Simply put, a healthcare blue ocean marketing strategy is
one where you redefine a market and dominate. By finding your blue ocean marketing
strategy one can leap ahead of competitor's swimming in a blue ocean free of competition,
instead of swimming in the bloody red ocean of undifferentiated services.
With healthcare moving
to a semi-retail model where experience, price and quality transparency weigh heavily on the healthcare consumer with
a higher economic stake in care
decisions, a healthcare provider at this time anyway, has the opportunity to
break the mold and innovate along these dimensions and clearly differentiate in
the market.
So how does this apply to healthcare marketing?
Healthcare is undifferentiated and for all practical
purposes may be in danger of becoming a commodity where purchase decisions are
made based on price, in this case the healthcare consumer’s out-of-pocket
expense. Hospitals, health systems, physicians
and other providers have similar programs and services, have the same managed
care contracts, share physicians etc., etc., etc, across multiple
competitors.
In an environment of multiple payments methods adding to the
confusion from being paid for the production of care with the “heads-in-the-beds”
to keep the healthcare consumer out of the hospital in the least expensive care
setting, a blue ocean marketing strategy based on experience, price and quality
transparency is just what the doctor ordered. Pun intended.
Now that being said, it is a tall order for an industry that
has traditionally not been transparent regarding price and outcomes to make
that change overnight. But it is one of
the few remaining changes that can provide a good head start on market dominance. And in all honesty, whether or not survival is
at stake, healthcare organizations need marketing innovation to change the competitive
dynamics of the market.
The semi-retailization of healthcare is accelerating even more so now with the entrant of
non-traditional providers who are competing on price, experience and access,
which is a deadly combination for traditional healthcare providers who are slow
to change.
Just because an organization packages the mouse trap
differently than others, doesn’t mean it’s any different.
Developing what I call a blue ocean marketing strategy in
truth stems from becoming a blue ocean strategy organization. Marketing
leadership and marketing organizational transformation at its best and you have
a formula for success. Be the blue ocean innovator and show healthcare marketing as
proactive rather than reactive.
As the Disney character Dory in Finding Nemo says, “Keep swimming, keep swimming, keep swimming.”