While the future of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is filled with uncertainty, the health benefits landscape is certainly set to undergo massive transformation over the next several years.
From risk selection, to market exits/entrants, to online rxchange consumer shopping (public or private), health plans must anticipate and prepare for fast-paced change.
Health care reform makes 2014 an important milestone for every health plan, market leaders that want to protect their turf, and opportunists looking at a land grab. What's coming is the "retailization of healthcare," where consumers are given control over their health benefit purchase decisions.
What was once an industry anchored in employer-based coverage is morphing into an individually accessed marketplace relying on a fragmented, multi-channel network of field agent, online, telephone, mobile and retail selling outlets. Over the next 24-months, winning health plans will take time to optimize their market position and articulate value proposition that resonates with consumers.
With product standardization and price transparency leveling the retail playing field, smart healthcare marketers need to refresh their arsenal of customer acquisition and retention tactics. Just to stay ahead, plans need to define core strategic imperatives. This means protecting and expanding relationships with their existing customer base across product-lines and market segments. And in terms of continued growth, it means strengthening direct-to-consumer marketing tactics and bolstering sales distribution to facilitate (and influence) customer choice.
Following are four areas of focus that construct tomorrow's marketing framework:
1. Know your prospects and customers.
Quantify the demographic make-up, profitability, and health-insurance attitudes of your existing member base (by employer group, direct-to-consumer segments, and distribution outlet).
Back this up by deploying data-driven marketing analytics and predictive modeling to strategically connect with those non-members most likely to contribute positively to a plan's bottom-line (i.e., disciplined expansion prior to 2014 within prescribed medical loss ratio and pricing requirements).
2. Adapt to new marketing.
Design marketing communications, both brand and direct response, to speak to a health plan's diverse customer set with a unified, consistent voice; always delivering a well-articulated, differentiated value proposition to combat the noise created by Health Care Reform, the rivalry of new competitors, and intense consumer cynicism.
This demands a move to high engagement tactics that cut across the marketing continuum and extends customer relationships (offline and online member acquisition campaigns tied to strict return-on-investment (ROI) metrics and LifeTime Value).
