Today’s trusted healthcare sites feature up-to-date, accurate information. They also boast SEO-optimized content. To stay ahead of your competitors in organic search results and reach the right target audience, you must regularly update your content for SEO. In this blog, I share how to do this in five steps. First, let’s define content optimization. What […]
As a hospital or health system, you know the value of patient engagement. You understand that it’s crucial for improving the overall patient experience and health outcomes for people of all socio-economic classes. But are you up-to-date with the latest patient engagement strategies? In this blog post, I’ll share ten targeted marketing campaigns to help […]
Organic Social Media When social media exploded onto the scene nearly two decades ago, marketers and healthcare professionals were a little too excited about its potential for healthcare marketing. Who could blame them? The fantasy was great. ‘All I have to do is figure out how to create a free Facebook business page, and then […]
The healthcare marketplace is crowded. As patient expectations continue to evolve, the need for thoughtful environmental designs that prioritize peace, tranquility, and healing cannot be overstated—they play a vital role in patient experiences and the perception of overall quality of care. Studies have shown many positive effects of healthcare environmental design on medical outcomes. In […]
Consumers across the globe have come to rely on search engines for reliable, trustworthy, accurate, and timely healthcare information. This has significantly increased competition among providers, making SEO—particularly local SEO—a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy. Local SEO is beneficial for any size business but critical for multilocation companies. By implementing local seo for […]
Best-in-class healthcare marketers are already planning for next year. They’re researching key trends that will attract new high-intent audiences, increase engagement, drive revenue, and reinforce patient loyalty in 2023. If you’ve been revamping the same marketing plan for a few years, now is the perfect time to reevaluate everything through the lens of market innovations […]
Welcome to step four of our “Marketing to Doctors” blog series. This comprehensive playbook is designed to help people in virtually every sector (e.g., healthcare businesses, device and supply companies, SaaS, etc.) market their products and services directly to doctors, physicians, surgeons, and other healthcare professionals. If you haven’t read steps 1-3, I highly recommend […]
Welcome to part three of our “Marketing to Doctors” blog series. This series is a comprehensive playbook for healthcare businesses, device and supply companies, SaaS, or anyone who wants to market their products and services directly to doctors (physicians, surgeons, and other healthcare professionals). I highly recommend reading this entire blog series. Here they are […]
While we are very excited to announce our agency just launched our new website featuring a brand-new design, functionality, backend tech, and fresh content, we expect you’ll be more interested in the following three takeaways: Why we decided to rebuild our site completely, Why you may need to similarly “start anew” with your website, and […]
Marketing to doctors, physicians, surgeons, and other health care professionals can be extremely challenging, complicated, and expensive. What’s more, most doctors work in a hospital or multilocation medical practice, making it even more challenging to identify key decision-makers. Not only are doctors and decision-makers difficult to reach—and even more difficult to persuade—you have to contend […]
By Stewart Gandolf, MBA (Editor’s Note: I wrote the first version of this blog post back in 2006 when we launched Healthcare Success. While I intentionally wrote it with a quick, playful tone, more than sixteen years later, it remains one of our most popular posts. I recently updated it here for your reading pleasure!) Every time I run […]
The Internet is now the well-established new business front door for health information, healthcare practices and hospitals. Nearly 90 percent of the billions of healthcare searches are online. But what you may not appreciate is that pay-per-click (PPC) advertising delivers answers to consumers’ needs via one billion search ad clicks. PPC Campaigns for Addiction Treatment […]
Every industry has its share of truly moronic comments, witless ideas and brainless advice. And healthcare advertising is certainly no exception. Over time, it becomes a bit easier to identify silly comments for what they are. Providers have an excuse, after all healthcare marketing isn't their profession. However, healthcare advertising agency people should know better. Extremely […]
There’s no battle royale here. Contrary to some heated discussions I’ve heard, direct response and brand or name-recognition marketing are both valuable tools in any healthcare marketing plan. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. That said, direct response advertising—where immediate customer action is measurable—is really challenging, and success depends on creating effective advertising that works. Be it […]
From a top-level perspective, a well-conceived marketing plan expresses four key elements. If each component of your plan does not clearly and specifically answer these questions, synergy and success are at risk. Mindful that “performance precedes accountability by a narrow margin,” confirm the following for every item on the plan: WHEN will this occur? Create […]
Sadly, we recently witnessed the sudden death of a good idea. As often happens within an office culture and politics in medical practices, a healthcare marketing idea was killed off before creativity had any chance at all. And the really tough part is that it was swept away for all the wrong reasons. In this […]
Fear. Risk. Rationalization. It’s likely that we have not heard all the reasons that doctors DO NOT advertise. Perhaps only a million or so. For one thing, the list of "not doing marketing" is nearly endless. Secondly, the doctors and healthcare professionals who we talk to most often have left that old-school thinking behind and have squared-off […]
[Marketing Minute Video Series] Healthcare Success Account Supervisor Tracy Scarborough and CEO Stewart Gandolf talk about RESULTS in marketing. Another Marketing Minute from Healthcare Success with tips, techniques and ideas for successful medical practice or hospital marketing and advertising. Hospitals, medical practices and other providers always want results from their marketing investment. But surprisingly, not […]
Competition in business is one course of study that is seldom taught in medical school. But it’s often the first thing we hear about when healthcare providers knock on our door looking for marketing help. You can list “competition”—or some offshoot consequence of same—as the leading reason why individual doctors, group medical practices, hospital executives […]
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 […]
I’ve found that marketing for medical practices and hospitals works best when everyone in the organization is “all in” on the effort. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. Within any healthcare organization, regardless of the size, some people can (and often do) have competing attitudes about marketing. Nevertheless, the role of marketing is increasingly vital […]
