Hospital Marketing Journal

making a better impression tips to improve your digital marketing

by Brandon Scott Digital marketing is a critical ingredient for success when it comes to attracting patients, educating them about your service lines and converting them into customers. It augments your print, broadcast and outdoor advertising with highly targeted and highly personalized content that speaks directly to prospects and existing patients. Done right, digital marketing instantly captivates your audience, irresistibly drawing them in and making the kind of positive impression that inspires them to learn more.   It starts with great website design. We’re not talking about pretty here, although visual appeal is fundamentally important. We’re talking about “feel.” Your website has to convey your hospital’s personal side. Hospitals treat people, and there’s nothing more personal than healthcare. Besides, all purchasing decisions have an emotional aspect, including choosing a hospital, doctor or services. Demonstrating competence is critical, of course, but compassion and empathy win the day. So make your website less clinical. More personal. Great website design also includes spot-on SEO that ensures searchers find you easily. It includes obvious navigation, graphics that directly support your content topic and a clear call to action on every page to guide their decision-making choices.   Content that works is strategically planned. Everything you say or show online underscores the fact that customers can count on you. Web pages, your blog, email and social media work together to inform people about who you are as well as what you do. You’re using compelling stories and visuals to relate amazing patient experiences – the kind of caring care every prospective patient hopes to receive. You understand. You’re people, too. Content that differentiates your hospital and your people from the competition increases market share and develops life-long relationships.   Social media link you with patients and colleagues. Nothing is more multi-generational than social media, and sharing reinforces your brand. You can reach patients and also care-givers responsible for patient healthcare decisions. Social media posts are short and sweet. They’re eminently two-way, perfect for ongoing engagement. Offer links to your other content. Or health tips. Share photos that demonstrate wellness. Give a face and voice to your staff -- not just physicians but nurses, technicians, others that have patient contact. Your hospital’s “bedside manner” is a composite of interactions. Participate in a few carefully-chosen groups or circles or communities, too, to expand your professional development and generate referrals.   Mobilize your resources. Smartphones and tablets are becoming the search devices of choice, so you’re wise to directly target mobile searchers. They’re usually looking for practical information -- directions to your hospital or to some department, your doctor directory, how to make an appointment – rather than conducting lengthy research. Response rates to texting are impressively high. So target your mobile audience with  appointment or prescription reminders, information about wait times, upcoming classes, etc. Add QR codes to your print ads so readers can follow up instantly with a quick click of their mobile camera. And use geo-targeting. Mobile searchers tend to be nearby. Above all else, remember this: small screens require concise presentation that fits their format. So optimize your all your content specifically for your mobile audience. Make it easy, and they’ll love you for it. Digital marketing can do amazing things for your hospital. But only if you track and analyze your progress in meaningful ways. You’ll get valuable insight about patient needs and preferences. You’ll quickly see what’s working and what needs work to strengthen your marketing results. What does your digital marketing say about your hospital?

