Early on, more than a few medical practices, providers and hospitals jumped onboard the nearest social media bandwagon because it was the trendy “thing to do.” Besides, we all know that “social media is free.” Right? It turns out, of course, that social media can be relatively low in cost, but overall, it isn’t completely […]
Our regular readers appreciate that we have a positive bias toward healthcare marketing and advertising that produces measurable, near-term results. Direct Response Marketing isn’t the only option, but for hospitals and medical practices—facing tough competition with a lean, cost-effective budget—it offers advantages over brand-based methods. Experienced writers will devote half (or more) of their creative […]
With very little encouragement, a professional colleague of ours will enthusiastically explain why her personal physician is an outstanding provider. As it happens, her hero-physician is highly skilled, credentialed and experienced. But one of the top reasons that she will recommend her physician is that the practice actively uses text messages and patient-physician email to […]
While languishing in a medical practice reception area, more than a few patients have fantasized about financial revenge, thinking: “I should send a bill to this doctor for making me wait so long.” That’s not a fanciful idea. “In 2010, people in America spent 1.1 billion hours seeking health care for themselves or for loved […]
Keeping up with what’s-new-and-creative among thousands of hospital and healthcare videos is daunting. YouTube alone has about a billion (with a B) active users each month. And every marketing-smart hospital in the US has embraced the engaging, educational and entertaining power of online video. The relatively low cost of video production, and the high user […]
[Article Series: An excerpt from a forthcoming book by Mark Tager, MD, and Stewart Gandolf, MBA, for private practice physicians and healthcare administrators about reaching, recruiting and retaining private pay and elective care patients. Refer to our previous article on this topic titled: How to Grow Your Private Pay and Elective Care Business.] Launching an […]
The popular buzz-phrase in contemporary healthcare—price transparency—is a relatively new dynamic in the competitive equation for providers and marketing professionals. And it cuts in two directions. On one hand, price transparency—and knowing the cost of medical procedures in advance—is a major plus for public awareness. On the other hand, price is not the only consideration for truly […]
There’s a famous line in the movie Jaws that you might recall. When Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) first comes face-to-face with the killer shark they’re hunting, he realizes: “You’re going to need a bigger boat.” It’s much like that in the real world when we hear about all the problems that doctors and hospitals […]
There’s nothing more satisfying in medical practice marketing than a program that produces measurable results. Attracting new patients or cases is usually the intent of external marketing, but the true, quantifiable pay-back is where Return-on-Investment (ROI) is calculated in “dollars in” divided by “dollars out.” This elementary concept is frequently overlooked or neglected. It’s frustrating […]
[Series Installment] Among our list of 19 critical medical advertising mistakes that healthcare organizations make every day is: Trying to build your image rather than building a patient base. We’ve labeled it as Number Six, but by any name it is a misguided budget-burner. Here’s how to recognize that you may be headed for this […]
A message presented through animation captures attention, explains with clarity and often entertains. For certain situations, healthcare and hospital marketing can employ this unique creative approach to effective engagement and communications online. Guest Post by Dr. Manroop Takhar Let’s face it, communicating in the science-based world of medical marketing can sometimes be dry, clinical and […]
[First in a Series: How to Avoid the 7 Deadly Sins of Healthcare Marketing] Deadly Sin # 1: Confusing Marketing with Advertising. From the Healthcare Success Educational library] Marketing a healthcare organization can be challenging—even painful—if you don’t approach it with the right knowledge, tools and guidance. The truth is, there are more than seven […]
First, in our Healthcare Success post today, we’d like you to have—and to share—a new infographic titled: How to Avoid the 7 Deadly Sins of Healthcare Marketing. If the title has a familiar ring, it’s because our educational White Paper of the same name has been downloaded close to 44-thousand times…and still going strong. (Both […]
Editor’s Note: Communications, such as appointment reminders, are often guided by HIPAA privacy rules, organizational policies and other regulations. Ideas presented in our Guest Post may vary in application according to the professional situation and circumstances. More information about Health Information Privacy under HIPAA is available at the US Department of Health & Human Services […]
The concept of shared medical appointments (one doc seeing several patients) isn’t well known or widely available…yet. That seems to be changing. The pressures of “more patients” and “fewer doctors” (among other things) are straining the nation’s healthcare delivery system, but it’s fueling innovative approaches that save time, reduce cost, and improve access, outcomes and […]
Healthcare is on a countdown to the New Year, and the only thing certain about 2014 is that it will be different from its predecessor. Plan accordingly. More than ever, your marketing plan—for a medical practice, hospital, service line or health systems—should be written in pencil. You’ll need a nimble plan to keep ahead of […]
Unsolicited electronic messages (the spam variety) are about as welcome as an earth-bound asteroid. Nobody likes receiving them, and professionally, you definitely don’t want to inadvertently send legitimate email to be caught-up in one of the many “spam filters.” Being familiar with filters and other rules of road can keep your valid email marketing messages […]
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 […]
Is your business model like playing solitaire? There's a brief back-story to my question. Sometimes, late at night after a long day, I still feel wound up, even though my family has long been asleep. So I grab my iPhone (in the dark) and play a little solitaire just to slow down. The fact that […]
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 […]
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 […]
Success often arrives wrapped in a compelling story. And “storyselling” is a highly effective path to achieving your medical marketing or advertising goals...from winning case acceptance to bumping up the price of a service or product. Here’s a quick look at how this idea applies to the business side of healthcare. A Las Vegas pawnshop […]
[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 marketing is more involved than simply hiring someone to write an ad or create a brochure for you. (After all, your practice is not a simple box of detergent or a used car lot.) To be successful, you will need a well-considered marketing plan and budget, complete with ethical, appropriate and proven strategies. While […]
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 […]
In our work with clients across the United States, we often help medical providers understand what their primary constituencies need and want. A starting point for a provider group for instance, would be an exercise in discovering what patients, referring physicians and payors want to know. And when you recognize the questions of these groups—what […]
Editor’s Note: Although he’s on a much-deserved vacation, Healthcare Success CEO Stewart Gandolf unintentionally bumped into an article idea. So, 2,347 miles away from home, Stewart shares these healthcare marketing insights that apply to anyone in healthcare marketing. Stewart begins with a little story about a chance encounter…
[Another in our series of posts about free, low-cost, affordable and effective tactics to make your medical marketing sizzle without breaking the bank.] Genuine business growth is the product of a well-designed marketing plan and budget. But there are serious ways to drive more “umphff” to your efforts without adding serious bucks to the budget.
