Why a multi-channel healthcare marketing strategy matters and how to execute it

I am visual.

When creating a multi-channel healthcare marketing campaign strategy, I need to see it mapped out in front of me to ensure it checks all the boxes for achieving stated KPIs.

And in my experience as a healthcare marketer, creating a strong and effective campaign relies on the capability to keep the “why” behind it at the forefront during development.

Marketers have conceived and executed multi-channel campaigns the same way for many years. While they might not be looking for a new way, it has always felt clunky.

For example, I sketched out a multi-channel strategy on a whiteboard during brainstorm sessions as the lead strategist. After a session ended, team members took a photo of the whiteboard and translated it to PowerPoint. The team circulated the diagram, finalized it and then handed it off to a designer to make it look “pretty.”

Creating a multi-channel campaign will always be a team effort, no doubt. But a huge issue is that the rationale and reasoning behind the strategy doesn’t get properly documented. On most projects, lead strategists don’t stick around for the detailed documentation process, and many times their thoughts and intentions vaporize.

With my team, after all the translating, re-designing, Power Pointing and analyzing, the original rationale was partially lost or at times miscommunicated. Additionally, campaign strategies never lived anywhere easily accessible to everyone on the team. There’d be so many versions of our strategy in different digital folders, notes, and decks, it was hard to keep track of during the development process, let alone a year later.

On the other side, clients would ask questions trying to gain clarity after multiple iterations of documents had passed through shifting teams. No one could quickly identify the right reference points. It was frustrating, to say the least.

Why the “why” is so important in healthcare marketing campaigns:

Well thought out campaigns with a strong strategy produce the best results. When you know what you started with, you can optimize proactively and get clear on KPIs. In the long run, the rationale persists.

Multi-channel marketing campaigns aren’t quick hits. They’re long marathons that require strong upfront planning and follow through over the long term. If not, they become a grouping of one-offs vs. a cohesive campaign.

I knew for years that there had to be a more efficient process that would save time and money. I also knew that a platform that would give my team the capabilities to create a strategy from start to finish with less technical talent (business analysts, designers) and more focus on the context behind the campaign had to be born. I knew it had to be user-friendly, intuitive, and culminate in a web-based visual map.

It wasn’t until this year that my team and I came up with an idea for the platform that would make the process of creating a strategy for multi-channel marketing campaign 100X easier.

We wanted to make something that would help marketers create a presentation-ready, easy to read map that showed every step along with the “why” behind the entire campaign. The documentation would live in one place and it would stay completely intact during creative and executional processes. So we developed Springboard in three and a half months and started sharing it with the healthcare marketing industry.

My team and I have been doing healthcare multi-channel marketing for over 15 years. We know that marketers (both client and agency-side) don’t want to read a complicated tech document. They want a campaign strategy they can understand at a glance.

Enter Springboard: a platform that helps healthcare marketers dynamically create multi-channel marketing campaigns.

These days, personalization is the key to successful multi-channel marketing — especially in healthcare marketing.

Springboard helps marketers map out and create tailored multi-channel campaigns. It allows them to store them in one place so nothing gets lost in the process.

It also makes it easy to share the entire strategy with other team members, whether they were around during the development process or not.

With Springboard, it’s impossible to ignore channels outside of email, like push messages, SMS, phone and direct mail to communicate with customers in mind. It’s also impossible to lose your work because your maps automatically save on the platform.

What makes us different? Springboard was made by marketers for marketers with healthcare in mind. But it can totally be useful to marketers in any industry too.

In fact, anyone with any type of background or experience level can use Springboard. Built-in tips and guides will help campaign creators step by step through the mapping process without hiring a designer or making it look pretty. No matter what, Springboard can help marketers create campaigns that feel 1:1 and provide a better understanding of engagement across channels.

I’m so excited to share Springboard with the healthcare industry.

Finally, marketers in this field can seamlessly craft campaigns that consider important milestones in the patient journey and how communication affects them on different platforms.

Every customer that comes into contact with marketers’ communication has a unique journey to consider. These milestones can’t be overlooked.

We aim to support companies that actually care enough to create personalized, thoughtful campaigns to communicate the information customers’ need at the time they need it. That’s what Springboard is for. Content and communication with care.

Do you want to take Springboard for a spin to see for yourself just how easy multi-channel marketing can be? Click here to start mapping.