Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) has seen its share of controversy…
Now, I don’t want to turn this into a political rant or stir up arguments… Instead, I’ll do what I do best – examine the marketing lessons we can learn from this whole debacle.
No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, here’s what Obamacare’s less-than-graceful launch can teach us about marketing:
1. Don’t Over-promise and Under-deliver
In all the confusion surrounding the earliest announcements of Obamacare’s provisions and requirements, there was plenty of false information going around… and when things are this complicated, it’s easy for the uninformed to get confused.
Plenty of people heard that they would be able to keep their current insurance plans and stay with the same doctors – but millions are finding out that this simply isn’t the case…
Can you imagine if a business tried something like this?
What if you ordered one product, and something else showed up? Or worse, nothing at all…
If we’re going to make claims, we’d better stick to them… otherwise any hope of building (and maintaining) trust is lost.
2. Focus on User Experience
When the Affordable Care Act website launched on October 1st, it was riddled with problems…
Site crashes, hold screens, freezing up – all commonly reported problems on launch day, and things have only improved marginally since then…
The long and short of it is this – if it’s a pain to use, people won’t want to use it.
If some online shopping cart crashed like the ACA site, I have zero doubt that customers would simply find somewhere else to shop…
The site managers (and plenty of other people involved) really dropped the ball on presenting this to “customers,” and failed to realize that no matter how things are updated, the sour taste is already in people’s mouths. It’s going to take twice the work to recover from the mistake…
The user experience needs to be smooth and easy (not to mention fully-functional) – anything less is a roadblock to success.
3. Transparency is Key
After the myriad of problems people experienced with the Obamacare website, something even worse happened…
Word came out that the administration knew about the problems before it launched… and launched anyway. Instead of warning users that there might be some hiccups – and helping set realistic expectations – they just didn’t say anything…
And that means that people’s high expectations were drastically unmet.
If they would have been a little more transparent, letting people know to expect some problems and announcing their intentions to continually improve site functionality…
People might have known what to expect, and not reacted so negatively.
When you can be up front about shortcomings (instead of shying away from them), it actually makes you easier to like and trust.
4. Branding Consistency
First off – Affordable Care Act and Obamacare may be synonymous, but plenty of people don’t know even know that! Two names for the same “product” does little but create confusion.
Now, beyond the confusion of double naming, what about the names themselves?
“Obamacare” isn’t exactly accurate, since it puts the entire program on the shoulders of the President – and doesn’t acknowledge any of the other contributing parties…
But “Affordable Care Act” is probably worse – since many, many people are discovering that, for them, it isn’t even close to affordable…
The “product” has been branded as one thing, but when examined a little closer – it isn’t at all what was promised.
A brand message needs to be congruent with the products or services offered by that brand… When it isn’t, it feels like a lie, a bait and switch…
And nobody likes to have their trust betrayed.
5. Test, Test, Test!
Rolling out any new product is something of a gamble, and with something as massive as Healthcare.gov, the margin for error is equally humongous…
To just launch the whole thing on one day – and expect nothing to go wrong – that’s INSANE!
A much, much better method of rolling out a product, system, website, etc., is to test in small, easily controlled batches. Take in some feedback about the initial test run, adjust accordingly, and test again…
Each test should expand a little, and as the process is refined, you’ll get a better and better idea of what works and what doesn’t… both in terms of customer response AND functionality of a product, service, website, whatever…
Testing is key – but apparently no one told the folks at Healthcare.gov!
There’s no shortage of problems with Obamacare, especially the way it has been presented to the public, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at it objectively, take some notes, and learn from the mistakes that have been made…
In fact (and maybe this is a bonus tip), these kinds of lessons are everywhere… The strategic entrepreneur is always on the lookout for new insight.
In your corner,
Charlie
