case study

Even though the company was well-established, being in business 15 years, its focus was very technical and centered around solving the medical imaging workflow problems that plague hospitals and health systems.

Through Healthcare Service Consultant’s guidance, the company was able to:

• Achieve heightened market awareness and credibility
• Package the individual products into a suite of software solutions
• Increase sales to larger health systems and OEM’s
• Grow the company’s existing base of happy customers

Laurel Bridge develops software that enables healthcare providers to manage medical imaging workflow. Their software suite enables hospitals to share medical images and imaging-related information across the disparate clinical IT systems used throughout their organization.

The primary market drivers for their business have been:

• Consolidation amongst healthcare providers
• The lack of interoperability amongst clinical IT systems that hospitals use
• The need to ensure medical imaging information remains accessible

With a long history in the medical imaging market, the company’s solutions have evolved to meet the ever-changing needs of healthcare environments. This has resulted in them having many happy customers who keep looking to the company to solve additional problems.

2.1 Small Size

Being a small company was a perceived barrier to hiring a full-time marketer. Before hiring HSC, Laurel Bridge’s overburdened executive staff handled all marketing. The company was limiting growth by not dedicating resources to marketing efforts.

2.2 The Wrong Messaging

Because the company is run by software developers and engineers, the company’s messaging focused on the technical capabilities of products and was too verbose.

Their messaging also broke some cardinal marketing rules:

• They concentrated on product features instead of product benefits
• They attempted to highlight every feature

2.3 Poor Positioning

Laurel Bridge initially positioned their products as individual software solutions. This prevented prospects from seeing how their software could work together to solve a broad range of problems. They also did not highlight the value of their installation, configuration and training services, which significantly influenced the end users experience.

When HSC came onboard, Laurel Bridge had limited marketing scope and tactics. HSC has managed the entire marketing effort for Laurel Bridge for over five years.

This has involved an ongoing reassessment of:

• Their business needs
• Shifting market pain points
• The effectiveness of the tactics

This constant analysis has allowed us to improve and refine Laurel Bridge’s marketing program.

3.1 Strategy

Our first step was to perform strategic messaging and competitive SWOT analysis. This helped us identify where and how we could improve their messaging.

As part of this process we:

• Discussed their product strategy
• Reviewed product and messaging items the client had considered but never implemented

We determined that the language Laurel Bridge was using to describe their offerings was highly technical, did not highlight a few key benefits and was potentially confusing. We developed workflow-centric messaging as a new way to talk about the overall problems they solved. We also restructured how the message for individual products fit into the overall messaging strategy.

3.2 The Right Messaging

HSC developed a holistic content-driven inbound marketing program built upon educational content and customer success stories aligned with the workflow-centric messaging. We also highlighted common imaging workflow problems and put them in terms their audience would understand.

By using clinical workflow terms instead of technical terms, we spoke to the client’s problems and offered Laurel Bridge as a solution. Also, HSC implemented targeted messaging for different market segments and audience types, to improve the likelihood that any messaging resonated with the reader.

3.3 Multi-Channel Approach

We applied our revised messaging consistently across all channels. In all cases we quantified the effectiveness of each effort and shared results with the client so they could follow up individually with leads. This included:

• Email marketing
• Social media (LinkedIn and Twitter)
• Sales collateral
• Website copy
• PR and earned content

3.4 Public Relations

Laurel Bridge had not been taking advantage of the benefits of public relations. We started using press releases to announce company and customer successes. HSC also approached trade publications to pitch customer stories that leveraged the customer success stories.

These methods expanded market credibility, audience reach and name recognition.

3.5 Trade Show Marketing

HSC reviewed the trade shows Laurel Bridge was attending. We applied the revised, customer-centric messaging to booth elements, including pre- and post-show messaging. This helped prospects and customers understand the value of meeting company representatives in the booth.

3.6 Speak to Decision Makers

HSC composed a couple of educational white papers that spoke directly to the actual decision-makers. They focused on educating the reader about the broader issues they may not be aware of. The white papers also framed the range of problems as an integrated set of issues, rather than as many discrete problems. As with any white paper the goals were to:

• Create awareness of the overall problem via education
• Show them that Laurel Bridge understood the bigger picture problems and could solve them

4.1 Increased Sales Growth

The result of implementing an ongoing integrated marketing effort was a significant increase in name recognition and considerable sales growth in all target market segments. This resulted in Laurel Bridge earning business from much larger and more prestigious healthcare organizations and OEM’s.

4.2 Return Customers

Existing Laurel Bridge clients are increasingly “multi-product customers.” By highlighting specific clinical imaging workflows, customers are able to understand how the suite of products work together to solve real-world problems. As their needs and challenges evolve, they know they can depend on Laurel Bridge to have the right solution.

Contact us if a refinement and repositioning of your messaging could benefit your business.