Lessons from the Field – Five Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Change Provider & Vendor Marketing

 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Everybody talks about Artificial Intelligence (AI), but what does that mean for the healthcare provider and vendor marketing? AI is already with us as a part of our everyday lives; look at Alexi, Siri, Google Home, and Cortana. These devices already know what we want and assist us in navigating a complex world at home, at work, and in our play. They help us search for medical services and vendors who provide medical products and services.

If you think about it, AI will have a profound effect on how hospitals anticipate the needs of and engage with patients and how vendors create a new prospect journey independent of sales.

At some point, direct contact with an individual, be it a physician, clinician, or salesperson, will come into play, as human touch will always be needed. But for sales, prospecting for new customers will become less about cold calling and existing client referrals, to responding to well-developed leads uncovered by the buyer's behavior and need, based on more data than anyone can synthesize in near real-time.

If you consider the advantages of AI in managing the engagement and experience of the patient or prospect journey, then marketing moves from the realm of interruptive marketing for creating awareness and value to driving interest with more compelling content and digital strategies that drive patient experience and engagement.

While on the other side of the healthcare marketing AI dime for vendors, prospects are not merely just someone looking for something, but become engaged, gaining an understanding of the value you offer and how well your product or service meets their needs. After all, isn't that three-quarter of the struggle sales face every day?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Healthcare provider and vendor marketing will change in the following five ways. 

1.       AI will streamline marketing and make it more efficient. With AI all around us in apps, chatbots, and content marketing, think of how it will transform the patient and prospect customer experience (CX) interaction and journey. 

2.       AI will allow marketing to delve deeper than ever before into the persona and psyche of the target individual. AI is the ultimate individualized personalization of the digital experience, engagement, and content. Consider Google Duplex, an AI tool that can make phone calls on your behalf, book appointments, and even make restaurant reservations in specific situations. 

3.       AI marketing will help marketers create new workflows, optimize marketing spending, ease content creation, augment product feeds with image recognition, drive predictive analytics and create powerful new marketing strategies.  

4.       AI applications will be used with a highly targeted digital advertisement strategy at the precise moment when a patient's or prospect's behavior indicates that they are most likely to need healthcare services or to be interested in purchasing your product or service.  

5.       AI will force a shake-out of the provider and vendor healthcare market to eliminate those providers and vendors who cannot recognize, adapt, change and implement AI in their marketing and sales efforts.

Image by George Tudor from Pixabay

For some time now, marketers have looked to the day when AI marketing tools, big data, and machine learning become part of our everyday lives. That day is here, and it's taking over marketing in forward-thinking companies.

The new question for healthcare marketing becomes, as AI technology grows and evolves, are you ready to reshape your provider or vendor marketing strategy?

Michael is a healthcare business, marketing, communications strategist, and thought leader. As an internationally followed healthcare strategy blogger, his blog, Healthcare Marketing Matters, is read in 52 countries and is listed on the 100 Top Healthcare Marketing Blogs & Websites ranked at No. 3 on the list by Feedspot.com. Michael is a Life Fellow American College of Healthcare Executives. An influencer in healthcare marketing strategy, communications, digital marketing, and social media, Michael is in the top 10 percent of social media experts nationwide. For inquiries regarding strategic consulting engagements, you can email me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com. 

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The opinions expressed are my own.