It’s amazing how often we encounter real life examples of opportunity lost, simply because someone was afraid to ask. More about that in a minute. Here’s a personal note that brought this to mind for me again recently. At the time of this writing, my mother, 95, is gravely disabled and in a skilled nursing […]
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 […]
Healthcare reform hit a bit of speed bump a few weeks ago when enforcement of the employer mandate requirement was delayed for a year under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Businesses with 50 employees now have until 2015 to provide insurance coverage for workers instead of 2014. In our view, this delay in the business […]
Eight out of ten times (probably more), the Internet is where the first encounter between a doctor and a prospective patient occurs. But it doesn’t stop there. Long before an individual selects a healthcare provider, hospital or facility for their medical needs, they often begin their decision journey with online due diligence. And when providers […]
I have to admit that I have a reputation for being a bit “attention deficit,” especially in meetings with my internal team members. Like Dug, the talking dog in the Disney/Pixar movie UP, I can easily get distracted. (Squirrel!) Take 20-seconds to meet Dug in this clip from this Academy Award-winning animated feature.
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, […]
[One in a series of posts about finding and using free, low-cost, affordable and effective tactics to make your medical marketing sizzle without breaking the bank.] In our experience, “marketing-on-the-cheap” has never been a useful or effective solution to anything. Over the years, we’ve often received an urgent call after some well-meaning (but ill-advised) stabs […]
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 […]
[Series Installment] Our recent post in this series declared the “Gen-Y” population group to be the “biggest ever” slice of the population. It turns out that “biggest” depends on who’s doing the slicing. Take a look at the Jones crowd. Medical marketing professionals need to keep up with the Jones Generation cohort, a “sweet […]
Personally, I’d jump at the opportunity to learn about business at the right hand of Bill Gates, Chairman and co-founder of Microsoft. That would be an insightful brain-picking session. It would be on par with talking about business with Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffet. But can you imagine a meeting between two of […]
We’ve been working on redesigning and refreshing our marketing information newsletter. And since the subject of newsletter content and construction was top of mind for us, we wanted to share a few how-to tips about the process. Not long ago we conducted a Reader Survey that was open to our 15,000+ subscribers. The responses helped […]
[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 […]
By Stewart Gandolf, MBA, CEO, Healthcare Success The Internet and social media presence of a physician is the sum of what most prospective patients know about you and your professional reputation. Here’s the “why-and-how” about using these tools to your marketing advantage. You’ve heard at least a dozen reasons why physicians dismiss—or steer a cautious […]
We've noticed that the most successful doctors and executives that we work with are constantly hungry for new information. By any of various names, continuing education is part of their personal fabric, something to be exercised daily, if not hourly. But what providers and administrators do for themselves, they sometimes overlook providing the value of […]
A prospective doctor’s long and arduous education has often been all about medicine, with precious little training or experience in the business of running a business. No sooner than a newly minted MD hangs out a shingle, but he or she is hit squarely in the face with the reality that “Healing is an art, […]
There’s something a bit institutional or simply conventional about how healthcare usually connects with patients. Hospitals and providers build many of their marketing and communications efforts around engaging slices of their target audience. While there’s nothing wrong with convention, creative and successful medical marketing lessons can be found in unconventional sources. Objectives include communicating a […]
While making a professional call on a doctor’s office the other day, a colleague of ours watched $5,000 walk out the door. The small-but-painful drama that unfolded in the reception area is worth retelling if our experience can save other medical practices from losing patients and revenue. It was a real-world lesson in physician and […]
Editor’s note: This article covers secrets about Search Engine Optimization. It is another in our series about how to get found on the Internet. We have a personal question for you. Have you ever "Googled yourself?" More to the point, when patients from your town search online for the services that you provide, does your […]
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 […]
Five quick search engine optimization techniques to recognize if your healthcare website needs help with search ranking—to attract more visitors and win new patients. Here's a quick assessment tool for your healthcare website. Internet Search Engines, like Google, decide how high your site will be listed on a mountain of search results. Sophisticated computer programs-spiders, […]
