Healthcare Marketing: How to Resurrect a Brand

March 30, 2012

Companies in the midst of crisis and declining brand value have shown that a brand cannot only be brought back to life but can also thrive again.

Karen Post is the author of Brand Turnaround, a popular book about brands that have gone bad but have made a resurgence and returned to glory.  In the book she provides case studies on such brands as Ford, JetBlue, the Red Cross, Xerox, Dominos, Robert Downey, Jr, Michael Vick and Martha Stewart.

Every brand faces a crisis during its lifetime.  Usually several. Practically every brand has some tough times.  This is certainly true of healthcare brands too.  Sometimes factors totally out of our control cause it. And sometimes it just lack of leadership or vision. But it happens.

Drawing upon lessons learned from the over 75 brands she’s studied, Post offers seven “Game Changers” which she has found to be important to resurrecting a tarnished brand.

1.     Take responsibility

When things go badly for a brand, denial only makes matters worse.  The brand must own up to it.  Admit it and take responsibility.

2.     Never Give Up

Most brands are worth fighting for.  They have flourished for a reason and to give up would be a mistake.  You must fight for the brand and for the brand’s resurgence.  It’s not easy but it’s worth the fight.

3.     Lead Strong

After taking responsibility it’s important to have strong leadership. From those who believe in the brand, those who care for the brand and who want to bring the brand back to life and vitality.  The work is not accomplished by the timid.  It must be done from a strong vision and purpose.

4.     Stay Relevant

As long as you have relevance you have a chance.  That means listening to consumers and hearing what they say.  And making sure the brand is relevant to their desires and needs.

5.     Keep Improving

The road to recovery is never easy or quick.  It requires a long concerted effort.  And it means pushing for improvement.  Improvement from staff and employees, processes, products, services, communications and throughout the organization.

6.     Build Equity

Brand equity is a valuable commodity.  And as you attempt to turn a brand around you must build band equity.  You must make sure the brand has value and customer loyalty again.

7.     Own Your Distinction

Every viable brand has a mark or characteristic of distinction.  A distinction that gives meaning to the brand. Being a commodity or doing it just like everyone one or being only as good as everyone else will not resurrect a brand.  Only by creating a true consumer-oriented distinction can you revive and sustain a brand.

Healthcare brands are vulnerable to crises, mishaps, bad publicity unanticipated negative situations.  Every brand will face them from time to time.  And how we handle them and deal with them will determine the life and vitality of the brand for the future.

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

Hospital Marketing: Making the Case for Mobile

March 30, 2012

The facts are overwhelming when considering whether your hospital should go mobile.  The small screen is the place to be.

An astonishing fact: there are 48 million people in the world who have mobile phones but do not have electricity in their homes.  That shows the impact of mobile on our lives.  It’s estimated that the off-grid, on-net population will reach 138 million by 2015.

Ann Tracy Mueller posted on healthcarecommunications.com statistics showing the use of mobile is growing exponentially. Citing Kevin Roberts from a Cisco report in his Blogging Innovation site, the case is made for the impact of mobile and the need for healthcare marketers to be mobile-savvy and mobile-ready.

  • Global mobile traffic nearly tripled for the third year in a row in 2010.
  • Mobile video traffic will exceed 50 percent of all mobile data traffic for the first time in 2011.
  • In early 2010, iPhone use was at least four times higher than that of any other smart phone platform. By the end of 2010, iPhone use was only 1.75 times higher than that of number two, Android.
  • There will be 788 million mobile-only Internet users by 2015, up 56-fold from 14 million at the end of 2010.
  • There will be more than 7.1 billion mobile-connected devices in 2015, roughly equivalent to the world’s population by then (7.2 billion).

The numbers are staggering.  But they are understandable.  Think how much you use your mobile device.  How much you see the people around you using there’s.  How many people do you know who don’t have a mobile phone?  Probably not many.  The numbers are clear.  The stats are obvious.

