Posted on 29 November 2007.
Recently, I gave a talk with our fabulous client, Cheryl Munn, about Microcasting. What’s Microcasting you may ask? Here was our working definition:
Electronic communication with your audience in the most customized way possible for the smallest, measurable segment possible.
Why does this matter for healthcare?
Because if you’re like any of our clients, you have some programs you have to grow, some you don’t want to grow, and some you could only grow by a handful of patients… or doctors for that matter. The scaling problems of healthcare, as a business, are related to cost of delivery. Adding another patient could cost you nothing… or make you unprofitable.
Most healthcare websites are only spoken of in terms of the past -- pageviews, visitors, the bizarrely misnamed “hits” — but measuring the past is only a start.
Most healthcare marketers have a far better handle of offline demographics than online, but only because the people who sold you the media told you so!
The good news is that it’s entirely possible to get a grip on your online audience. What you should be after is a working theory that can be tested and validated over time.
The key is to be curious and challenge assumptions whenever possible. More about that, next post.
About Paul Griffiths
Paul has been CEO of MedTouch since April of 2007 and, prior to that, held the position of COO. As a co-founder, he has helped set the vision for the company from its inception. Paul is an active speaker in the healthcare marketing community. In addition to the dozen webinars MedTouch presents each year, Paul can be seen and heard giving lively talks around the country about helping healthcare organizations succeed online: from New England (NESHCo), to Tennessee (TSHPRM), Florida (FSHPRM), and Las Vegas (Annual Healthcare Internet Conference).
Prior to MedTouch, Paul managed online brand experiences for a variety of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. He has over 15 years of combined experience in online commerce, interactive marketing, experience design and content management solutions. Most notably, he directed the consumer-facing channel for the now defunct Send.com, an online gift delivery network that raised $45 million from such VC luminaries as Greylock, Highland Capital, Benchmark and Charles Rivers Ventures in the late 1990s.
Paul earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Boston University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.
When he’s not traveling across the country to visit clients or to speak at healthcare conferences, Paul runs a humanitarian non-profit with his wife. He’s thrilled to finally have a yard for his dogs and two boys, and often daydreams of spending a summer in Iceland.
