A crisis communications plan is a bit like the safety air bags in your car. You always want to have them, but you hope they’ll never be needed. It’s always bad news. Preparedness is the key to handling "bad news" in hospital and healthcare communications. It’s simply good “PR insurance” to have contingency protocols at […]
Surprisingly few US hospitals have a YouTube Channel in their marketing lineup. Still fewer have the right content. Jumping on this opportunity is an open field competitive advantage. Here’s why and how. We’re one of those medical marketing companies that loves numbers. Good or bad, numbers can gauge progress, measure Return-on-Investment, and reveal opportunity. For […]
This is a story about competing hospital systems where the legal wrangling spilled into contentious advertising. The controversial television and newspaper debate became so heated that the governor intervened. (Without much success, however.) There are a number of PR hotspots in several states were hospitals, health systems, insurance providers and even politicians are tangled in […]
Let’s hope you never back into a buzz saw of “unintended consequences.” That’s when seemingly ordinary events inexplicably spin over to the dark side. It doesn’t happen often, but here’s a roundup of three recent and unrelated news reports that went from sweet to sour. What’s your reaction to these items, and what would you do if […]
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the March/April issue of Spectrum, a newsletter of the Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development, and is presented here with permission. “Internet” proved to be the key word in Pomona Valley Health Centers’ marketing campaign to connect patients with its outpatient sites. By Chris Aldworth and Healthcare Success […]
[Series Installment: How to Win More Patients for Your Most Profitable Service Lines; Step Seven – Develop Your Feet on the Street. A free White Paper from the Healthcare Success Educational Library.] FOTS? That’s our shorthand for outside representatives, liaisons or simply your “Feet on the Street.” It’s one of the most important and proactive […]
If you missed the final score in St. Luke’s 2014 Baby Bowl…the boys won. And from a hospital promotional perspective, the other winner in this clever promotion was the New Beginnings Family Birth Centers at St. Luke's University Health Network. Here are two recent case examples (and ideas you can use) for leveraging media exposure […]
[Series Installment: How to Win More Patients for Your Most Profitable Service Lines; Step Four – Creating an Effective Plan. A free White Paper from the Healthcare Success Educational Library.] A constant undercurrent in the turbulent transformation of the nation’s healthcare delivery system is competition. A better term is “hyper competition.” In many market areas, […]
Emergency Room appointments—for non-threatening care—are a flipping great idea. Ask a few patients in the Emergency Department (ED). Nobody likes to wait. And hospital wait times are—for both patients and administrators—a literal and figurative pain in the butt. And if you’ve “been-there-and-done-that,” the national average time patients spend in the emergency room before being seen […]
Some 89 million people in the US are going to watch 1.2 billion online videos today. (Yes, just today.) Healthcare and hospital marketing professionals understand the popularity and importance of online video content. The first challenge is to create interesting and engaging video material that conveys a message, inspires action and is truly share-worthy. The […]
It was nearly unanimous. Hospital marketing executives and administrators ranked marketing for various service lines as “extremely important” (65.5%) or “very important (24.1%), among respondents to the recent Healthcare Success (HSS) survey. Although service lines have generally commanded an important position in the marketing mix, Heart & Vascular Services ranked as the clear leader. It’s […]
By this time in the planning process, you’ve nailed all the big picture items for 2014. All your major building blocks—marketing plan, campaigns, goals and budget—are stacked, and the countdown to the New Year is ticking. What’s next we’ll call “adding icing to the cake.” Here’s a roundup of ideas that don’t qualify as major […]
Of the thousands of hospital or healthcare videos, few will ever “go viral.” But nearly all online videos that hit the big time circuit—being shared and shared again—will be fueled by emotion. It’s emotions that make marketing campaigns get noticed, attract viewers and go viral, according to research reported by the Harvard Business Review (HBR). Viral […]
by Janet Bowden, Healthcare Success Senior Account Executive How well do consumers “know” their local hospitals? According to a national survey, you could label the awareness score as “generally good.” But over the last 10 years—in spite of the influence of the Internet and aggressive marketing efforts—the data continues to hover on a plateau.