As healthcare marketers, in the very least, we need to make sure our internet presence is mobile-friendly.  And we should be exploring ways to create and use mobile apps to market our hospital.  Information is being accessed from mobile devices, including information about one’s health.  We must make sure our health information and information about our organization and services are easily mobile-accessible.

Not convinced yet?  Here’s one more bit of information from Roberts that should remove any doubt about the need for our hospital to be mobile-friendly:

“The average smartphone will generate 1.3 gigabytes of traffic per month in 2015, 16 times more than the 2010 average of 79 megabytes per month.  Growth in the next five years will see global mobile traffic reach 6.3 exabytes per month by 2015. How big is that? It’s been suggested that every word ever spoken by human beings would equate to five exabytes. So six every month is a lot of chatter!”

 

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

Healthcare Marketing: Six Tips for Effective Social Media Marketing

March 29, 2012

Heed the advice of top social media experts.

Healthcare marketers are always looking for advice and ideas from experts.  Seeking new and better ways of doing things.  Or for confirmation of what we are already doing.  And sometimes we just need to be reminded of the basics.  We all need to step back and listen to others from time to time. Sharon Hudson, Vice President of MarketingProfs, recently published helpful advice from six leading social media experts.  Here are the their secrets to social media success.

1. Start with the Right Strategy

“Align with the goals of your department. That’s a good starting place. In most cases your department strategy should also align to a larger corporate strategy. We don’t want a communication strategy that is at odds with our service strategy.” (Shannon Paul, Blue Cross Blue Shield)

2. Know Your Objectives

“Tie your social media activities to existing objectives, such as increasing online sales, driving web traffic or boosting attendance at your next webinar or offline event. Set a reasonable target, see what happens and use it as a benchmark for future campaigns.” (David B. Thomas, Radian6)

3. Deliver Relevant Content

“Deliver the right content, at the right time, in the right channel to the right customer (or partner). Relevant content happens as a result of listening, thought leadership, Google insights, and community sentiment.” (Michael Brito, Edelman Digital)

4. Develop Meaningful Relationships

“Use social media as a platform for developing relationships. Show your thought leadership by answering questions on LinkedIn and Quora—it could lead to new contacts and leads.” (Shashi Bellamkonda, Network Solutions)

5. Integrate into Your Marketing Mix

“Don’t leave opportunities on the table; explore how you can extend your marketing effort by integrating social elements into your PR, events and customer support activities.” (Jane Price, Marketing Consultant)

6. Measure What Matters

“Distill social media measurement down to core metrics that your company is already measuring that have history behind them. When you show what social media is or isn’t delivering there is a conversation that can take place.” (Nichole Kelly, Full Frontal ROI

 

These are some very helpful suggestions that can be applied to hospital marketing.  The points are fundamentally sound.  The challenge is to implement them effectively in our own healthcare setting.  The more we adhere to these basics, the more successful our social media efforts will become.

 

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

Healthcare Marketing: Younger Population Does Read Newspaper – Online

March 29, 2012

To fully reach the print audience, healthcare marketers must include an online component. Though not as easy as one might think.

Sixty-one percent of adults under 30 who read newspapers read it online.  Compared to just 39% who read a printed version.  Additionally the average income for those who read it online is 20% higher than those who read the printed version.   More astonishing is that adults under 30 who earn more than $100,000 annually are 82% more likely to read digital news content than print.

According to a survey of 5,034 households conducted by Pulse Research, online readers of newspapers are younger, more affluent and better educated.  The survey showed the average age of print readers is 51 compared to digital readers at 44.

Digital readers are 22% more likely to have a college education.  Additionally 48% of the digital readers have children at home compared to 32% of print readers.

While circulation of daily newspapers continues to decline, the print and online audience is substantial and desirable.   To penetrate the younger, more affluent, better-educated audience with print we must adopt an online strategy.

