If you think 2012 was fiercely competitive year, savvy healthcare marketing plans might want a new Kevlar wrapper. But they definitely will need to be more aggressive about Internet marketing in 2013. Healthcare delivery is reinventing itself, the consumer/patient new empowerment, competition has shifted dramatically, and “patient experience” is the watchword. I could go on, […]
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 recent "superstorm" that hit the East Coast reminded us that seasoned healthcare and hospital public relations professionals are a bit like professional journalists. With little or no warning, they may need to document unannounced or spontaneous events including capturing on-the-spot photos or videos. Let's hope it doesn't happen often, (or as serious as a […]
Empowered patients and retail-like consumerism have become increasingly important in healthcare delivery. But for many medical practices, doctor groups and other healthcare providers, the ability to deliver and measure a positive patient experience remains a bit elusive. This may be due in part to the fact that, traditionally, patients were not seen as “customers,” at […]
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.
Three reasons why digital signage should be part of your healthcare marketing and PR planning Printed posters and static signs have evolved to a digital format that's attention getting and versatile. And digital signage is an affordable and cost effective marketing tool that should not be overlooked. It's a significant lost opportunity for many medical […]
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 […]
By Neil Baum, MD Most of us like to think of ourselves as good to excellent communicators. However, if we were to survey our patients about our communication skills, we would find, to our dismay, that we are deficient in our ability to receive and transmit information to our patients. A study that monitored provider-patient […]
Think of Google's search page as a gateway to your healthcare website. And since the majority of online searches for information begin with Google, it’s helpful to know a bit about how the search giant “thinks.” Ultimately, creating a high quality online presence that Google prefers will help give your hospital, medical practice or facility a […]
Perhaps the single biggest barrier to the adoption and proliferation of telemedicine has been a financial one. Physicians, hospitals and other healthcare providers have avoided or resisted the various forms and formats of "telehealth" because there's no obvious path to monetize the time and effort. Frankly, that's still an issue, but it's changing. Some practitioners […]
Doctors are often called upon by members of the news media to speak or be quoted as an authoritative source. Often, that's good, but there could be a downside. Physicians, medical practice administrators and hospital marketing and PR executives need to consider that sometimes reporters are not digging for gold, they are digging for dirt. […]
Our Managing Editor at Healthcare Success is normally an easy-going person who doesn’t get upset easily. After all, he easily handles the daily high-strung environment of publishing deadlines and life in the medical advertising agency fast lane. But now and then some things cross his desk that make him cringe, “This is dumb." Moments like […]
There’s a tendency to oversimplify what we think of as hospital and medical practice branding. Perhaps we think of the carefully crafted logo and tagline as the brand. For others, the physical structure—a commanding facility with amenities emblematic of the brand. Or perhaps “our brand” is the prestige name and reputation of a long-established practice.
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 […]
Our (occasional) Friday Video post today is truly awesome. And it’s clearly our new favorite in the hospital/healthcare category from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. If you haven’t seen the Hey, Jude! Make it Better online campaign, take three minutes to watch patients, staff, researchers and a string of celebrities present an unforgettable […]
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 […]
Somewhere in everyone’s job description—expressed or implied—is the need to be creative. And we know from experience in that it’s doubly challenging to be creative on demand. Surprisingly, a little coaching can help the process of generating good ideas for better healthcare marketing and advertising. Here are some secrets about being creative from, of all […]
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 […]
Here are some (relatively) easy and (generally) non-technical SEO tips that everyone can use for better healthcare marketing results. Everyone appreciates that proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is vitally important to being found online and makes for more successful healthcare marketing. But a techno-talk vocabulary of “title tag,” “Googlebot,” or phrases beginning with “meta,” tends […]
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, […]
Hospital and healthcare marketing professionals have only begun to experience the rise of the new consumer. There’s even more consumerism likely in the future, according to the 2012 Altarum Survey of Consumer Health Care Opinions. This and other findings are influencing the shape of healthcare marketing and advertising. Of significance for marketing and communications planners, […]
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 […]
It seems that our recent post, If We Trust Doctors with Sharp Instruments, We Can Trust Them with Social Media, ignited some lively discussions among healthcare marketing professionals on LinkedIn. As a bit of background, the big idea behind our “If We Trust Doctors” post is that social media has taken a leadership role in […]
On the surface, a medical marketing email campaign is appealing, in part, because it is immediate and low cost. The proliferation of high-speed Internet connections, computers, laptops, smartphones and other mobile devices rapidly connect healthcare providers and hospitals with constituent audiences. Although a single email is fairly simple, creating a successful email marketing effort with […]
This is a curious business concept: One of New York’s largest hospital networks wants to keep their hospital beds empty. That notion, says Kaiser Health News, would be the case for some hospitals that want to provide health insurance. Disruptive business ideas are innovations intended to improve a product or service in ways the market […]
Often, It’s important to know what not to do in healthcare marketing…and especially when it comes to website design. Creating and maintaining an excellent online presence can be a challenging task. But it’s well worth the investment when your web presence creates brand (and reputation) awareness, generates inquiries and produces a stream of new patients. […]
Those of us who know (or know of) Ed Bennett have to applaud his pioneering work in creating and maintaining the Hospital Social Network List. His work during the past few years resulting in the highly informative list—a giant scoreboard really—of hospital social media resources around the nation. For professionals in hospital marketing and communications, […]
Each year about this time, many healthcare providers are thinking about their marketing plan. Only a few pages remain on the calendar, and some planners are close to the finish line, while others realize they need to begin. Still others have a “rolling” marketing plan that is reviewed and adjusted monthly on near-term items, and […]
Understandably, interpersonal and communications skill is one of the vital core competencies for physicians. But communications is also one of the biggest gaps in physician competency, according to the American Hospital Association’s Physician Leadership Forum. Some of the obvious applications for good communications include working effectively with provider team members, professional colleagues and doctor-patient interaction. […]
In this podcast interview, Chris Nelson and Dennis Jolley of University of Utah Health Care share the reasons they think it makes a lot of sense, financial and otherwise, to use outside marketing talent. They also share 6 specific principles for hospitals and doctors to follow: 1. Demonstrate need 2. Embrace your strengths and compensate […]
[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 […]
The emergence of the wave of “consumerism” in healthcare delivery is, in some respects, not entirely new. Consumers have been making purchase decisions about products and services for…well, forever. What’s new is that patients are better informed and are more actively evaluating their purchase options in healthcare as they typically apply in retail or other […]
For the past few weeks we’ve had a lot of fun presenting our seven-part educational video series of successful marketing strategies for healthcare practices and hospitals. Lonnie Hirsch and I (Stewart Gandolf) decided to make these fast-paced and informative presentations available to our readers at no cost, but for a limited time only.
