Crystal Clear Communications Blog

As 2022 draws to a close, I’m publishing my annual blog of marketing success stories from which others can learn. While some people resumed “normal” life, inflation, economic uncertainty, and the continuing state of COVID impacted marketing programs and budgets.

The good news is that marketers are a clever group. And I once again asked some colleagues to share their success stories from the year.

Here’s what they had to say:

Connecting with clients

 People are hungry to join communities again, even virtual communities.

“With remote work now a reality across our business and our customers’ businesses, we needed to find ways to stay connected,” says Kathy Baker, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Healthcare at Syntellis Performance Solutions.

“We specifically wanted a way to engage with our customers to share product knowledge and training as well as to stay abreast of their business needs in the ever-changing market.

“Our company held virtual workgroups focused on a particular product with the following goals

1. Understanding the challenges they were facing with the new market conditions.
2. Learning how they were using our product to solve these challenges.
3. Sharing information about ways we are improving our products to better meet their needs.

“We found these small workgroup conversations successful, with customers looking forward to, and attending, them on a quarterly basis. We will continue the workgroups in 2023.”

Re-establishing marketing’s value to the organization

It’s smart to reset expectations for Marketing among internal clients.

“COVID impacted and changed how marketing reached buyers. This impacted and improved brand awareness and increased demand generation,” says Samantha Downing, Vice President of Marketing – Industries at EXL.

“That resulted in unique, concierge, and 1:1 focused marketing, creating confusion on the role marketing played within the organization and diminishing the perceived value marketing brought to the business.

“While this seems basic in nature, we realized if we did not reset with our internal stakeholders, we were being taken off course of our primary objectives. From improving brand awareness and increasing demand generation.

We spent significant time in 2022 re-establishing the value marketing brings to the organization.  We achieved this by repetitive and improved definitions of the role of marketing and the impact it creates through the 1:many approach, with a dedicated focus on brand and messaging.

“By doing so, we got back on track. We delivered campaigns that accelerated brand awareness and demand generation on a wider scale.

A bonus is that this re-establishment of marketing’s value ensured that we were effectively collaborating with our stakeholders and optimizing our budget, resources, and efforts in a meaningful and valuable way to them.”

Personalize for your target audience

To foretell the future, ask decision-makers what they see coming.

“The Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) is one of the key decision makers for our solutions,” says Barbi Green, Vice President, Brand & Content at Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO). “We decided to put this audience front and center with a new kind of asset that tapped into their unique expertise and insights. We reached out to CMIOs across the country and secured quotes from 10, each of whom answered the question: ‘How will the role of the CMIO change in the years ahead, and what challenges or opportunities will these changes bring?’

“The resulting insight brief was a success on several fronts:

• We created relevant, thought-provoking content while establishing stronger ties with the CMIOs who were quoted.
• The future-facing quotes provided learnings for us to use in sales conversations and product planning.
• The email open rate of 30% was one of the best of the year, contributing to greater lead generation.
• Ten quotes from ten CMIOs fed a steady stream of social posts – and tagging each participant meant expanding IMO’s exposure through their networks.

“Given the positive results, we plan to create a similar asset for another stakeholder group in 2023.”

Engaging employees to bring a new brand to life

When you launch a new brand, first get employees on board.

“2022 was a big year, as we spun off from IBM to become a standalone company,” says Meredith Hilt, Communications Lead at Merative. “Creating a new brand was a huge collaborative effort.

“Until we officially became the new company, we had to keep Merative under wraps. But we also needed to share the brand with employees so that we would be ready for the external launch.

We showed a brand introduction video at our sales meeting, which was met with a standing ovation. We interviewed employees for a video series to keep enthusiasm high in the weeks leading up to the launch. Remarkably, no one leaked the name or brand.

“The day we became Merative, we launched an employee campaign ‘Make Merative Matter.’ Every day for a month, we offered a simple brand activation. Such as ordering new business cards, updating your employer on LinkedIn, and downloading new branded templates.

By engaging employees early and often, we helped prepare brand ambassadors who were excited to share Merative with the world.”

Give your audience the content they desire

Going beyond blogs, long-form content emphasizing SEO works well.

“In 2022, my team put a larger focus on developing longer, more narrative-driven pieces beyond our usual blog content. All with an emphasis on using SEO keywords to capture audiences searching for solutions for the challenges they face with healthcare IT technology,” says Tom Lynch, Director of Marketing and Communications at Altera Digital Health.

“I’m pleased with our success and the engagement we received, which tells me there is still very much an audience for long-form content.

Our company was acquired and our team was responsible for launching a new brand. I’m excited for what’s to come as we further establish our new company, Altera Digital Health.”

Deliver messaging relevant to your audience

Identify customers’ most pressing issues.

“In 2022, many of our healthcare clients felt the enduring impact of the pandemic and economic uncertainty,” says Elisabeth Ritz, Founder & President of Ritz Communications. “Helping them identify not just their customer’s pain points, but those points within the context of the healthcare industry’s urgent concerns. For example, preparing for the next pandemic, providing infrastructure in the face of workforce loss and burnout, or coordinating care through the convergence of in-person and telehealth services.” 

 “A focus on helping each client address customers’ issues. From the immediate problem to be solved to the broader public health implication.  We demonstrated the significance of their contributions rather than simply delivering marketing messages for their products and services.”

Don’t lose your edge, especially when subjects get sensitive

Go beyond the safe but emotionally bankrupt message.

“For me, the big takeaway this year was the transformative role great communications and marketing teams can play in translating their clients’ value propositions into authoritative insights that cut through the clutter,” says John Roderick, President of J. Roderick Public Relations. “This is particularly true when dealing with complex, highly technical, or sensitive information, where accuracy and precision of language are critical.

“Take DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) or ESG (environment, social, and governance) initiatives, for example. When working with a client in these areas, it is tempting to tread so carefully that we end up simply parroting back what the client – or more often their lawyers – said on a conference call.

The result is often a safe, but emotionally bankrupt, inauthentic set of words that do not resonate with target audiences.

“The magic happens, and brands start to rise above the noise of safe-but-ineffective messaging when we translate these concepts into provocative ideas.

Ideas that challenge audiences to think about an issue, push beyond the status quo, and commit to action. We continue down this path of increased corporate transparency and heightened scrutiny of sustainability initiatives.

It will be the communications and marketing teams who need to call out empty statements and overly cautious positions as potential reputational risks.

We need to have the courage to push for more substance behind the words we put out into the world.”

Keep the partnership with sales strong

 Build a partnership with sellers.

 Lisa Smith joined Clarivate in October as the Vice President of Marketing for Life Sciences.  One key priority was building a strong partnership with sales as she reflected on how to approach her new role and best support the business.

“I prioritized building a partnership with our sellers right out of the gate. I am fortunate to have a sales leader who views marketing both as a partner and a key contributor to growing the business.

“Working as one sales and marketing organization gave us the input we need to build programs from demand generation to thought leadership that we are certain will resonate with our customers. This trust is helping us make tough decisions together. To place our collective resources against the same priorities and to grow the business impact we have as One Clarivate.”

This may be the longest blog I’ve ever published, but so many colleagues had great success stories this year. As I look them over, I’m struck by two key themes: connection and relevant information.

We can only succeed with internal and external stakeholders when we connect with them and provide them with the relevant information they desire. That’s why I always recommend creating and using a Message Map to ensure your message will connect and resonate with your target audiences.

For assistance with marketing or communications needs, email me at ariana@crystalclearcomms.com.