Prevention is Power

by Jon Headlee Prevention is a pretty simple concept to grasp — find the cause of some undesirable outcome...and avoid it. (Which can also mean taking proactive steps that lead to optimal outcomes.) But, as marketers, we all know this: getting people on board with prevention is not quite so easy. After all, not only do we have to lead the horse to water — but we have to figure out how to get him to drink. Prevention and wellness should be leading the charge in our thinking when it comes to marketing our hospitals, but we've got to know how to inspire our patients to get on-board and be accountable to their own health.   An Ounce of Prevention Personal awareness plays an important role in prevention. But, many times, that's the toughest nut to crack — because many of us just don't have a realistic picture of ourselves, especially in terms of our own health. That's why we need a partner to help us get a clear perspective — that could be a spouse, a parent, sure — but, ideally, this person is a doctor (who has less of a personal bias than a family member). Clinicians are working to develop models that can better predict outcomes so that doctors can see the signs and find opportunities for early interventions. We all know that an increased emphasis on prevention and wellness is going to help with rising health care costs — as well as improving outcomes. And, the birth of the mighty EMR is generating vast amounts of patient information that can give us new insights about prevention in real-time. Providers can focus on population health management and outcomes rather than on episodic care that only looks at the symptoms of the moment. Prevention is a strategy. And it touches every aspect of our hospital and its operations — long-term planning, marketing, our culture and the way we deliver services.   Strategic Planning The Affordable Care Act is no longer this thing looming in the distant future. It's here. And it's real. While this is scary to some folks, luckily, smart marketers like us are armed with the knowledge that, by focusing on prevention, we can come out ahead of the rest of the pack. So, exactly how do we increase patient awareness and get them excited about wellness? Major changes in technology have enabled our staff and patients to access information faster — and to use it more effectively. Mobile diagnosis and even treatment increases convenience and immediacy — and provides that instant gratification our society has groomed us to crave. Our consumers are more mobile than ever — they want to interact with us. They want an experience. So let's give them what they want!   Marketing As hospital marketers, we must position our hospitals as places of prevention and wellness. We must provide an experience that is rooted in prevention, in wellness. This requires a holistic approach to content development and delivery, whether we're engaging patients digitally, traditionally or in person. Smartphones are a vital tool to distributing our marketing messages and even health information. In fact, the ability to interact with doctors and health coaches via text message is becoming increasingly popular, giving patients the health relationship they crave. The experience they are looking for. We can use technology and communication tools to build our reputation as trusted resources.   Culture If we expect patients to take charge of their own wellness, then we should expect the same from our employees. After all, if a patient is holding themselves to a high standard, they certainly hold us to one that’s even higher. Not fair, but it's reality. Our interactions with them have to be relevant. Believable. After all, taking health advice from a physician who could obviously take some of his or her own advice is a pretty tough pill for a patient to swallow. We have to walk the talk — and practice what we preach. This builds credibility — and can inspire patients to make changes of their own. Focusing on prevention will also affect how we interact with our corporate audiences. Our industry partners, from our own physicians to insurance and pharmaceutical companies, will have to work more closely with us to achieve positive outcomes. How will each of our roles change? And how will we benefit?   Operations By focusing our business model on prevention, we can provide an efficient back-office experience that eliminates inefficiencies and frustrations — and helps build a healthier organization, both financially and operationally. It enables us to be more proactive than ever, to achieve the ideal healthy state for our hospital. Prevention is a powerful tool in every hospital marketer's bag of tricks. What does a prevention-oriented future look like for you and your hospital?

Anatomy of a Photoshoot (Part Deux)

As we gear up to launch our new campaign for Riverside Medical Group next month, we thought we’d offer another behind-the-scenes peek at a Ten Adams photoshoot…and, of course, lessons learned along the way.     LESSON #1 — Doctors are different from you and I. (In this case, MUCH better dancers.) WHICH LEADS TO LESSON #2 — Music makes every job better. LESSON #3 — An unused wheelchair makes for a perfect camera dolly. LESSON #4 — It’s okay if your photographer looks like Andre Agassi. (As long as he doesn’t act like John McEnroe). LESSON #5 — Hospitals are home to many Instagram-able distractions. Oooh, shiny… LESSON #6 — Messages from home can make the long trips more bearable. LESSON #7 — Professional lighting brings out the poser in all of us. LESSON #8 — Healthcare marketing requires more heavy lifting than you might imagine. LESSON #9 — Anything can be fixed with duct tape. LESSON #10 — Sometimes doctors need a little TLC, too. LESSON #11 — A weeklong shoot means you should plan to leave with more than you arrived with. LESSON #12 — And, if you didn’t plan for that, see lesson #9 — duct tape. LESSON #13 — A good team moves in synchronicity at all times. LESSON #14 — And a good client knows how to make the job fun. LESSON #15 — Dinner on a photoshoot is not always fancy. LESSON #16 — You should always have several wardrobe options ready to go during a shoot. LESSON #17 — If you try to take pictures of your shoes on set, you’re probably gonna get busted. LESSON #18 — Sometimes everyone really is kung foo fighting. LESSON #19 — Life on the road is better with good folks by your side.

