Patient Acquisition Segments

I had a great conversation with a healthcare executive last week about segmenting and targeting new patients. When you think about acquiring new patients, you can bucket them into four segments. Patients that care about...

  1. Brand -- they want to see a doctor that is employed or affiliated with a prominent hospital or health system.
  2. Facilities -- they want nice, clean offices in a good neighborhood.
  3. Convenience -- they want easy access to good doctors near their home and to get in and out quickly
  4. Cost -- they want to pay a smaller co-pay, receive less expensive services, etc.

We agreed that very roughly 25% of patients prioritize brand, 35% prioritize facilities, 35% prioritize convenience and only 5% prioritize cost.

My personal take is that the fastest growing segments are the cost and convenience segments. Federal and state governments are providing a variety of incentives that are driving patients toward the lower cost providers, and I think we'll see that trend continue. And just like most industries that begin to move online (healthcare is a laggard in this area) consumers will begin to value convenience and ease of access more and more.

And I think it is the brand segment that is shrinking. As quality and cost become more and more transparent to patients, brands will become less important. If a patient finds a doctor online that went to a decent medical school, that has good reviews from other patients, and good availability, the brand that they're affiliated will matter less and less.

Top 20 Movies

I had a debate with some friends a couple weeks ago about the best movies ever made. Here's my list. It's impossible to rank them from 1 through 20...so I created two lists: the top 10, and the next 10.

Top 10

  • Shawshank Redemption
  • Scent of a Woman
  • A Time to Kill
  • Michael Clayton
  • The Big Lebowski
  • A Few Good Men
  • Fargo
  • Good Will Hunting
  • Bourne Identity
  • Juno

Next 10

  • Capote
  • Little Miss Sunshine
  • Field of Dreams
  • Traffic
  • Silence of the Lambs
  • Driving Miss Daisy
  • Saving Private Ryan
  • Forrest Gump
  • The Fugitive
  • The Natural

Honorable Mentions: ET, Margin Call, Man on Fire

3 Random Marketing Thoughts

Here are three random marketing related things on my mind this week.

  1. Facebook is becoming more and more powerful as a marketing channel. One neat thing they’re doing is allowing advertisers to send them a list of all of their customers' email addresses. Facebook will then cross reference the advertiser's emails with their own user base and re-target ads to drive repeat purchases. I’m sure there are some privacy questions around this but that’s a super compelling proposition for advertisers -- a very efficient way to spend ad dollars.
  2. If you’re shopping for a television on Best Buy’s website, you might be shocked to see small advertisements for televisions from other merchants on the page (with links out to their websites). The risk that you might click on one of these ads is apparently offset by the high CPA Best Buy will get if you end up clicking away and buying the television from someone else. That’s pretty amazing – and a clear sign that the consumer is so much more in control these days. Best Buy's thinking is, "hey, if people are going to shop around, we might as well get a piece of it."
  3. A while back, I learned (the hard way) that when you misspell a word in the subject line of a marketing email, it’s very likely that you’ll get a higher response rate than if you had spelled the word correctly. The mistake jumps out and gets people’s attention. I got an email from Choice Hotels last week that spelled Worcester, Massachusetts as “Worchester”. I opened it right away…to find that they had spelled it correctly in the body of the email. Not a tactic I’d recommend, but sometimes you just gotta do what works.

Are The Boston Celtics Better Without Rondo?

Rondo

There was a good article on Red's Army the other day asking the question that most Boston Celtics fans are asking since Rondo went down with an ACL injury back in January: are the Celtics better without him?

Looking at the Celtics record, you'd certainly have to conclude that they are better. The Celtics were 20 and 23 through the first 43 games of the season with Rondo. Since he went down, they're 16 and 6.

When you dive a bit deeper into the numbers, you'll find that the Celtics offense (the part of the game where Rondo thrives) is almost exactly the same from a statistical perspective. They have virtually the same shot percentage, 3-point percentage and points per game.

But when you look at the defense (something that basketball fans often forget is 50% of the game) then you do see that the Celtics have improved. Boston has a defensive rating of 100.5 points per possession when Rondo is on the floor. When he's off the floor that drops to 98.3, which translates to about a 4 points per game improvement without him in the lineup.

