Each December brings the enjoyment of all the holiday classic movies. And there’s a fun little marketing and advertising lesson in A Christmas Story, one of our seasonal favorites. No doubt you’ve seen the quirky and endearing 1983 comedy about an Indiana schoolboy—Ralphie (Peter Billingsley)—who desperately wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. The […]
[Series Installment: How to Avoid the 7 Deadly Sins of Healthcare Marketing -- Deadly Sin # 2: Spaghetti Marketing. From the Healthcare Success Educational library] The “spaghetti” approach to marketing is much more tragic than funny. All too often we discover the trial-and-error method of throwing marketing strategies against the wall to see what sticks. […]
Inbound Marketing is flying so high and so loud these days that it seems to dominate the marketing landscape like a super storm. Some folks might be dazzled by all the ballyhoo and think that Inbound (also called Content Marketing) is the one and only—virtually compulsory—basis for a contemporary marketing plan. And worse, it’s troubling […]
Without giving it much thought, many--if not most--doctors will simply assume that they need a brochure to promote their medical practice. Often, this is true. But surprisingly often, it's a premature assumption where the "treatment gets ahead of the diagnosis." A healthcare brochure is not always the first or most important component in a comprehensive […]
Permission-based email is one of the most engaging, useful and effective tools available in your marketing toolbox. For starters, the cost is low and, being opt-in, recipients are prequalified and lists can often be segmented for precision targeting. The folks who keep track of such things say there are 3.6 billion email accounts as of […]
Social proof is a principle of influence and persuasion that can be highly effective in healthcare marketing. People want validation that they are making the right choice or proper decision and the actions of others like themselves is compelling guidance. Here's how it works and ways to use it. There was an interesting item about […]
We often advise our clients that a professional website requires regular “care and feeding.” To remain visible, viable and effective as a marketing tool, it’s vitally important to regularly add fresh and interesting content and remove dated material. The upkeep and maintenance allows you to stay “friendly” with search engine algorithms and avoid visitor habituation. […]
Be careful what you say. The words and images that you use might be working against you, or at least producing unexpected (and undesirable) “message meaning.” It’s elementary mar-com 101, but you might be amazed at how often some folks neglect the receiver-side of the communications loop. Sometimes it’s an innocent oversight, or unexpected consequence, […]
Broadcast advertising—both radio and television—have been evolving as choice media options for many advertisers. Placement opportunities are up, costs are reasonable, and results can be strong. To illustrate, we wrote recently about how it might surprise you to find that television is still an effective beast.
[One of a Series] Millennials are a significant slice of the population that’s important to healthcare professionals. And if they are not a consideration in your marketing game plan today, they definitely will be soon. Disclosure: I’m outside of the age parameters of the Millennial Generation. I’m pretty sure about that, but the trouble is […]
One of the most powerful concepts we know and teach is the Pareto Principle (aka The 80-20 Rule). In1906, Italian economist and avid gardener Vilfredo Pareto established that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. While gardening he later observed that 20% of the peapods in his garden yielded […]
At times, the wildly popular attention to Internet marketing (according to, well…the Internet) seems to ignore “traditional” media. It’s as if television advertising is a laughable relic that only your grandparents recall. What’s more, there’s no place for TV in a healthcare marketing plan. Opps...wrong! Log off the "digital darling" fixation for the next two […]
Healthcare in general—and medical practice marketing in particular—has as an over-abundance of challenges these days. How do you move forward in spite of the competitive headwinds? How do you maximize your advertising Return-on-Investment? How do you shift from “get along” to “get ahead?” Where’s the path to increasing personal and professional satisfaction? How can we […]
The second in a two-part series about intelligent individuals that allow their personality or attitudes to block their potential for success. Read part one: Staff Secretly Takes Assertiveness Training. We continue with the second of our true tales from the field about doctors who step on their own marketing toes.
The painful thing about lost business opportunity is that you often don’t know that it’s lost. It’s revenue that never happened. Here’s a sorry-scenario that we discover all too frequently:
We’re not going to mention any names, but you’ll probably recognize the personality types. And please excuse our candor…consider it constructive criticism.
