Marketing 101: What They Don't Teach You in College

In college, you learned the basics of marketing – how to write a press release, how to compose a marketing plan; you may have even learned a bit about logistics or consumer behavior or … internet marketing… but when you were thrust into your first marketing job, you learned what they teach you in school hardly prepares you for the real world.

 You discovered that all the concrete things you learned was only a tiny fraction of the real-world practices and procedures you would face every day. You also found out that the most important aspect of marketing – the human element – is something you began learning about on your first day of work and will continue to learn about until you retire from marketing.

 The human element, especially in healthcare marketing, is something you must consider – although you hardly ever think to consider it. Make sense? No?! Okay, pretend you are a woman who is about to give birth to her first child. Would you rather give birth to your newborn in a cold, uninviting room or in a warm, appealing birthing center? Duh… your job is to make sure the mother knows that your rooms are a warm and inviting place to be when she engages in the worst pain of her life.

 How do you convey that message to expecting mothers and their families? Should you throw a campaign together that consists of a couple of radio and TV spots – maybe a billboard and a microsite… She’ll get the point, right?

 Well, maybe she will or maybe for undisclosed reasons, she will go to the hospital on the other side of town. The question is: how do we convince Mama that your hospital is the best place for her to bring her child into the world? (We realize this is the universal question of all marketing departments everywhere but we’d like to walk you down that fine line of what is expected of you as a healthcare marketer and what is effective.)

 

The Proof is in the Pudding

Many marketers have the luxury of convincing their audience of a product’s worth. In your case, however, the service is the product, and the service is only as good as the customer experience. Would you choose a hospital that has a reputation of cantankerous, and down-right mean nurses even if they were a little closer to home or had flat screen TVs in every room? No? Of course we are exaggerating the factors but one poor customer service experience can have a severe impact. Due to fluctuating personalities and personal issues, some things are unforeseeable but there are also many ways you can improve the customer service experience – and it all begins with your staff. Teach your staff to meet the consumer’s needs before they have them. By instilling character values and holding your staff to a consistent level of excellence you have laid the foundation for honest and precise marketing.

 

Walk Softly but Carry a Big Stick

Consumers don’t sit around waiting for your next direct mailer or radio commercial to come on. In fact, consumers find most of these advertising pieces to be clutter. In our attempt to market everything, the consumer loses sight of the most important aspects of your hospital in all the “noise.” Marketing is too valuable to waste on mediocrity. Using precious marketing dollars on the run-of-the-mill healthcare is unjustifiable and if you attempt to fluff up the ordinary, the consumer catch on and it will leave a bad taste in their mouth.

 Thread the External and the Internal

In 2007, Ten Adams began a new department called Workforce Development. This department fleshes out the issues and problems our clients are having and addresses them in a positive way. The number one thing we have learned since we implemented this department is that it takes a combination of internal marketing, external marketing and implementing policy and procedural changes among staff. And, though academia will teach you that as a marketing practitioner that it takes lots of ads and press releases to be successful, you and I know better. It takes knowing and understanding the human element; it takes investing time in your staff and in your consumer. It takes getting patients in the door with an brilliant marketing message and then providing them with the most compassionate and exceptional care from the time they walk in until the time they go home.