Strategy Into Action

Developing A Women’s Health Marketing Plans
Mary Lou Jones PhD, RN, CNAA 1 Kim Weiss MBA 2 Jaynelle F. Stichler DNSc, RN 3 Melinda D. Noonan MS, RN 4 Patricia Looker MA 5
1 Mary Lou Jones, PhD, RN, CNAA, is assistant operating officer, Women’s Services, at Duke University Hospital in Durham, NC. 2 Kim Weiss, MBA, is a senior consultant at The Stichler Group in San Diego, CA. 3 Jaynelle F. Stichler, DNSc, RN, is principal and senior health care consultant with The Stichler Group in San Diego, CA. 4 Melinda D. Noonan, MS, RN, is senior consultant with the Stichler Group. 5 Patricia Looker, MA, is senior consultant at The Stichler Group.
Copyright 2002 Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses
ABSTRACT

In June 2000, Lifelines launched its first series on the business of women’s health. As women’s health continues to emerge as a “must-provide” services line for all types of health care organizations, Lifelines again asked widely recognized women’s health services experts to revisit the notion of creating women’s health business model. This issue features the second installment of this dynamic three-part series that explores the strategies, marketing approaches and needed finance tools in developing a successful women’s health business model.

Google Chief Economist: Marketing Is The New Finance

Brian Morrissey, my Twitter friend and one of the smarter hacks covering digital marketing, interviewed Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist. I attended Varian’s presentation at a recent SMX show, and his message stuck in my brain like Super Glue. How to succeed in search advertising? “Test and test and test again.”

Brian elicited a few nice quotes and gems of Google intention.

First:

“The biggest problem in advertising has been the performance measures,” said Varian. “In search engine advertising, you have the click and the conversion. It makes it much more easy. In brand advertising, the difficult part is the measures are much more diffuse. We hope to use math to bring more clarity to that.”

Um…sounds to me a lot like the whole engagement conundrum the ARF tried to tackle: how to qualify exposures of media, considering context, and link them to a business result. Will Google figure out what the ARF and its industry participants couldn’t? I doubt it will be that easy.

Second:

“Marketing is the new finance,” Varian said. “Just as finance has become more quantitative because of what happened in the 1970s, you’ll see marketing do that.”… “If you’re adding a lot of value, those jobs are good,” Varian said. “Computers are good at doing non-creative tasks.”

I agree with these statements.

Finally:

????????“TV will come into the 21st century,” Varian said. “It’s going to be a lot easier to measure response and target than it is today.”

And Brian had the guts to call the obvious about the threat facing his publication’s parent company’s biggest cash cow:

The biggest opportunity for Google: TV advertising. All TV ad spending in 2007 (network, cable, spot and syndicated) totaled almost $77.5 billion, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Google sees TV as a market ripe for disruption, since ads are poorly targeted and difficult to measure.

Brian’s full story is here.

Disclosure: I used to work with Nielsen after it acquired my last company, and underscore that Nielsen is an admirable company with a proud heritage. I’m proud of my brief history there! However, it’s an interesting one to watch as it strives to transform itself into to the digital world and transition through the disruption of a private-equity takeover. One question people have asked me: Are its competitors traditional players like TNS? Or new players, particularly Google? Probably both, just one is short-term while the other is long term. Frenemy will become common language to the old research world.

Jobs in Business, Management, Finance, Accounting, Marketing, and Sales

What follows is a collection of the best job resources for the business profession, including jobs in accounting, finance, sales, marketing, and management — at all levels, from entry-level to executive. For purely executive and top management jobs, please go to

Customer Service, Finance and Sales/Marketing: The Next Drivers for Operational Performance Management

Operational managers are increasingly demanding visibility into day-to-day performance metrics in order to align operational business activity with corporate objectives. In June and July of 2008, Aberdeen Group investigated a wide spectrum of operational performance management capabilities through a primary survey research program. The resulting August 2008 report – Operational KPIs: Are Your Daily Decisions Based on Fact? – provides analysis of responses from over 200 organizations, and uncovers the strategies, actions, technology investments, and services that Best-in-Class companies are utilizing to improve operational performance. Organizations are prioritizing the areas of the business that will benefit most from operational performance management initiatives. When asked to identify the areas of the business where operational performance management efforts will be directed next, respondents agreed that customer service is the top priority, followed closely by finance and sales/marketing operations. This document uncovers the different approaches and resulting performance that these functional business areas are experiencing.

PhD in Accounting, Finance and Marketing – University of Stockholm

PhD
in Accounting, Finance and Marketing
Stockholm University School of Business

Stockholm University School of Business is seeking applications for full-time PhD positions beginning January 2009 in Accounting, Finance and Marketing. Deadline 15th of October 2008. Reference No 617-2438-08

Qualification Requirements

To qualify for the positions applicants should have a solid educational background in accounting, finance or marketing. They are also expected to hold at least a Bachelor’s degree in the relevant areas. This should include an independent research project, such as a thesis.

Selection criteria

Selection is made on the basis of 1) the applicants’ documented knowledge in the relevant subjects, linguistic skills in English (both spoken and written), and analytical, critical, thinking ability and creativity; 2) a letter of intent outlining applicant’s planned research topic; 3) a personal interview; and finally, 4) two academic references.