The ongoing migration by doctors from private practice (self-employment) to working for a hospital or health system appears to have passed a tipping point, and many physicians are unhappy and considering a change. Fueled by financial pressures, regulatory changes, and the uncertainty of continuing change the trend is increasing. The recruitment of doctors into solo […]
The mixed-up-world of healthcare delivery in the US has been scrambled again…this time by the corporate/retail sector. Walgreens continues to redefine the mid-level provider landscape by announcing that it will become “the first-ever chain retailer to become a direct provider of primary care services.” Just when you thought you had a fix on the competition, […]
A baker's dozen of helpful tips in evaluating and using healthcare radio advertising Radio is a powerful media option for healthcare marketing. With rates negotiable to "half-off" or better, radio is worth a close look, even if you've avoided radio advertising in the past as too sophisticated or expensive for your hospital, organization or private […]
If you track things by the numbers, the upstart medical information site, HealthTap, shouldn’t be doing nearly as well as it is. Just two years old this week, HealthTap says it’s the first “Interactive Expert Health Companion,” and it has thousands of doctors answering health and medical questions online, for free. There’s no question about […]
Doctors tend to be risk-aware or risk-sensitive individuals. It’s part of the sobering responsibility they assume with the care and treatment of their patients. Years of education, professional training and clinical experience develop a mindset of assessing and managing risk vs. reward. Patients and colleagues expect no less in practicing medicine. Of course executing a […]
“Call Now,” “Click Here,” “Act Now,” or “Find Out More.” In virtually all forms of advertising, if you don’t tell people what you want them to do, they won’t do it. It’s an elementary healthcare advertising rule, without a call-to-action, a message is at least incomplete. More likely, the advertising effort is probably an ineffective waste […]
Although US doctors recognize that many (perhaps most) new patients are searching online for healthcare information and providers, it seems that few doctors believe their website motivates patients to call their office. The majority of medical practices in America have a website, but data from The Little Blue Book’s National Physicians Survey 2012: The Health […]
The month of December often triggers a bit of personal and professional reflection and self-evaluation for most of us. And generally, that's a good thing. Perhaps we appreciate the achievements and milestones of the year ending. And we look ahead at the New Year with visions of opportunity and progress. From a medical marketing perspective, […]
A curious thing about Internal Marketing is that healthcare—be it a hospital or a medical practice—understands the term by a slightly different definition. Many textbooks apply “internal marketing” to leadership and organizational approaches targeting employees and departments. Although everyone in a medical provider practice plays a role in the service product delivery, Internal Marketing is […]
The collection of marketing insights that we posted a few weeks ago was well received. We called these medical marketing nuggets “Twisdom.” Our previous article, which is linked at the bottom of this page, inspired some of our readers to submit a few more thoughtful gems.
Perhaps you can relate to the experience of a colleague of ours. His observation is a healthcare marketing and advertising lesson of opportunity lost. I frequently travel a main commercial street in our community…just one a thousands of local residents in vehicles on our way to or from the nearby post office, the drug store […]
Internet advertising terms can be a bewildering forest of initials, tech-talk and shorthand. For some healthcare providers it’s a strange vocabulary that’s essential to successful online advertising that brings new patients to your doorstep. Fortunately, it's easy to master. Why Internet advertising? Patients and prospective patients—the target audience—are online. The search for health and healthcare […]
Creating an effective healthcare marketing plan shouldn’t be a painful exercise. But to many, it seems like that. The doctor who is already into marketing wants to grow his or her practice…but resources are more scarce than ever. The medical group practice may have a few resources, but the competition has grown from “tough” to […]
You’re familiar with the social media marvel Twitter. With about 250 million active users (and another 250 registered users), Twitter is a well-known cultural phenomenon. Just about everyone has seen it. Tons of people are using it. And as a medical marketing tool, Twitter is second only to Facebook among the most popular social networking […]
One of the oldest forms of advertising is everywhere, but it's tough to do it right. The first American "billboard" appeared about 175 years ago to announce the circus was coming to town. These days the billboard is only one of many forms of Outdoor Advertising-and that's a totally different animal. Approach with caution, however, […]
How to know what you want to achieve, so you know how to hire right for success. How you define the job of an in-house marketing person sets the road to success (or failure). Marketing and Physician Referrals go hand-in-hand, but there are different skill sets for each, and they don't all fit into a […]
[Another in our series.] More than at any time in our history, healthcare marketing and advertising planners have a ton of media choices available. There’s the familiar “tradition” media basket that includes newspapers, direct mail, radio, television, billboards, Yellow Pages, postcards, and others. Plus there’s the ever-expanding batch of digital channels—including email, the Internet, smart […]
This year’s Mindset List from Beloit College has relatively little to do with healthcare marketing, at least directly. It’s informative, amusing…and a little sobering. But for healthcare providers and medical marketing professionals, this annual look into the value system of college freshmen helps keep us painfully aware of the life experiences and “cultural touchstones” of […]
Maybe you first met AIDA in a creative writing class. And that could have been long before there was an Internet, Internet marketing, social media…or the constant challenge to engage your audience. Digital media is contemporary, but customer (patient) engagement is a marketing fundamental that’s been around for years. So, although AIDA is decades old, […]
How to know if the 30-minute format should be part of your marketing mix...and get it done right An "infomercial" is probably not what you think it is. Put aside any image of a rapid-fire, late-night TV demo of a Japanese knife set and let me tell you how this long–form of direct response has […]
Some old-school ideas needlessly linger on. There’s a tired notion that sometimes whispers in the back of a physician’s brain and says: “Doctors shouldn’t advertise.” Or, more specifically, they fear: “My professional peers will think less of me. Physician advertising will hurt my relationships with referring doctors.” In fact, the reverse is often true today. […]
Editor's Note: Nationally recognized physician, speaker and author Neil Baum, MD, talks doctor-to-doctor about successfully generating income from ancillary services in a doctor's office, beginning with internal marketing.
