All posts tagged healthcare marketing

by Abe Kasbo

[This article was published in Strategic Healthcare Marketing's May, 07 issue]

Yes, I am encouraging hospital CEOs and chief marketing officers to think inside the box to build successful marketing campaigns that positively contribute to their organization’s bottom line. Successful corporations tap this kind of thinking every day.

Anyone whose kept a keen eye on recent advertising and marketing trends fully recognizes that the increasingly potent cocktail of media fragmentation, greater advertising clutter, Internet influences, and subsequent consumer control over media has made creativity in reaching patients and physicians a hot commodity. I am not talking about creativity in the sense of creating branded or image ads. I am talking about implementing what some may consider being non-traditional marketing strategies that will drive your business and increase patient volume. To do that, you have to fully understand what’s inside your box.

Industries outside of health care have heeded the message, understanding that the advent of the Internet, mobile phone, and iPod has brought about fundamental changes in the way people consume and respond to media. The marketing heads of the world’s largest advertising powerhouses, such as Procter & Gamble and American Express, have recently demanded more accountability from their agencies, noting that traditional ad campaigns are simply not working to their satisfaction. Corporate marketers are no longer settling for great ads, logos, and tag lines. They are seeking a tangible return on investment through concerted campaigns that push the traditional bounds of advertising and marketing.

Indeed, what’s inside the box can drive volume and positively contribute to your bottom line. Here are some ideas to fuel your thinking:

Define the key elements of each service line in your hospital and their relationship to the overall market. Your marketing efforts must reflect your strategic plans and should focus on those services that provide your institution with the best opportunities to profitably grow patient volume in your primary and secondary markets. Prioritize your service lines with this objective in mind. Carefully researched and executed advertising should enhance your organization’s brand while it tells your market about your hospital’s unique and specific services.

Take a broad view of the market. Today, a variety of different types of providers from outpatient surgery centers to imaging facilities may be competing for patients in your primary and secondary markets. By recognizing these entities as competitors and understanding their services, you can more clearly define your offer and what sets your organization apart.

Give your brand away. This is what successful brands do every day. Google, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, Harley-Davidson, and MySpace create communities of people who share a passion based on their experiences with the product or service. The company here is almost irrelevant; no one talks about the parent company of MySpace, News Corp. Community building, although non-traditional, is an activity that allows for more business growth potential than any other communications form.

You can build communities by looking inside, to the people whom you’ve successfully treated as well as loyal physicians and volunteers and bring them together around specific events and functions. Let’s say you have patients with a unique experience with your hospital and you know that there are people in the community who would benefit from the same service. Involve those patients in your community outreach plan, and if they agree, and usually they do, ask them to speak at events on behalf of your hospital. Perhaps you can also feature their stories on your Web site or through a blog.

Make every patient a spokesperson. Focusing on the experience rather than the transaction is a surefire way to get advocates in the community to rave about your hospital. In speaking with marketers, I find that while the “patient experience” is important to them, they tend to focus more on advertising. Without a doubt, the patient experience piece takes time and effort to develop because so much of it has to do with how everyone in the organization interacts with patients, physicians, and visitors. However, staff encounters, or touch points, with patients and others are an integral part of how your institution communicates its brand and is perceived by various constituents. Experience management requires leadership commitment to operational changes and investment in training and incentive programs.

Consider how much you spend on external versus internal advertising. Let’s say you spend $7,000 a month on image print ads. Are you getting a good return on the ads? Consider moving some of your budget to inside your building to build your brand in-house. I once worked at a large academic medical center where the lobby traffic averaged about 2,500 people per day and that didn’t include employees, now that’s measurable.

Embrace the Internet. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 93 percent of health seekers have gone online to look for information about a particular illness or condition. Your Web site is your key to solid connections with your community. Utilize search engine optimization and fill your site with appropriate clinical content and relevant service information. Position your Web presence as your community’s health care resource and communicate that consistently to your community. Make it easy to do business with your organization by including tools such as online bill payment and registration for elective procedures and diagnostic tests.

Your Web presence is a vital strategic and business development function that needs to be an essential part of your strategic planning. We are now in the pull media age, meaning that the consumer chooses what he or she will watch and see.

Tap appropriate social networking sites. If you have specialized services where people choose to travel for care, such as cardiac or bariatric surgery, tell the world. Some sites to consider: OrganizedWisdom.com, DailyStrength.org, PatientsLikeMe.com, and Sermo.com (for physicians only).

Know that your employees are your sales team. Yes, your physician relations department is also very important, but if your organization has 1,000 employees, then you have 1,000 sales representatives. Be sure that your employees know about the organization’s key services, physicians, what sets it apart from the competition, and other relevant information that will enable them to engage in positive word-of-mouth communications with friends, neighbors, and family members. If recipients of positive communications believe in the clinical excellence of your physicians and nurses, they will also utilize your services. Remember that people buy from people.

Your communication should be to the point and focus on the benefits. Use different formats and make them fun. Think way beyond employee newsletters to intranet quizzes, facility treasure hunts, electronic bulletin boards, and one-minute stand-up expert talks. And, be sure the workplace is highly regarded by employees and the community at large.

Stay focused. Just because the competition places an ad in your local newspaper doesn’t mean you have to respond in kind. Focus on your game plan and brand distribution strategies. An effective marketing and public relations plan is a disciplined one based on which service areas you want to grow in a given area. Diverging from the plan for emotional reasons is likely to take you off course and waste resources. Keep an eye on your competition and their campaigns, but do not feel you have to respond to one or two ads. Research tells us that frequency reigns in media campaigns and most likely a few ads will not sway the market.

Although exposure to the market via traditional communications efforts is vital, it is equally important to demand more creativity from your marketing strategists and ad agencies. This year and next portend a far different marketing universe than 2005 or even 2006. With the speed of technology adoption by consumers, who knows what the media outlook will be like in the next few years. Accordingly, hospital CEOs and marketers must also recognize these changes in the market and consumer behavior quickly in order to build market-driven strategic marketing plans.

By having a thorough understanding of your box and what’s in it, you can create meaningful campaigns, using the right mix of traditional and non-traditional tactics and brand distribution strategies, to drive volume and heighten patient and physician loyalty.

So the next time you’re working on your strategic marketing and public relations initiatives, look inside the box for non-traditional ideas that, if implemented correctly, can pay off in a big way

Abe Kasbo is the CEO of Verasoni Worldwide, a marketing and public relations firm in Montclair, NJ. Kasbo is also an adjunct instructor in health care management in the Graduate Department of Public and Healthcare Administration at Seton Hall University. He can be reached at kasbo@verasoni.com.