In this informative and highly-entertaining keynote session, Larry Bailin - author and CEO of Single Throw Digital Marketing – illustrated how “average” marketing is “average masquerading as acceptable.” Average results are for average businesses. Average results won’t beat the competitors. Average marketing won’t get you more customers and patients. So why settle for average every day? To be a world class healthcare marketer, you must respond to market forces, take advantage of opportunities and be alert to the possibility that what you are doing can be done differently. When done well - search engines, local search, social media, content marketing, video, mobile, tablets, phablets, wearables, augmented reality and even implantables - can take you beyond average. Here are some high points Larry used to help the audience learn what it takes to cut through the noise, see past the hype and get beyond ordinary – in other words, how to be an above-average marketer:

• “Average” does not mean what we think. It’s actually derived from an Arabian word meaning “damaged,” referring to damaged cargo. So, is “average” marketing really “damaged” marketing?
• Know your customer. Big brands often get it wrong because they don’t know their customers.
• Don’t follow the leader - BE the leader. Average businesses obsess over what their competitors are doing. Winners focus on what their competitors are not doing.
• Social media still matters. Social is who we are. Your brand gets shared on social media not because people like your brand but because they like their friends.
• Sometimes the answer we need is not the answer at all, but rather it’s another perspective on the problem. Larry’s Arby’s example was spot on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv5StAv77Dg
• Sales solve all. If you don’t know how to sell, you don’t know how to market.
• Purveyors of health care will live or die based on attention paid to local search. You have two choices with local competition: out-local them or let them out-local you.
• Showing up on search is not winning. SEO is not to get you found, it’s to get you chosen.
• Don’t just hear – LISTEN. Healthcare marketing has become so sanitized it’s in jeopardy of losing connection to the customer. People will always have a hard time choosing what they don’t understand (i.e., speak in terms people will understand). Talk over their heads and they’re gone.
• Best design doesn’t win. People visit your Web site to buy. Anything that gets in the way of that is trouble.
• Put the difference back in different. Think different.
• People determine your value in a split second, and that’s all it takes to convey the wrong message.
• Reputation matters.
• To get patients, always think like a customer.
• Be a bad-ass marketer every day.