If you ask a thousand US hospitals about their top priorities, nearly everyone would Patient Experience/Satisfaction at the head of the list. But surprisingly, upwards of half of those organizations do not have a formal mandate or mission to achieve that objective. Those two data points come from a recently released and insightful survey by […]
For years, doctors and hospitals throughout the US have talked to us about a familiar and reoccurring theme in healthcare. That is, there is a common perception that people leave home and head off to the big city for medical services that are available in their own local community. Prospective patients are either unaware that […]
There are times when hospital and health system publicity or public relations can leverage current news or events to a positive advantage. Healthcare reform and the many faces (and continuing implementation steps) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) for example, is an ever-timely springboard to being part of the news. There can […]
[SHSMD13 Podcast Series] Awhile back, the world-renowned MD Anderson Cancer Center recognized that it had a patient experience problem at their front door. Associate Vice President of Marketing Alicia Jansen explains it this way: “One of the things that we noticed early on was that the biggest sticking point that our patients had in interacting with […]
The Healthcare Success blog is open to guest posts. We welcome the opportunity to have others write for us and share high-quality ideas to our 16,000+ subscribers. We are most interested in guest posts from healthcare professionals, especially doctors and marketing people who work for hospitals and practices. We appreciate the "client side" perspective. But you […]
[SHSMD13 Podcast Series] David Marlowe is the founder of Strategic Marketing Concepts and a past president and board member of SHSMD, the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development of the American Hospital Association. And in our podcast conversation with Lonnie Hirsch, David provides expert insight about tracking and metrics for effective and profitable hospital marketing. […]
[Healthcare Success Podcast] Hospital marketing professionals are not immune to a form of “white coat syndrome.” It’s the somewhat common phenomenon where patients exhibit elevated blood pressure in a clinical visit—but not in other settings—due to anxiety of being face-to-face with the doctor. Similarly in healthcare marketing, communications professionals can be nervous talking with physicians […]
[What Stewart’s Reading Series] I was reminded recently that FEAR is one of the most powerful emotions at play in marketing and advertising. On one hand, fear can encourage a purchase decision. Consider the amusing television advertisement where a klutzy neighbor saws off a giant tree limb and it crushes the adjoining homeowner’s car. It’s […]
Everyone likes to think that his or her marketing and advertising efforts are creative, fresh and energized. (Let’s hope that’s always so.) But what we rarely notice is their rapid decay. Familiarity can lead to benign neglect, and even the best of marketing efforts often become stale long before we’re aware of it. Unless we’re […]
Chances are you’ve seen the occasional Tweet that’s larger, longer and more impactful than the standard 140-character, text-only allowance. Among several types, Twitter Cards create breaks in the Twitter stream that grab attention with photos, video, summary notes, songs or other expansive content and inspire a click-through connection. Twitter says it delivers “a beautiful consumption […]
[SHSMD13 Podcast Series] There are dozens of ways that hospital marketing and advertising can benefit from a readily available feedback channel. For some facilities, an online patient insight community taps into their customer base for a valuable “voice of the patient” resource. In our continuing series of podcasts, Healthcare Success Co-Founder Lonnie Hirsch talked with […]
There’s nothing trivial about website analytics. And it’s not our intent to oversimplify an important (if sometimes confusing) subject. But, among the pages-and-pages-and-pages of available site performance metrics, there are four indicators should always be top-of-mind. Some tech-minded and numbers-driven people in marketing immerse themselves deeply in website performance statistics. These are the potentially daunting […]
Physician Relations resides at the intensely active intersection of doctors and hospitals. Sometimes a battlefield, sometimes a love fest, hospital-physician collaboration has never been more critical than during today's healthcare reform evolution. In this dynamic playing field, both the facility and the provider have a bigger-than-ever stake (with incentives and penalties) for clinical quality, cost […]
Three community-minded ideas that your hospital might want to “borrow.” Plus an enjoyable, and completely unique, billboard concept that you probably won’t be able to steal. The Affordable Care Act rollout continues to inspire ideas that promote wellness and healthy living. Hospitals, medical centers—and in some instances group medical practices—are increasingly open to various ways […]
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. […]
If you don’t include cave paintings (30,000 BC) or variations of ancient Egyptian picture writing (3200 BC), sometime in the 1960’s a blending of “information” and “graphic” produced the contemporary adjective INFOGRAPHIC. By definition, infographics are graphic, visual representations of information, data or knowledge. Admittedly, our thumbnail profile oversimplifies the rich legacy of—by various names—information […]
Two interesting items in the online news caught our attention recently. Both were serious reports from the business world about the comparative effectiveness of search engines, social media and email. Both were completely credible, widely circulated, and good fodder for strategic thinking and planning. The contrasting information asks and answers vital questions. With an equal […]
With 30 million prospective new patients just over the healthcare horizon, hospitals and other provider organizations are rethinking service channel opportunities. (And alliances perhaps.) Retail medical clinics, as one example, appear to be trending from competitive “foe to friend” on many marketing plans. A recent business study by consulting firm Accenture indicates that the number […]
Nothing personal, but most corporate CEOs don’t have a high opinion of their own marketing team. They think operate in a “marketing-la-la-land” and don’t have their shoulders into the heavy lifting of “generating, tracking and boosting customer demand.” We’d like to hear what you think about this study. How does the working relationship among hospital […]
About the time the Affordable Care Act (often labeled Obamacare) was enacted a few years ago, the trend in hospital physician hiring took a distinct upswing. Various data sources that track the whereabouts of doctors generally agree that we’ve passed a tipping point. About 50 to 60 percent of physicians now work for a hospital-owned […]
[Second of two articles.] Read our previous post on the topic of transparent prices among hospitals, How to be Named the Costliest Hospital in the Nation. When the federal government opened the books to the public on hospital prices, the unprecedented transparency came as a shock to many facilities and industry executives. And this visibility […]
The most expensive hospital in the nation is in New Jersey, according to The New York Times. “The Bayonne Medical Center charged Medicare the highest amounts for about a quarter of the most common treatments, a Times analysis of 2011 data shows.”
