Hospital Marketing Journal

Adaptability

by Kris Laufer

In speaking to Inc. Magazine, Steve Jobs once said, “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” This is exactly why adaptability is such an important trait in the workplace. Everything that surrounds us is constantly changing, and it’s critical that we have the skills necessary to adapt to those changes. Adaptability means being willing and able to function in circumstances that are new or unexpected. As your business continues to grow and evolve, your team will face new hurdles and challenges. So inspiring your staff to become more adaptable is more critical than ever. One key thing Steve Jobs taught us is this: If we embrace change, we’ll give birth to creativity and new innovation. However with uncertainty and sometimes frightening changes taking place every day – such as the economy – it can be extremely challenging to embrace change. But adaptability can often turn these hard times into rewarding opportunities. Use this time to learn new things. Developing new skills – or continuing to improve existing ones – will help you succeed and better adapt in a changing world. Always expect the unexpected. When you’re ready for anything, there won’t be any surprises to catch you off guard. Trust yourself. Allow your instincts to lead you, especially in high-stress situations. Remain positive. A positive, can-do attitude will guide you to limitless possibilities. I believe that we all have a natural ability to be creative and innovate. While we may not be the inventors of the next-generation iPhone, we can make a positive difference in the world – in both large and small ways. In what ways can you or your team be more adaptable?

Diligence

by Scott Angle

Seeing things through to the end is tough for anyone; but try being the guy who wants to bring ‘light’ to the world. Thomas Edison toiled through hundreds of failures and obstacles trying to get his bulb to burn. How many obstacles are in the way of finishing your tasks in the workplace?  Those obstacles are overcome with Diligence. Diligence matters in the workplace and is a key character trait to call out and instill within staff.  It is, essentially, investing the necessary time and energy to see a task completed. Edison once said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” The task may seem too small, or even too big, for you, but success is found in both places. We just need to be diligent. The diligent person succeeds in finishing any task by keeping these items in mind. Know what you’re getting into – diligent people study and understand the task; to both, seek ways to improve execution, and spot things that would distract them from it. There’s a reason you need to ‘get the ball rolling’ – an object in motion tends to stay in motion, and diligent people know that procrastination is one of success’s worst enemies.  By jumping into a task immediately, with goals in mind, you set out milestones for yourself to build both confidence and momentum. Put as much diligence into rest and relaxation, as you would the task at hand – diligent people pour their whole selves into a task, but know that they must also step away from the task for the break they need. Stretch yourself, but establish realistic deadlines.  Find a productive rhythm to your work and non-work life. This will help you dance through any task. If it’s worth the effort, it’s worth the effort to make it right – diligent people pay attention to details and mind the quality of what they deliver to others. You would do well to mind the carpenter’s adage – measure twice, cut once. I believe that no one sets out to fail or give up on a task. We all want to succeed and excel at everything we do. Still, life happens in the meantime; then we’re distracted or discouraged and, finally, the task is collecting dust on our desk. The diligent person finds a way to get started, stay the course, and ultimately finish strong to completion. You may not be inventing the light bulb, but what you and your co-workers do is important to success. Stay diligent and reminds others to do the same. In what ways have you seen those around you demonstrate diligence?

 

 

 

Measuring Social Media on the Web

by Nancy Daugherty

Digital communications over the internet have opened, to hospitals and healthcare organizations, a growing trove of marketing channels; particularly those built around search and social networking.   With an opportunity of abundance comes a challenge of control. Using social media marketing to build awareness and affinity around your brand and web presence can be a boon, but trying to understand the complexities of how well your marketing vehicles perform online can seem like an anchor.  A solid digital presence relies on your ability to recognize your reach and influence within the world of the web. Significant resources are often applied to this challenge, but there are free options available that give healthcare managers – marketing or otherwise – access to basic measures of engagement and effectiveness. These tools measure an array of elements; from visitor page counts and tracking, to the ‘hottest’ spots on your site (through analysis of click patterns). These examples cover many of the more popular marketing channels on the web: Google Analytics – gives you a view of the traffic flow into and around your website. It can tell you if visitors arrive through search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, or email marketing.  It also provides data on time spent with your site and the next web destination for visitors. FaceBook Insights – a tool for understanding your followers on Facebook. Demographic info, as well as psychographic clues like activities, comments and wall posts, give a glimpse into the consumer who is most engaged with your social media. Feedburner – if you are blogging or providing other content, know more about your content consumers.  This tool gives you data on where and how your subscribers came to find your RSS feeds. Post Rank – if your site is powered by WordPress, get analytics that identify where and how visitors engage your site, and what they do while visiting.  This tool provides near real-time snapshots, as it refreshes data daily. Twitalyzer – analytics for the Twittersphere.  This tool, provided by Twitter, delivers detailed metrics on engagement and ‘clout’ for individual Twitter accounts. YouTube Insights – view detailed statistics about the videos that you upload to your YouTube site. Understand the number of unique viewers as well as total views, broken-out by geographic regions.  Benchmark your data against all videos in that market over a given time period. Maximizing viewer engagement and optimizing your reach is at the core of success in any digital marketing campaign; and social media marketing on the web is becoming a more and more valuable ‘community communication’ channel for healthcare organizations. Measuring the impact of your campaign on the web should give a much better picture of overall effectiveness. Have you had experience or success with measuring your online impact? If so, how has it impacted your present marketing efforts?