Doctors are Different

by Scott Mosley Attending the 4th Annual Becker’s Hospital Review Meeting in Chicago, I had the opportunity to hear Jeff Leland, CEO of Blue Chip Surgical Center Partners, speak under the title “Doctors are Different.” This is obviously a fact, freely acknowledged by anyone who works in healthcare. However, I was intrigued by the way Jeff framed his message. Crediting Dr. Joseph Bujak, author of Inside the Physician Mind, as the source of some of his points, Jeff Leland made the following observations about how doctors think. First, they are very decisive. This is ingrained in them during med school, along with self-reliance, independence and courage. Jeff framed the latter attribute as the courage to wade into battle armed with knowledge and empirical data. Physicians boldly go where most fear to tread, if they have the facts. Or if they believe that they do. Jeff equated a physician’s idea of teamwork to the game of golf vs. rugby. Both sports have been reinstated to the 2016 Summer Olympics, but the similarities stop there. There are many people involved in orchestrating a golf tournament, but the game of golf ultimately pits one individual’s skill and knowledge of the art against the elements faced on any given day. Rugby, well… doesn’t. Jeff also compared the physician’s orientation to parenting children vs. teenagers. Children listen. They mind. They respect their elders. Teenagers do none of these things. Borrowing from Dr. Bujak, Jeff suggested that typical physician behavior is reflected in the Peter Faulk’s TV character, Columbo. The disheveled-looking LA homicide detective is consistently underestimated by his suspects. But, his intellect, insights, experience and powers of perception always give him the upper hand in the end. Physicians are pattern-seekers. They readily recognize relationships between a set of circumstances and the outcome of those circumstances. Physicians have very keen skills of observation. They see things others miss and compartmentalize observations for retrieval. Physicians form bonds in the trenches, in the heat of battles shared with small groups of colleagues. The common thread is trust. The trust of a physician is often hard to come by, but once earned, there are few more valuable commodities on earth.

A New Model for Success

Anyone working in the healthcare industry knows a new era is upon us. The challenges we're facing today revolve around critical decisions related to new mandates + how they’re (truly) going to affect how we promote health + deliver services. Effectively. Responsibly. As the industry evolves, Ten Adams has evolved right with it. To serve the changing needs of our clients, we have expanded our business model, incorporating operational refinement as an element of our integrated service offering. Here’s what that looks like — the primary elements that build the Ten Adams service portfolio: Marketing, advertising + communications continue to serve at the core of our business--the foundation of our work over the past 25 years. But, without a solid strategy, even the most dynamic marketing will fail to deliver maximum results. Marketing programs MUST drive business outcomes. We understand + appreciate the importance of service line + operational strategy as elements of an integrated solution that delivers maximum results for our hospital clients. We also understand that, at the end of the day, healthcare is a people business.  The importance of ensuring a relationship between a hospital’s brand + its culture can’t be overlooked. The people who deliver the care hold the power to make or break the brand — a fact which became very clear to us seven years ago when we expanded our business model to help hospitals bring their brand positioning to life within their culture, each and every day. Our newest point of emphasis — helping to ensure operating effectiveness — is a natural next step in our own evolution and one that is vital to our clients. Never has there been a more important time for hospitals to deliver at the highest level of operational effectiveness. This requires a delicate balancing act. Our experience helps reveal significant, practical opportunities to improve the efficiency of the organization specifically through frontline managers and employees — without compromising quality of care. We have expanded our team to include professionals with LEAN-certification and administrative, clinical + financial expertise to assist hospitals in optimizing operating results, while maintaining that crucial balance. Simply put, the integration of strategy, marketing, culture + operations has a direct impact on business performance + results. It strengthens competitive positioning + improves market leverage. And at Ten Adams, we’ve built our business model to create the strongest + most distinctive healthcare brand experience possible. A powerful brand experience is critical as we prepare healthcare organizations to lead the industry's transition from volume-driven to a value-focused model of improving health. Ten Adams invites you to be one of those leaders, as we take on the new era of healthcare together.