The chief problem with this for healthcare marketers is the options online are not nearly as attractive as those provided by newspaper print versions.  Traditional print offers good real estate, which can create impact and allow a brand to develop and tell a story.  Online options provide very little more than name recognition and a brand statement.  Until newspapers decide to offer significant space in their online content, newspaper advertising will continue to be less and less attractive.

Many marketers are shifting money away from newspapers because a significant portion of their audience is going online for the content, but offer limited advertising options for digital marketing.  Newspapers will have to address this issue as they provide little more than billboard advertising but with a much smaller reach and frequency.

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

Healthcare Marketing: 20% of Time Spent Online is with Social Networks

March 28, 2012

Social media sites reach 82% of the online population and Facebook reaches over ½ of the world’s population.

Social media continues to show amazing growth.  In “It’s A Social World”, ComScore has issued a report concerning the growth and impact of social media.  Without a doubt social media has become the most popular online activity.  In 2007 social media represented only 6% of online activity but that has now increased to 20%. Over 1.2 billion people globally use social media sites.

The report verified that women spend more than 30% more time online than men.  Social networking is no longer a young person’s activity as the participation now spans all age groups.   And Facebook now reaches 55 billion people, which is more than half of the world’s population.   Despite the hype for mobile access and marketing, it still captures just a fraction of the fixed-line connection.

The study just proves again the impact of social media.  The extensiveness of social networking.  But it does not answer, for healthcare marketers, the question of how to take full advantage of this massive audience.  Savvy healthcare marketers have experimented with some success.  But there are so many unanswered questions. We continue to learn and hopefully grow smarter.  But with limited resources and some of the limitations of healthcare marketing, it’s still a learning process.   There is still much to be explored as we attempt new tactics and new ideas.  Stay tuned….there will be much to come.

 

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

Healthcare Marketing: Ten Steps to Creating Effective Hospital Landing Pages

March 28, 2012

Improve your web marketing by utilizing landing pages that make engagement much easier.

In a recent issue of Ragan’s Health Care Communication News, Scott Bille contributed an article on how to create effective landing pages.  The article has some very useful information and is republished here:

Now that people are coming to your website, the next question most marketers ask is, “How can I make the site work harder for me?”

Take a look at these ideas.

1. Identify business goals.

Before you can figure out how to make a landing page work harder, ask yourself, “What was the business need behind the campaign?” Lead generation, patient education, engagement? Answering this will help define a call-to-action (CTA) to engage visitors on the landing page. It will also help you find effective ways to measure how well everything is working.

2. Define a target audience.

Your next question should be, “Who can help us achieve those goals?”

3. Develop marketing tactics.

Once you know whom you are targeting, you need to ask, “How can I get my message in front of them at decision-making time?” It may be that you have a few targeted messages for subsets of the audience. This leads to another vital piece of this step—setting up a plan for reporting on individual tactics (messages, creative and placements).

4. Drive visitors to unique landing pages.

Sure, when someone clicks a link in one of those places, you could send them to the home page and they should be able to find the desired content. But why make them work that hard? You have a specific message—why not send them to a landing page focused on that message?

Now the fun begins. How can we make the landing page convert visitors into action-takers?

5. Deliver on off-page promises.

Since you built the marketing campaign driving traffic to the landing pages, you know what visitors were reading immediately before they arrived. Your page title, URL, headlines and body copy should all relate directly to the message that got someone to the landing page.

This will help them quickly realize that they are in the right place and prevent high bounce rates (people leaving the page without taking any action). It will also boost your quality score for pay-per-click (PPC) ads like Google AdWords, which could save you money on your ad bids.

6. Don’t make visitors think.

Keep the message on the page focused and simple. Eliminate distractions (too many choices, navigation to the rest of your site, etc.). Create a bright shiny and irresistible call-to-action.

