you need to engage them through social media it's never one of these things it's typically a combination of these things because know that when you're engaging an employee population that that employee population is very heterogeneous you've got millennials you've got gen xers you got baby boomers you've got men you've got women that's six personas right there that you need to address and these people like to be addressed not only with different content but in different ways are you going to be able to talk to a millennial on the phone probably not they don't really talk on the phone are you going to be able to uh have a lot of you know chat and text messaging with a baby boomer yes some but not a lot they're more likely to talk on the phone right so and then finally you're like okay great i'm getting their attention and educating them inbound marketing there literally is a sales process for the individual plan members as well where typically there's not like an out-of-pocket cost for the member whether it's like using your digital health tool or using your point solution or whatever it is oftentimes that's at zero cost in them but you need to sell them because they still have to invest their time they have to invest their attention into like learning how to use your digital health solution whatever thingamabob or it is so how do you do that who do you need to sell to you need to sell to the the peers within the organization in other words the early adopters right because everybody has the technology adoption life cycle and so there are early adopters within the employee population who are going to be the first people to use a digital health solution and you not only need to identify and sell to them but then you need to encourage them to then sell to the early adopter excuse me sir uh the pragmatist and the the conservative employees because you yourself at the digital health company you're not going to convince a conservative employee to use your digital health service their coworker is going to sell them on using your digital health service their early adopter co-worker who they look up to or who they're friends with etc they're the ones who are going to convince them not you your job is to get the early adopters and the pragmatists on board and then the early doctors and the pragmatists get the conservatives on board okay so and then also through management at the end of the day businesses then they say oh we're a flat organization listen all businesses have a hierarchy because all organ all human organizations have a hierarchy like you can say that hierarchy is right or wrong but listen that's the way it is so do you communicate out to the management have you sold the management if they're hearing about this from their fellow employees but like their boss doesn't talk about this at all they need to hear it from multiple places they need to hear about from their fellow employees and from their boss and from their boss's boss and from their boss's boss's boss listen when we have done videos by the ceo or by regional managers or divisional leaders etc that go out the employees that's super helpful to be like look this is the ceo of the company that's talking about xyz digital health solution you can't do that in every company but when you can engage the management and sell so that's hugely helpful in the sales pipeline so there you have it digital health sales and marketing three funnels you must master all three of them in order to be successful so we can stop wasting time and money i mean let's roll up our sleeves and get this done america and thank you for watching a healthcare z