Lean organizations are focused on one thing: creating greater customer value while minimizing waste. This type of business model is a natural fit for the healthcare industry, which prioritizes getting patients the best care possible, as quickly as possible, at the lowest cost possible. As a healthcare distributor, it’s worth doing your homework into the lean approach to see how it can enhance your business operations. Agile marketing in healthcare is one way to make your organization leaner.
What Is a Lean Organization?
“Lean” refers to a type of organizational structure. It’s all about using as few resources as possible to achieve the best outcomes for customers.
In a lean model, every member of the organization will find ways to improve daily processes. When small tasks performed by individuals become more efficient, the organization as a whole becomes more streamlined. The end result is the ultimate lean goal stated in the introduction: more value for customers, less waste for companies. Everybody benefits.
Can this business model really make that much of a difference? You’d be surprised. Some big names in the business world subscribe to the lean methodology, including Toyota and Intel.
A lean organization benefits your employees, customers, and company alike. Here’s how:
- Employees: Lean can boost employee accountability and engagement within your organization, as the onus is put on individuals to find ways to improve processes.
- Customers: Since Lean is ultimately all about improving customer value, it forces the company to get into the customer’s shoes. This means placing value on customer opinions, soliciting feedback, and acting on it. By catering to customers, the company can better meet their needs.
- Company: Lean promotes growth by paring the business down to the essentials, using readily available resources without over-extending beyond existing means. Plus, more engaged employees mean improved performance, while happier customers whose needs are being met drive sales – ultimately boosting profitability.
Agile Marketing 101
How can agile marketing in healthcare contribute to a lean organization? First, let’s define agile marketing.
A Quick History of the Agile Mindset
The agile approach was initially developed as an approach for software delivery in 2001. It’s characterized by its iterative process, which is what gives agile its defining trait – flexibility.
In the past, developer teams conceptualized a product and then concentrate their efforts to deliver that final product as they had envisioned it. In contrast, the agile approach requires development teams to assess value at every development stage – not just once they’ve crossed the finish line.
What sets the agile approach apart (and made it so groundbreaking when it appeared) is the flexibility it insists upon. Agile development requires a continual feedback loop. The software development team doesn’t just define a product and deliver that end product to the market. They continually seek feedback throughout the development process, tweaking things as they go along.
This results in more innovative development and, ultimately, a more user-friendly product. Agile development has proven extremely successful in the software industry and is still used to this day.
Agile Marketing Defined
So, what’s all that got to do with marketing?
Let’s get back to that defining trait mentioned above – flexibility. This is likewise a defining characteristic of agile marketing campaigns.
Marketers have recognized that they can’t just create campaigns and shove them down consumers’ throats. By consistently soliciting feedback from their target audience, marketers – including in the healthcare industry – can craft campaigns that truly resonate with that audience.
Agile marketing is about more than just collecting feedback, however. As a tactical marketing technique, agile requires teams to:
- Collectively identify high-value projects and then focus collectively on those projects.
- Measure the impact of those projects.
- Tweak their efforts to incrementally yet continuously improve the results of the project.
This marketing model supports a lean organizational structure because it improves value for the customer (creating marketing campaigns that engage clients) while reducing wasted time and resources for the company through constant feedback, measurement, and tweaking.
Tips for More Agile Marketing in Healthcare
Implementing agile marketing in healthcare is easier than you might think. These tips can get you started.
Implement Sprints
Agile marketing teams rely on sprints to drive cooperative and efficient collaboration. A sprint is a short, predefined period in which teams jointly focus on a single task. For example, you might ask your team to implement a new pay-per-click ad campaign within X days or weeks.
Hold Daily Stand-Up Meetings
Agile’s flexibility means projects are always evolving. It’s thus smart to check in with your team’s progress regularly. A short, 15-minute (maximum) stand-up meeting every day is a great way to do this. Team members should bring up issues and bottlenecks (e.g., that PPC campaign isn’t performing as hoped) so they can be addressed quickly. The entire team can then collaborate on the solution.
Use a Board to Track Progress
Another key trait of agile is that it relies on visual progress tracking. You can go old school and use a whiteboard and sticky note to track progress. Alternatively, you can use a digital Kanban board. This is also a great way to enforce accountability. You can update the board together as a team during stand-ups to see who is doing what.
Measure, Measure, Measure
As mentioned, feedback is critical to agile success. Now, that doesn’t mean that marketers have to continually ask their target audience, “Hey, what did you think of that campaign?” or something similar. Modern marketing tech and tools make it easy to get feedback.
For example, the success of social media influencer marketing can be measured by metrics like shares, comments, and likes. The success of an email marketing campaign can be measured by opens and clicks.
Ramp Up Your Healthcare Marketing
Share Moving Media can help you tap into the power of agile marketing in healthcare. A full-service media company, we help our clients create content and campaigns that deliver real value to their target audiences. Our goal is to help you increase healthcare sales.
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