Agile Marketing In Healthcare: Kaycee Kalpin, Chief Marketing Officer, Premier Inc.

In this Healthtech Marketing podcast, Kaycee Kalpin, the Chief Marketing Officer of Premier Inc. discusses how they work with thousands of healthcare vendors to meet the needs of hundreds of healthcare organizations. She also dives into the Agile Marketing approach with Adam Turinas, the CEO, and founder of healthlaunchpad

Kaycee shares some of the innovation and transformation marketing strategies that their GPO organization applies to gain a competitive advantage.

The podcast is produced through the partnership of HIMMS & healthlaunchpad.

Podcast Highlights With Timestamps

0:24 – Introduction, HIMMS Partnership, & Guest Speaker

2: 40 – Kaycee Kalpin’s Career &  Premier Inc.

3:46 –  Premier Inc. – Group Purchasing Organization (GPO)

6:54 – Partnering With Premier Inc.

8:59 –  Premier Inc.  – Approach To Innovation

9:56 –  Kaycee Kalpin – Marketing Transformation

13:45 – Positioning & Repositioning of Premier – Key Strengths

15:11 –  Premier Inc. – Approach To Customer Research

16:49 – Use of Data In Marketing Evolution

20:02 – Kaycee Insights On Communication Management

23: 13 –  Personalization of Customer Communication

24:56 – Tailoring Digital Communication

26:48 – Marketing Content Customization

28:30 – Premier Inc. & The Customer Journey

29:59 – Premier Inc. & the Agile Marketing Process

34:50 – Kaycee’s Advice – Being Yourself & Authentic

Healthtech Agile Marketing Podcast Video: Kaycee Kalpin, CMO Premier Inc. 

Kaycee Kalpin Podcast Briefs With Time-stamps.

0:24 – Welcome Note, HIMMS Partnership, & Guest Speaker

The podcast begins with Adam, the founder, and CEO of healthlaunchpad welcoming listeners, and recognizing their partnership with HIMMS.

He then welcomes the guest speaker, Kaycee Kalpin, a long-time growth and leader in healthcare marketing, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Premier Inc., and an advisor to startups.

2: 40 –  Kaycee Kalpin –  Background &  Premier Inc.

Kaycee Kalpin shares about her long-time career journey and growth with Premier Inc., her current role as a CMO, and her team of rockstar marketers.

3:46 –  Premier Inc. & Group Purchasing Organization (GPO)

Kaycee then explains what Premier Inc. does as a GPO, and how they work to optimize the supply chain for the best costs and values for customers

She also explains how their organization works towards:

• Optimizing supply chain spending by hospitals without compromising the output of patients
• Helping hospitals, the health systems, and the providers to perform better
• Assisting customers to make the right decision when buying
• Helping vendors learn how healthcare service providers care for patients
• Ensure that vendors or partners have the right data in order to make focused decisions or plans
• Helping in shaping company brand and reputation

Responding to Kaycee’s insights, Adam talks about the misconception that many companies have regarding GPOs

6:54 – How To Partner With Premier Inc.

Kaycee goes on to explain the following as some of the strategies their organization use in an effort to build strong partnerships with their customers and vendors:

• Going through a vetting process to become a supplier to their GPOs
• Collaborating with companies
• Running an Innovation Lab (PINC X Lab) in order to access customers’ needs and missing gaps.

8:59 –  Kaycee Kalpin – Premier Inc. – Approach To Innovation

Kalpin shades more light on their innovation lab called  PINC X Lab, where PINC is the short form of Premier Inc.

She then explains how they ensure that they have a better understanding of their customers by:

• Inviting external speakers with more insights on customers, or market needs
• Letting some companies do the customer assessment work for them

9:56 –  Kaycee Kalpin – Marketing Transformation

Again, Kaycee Kalpin demonstrates how their GPO has continued to grow stronger, and how the pandemic has validated most of the programs and strategies that they had earlier

So she goes ahead to explain the following marketing transformation techniques that their organization has adopted:

• Identifying unhealthy markets and adding resiliency to the supply chain
• De-risking markets that had disruptions by improving in the supply of masks, gowns, PPES, etc
• Partnering with companies to develop manufacturing facilities
• Focusing on data and the customers who are willing to tell their story
• Having a strong belief in what they sell in order build customer’s confidence in their brands
• Letting members drive use-cases with what they do with data in order to enhance awareness
• Buying and building several capabilities on how to make the best use of data

13:45 – Positioning & Repositioning of Premier – Key Strengths

Kaycee explains how their organization’s positioning and repositioning are not just aimed at helping the supply chain.

It also aims at helping with critical aspects of the transitions that they are going through.