So the Celtics are the same on offense and a little bit better on defense. But I don't think this kind of analysis really captures some of the important intangibles:

  • The attitude of the team seems to be a lot better.
  • The younger and newer guys are getting the ball a lot more and feel more empowered.
  • They don't take as many nights off.
  • They don't fight with the refs as much.
  • They're spreading the offense around and playing at a faster pace.
  • Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett have been forced to take back their leadership role.
  • The team seems much more coachable.

Obviously all of these things are hard to measure but there's no doubt they make a difference. I have to say, I really like this team without Rondo.

But all of that said, it'll be interesting to see how they perform without him in the playoffs. They don't really have a young superstar on the court without him. And often that's what you need in the playoffs. It's awfully easy to forget that Rondo was the Celtics leading scorer in 3 of the 7 playoff games with the Heat last year and that he put up 44 points in game 2.

The good news is that we will get some closure on this soon. Right now the Celtics are slated to play the Knicks in the first round of the playoffs. If the Celtics show they can play with the best teams without Rondo, they will have some clarity and may have to make some tough decisions in the offseason. On the other hand, if they get knocked out early, a lot of sportswriters will have some apologizing to do. I'm looking forward to watching.

Yahoo! & Working From Home

Much has been made of Marrisa Mayer’s controversial decision to stop allowing Yahoo! employees to work from home. I've heard pretty convincing arguments for it and against it. I feel pretty strongly about allowing employees to work when and where they’re most productive. Personally, I’ve often found that I can be incredibly productive working from home on Saturday mornings. And not so productive when in the office on a Friday afternoon. And often it can be vice versa. But having the flexibility to manage my own productivity makes me a better employee. Having that kind of control is really important.

But none of this takes into account collaboration with my company and team. There are things that I can’t do on my own time. I have to collaborate with my colleagues, and when and where we do that is not always up to me. So I need to balance optimizing my own productivity with finding time to collaborate and learn and innovate with my colleagues. Ideally, a CEO should allow individuals to manage that balance on their own. But when a company is going through a massive change in management and structure and mission (like Yahoo! is right now) it absolutely makes sense for the CEO to mandate that balance.

Right now, according to Mayer, it appears that Yahoo! is in transition. And in need of better collaboration and teamwork and that’s why she made the decision to bring employees back to the office.

In short, I guess my opinion is to not have an opinion. Those of us that are not on the executive team at Yahoo! can’t really know the circumstances at Yahoo! and, given those circumstances, can't really make an intelligent judgement about the most appropriate work from home policy.

The Power Of LinkedIn

I received this email from LinkedIn the other day. LinkedIn Email

I'm surprised I'm in the "LinkedIn one-percent". I don't share all that much on the site, or many other social networks for that matter. 95% of my sharing is done on this blog. I've always been reluctant to share very actively in too many places; I prefer to share in one place that I can be really proud of.

That said, I have built up an amazing network of colleagues, friends, partners, clients and mentors that I can easily speak to through LinkedIn's platform. And this email is a good reminder of how much of an asset that network can be.

Failure

People of Groupon, After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding — I was fired today. If you’re wondering why … you haven’t been paying attention.

These were the first two sentences of Andrew Mason's letter to employees announcing that he had been fired as CEO of Groupon following a disappointing fourth-quarter earnings report. The letter goes on to explain some of his failures, as well as express his hope for the future of the company.

It was really refreshing to see Mason take this approach. This guy built an amazing company (I wrote about their growth a while back). And I give him a ton of credit for talking about his failures so publicly. This is so rare in public and private life.

When I interview job candidates I always ask them about the biggest mistakes and failures in their career. Candidates are so reluctant to talk about this topic. They often don't answer the question or talk about a failure where they didn't really fail. They're afraid that I'm going to view their failures as a bad thing.

But failure is a good thing, a great thing actually. Because it shows that you've tried things that are hard and have been through difficult times and persevered. And I want to work with people that have tried hard things and been through difficult times and persevered.

When you try to do great things you're going to fail. A lot. And failing is the best chance to learn. Personally, I learn much more when I fail than when I succeed.

When I interview someone and they can't think of a failure, there are three possible takeaways: 1.) the candidate isn't self aware 2.) the candidate is lying 3.) the candidate has never tried anything difficult. All of these are bad.

I hope we see more business leaders (and interviewees) become more open about their failures like Andrew Mason was last week.