The confusion is common…and somewhat understandable. Just as patients cannot easily evaluate and compare surgeons, it can be difficult for provider management to understand the differences among marketing companies. From a distance, a health care marketing consultant, a medical marketing company, a healthcare advertising agency (and a bunch of similar labels) can all appear to […]
All too often marketing professionals unintentionally alienate one of the largest (and most financially significant) target audiences, the over-50 crowd. Maybe they didn’t mean to, but the 30-something marketing person just doesn’t have a clue about the true mindset of the 50-, 60- or 70-something person they want to reach. We see this frequently when […]
Most medical groups and doctor-owner practices respect the fact that the business environment—particularly the competitive landscape—has changed dramatically. It’s tough and getting tougher as the nation’s healthcare system reinvents itself almost daily. But being aware of the competition falls far short of understanding how truly vulnerable most practices are…whether they know it or not. As […]
No, I’m not bald. Not yet. But there are moments throughout the year when I’m ready to grab a handful of those threadlike strands and yank with gusto. Instead, please allow me this brief and civilized rant…a year-end vent for the little frustrations that I encounter in healthcare marketing and advertising. In fact, let’s consider […]
The usual challenges of physician recruitment, physician relations and physician marketing are all contending with an unhappy dynamic: Many doctors simply don’t want to be a doctor any longer. After investing ump-teen years in earning their much-prized white coat, it looks like many docs want to hang it up. They are either ready to get […]
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 […]
[The first of two articles.] Where were you and what were you doing five years ago? Four years ago? As recently as 36 months ago, many doctors and hospitals were working from a “traditional” marketing playbook. And for the time, by intent or oversight, it seemed that it was “good enough” for marketing, advertising and […]
In a conversation the other day with Simona Ramos, one of our top artists at Healthcare Success, I was reminded how the general public has become far more visually aware and demanding. For healthcare marketing, good pictures are not good enough. The ability to “think visually” is a talent that not everyone has. They don’t […]
Having and effectively using an online presence—website, social media, etc.—is a primary channel for connections between patients and providers. It is the principal means for the newly empowered healthcare consumer to find and act upon authoritative information.
[First of a two-part post.] Social media (SM) has swiftly engrained itself in nearly every corner of contemporary culture and daily living. And that includes healthcare where, among other things, the various social media platforms have become a significant agent for change. Fundamentally, social media is changing the nature and speed of healthcare interaction between consumers […]
Although some risk is inherent in healthcare marketing and advertising, smart planning and creative execution can minimize problems and maximize return. But while risks are manageable, money-wasting mistakes are a different animal. Over the years, we’ve encountered all kinds of mistakes; more than we have space to list here. But, if there’s a silver lining […]
Have you heard the one about the toothbrush and the mobile phone? The nearly-fabled statistic observes that: Among the six billion people on the planet, 4.8 billion have a mobile phone while only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush. (AdAge) The counterpoint is amusing, but it's a serious reminder that a mobile strategy needs to be […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Consider this a brief continuing education exercise. Take a three-minute break from your work today and step into the not-too-distant future. Healthcare and medical marketing professionals…ask yourself, “How would I devise a marketing plan for any of theses five innovations in health?” You may not have heard about these ideas, but The New York Times […]
Exactly when is it a sound business decision to outsource all or part of your healthcare or dental marketing or advertising?
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 […]
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.
The future is impossible to predict with precision, but it’s helpful to keep your eyes on the road ahead. Here are a few key things we see just over the horizon that have implications for healthcare marketing…soon, or someday soon. Facebook will challenge Google in search, and Google will challenge Facebook in social. Both are […]
We think the current economic picture just might be a “unicorn recovery.” Like the mythical beast, everybody talks about it, but nobody has seen it. Hopeful signals filter through the media, but—in our slice of reality—we have yet to hear a client or prospective client say that they see evidence of a real economic turn […]
Not everyone can use innovative ideas about digital signs, so let’s just say that sometimes our Friday posts can be on the casual and slightly amusing side of informative. Our little story begins more than a dozen years ago… The cardinal rule of a brainstorming session is that there are no bad ideas. So when […]
Quick-check questions that reveal make-it or break-it problems before launch The difference between big-time winning vs. downright disaster in healthcare direct response depends on a million variables. A single, simple oversight can cost you the ballgame. Ask yourself these seven questions to find and fix fundamental problems before you rollout any direct response program.
Do you have an idea for a successful open house? Please tell us about it. All too often we bump into a medical practice or hospital doing an “open house” or something similar. So far, so good…a community and patient involvement special event can be a useful doctor marketing tool. The problem is that simply […]
Some health care advertising agencies would have you believe that trendy and award-winning creative materials, intricate and expensive media plans, and enormous medical advertising budgets are what it takes to win the hearts and minds of new patients. In fact there's more science and psychology at work in the business of influencing human behavior than […]
With the approaching New Year, we like to look ahead for emerging trends in healthcare delivery and medical marketing. On our “new technology” list, there are three concepts (among many) that we’ll be watching closely in 2012. Marketing savvy doctors, administrators, dentists, hospital marketing and advertising professionals might want to keep these topics on your […]
Guest Post by Healthcare Attorney Stephen H. Kaufman Whether you are starting a new medical practice, operating a long-established business, or actively engaged in hospital advertising, you probably have a trademark—a name, a phrase or a design that brands your business in the marketplace. You can establish rights in your marks just by using them […]