More than a few marketing-savvy hospitals have grown from a simplistic and static Web presence to a dynamic, multi-layered Internet encounter with their many audiences and various messages. It’s getting tougher all the time to constantly juggle the competing digital demands, messages and methods. And “constrained resources” can’t be allowed to chisel away at service […]
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 […]
Hospital executives say they are increasing their digital marketing budgets to reach and influence doctors. Close to 30 percent (on average, about $13,000) is aimed at physicians, and the balance targets consumers for the typical small hospital budget. This data comes from an informative report available from UBM Medica US. Among the findings, hospitals—like other […]
On an ordinary day many small- to mid-size community hospitals struggle to compete, remain independent…or even keep their doors open at all. But as provisions and affects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) continue to rollout, the challenges are increasingly severe.
Human emotions are probably the strongest reason for someone to LIKE, SHARE or COMMENT on Facebook (or almost any social media for that matter.) Sure, there are many posts that inform or educate, others that reward, a few that tempt or tease the page visitor. But the lesson for healthcare and hospital marketing folks is […]
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 […]
Not long ago the folks at Krames StayWell checked-in with us about how healthcare Customer Relationship Management—hospital CRM in particular—is recalibrating its mission for greater engagement and improved outcomes in an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) world. Many of the “old rules” are changing. They’re out now with an insightful report about CRM in an ACO […]
“SoLoMo.” Say it slowly a couple of times. It’s one of those recently minted, goofy-sounding marketing terms that someone invented. But SoLoMo belongs in your hospital marketing vocabulary. It’s a convenient contrivance to remind marketing planners to leverage the significant SOCIAL, LOCAL and MOBILE trends. Dissecting SoLoMo: What it means and why it’s important…
The traditional textbook for hospital design and décor is a quick read. Historically, the hallmark of doctors’ offices and medical facilities—from reception areas to exam rooms—has been stark, sterile functionality…usually with a non-descript monochrome paint job. Fast forward to today. Who says clean facilities require a sterile look? Significant advances in printing technology have met […]
We’ve noticed a disturbing sameness among some hospital and medical advertising. Fortunately, it’s not everyone or even most healthcare advertising, but there are all too many instances when the message of one organization is monotonously similar among competitive facilities. Regrettably, being “the same” is not a leadership message. Nor is it compelling, or even interesting. […]
One of the most common medical advertising mistakes that doctors and hospitals make every day—one of many that we discover all too frequently—is using the wrong advertising channels. Physicians, hospital executives and other healthcare marketing decision-makers are distracted by a hundred other daily demands on their time, and they fail to fully evaluate their media […]
There's a definite undercurrent of panic in the phone calls we've been getting recently about Google search results…or more often, the results that have disappeared. If you haven't checked your Google Search results ranking in the past few days, do it now. Take a minute and do a few Google searches just as the regular […]
[Hospital Advertising Success Story: Part Two] Texas Health Resources has been successfully using humor in their hospital advertising. The first part of this article [available here] looked at why humor in advertising is both difficult and dangerous. In this concluding part, we find that it can also be rewarding…but only when it’s done right. Many […]
[Hospital Advertising Success Story: Part One] Using humor in advertising—especially healthcare ads—is both difficult and dangerous. It’s difficult to find the precise balance between being funny (which makes it memorable), and communicating a product or service message (which makes it effective). What’s more, many health issues are no laughing matter. Potentially, it can backfire.