If visitors came from an email, chances are you might know some of their personal info. Talk to your IT team to find out if they can pre-populate the form fields in the landing page’s CTA. At AB&C, we have had conversion rates of more than 50 percent by pre-populating form content.

7. Build trust.

Bounces can be caused by failure to establish trust. Web surfers are a savvy bunch and will bail out of any site that feels like a spam trap created to get their personal info.

When visitors hit your landing page, you need to assure them that they arrived at a legitimate destination. Tell them where they are. Show your contact information, accreditations, awards, etc. to help create a sense of authenticity.

Avoid over-use of capitalization and punctuation. “AMAZING!!!” Or “NEW!!!” Might as well read “SPAM TRAP!!!” “RUN AWAY!!!”

8. Optimize Call To Action.

OK, you have identified the right people, driven them to the landing page, given them a concise message. Now, how do you get them to take action? On the web, it’s often a lead-generation form. Here are some tips to make that form process simple for your visitors.

  • Outline the benefits: Let visitors know why they should fill out the form. What’s in it for them?
    • Keep it short and simple: I always start by asking, “What fields can we remove from that form?” If you don’t have an immediate use for every piece of information you’re asking for, remove them. More importantly, remove any field that might make visitors ask, “Why would they want that?”
    • Create a simple scan line: Line up fields and titles to keep the user from having to jump around to understand the form. This will help even complex forms to feel less daunting.
      • Make the form easy to read: Make the type large enough for your target audience to easily see (the older the audience, the larger the font size).
      • Don’t skimp on white space: Let your form have room to breathe. It will make it less intimidating.
      • Identify required fields: This shouldn’t be necessary if you have done your job in eliminating unnecessary fields. But, if only some of the fields are mandatory, mark them.
      • Inline validation: Don’t make visitors hit the submit button before they find out that they didn’t enter a valid email, or they skipped a required field

9. Measure results.

If you are using Google Analytics and have properly tagged all inbound links, it should be fairly easy to see what tactics are driving the best traffic. Look at how many people hit the site versus the number of completed actions. Now, ask yourself, “What can I do to get more people to convert?

10. Test, test, test.

Try some variations to the page to see how they affect conversion rates. Fight the urge to test multiple variations the same time. If you do, how will you know which one made the difference? Run A/B tests to two variations; observe and refine as you learn from visitor responses. Here are some variables to throw into your A/B testing.

  • Headlines
    • Graphics and other images
    • Multiple CTAs: Some people will click the first shiny object. Others may read through your content before deciding to get involved. Make sure that second category doesn’t have to hunt back up the page to find your CTA. Sometimes a secondary CTA could work for someone who isn’t fully committed
    • Button colors: Try colors that blend with the page’s palette, and colors that contrast. There is no perfect formula. Some say that green means “go” and red means “stop.” Others say red evokes a strong emotional response. Some say blue is the standard link color, so use that for buttons. Whatever color you choose, make sure it looks “clickable.”
    • Button text: Label your button something that ties in to your CTA like “Request an Appointment” or “Apply Now.” Avoid labels like “Submit” or “Go.”
    • Form variations: Try your full form. Then, try simply asking for a name and email. Somewhere in between lies the perfect blend that doesn’t scare people away, but still gives your staff the info they need to follow up.

 

Scott Bille is the interactive director at Aloysius Butler and Clark.

 

 

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

Healthcare Marketing: Decisions without Considering Consumer Costly

February 27, 2012

Recent snafus prove that we should think from the consumer’s perspective.  And not about what’s best for our organization’s operations.

Recently Facebook made changes to its social network’s interface.  This was closely on the heels of earlier changes that Facebook users weren’t even used to yet.  And users were not happy.  Then Netflix customers who were already unhappy with a price increase were then angered more when the company announced it was separating its streaming video offering from its video rental business to create a new company.