To be included in the application are a short presentation of yourself, the reasons why you think you are suitable for the position, curriculum vitae, and copies of all certificates and the independent research project report (thesis) completed within the remit of the Bachelor’s or Master’s degree.

Application form:

http://www.fek. su.se/Forskar/ Bilagor/Applicat ion_form_ doctoral_ programme. doc

Terms of employment

The research program comprises 48 full-time months, thus, these positions involve PhD-employment during this period only.

For further information contact: Director of Doctoral Studies, Torkild Thanem, Telephone: +46 8 16 46 43, e-mail tt@fek.su.se.

Trade union representatives: Bo Ekengren, SACO, Lisbeth Häggberg, Fackförbundet ST tel. +46 8 16 20 00 switch board, and Gunnar Stenberg, SEKO, tel. +46 70 316 43 41.

Relevant websites for further information

Stockholm University: www.su.se
School of Business: www.fek.su.se/ index_eng. html

Applications labelled with Reference No 617-2438-08 should be sent no later than 15 October 2008 to:

Stockholm University
Registrator/ PÄ
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

or by fax +46 8 16 38 66 or e-mail: registrator@ su.se.

Please quote 10 Academic Resources Daily in your application to this opportunity!

Search: “Paid Access $299″

Who has extended their mobile web reach in Asia? And which new start-ups have attracted investment in Q2? Inform your strategic development with a full and detailed report on all Merger & Acquisition, Venture Capital and Partnership deals in the Search sector for Q2 2008. This sector includes Recommendation Services and all types of Search; Consumer and Directory Advisory, EPG, Local Search, Mobile Information, Mobile Search, Social Tagging, Virtual Search and Web Search.

Rules of Innovation From a Wal-Mart Pro

When Wal-Mart launched its in-store health care clinics in 2005, Alicia Ledlie went from co-manager of a store in Uniondale, Long Island, to senior director for health business development. Ledlie first heard about the new venture at a conference at Wal-Mart HQ. She immediately applied for a job with the clinic start-up team, and a month later she moved to Bentonville, Ark., to join the experimental project. (To learn more about her involvement in the launch, see “How They Did It: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories.”)

The project represents a revolutionary concept: Wal-Mart partners with local hospitals and health-care providers to run independent clinics within Wal-Mart stores. Clinics are open seven days a week, and hours include nights and weekends. Under Ledlie’s direction, Wal-Mart has opened 79 in-store clinics in 12 states, and it has plans to add as many as 2,000 such clinics in the next five to seven years.

The Changing Face Of Competitive Strategy

In nowadays global, intensively interconnected business environment, a major challenge faced by business organizations is how to maximize shareholder value and sustain growth, while at the same time creating economic value for all. Two essential ingredients of strategy are needed to achieve these long-run corporate objectives which are setting up and being the central part of constellations of partners with whom to conceive and cocreate a continuous stream of value propositions; identifying unique combinations of these value propositions by engaging customers in developing customized services that meet their continuously changing-and equally unique-needs.

Take Advantage of Recession

An economic downturn is a great time to go after competitors, who likely will be retrenching rather than advancing.

But you need two things before loading up. First, your financials must be in order, including a healthy balance sheet, cash, and little debt. Second, pick the right fights — in other words, craft a recession strategy.

Several recent posts at Harvard Online talk to this subject.
Harvard Online blogger Michael Roberto identifies four steps to grow in a recession. Here’s a summary:

1. Invest in R&D. Innovation will propel you to the front of the pack when the economic environment improves.
2. Raid competitors. The competition will focus on maintaining their best customers, leaving you to cherry-pick smaller but still attractive clients.
3. Help suppliers and distributors. Build loyalty by offering your best partners a helping hand.
4. Recruit talent. Downturns provide great opportunities to snap up high achievers at lower prices.

Harvard Business School marketing professor John Quelch provides another view in How To Market In A Recession. One of his key points is that customers redefine value when resources are drying up.

Consumers take more time searching for durable goods and negotiate harder at the point of sale. They are more willing to postpone purchases, trade down, or buy less. Must-have features of yesterday are today’s can-live-withouts. Trusted brands are especially valued and they can still launch new products successfully but interest in new brands and new categories fades. Conspicuous consumption becomes less prevalent.

When planning a marketing budget over the next year, says Quelch, executives need to understand this shifting value proposition, rethink product portfolios, revisit pricing, and emphasize market share. Read his post for some great tips.

Creating a Temporary News Web Site for Major Events

My colleague Sean Silverthorne over at BNET’s Harvard Business School blog tips me off to the temporary news web site created for the announcement of the proposed Delta-Northwest merger. His post is entitled “The Press Release of the Future” and indeed, this is a very creative, smart and modern way to use the Internet to handle the dissemination of news and background information on the merger.

Sean’s title got me thinking though: is it enough to post a site for a major news announcement, or do you have to do some proactive dissemination as well?

The answer, I think, is that this site is terrific as a portal for sharing news and putting your own spin on it, but you’ve still got to have a proactive strategy to push the news out to your key media and non-media audiences. You can’t just assume that people will find your web site via search.

And if that’s the case, what form should your proactive release take? I’m not totally sold on the so-called “Social Media Release” — I like the idea but I find it unwieldy and lacking in one critical aspect: storytelling. On the other hand, I’m appalled that most press releases are still written as long-winded pseudo news stories that are boring and fail to provide users with information chunks and links to more information on the web.