The Affordable Care Act: Your Brand in Vegas

In 2014, the landscape of the health insurance exchanges will look a lot like Las Vegas. Each health insurance company will have its sales message and product offerings couched in flashing lights and bright costumes.

So how do you make your products and services stand out?

Your differentiator—like the pyramid that defines the Luxor or the light and fountain show at the Bellagio—will be in how you brand and advertise your offerings.

Below are the 4 key questions you need to ask before 2014 in order to keep customers in house and bring in others off the exchange.

1. How well will your brand image serve you?
2. What price premium does your brand image imply?
3. How do customers feel about you now? How much loyalty have you built up with them?
4. How do customers and other consumers compare you to your competition in key drivers such as physician network, cost, and customer service?

Where to start: the brand assessment study

To find the answers to the above questions is no little task, but reassuringly one of the best places to start, a brand assessment study, may give you the information you need.

A brand assessment study, which is essentially a survey of customers and consumers, will reveal the following:

• Strengths and weaknesses of your brand image
• How your brand compares to others
• How your company performs on product attributes
• What percent of your member base is predisposed to stick with you through 2014
• Why others will look elsewhere when offered the chance
• What might help you retain those customers if you made changes now
• The perception of the current cost for services, products, and programs

This knowledge can be a powerful motivator and change agent for your current marketing and brand plans. You can leverage it into your own Eiffel Tower like the Paris Hotel, so that in 2014 at the health insurance exchange your current customers will remain engaged with your offerings and new customers will want to learn more.