Two very successful corporations who had great loyalty and good will but unilaterally made decisions, which were good operationally without considering the impact on consumers.  It’s a mistake many companies make.  Although not as widely discussed and criticized as these two.   Both of these companies thought they could do anything they wanted and consumers would accept it.  They never even considered what the consumer would think.  It was good operationally for each of them and that was the basis of their decision.

So a management decision that made complete sense internally backfired because no one bothered to consider or ask what their customers thought. And now they’re paying a large cost in public perception, consumer loyalty and sales.  Their brand has been tarnished.

Healthcare organizations sometimes make the same mistake.  In an effort to cut costs, improve efficiency and increase productivity, hospitals and healthcare organizations make decisions that make sense internally but may not be received well by patients.

It proves that we need to listen to the consumer and evaluate every decision from the customer’s perspective.  In a very competitive marketplace with pressures on the bottom-line organizations can ill afford to alienate customers.  Decisions made without considering the consumer may save money but it could cost far more in business, consumer locality and brand perception.

Of course we know this.  But sometimes we forget.  We look at decisions from every angle except from the viewpoint of the consumer.  Sometimes it takes highly publicized snafus like Facebook and Netflix to remind us that what our customers think is of extreme importance.  May we not get so removed from our customers that we repeat the mistake. 

 

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

Hospital Marketing: Politics Teaches Valuable Lessons about Social Media

February 17, 2012

 A “like”, “follow” or “re-tweet” is not necessarily a brand endorsement.  

As healthcare marketers begin to experiment and utilize social media, questions arise about how to measure its effectiveness.   Some would argue that a “likes” and  “followers” are an indication of brand endorsement.   Well politics may be teaching us that’s not necessarily true.

Micah Sifry reporting for CNN,  examines the impact of social media on the current GOP presidential campaign.  What he discovered is there really is no valid correlation between twitter buzz and Facebook followers to a candidate’s success at the polls.

There is a lot of monitoring of each of the candidate’s social media activity.  It is natural to assume a growth in the number of followers and a high occurrence of re-tweets are both indicative of support and success.  But actually, the actual votes at the polls show that social media activity appears to be more an indication of notoriety and celebrity.

Herman Cain had a great following on Facebook and created a tremendous amount of social network activity (although admittedly some of it was negative) but he is no longer in the race.  Newt Gingrich’s 1.4 million followers on Twitter would indicate strong grassroots popularity and support. But a closer view shows half of those accounts are outside the US and half the accounts are inactive.  His number of accounts is a function of longevity and notoriety.  Rick Santorun’s early success came from social activity but not the online kind.  His support came from social activity even more local and personal than online social networks.  It was the work of the evangelical church.  And his surprise showing overloaded his website and he was not ready to fully take advantage of his success.

Clay Johnson seems to be prophetic by stating in his book The Information Diet, there are empty information calories and to eat them is to do so at your own risk, for they can make you really dumb. In other words a link, or a follow, or a retweet is about as meaningful as a glance or a nod and certainly not an endorsement.

As healthcare marketers we are tempted to believe the notion that social media activity or likes or links are indications of brand endorsement and loyalty.  We often tout our social media success by citing such numbers. But if the current political campaigns teach us any thing, it’s that these conclusions are not necessarily true.

We shouldn’t ignore social media.  We should embrace it as a legitimate marketing tool.  But the numbers for number sake shouldn’t fool us. The effectiveness of social media is difficult to measure.  We are still learning how to interpret the data and how viable the data actually is.

“Likes”, “followers” and “re-tweets” may just simply indicate a fairly low level of interest.  The real challenge is converting those glances or nods into something useful.

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

Healthcare Marketing: Online is NOT for Branding

November 21, 2011

Online advertising has proven to be effective as a direct response medium but not so much for brand building. 

More eyeballs are turning to the web.  No one can argue that.  And they are spending more time looking at the web.  So does it make sense to follow those numbers and try to build a brand with internet advertising?  Probably not.  Online advertising is great at direct response.  We all look at the web to find where to buy something or where a business is located or how to contact a business.   That’s why the yellow pages are now on the web and is replacing the printed book.   But is it effective building a brand?