 

 

 

Emphasizing Good Character

by Scott Angle

Emphasizing good character in the workplace can drive more engagement from staff and, ultimately, stronger performance on the job.  Specific skills, competencies or talents are critical, but good character forms a foundation for an organization; a foundation on which individual talents can be built and optimized. Leaders need to consider a great many character traits in an organization, but certain traits tend to be more relevant, depending on the business endeavor.  Take ‘attentiveness’ in the airline industry as an example.  Employees, from CEO to food service workers, should exhibit attentiveness; but a pilot needs attentiveness as a key character trait.  The consequences of non-attentiveness in the members lounge are far less.  Likewise, different industries should emphasize different character traits. In healthcare, the character qualities of Compassion, Initiative, Thoroughness and Responsibility are among the many that need to be demonstrated, consistently and constantly through the day.  We owe it to patients to emphasize, require and recognize these qualities in all that we do. Character development is a key pillar in the culture at Ten Adams.  We hire for it, reinforce it with training, and model it for our clients.  As we are tasked with sharing worthy information on how to improve your business, enhance your culture or just get better at what you do every day; Ten Adams is committed to making character matter in the workplace.  Check back soon for information in this space on relevant character traits in healthcare and why they should matter to you. In the meantime, we'd like to know: What character traits do you think are most important in healthcare?

 

 

 

 

The Re-Branding of Ten Adams.

By Jon Headlee

It’s a little bit like a world-renowned surgeon successfully operating on himself. 

At Ten Adams, we are often involved in re-branding projects for our clients. But recently, we took all of our re-branding expertise — and applied it to ourselves.

The results were remarkable. And I’ll tell you more about them in just a minute.

Because first, you might be wondering, “Why?”

More specifically, why would Ten Adams go to all this trouble when we are already experiencing great success?

For the exact same reason re-branding is often so important for our clients: it helps you to better understand and communicate the real truth behind your business.

Here’s what I mean: Many people in our market know that Ten Adams focuses on healthcare. But they often don’t know that we offer a unique and powerful approach that integrates three disciplines:

Strategy. Culture. And marketing.

We get into the trenches with our clients to truly understand what’s going on. We look at everything: The patient experience. Employee satisfaction. Public image. Culture. Advertising. Absolutely everything that impacts what you do.

Then we apply the powerful perspective of an industry partner — that’s us — with 25 years of experience in helping hospitals do great things.

We provide strategic recommendations such as Cultural Assessments and Leadership Development, Physician Engagement and Alignment, Market Research and Communications. All of them interconnected and mutually supportive.

It’s easy to see how this example of an approach provides far greater results than, say, simply producing a new ad campaign.

But our approach isn’t just a theory. It’s been proven time and again.

Here’s what Joseph Miller, Vice President of Strategy and Planning for Trover Health System had to say:

“Thanks to (Ten Adams), our patient satisfaction scores are improving steadily, and trust within the organization has grown as well.”

And other clients, like BroMenn Medical Center report that Ten Adams helped “raise our hospital market share to the highest point in our organization’s history.”

It’s an approach that is highly effective. All the more reason to make our branding more effective, too.

We wanted to communicate exactly what it is we do. How integrating these three disciplines — strategy, culture and marketing — creates a synergy that multiplies efforts and makes remarkable achievements possible.

In fact, it’s even more than a multiplication of efforts. Actually, it’s exponential.

And that’s what led us to the theme of our new brand campaign: Ten Adams. The Power of Ten.

The best part is, this is more than just a campaign. It’s the truth about the tremendous impact we are having on clients across the country.   

You can read more about The Power of Ten at our newly designed web site. You’ll find it at http://www.tenadams.com.

But before you do that, I want to take this opportunity to thank the team at Ten Adams that was responsible for our re-branding effort. They have done a truly remarkable job.

I have always known our clients were incredibly fortunate to work with such talented and caring people. Now I’m even more sure of that fact.

Thanks to all of you here at Ten Adams. You increase my joy and effectiveness by at least
The Power of Ten.