As of today, only a few hospitals in the United States have ventured into “the new frontier for health ads,”—using Facebook or Google online ads to attract new patients. (By one estimate, a lonely few of 150 hospitals out of 6,000 have ventured out to this digital edge.) With 97.5 percent of the nation’s hospitals […]
Here's how to produce amazing results from tiny territory and precision creative. By Lonnie Hirsch Postcards–the unpretentious little urchins of the direct mail game–can be a heavy hitter in your marketing mix. But for as unassuming as a postcard may appear, there are a lot of significant rules to this game that can make the […]
We don’t want this post to sound like a rant…so we’ll keep our criticism to constructive tips (and only vent a little). It’s about marketing-smart healthcare practice and medical facility names…and by extension, their exterior signage (or lack of it). To be blunt, eight out of 10 times it’s wrong. The root of our two-fold […]
Everything you need to know about healthcare marketing jingles but were too busy singing to ask. Healthcare marketing and advertising gets a boost in effectiveness and greater response using broadcast commercials that include musical jingles. And they're more affordable than in the past. Here are the four basic components and six ways to use healthcare […]
We frequently address professional audiences around the nation, and this month is no exception. HSS Founding Partner Stewart Gandolf will speak at the 2012 American Association of Orthopaedic Executives (AAOE) Annual Conference in New Orleans. Calendar Note: Stewart’s presentation, Importance of Marketing in Building a Physician Referral Network, will be on Tuesday, May 22nd, beginning […]
The single most financially dangerous line item in a healthcare marketing plan is usually labeled Media Planning and Buying. An otherwise sound medical advertising plan can become a major waste of resources. When hospitals or doctors who own a practice fail to understand how media buying works, they either spend more money than they need […]
If you don't already have a "visual marketing strategy," your healthcare branding message could be quickly slipping behind the power curve. This is more than an exercise in graphics; some see it as an important trend for healthcare marketing. Healthcare providers, hospital marketing executives and medical advertising pros need to leverage the new emphasis on […]
How to organize the tasks and responsibilities that will get you where you want to go. A marketing or business goal is not clearly defined without establishing what's needed to achieve it. Organizing the broad concepts and specific action steps that support the goal are the fundamental tools necessary to success in healthcare marketing. Here's […]
Fundamentals That Keep Your Medical Provider Marketing in the Safe Zone First in a Series: Ethical and professional advertising messages steer physician and healthcare provider advertising away from legal problems. We talk with a healthcare attorney about the proper handling of basic legal problem areas. A legal mistake in healthcare advertising can ruin your life.
There's a five-step process that makes for best practice success. Healthcare marketing is very much like drilling for oil. Success requires a proven system not a shovel. Here's an analogy that I presented to a client recently. Suppose you want to drill for oil. You can begin making random holes in your backyard, or you […]
In professional circles, almost any corner of the film production industry is casually referred to as working in “the biz.” And those same professionals will quickly add that it’s a lot more hard work than the popular PR image of “glitz and glamour.” But the considerable effort behind a healthcare television commercial is not only […]
Lately we’ve been thinking about the increasingly evident gap between patient expectations and provider expectations in healthcare today. As the nation’s health delivery system continues to redefine itself, there’s a shift from a provider-focused culture to a patient-centered culture. Past, present and future, healthcare is a caring and progressive profession. No one deliberately offends patients […]