Alan Pearlstein, president of Cross Pixel Media wrote in Ad Age that the “internet sucks as a branding medium.”  And he makes some compelling arguments.  He argues that brand building is an emotional endeavor.  The desire for every brand is to build an emotional connection with the consumer.  Television does that very effectively.  Print can do it.  But not internet advertising.   Because online advertising is limited in size and format, it’s not effective at brand building.   He argues that no advertising medium has proven to be effective at both direct response and branding.  And online is no exception.

It’s important as healthcare marketers, to understand that each advertising medium has their own strengths.   TV creates an emotional impact, magazines provide the environment for stunning images and print provide the opportunity for long copy and storytelling.   Direct mail is great at direct response.

So what are the strengths of online advertising?  It is great at building name recognition.  It has a low cost for exposure.  It reaches a very wide audience.   It’s great for supplementing a campaign with reach and frequency within a target audience.  But branding is not one of its strengths.  Online advertising, limited in size, not very engaging and usually within a cluttered environment is not strong for brand building.  It is complimentary to more emotional and engaging mediums.

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

Healthcare Marketing: 5 Ways to Improve Your Hospital’s Brand

October 25, 2011

Your hospital will live or die by its brand.  What can help make your brand stronger?  Here are five tips to improve your hospital’s brand.

Here are excerpts from an article from Becker’s Hospital Review by Lindsey Dunn after interviewing Steve Rivkin, founder, Rivkin & Associates, a healthcare branding and communications consultancy, and co-author of Repositioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis (McGraw-Hill, 2010).

1. Think of your brand as a promise. A hospital’s brand is a promise of what the consumer should expect and how the hospital will perform.  Think about a brand in the same way as a person’s reputation. You earn a good reputation by doing the right thing, doing it well, and doing it consistently. And just like a reputation, a brand is a living entity — it evolves, and it is enriched or undermined by your actions.

2. Understand your strengths, weaknesses. Any hospital’s branding efforts should begin with an understanding of its market share, strengths, weaknesses and consumers’ perception and beliefs about its services. Consumer research should ask community members what they think is important when choosing a hospital, how the hospital is perceived and how it compares to competing facilities.  This research will reveal if the hospital is preferred, and if it isn’t preferred, will give some indication of why it’s not preferred.

Mr. Rivkin notes that consumer perceptions don’t always match reality, but it’s perceptions that influence volume.
It’s action first, communications second.  Eighty-five percent of changing a perception is what you actually do, and only 15 percent is what you say about it.

3. Differentiate. After identifying areas of strength and improvement, hospitals should determine what differentiates it from competitors and whether that point of differentiation is important to consumers. Potential differentiators include:

•    The patient experience— for instance, best customer service/patient satisfaction scores in the market;
•    Centers of excellence for specific service lines;
•    Heritage/history in a community;
•    Highest rated physicians;
•    Industry awards received (top hospital lists, Magnet status, etc.);
•    Newest technology/cutting-edge procedures; and
•    Widest range of services in market area.

4. “Sell” the brand to employees first. After determining how a hospital will position itself, hospital leaders should sell that identity or brand first to its employees. “Your workforce is a critical part of a branding program. Everything starts with your own people. Don’t expect to persuade the folks outside about much of anything, unless the people inside believe it first.”

5. Market the brand and connect it to the bottom line. After gaining buy-in from employees, hospitals should take their branding messages to the public through public relations efforts, advertising, direct marketing and other methods. Hospital marketers should be careful to quantify the results of all efforts.  Measuring return on investment will direct hospitals toward the most effective marketing tactics.

Your brand is one of your hospital’s most valuable assets.  Great attention should be given to its care. The stronger the brand the more successful your hospital will be.

 

 

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Posted by Jimmy Warren

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