Some important national surveys about patient satisfaction have been in the news lately. The company credentials are highly respectable, and the healthcare marketing implications are significant. First on the street was the PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute (PwC, HRI) data that concluded, for healthcare consumers, personal experience is the number one reason for choosing a doctor […]
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 […]
We spoke with Kim Reynolds, Vice President, Marketing Services at LifePoint Hospitals at SHSMD Connections 2012 about her talk today, "Patient Development as a Marketing Strategy." (Chis Fenoglio, who is on her web team joined her.) Kim's challenge has been to tie marketing programs from over 23 rural hospitals into a comprehensive program that gets […]
Camille Baxter, Director, Health Enterprise Marketing, University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System, recently spoke wth Lonnie Hirsch about her 2012 SHSMD Connections speech, "Squeaky Wheels and Other Approaches to Strategic Service Line Marketing." During this preview podcast, Camille shares her thoughts about how service line marketing should be an extension of the hospital […]
Healthcare marketing is having a milestone moment. Because the nation’s healthcare delivery system has experienced sweeping changes in the past few years, the textbook list of medical marketing fundamentals needs a significant adjustment. Henceforth, PATIENT EXPERIENCE joins the classic “Seven Ps” of a marketing mix—PEOPLE, PRODUCT, PRICE, PROMOTION, PLACE, PACKAGING, and POSITIONING—for a new total […]
A Bruce Willis tough-guy character might say this—it’s one of those edgy little quips that circulates via the Internet: “I’m only responsible for what I say, not for what you understand.” This cheeky advice plays OK as a just-for-fun Twitter message. But it’s obviously a joke. In the real world of healthcare communications and doctor […]
PODCAST: Prior to his SHSMD 2012 talk, R. Kelly Myers of RKM Research shared a few insights with us during an audio interview. Kelly's research has shown that traditional customer service strategies don't really compare to patient experience strategies, because the stakes are so much higher in healthcare. Additionally, he cautions hospital marketers to go […]
In preparation for her upcoming talk at SHSMD, we interviewed Donna Teach, Chief Marketing Officer for Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. In this audio interview Donna shares insights about the various reporting tools and metrics she and her team use. Donna also discusses how to apply return-on-investment data to convince upper management of the […]
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, […]
In the greater Cincinnati area, The Christ Hospital Health Network has a novel idea to capture testimonial-type comments from patients, employees and friends. In fact, it’s a healthcare and hospital marketing idea that literally speaks for itself. (Really.) This idea may also be suitable for some group practices and other provider situations. Here’s how it […]
When it comes to doctor referrals, most primary care offices either 1) hand their patients a piece of paper and HOPE they make an appointment with the specialist, or 2) fax the referral directly to the specialist's office. The trouble is, up to 70% of patients never make their way to actually see the specialist. […]
Bill Oakes, Chief Development Officer for Johnson Memorial Hospital, recently spoke with us about why he and his executive team decided to collaborate with one of their hospital's major competitors. In this audio interview, Bill gives us a preview to his SHSMD Connections 2012 speech, and shares some of the positive results they have seen […]
We’re always watching for new healthcare and doctor marketing tools. But only a few “new, online startup” companies get the necessary business traction to be successful. That said, we spotted something unique from Clear Health in Minneapolis called Clear.MD. [That’s clear-dot-md, not dot-com.] It’s a startup—presently in online Beta testing—but Clear.MD shows some genuine promise […]
There's one vital step in shaping a positive patient experience that is often forgotten or neglected. In healthcare marketing terms, it's the one step that can make or break everything else you do to put the patient first and grow your brand and reputation. The nature of healthcare delivery is, more than ever before, focused […]
Our first post about Happtique—the Greater New York Hospital Association’s (GNYHA) mobile application store—was just prior to its launch in 2010. Much has transpired in the subsequent couple of years. There are some important trends here for forward-looking healthcare and hospital marketing professionals. Including—just this month—a pilot program for an app for issuing prescriptions.
One of the secrets to creating a successful healthcare marketing program is to simply identify and use the strategies and tactics that work. There's less risk in knowing and using the right “proven” strategies. All you need to do is to collect many years of direct knowledge, practical experience and documented resullts from doctor and […]
Our Big Book of All Things Marketing has a page devoted to the symbiotic relationship between content marketing and healthcare. Few strategies and tactics in healthcare marketing combine as easily and appropriately. Here’s why “content” and “healthcare” are natural marketing partners. And why Content should be a key ingredient in the marketing plan for hospitals, […]
