Tales from a Marketing Life

I was helping build the competitive landscape for a company. We had a decent market share, but had potential for growth. My concern was that executives didn't grasp the strength of the competition.

Instead of simply stating how much market share we had (18 percent), I thought it would be more effective to show how we stacked against major competitors. 

The blue color in the map represents states where our company had business. The other colors showed our competitors. 

For many in the management team, this was the first time they saw the competitive landscape presented visually like this, and it was a revelation for them.

The graphic above represents an example of using very specific data to focus digital advertising. The numbers represent potential market opportunity. The letters represent competitors. 

Even as more avenues and channels have become available for marketing and advertising, trying to figure out where to direct your money for maximum impact can be a challenge.

I take budgeting seriously. Where to focus digital outreach has to be part of the overall marketing strategy.

I access and analyze data to affirm how best to use marketing resources. Gut feeling is good, but backing it up with data is far more effective.

Rebuilding Market Share

This health insurance company worked in the consumer and commercial space.  The consumer business was doing well, but the commercial business was losing membership and money. I was brought in as Director of Business Marketing to revive the commercial side.

As I dug into the challenges, several things became clear:

• We were not communicating with the business community. Our messaging, both advertising and outreach was mimicking our consumer work but was not focused on the employer market. I shifted our advertising to key business channels. 
• We had poor relationships with our distribution partners. Insurance consultants were responsible for the majority of our sales, but we did not treat them as a primary stakeholder. Together with the sales director, I began to strengthen relationships with distribution agencies.
• Our product development and deployment was completely off-cycle. We were not delivering new products in time for our distribution partners to get them to market. This was a particularly daunting challenge as it required changing internal culture. I worked to get it accepted by our executive team, and establish a rigorous product development schedule.
• We stopped membership decline, stabilized the business, and showed revenue growth for the first time in 5 years.

At the insurance company, we wanted to establish ourselves as an authority on healthcare topics for the business community.

One way we did that is by raising the profile of our executive team. By negotiating an advertising package that gave us space in the major business publications in our target area, I began to write and publish articles that touched on relevant healthcare topics of the day, written from the perspective of our leadership team.

Somebody's going to tell your story - might as well be you. This opinion piece written for the Chief Marketing Officer was designed to get our leadership known in the business community.

One of our key stakeholders were insurance brokers. We wanted them to know that we could offer solutions but also that we were tuned into the current healthcare environment and could help them answer employers' questions.