Hospital Financial Decision Support SaaS Vendor Launches Content Presence to Address New Market Entrants and Slow Sales Results

  • Established vendor with a level 0.75 content program
  • Doubled email open rates from 20% to 40% on customer emails
  • Set up semi-monthly metrics reporting to CEO including email KPIs, social metrics, and ABM feedback
  • Built case study that was instrumental in closing their first deal in 2 years
  • LinkedIn Growth
      • 1,200% growth in page views
      • 1,300% growth in unique visitors
      • 1,500% growth in custom button clicks
  • Ranked 2nd on Google for key thought leadership SEO term through regular publishing of themed blogs
  • Launched sales content library in Salesforce

Impact of Value-based Content Marketing Application

Challenge: Playing Catch-Up to Aggressive Competition

The VP of marketing of a hospital financial decision support SaaS company approached me with a content program at level 0. They were an established industry player, had a product that was getting results for their customers and deep internal knowledge, but none of this was reflected in their content presence.

They were losing RFPs to new entrants and prospects were generally unaware of their existence. Sales had stagnated and all new leads were coming from peer-to-peer referrals from hospital executives and personal relationships with their sales teams.

 

Goals: Improving Content Results and Tying to Business Impact

  • Get on a content publishing schedule that freed leadership up from content creation and review
  • Establish a content presence that supported a functioning sales pipeline
  • Create a self-service sales content bank to support rep development and results
  • Feed sales team better-qualified leads who already understood the company value prop and key differentiators in financial decision making and insights for hospital leaders
  • Making use of an expensive CRM and email marketing software that were sitting idol 
  • Launching an ABM program
  • Identifying key content marketing metrics and KPIs to prove business impact

 

Solution: Applied Value-Based Content Marketing 

Evidence-Based Listening

  • Interviewed executive leadership to 
    • Map personas and customer pain points 
    • Establish differentiators
    • Identify target personas and pain points
    • Outline tone of voice, brand pillars, and key content types
  • Reviewed prior market research conducted on customers
  • Combined with LocutusHealth proprietary data on market interest 
  • Leveraged information from market research partner to identify a core brand issue of low brand awareness

Value-Based Content

  • Identified internal SMEs and repurposed resources for ongoing campaigns
  • Began cadence of a monthly blog and automated LinkedIn posts
  • Relaunched customer and prospect newsletters 

Platforms & Tech

  • Set up Salesforce email automation and CRM to align with new content program needs
  • Recommended against additional upgrades suggested by Salesforce reps until we could justify investment and maximize feature use

Systems & Workflows

  • Established sales reps interview process to inform content campaigns
  • Set up weekly automated reporting in Salesforce to be delivered to marketing leadership
  • Set up Salesforce lead scoring system tied to website activity
  • Coordinated with customer acquisition vendor

Provider Engagement

  • Identified distribution as a key content challenge that was stalling funnel efforts
  • Began ABM tagging initiative on LinkedIn

Sales Enablement

  • Created content aligned with sales rep development program
  • Established easy-to-access content library in Salesforce. This bank allowed them to pull… 
    • Case studies
    • Videos
    • White papers
    • Digital and print materials for virtual and in-person conferences including HFMA (regional and national conferences), Becker’s, TORCH, and ANI
  • Built out event strategy, collateral, and email sequences based on the yearly schedule for events including local and national HFMA events, TORCH, and other regional events 
  • Set up deal value tracking in Salesforce and identified key accounts for minimum viable ABM, along with tactics for omnichannel engagement

Results: Content Marketing Program Upgrade

  • Established weekly blogs and monthly newsletters for prospects and customers
  • Ranked second on Google for key thought leadership SEO term through regular publishing of themed blogs
  • Doubled customer email open rates from 20% to 40%
  • Received glowing feedback from sales team on effectiveness of videos, case studies, conference materials, and other refreshed collateral
  • Built case study that was instrumental in closing their first deal in 2 years
  • Leveraged partner webinars for email and case study distribution to support ABM efforts as aligned with sales team

 

We brought Megan in early in the evolution of our content marketing program, largely because she knew the language of hospitals and we didn’t have to translate. She got our email automation program up and running, was instrumental in improving our use of Salesforce, and helped us translate our deep internal knowledge and subject matter expertise into long-term, full funnel content execution.