Case Study: The Karis Group - Re-positioning a top healthcare services company to restore growth

As leadership changes evolved, a leading nationwide professional healthcare services CEO was concerned about the strategic direction of his company. Sales were good but not as strong as they could be, and he felt it was due to the fact that they were maintaining an equal focus on two competing products that had variations between the two.

Client

Headquartered in Austin, TX, The Karis Group, maintains a strong mission and offering whereby they specialize in providing its customers with Patient Advocacy, or Bill Mediation services, helping them reduce their costs from $100k to $10k, and has saved its customers over $24MM per year. Karis serves clients nationwide: employers, insurers, benefits aggregators and healthcare sharing organizations in order to provide these saving opportunities to healthcare administrators and individuals overall.

Mike Martin, Karis Group’s CEO, first became introduced to Chief Outsiders through a C12 meeting in Austin, TX, in which he presented his business plan and sought input for how to address the sales trajectory.  Pete Hayes, Principal/ CMO of Chief Outsiders, immediately offered suggestions that resonated with Martin, and a cost-effective, three-month strategic advisory partnership was born.

Approach

To identify and capture the opportunities and challenges, Chief Outsiders facilitated a number of work-sessions amongst Martin’s Executive Team, which immediately highlighted that Karis Group had one major product, and a messaging strategy that addressed their evolving needs.

“We just didn’t have the marketing capability in-house and would have been spinning. Pete clarified the issues.”

Acting as a Strategic Advisory, Hayes worked with the team to leverage the strategic marketing discipline that was not resident within Karis Group to achieve their growth goals, however the Executive Team performed all of the heavy lifting… “So that we all said, this is where we want to be, which was key to buy-in” said Martin.

Results

Re-positioning:  While maintaining a separate product for other target segments, Karis rebranded Kare360 to The Health Co-Op in order to focus on the customer base of health cooperatives.

Messaging:  After developing personas for each target segment, clear and concise messaging were developed for use in all communication channels.

Restore Growth: The streamlined focus on the larger market opportunity was able to reverse declining revenues and increase/ exceed sales targets.

“It turned out to be for this company, a good turning point as we were stagnating and bogged down. We would have experienced financial impacts. We had a direct infusion of marketing intelligence into our jugular vein and are forever appreciated. We want more.” - Mike Martin, CEO