And so she highlights the following as some of the factors that have facilitated their positioning efforts:

• Based on their GPO history, they have the ability to accelerate ingenuity in healthcare
• Their ability to scale innovation quickly
• Focusing on data visibility in order to identify what works for them and what doesn’t work.
• Best use of data and the evidence that is generated from it like Artificial Intelligence (AI)- enabling workflows with evidence-based care
• Connecting self-insured employers with high-value providers
• Helping providers become self-insured
• Addressing unhealthy market

15:11 –  Premier Inc. – Approach To Customer Research

Further, in the video podcast, Kaycee Kalpin explains the following as their organization’s approach to customer research:

• Understanding & accessing customers’ voices so as to focus on addressing their interests
• Brand studies with different audiences such as provider audience, life sciences, & payers,
• Assessing views on what audiences think of Premier Inc.
• Continuously measuring brand growth.
• Having in place customers’ feedback strategies
• Developing tactics to shape and inform the opinion on what Premier Inc. do
• Focusing on evidence-based marketing

16:49 – Use of Data In Marketing Evolution

Kaycee also explains the 2 approaches they used in their marketing evolution:

1. Being Customer-centric.

Kaycee Kalpin provides insights on how they work on changing the culture and mindset in order to be more customer eccentric.

In order to achieve this, Kaycee explains that:

• Not just focusing on what is best for the customers, but also having tough conversations when necessary.
• Using both negative and positive feedback data to drive the organization’s growth
• Being open-minded and receptive to customers’ feedback

2. A Bidirectional Conversation With Customers

In emphasizing the importance of bidirectional conversation with customers, Kaycee explains the need to:

• Recognize customers’ feedback & share prioritized actions that address their feedback
• Provide customers with reasons on areas where actions will not be taken.
• Ensure there is free-flowing of information for effective use of data

20:02 – Kaycee Insights On Communication

Because Premier Inc. deals with multiple customers and vendors, Kaycee shares the communication management strategies that they use in order to ensure effective communication.

And so she begins by explaining how their organization:

• Continuously work on enhancing communication
• Use Account-based Approach for their Marketing Communication
• Have a strong marketing channel to ensure convenient and effective communication or customer engagements
• Partner with both their product teams & delivery teams in order to enhance information sharing.
• Adopt different ways to communicate with different audiences (some through CEOs or CFOs)
• Have personalized individual meetings to build and enrich relationships with customers
• Use automation platforms where necessary with personalization as a key approach

23: 13 –  Personalization of Customers’ Communication

Kaycee further explains how Premier Inc. uses the following strategies to personalize communication with their customers:

• Having marketing channels accounts with customer accounts representatives in order to enhance strategic engagements
• Begin personalization by adequately understanding customers because this is critical in addressing their needs.
• Customizing campaign or marketing content in order to target high potential customers.

24:56 – Tailoring Digital Communication 

While discussing how Premier Inc. tailors its digital communication, Kaycee explains:

• How they tailor communications based on account penetration, revenue perspective
• Segmentation of audiences based on the publicly available matrix

Kaycee also shares the following approaches they use to communicate with target customers:

1. Sitting with customers in order to map their journey with Premier
2. Customers share about what matters to them most
3. Customers get feedbacks that strategically address their key concerns

Kaycee then emphasizes that at their organization, they do not just focus on automation and digital communication, but they are more hands-on.

This is because of their need to have a better and personalized understanding of their customers.

26:48 – Premier Inc. –  Content Customization

Again in the video, Kaycee discusses how they approach content customization by:

• Customizing certain campaigns to get high Click-Through Rates
• Using Terminus to run campaigns that map customers’ journey or decision map
• Ensuring that you always have the right message for each stage of the customer journey.

28:30 – How Premier Inc. & The Customer Journey

Kaycee Kalpin then explains the following strategies that they use during their customer journey:

• Consideration of some technology & Customer Platforms for customer journey mapping
• Spending time with customers and focusing more on data in order to enrich your engagements.
• Talking to the accounts & service level teams to ensure that all understand customers’ needs
• Taking time to collect the necessary data then transform them into a simple presentation
• Focusing on the 4 key stages of the customer’s journey which are basically: awareness, decision, and loyalty

29:59 – Kaycee Kalpin – Premier Inc. & Agile Marketing

In this podcast, Kaycee also shares valuable insights on how their organization has adopted the Agile Marketing strategy.

And so from the video, you will learn about:

• Their organization’s team who are Agile Marketing certified team
• The challenges they initially had of the marketing time taking long
• How Agile Marketing perfectly suit their organization
• The benefits of using Agile Marketing
• Their use of Monday dot come for their agile boarding

Kaycee then explains how their use of Agile Marketing has enhanced bi-directional communication among their various teams.

34:50 – Final Advice – Being Yourself & Authentic

Finally, Kaycee Kalpin advises you as a healthcare marketer, to be yourself and remain authentic.

She then speaks on the importance of matching your skillset and passion while making adjustments so that you connect with what really matters by connecting to vision & mission.

Podcast Subscription

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You can also view the video of this podcast through a link in the show notes.

We have got a great program of guests coming up.

So do subscribe so that you do not miss out

Thank you for listening.

In case you have a topic you would like me to cover, please just let me know by emailing me at adam@healthlaunchpad.com, or reach me through LinkedIn here

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