Everyone wants their marketing materials to look attractive.
After all, most patients have a very difficult time evaluating providers, and therefore consciously or unconsciously, look for clues about you based upon what they can see and understand.
If your facilities, office, hospital and marketing materials look professional and inspire confidence, you are set up to win before you even meet the patient. Conversely, if your advertising "face" looks amateurish or cheap, many of your would-be patients and referrers will quietly disappear.
This harsh reality shouldn't surprise you - after all, you do exactly the same thing. Would you be excited about trying a new hair stylist who sports blue spiked hair? Want to eat at a restaurant with stained tablecloths and chunks of food on the floor?
So, generally you are right to want attractive support materials.
The first step is to make sure you have really defined your target audience.
Remember that most of your effectiveness will be a result of the effectiveness of your message and your offer -- not how pretty your brochures and logos appear. Your message and your offer are primarily determined by the words - what the materials say.
Finally, make sure whomever you work with is highly experienced with healthcare marketing.
(Forget trying to be a do-it-yourselfer. This is your reputation we are talking about.)
Generally at least three people should team together to help you. The leader needs to be a marketing strategist who will lead the entire process and make sure the messaging is on target. Then, the strategist will generally work directly with the writer and graphic artist.
For example, whenever we work with clients, we often go through many revisions with our creative team before we ever present to the client. That way we are assured of the highest quality, most on target marketing materials possible.
Marketing a healthcare organization can be challenging - even painful if you don't approach it with the right knowledge, tools, and guidance. By reading about mistakes and lessons others have learned the hard way, you can boost your marketing effectiveness and take a shortcut to success. Discover how to avoid these "Seven Deadly Sins". Plus, join over 30,000 of your fellow healthcare providers with a free subscription to our Insight Newsletter.