Healthcare Marketing Agency

Hospital Marketing: 5 Tests to Keep Your Brand Relevant

 A critical view of your brand can make it enduring and stronger.

A hospital’s brand is extremely important.  With the changing healthcare environment brands are in transition with new alliances, new ventures, a host of rating organizations, consumer-driven marketplace and so much more.  Which means it’s more difficult to keep a strong and consistent brand.

It’s crucial for hospitals and healthcare organizations to frequently revisit the brand, reassess and keep the brand as clean and consistent as possible.  Here are 5 tests every brand should ask and consider on a regular basis.

1.    How is your brand perceived in the marketplace?

What is the consumer perception of your brand?  Is it gaining strength or waning?  Does the consumer have a clear idea of what and who the brand is?  Do they know what the brand stands for?  Is the brand relevant to the consumer?

2.    How is the brand communication?

Take an inventory of all brand touchpoints.   Patients, physicians, providers, payers, employees, management and board.  What is the brand communicating to each?  Is it consistent?  Does it reflect the mission and values of the organization?

3.    Analyze your brand architecture.

In many ways this may be the most difficult.  As organizations grow and change, it’s difficult to keep consistent and clearly defined brand architecture.  Do patients understand the different product and service lines and how they relate to each other and to the master brand?  Is there confusion?   A weak brand architecture creates weak brand equity.

4.    Assess the brand expression.

Does the brand have a consistent image, look and feel across all touch points? Can the consumer tell that all parts of the brand are part of the overall brand family?

5.    Examine the brand expression.

How is the brand expressed?  Does it have a consistent tone, personality and message?  Do all the communications speak the same voice and reflect the same character and heart?

In today’s environment it’s so easy to get sidetracked, disjointed and inconsistent.  It’s easy to get going in too many different directions and sacrificing the brand for expediency or politics.  And when this happens, the brand is weakened.   Healthcare marketers should constantly be asking these questions and diligently communicating a consistent, well-planned and strong brand.  Across all platforms, to every audience and with every execution.  I know it’s easier said than done.  But we must always be fighting the good fight to protect and enhance our brand.

Healthcare Marketing: What is Your Color?

Color impacts what consumers think and how they respond to your brand.

What color is your hospitalThe science of color has always been fascinating to me.  How people respond to certain colors and how different colors make them feel.  Not only is it interesting, it can also affect how people feel about your brand and even how they respond to your brand.  Different colors evoke different emotions and feelings. And different colors get different levels of attention.

As healthcare marketers, it’s important to know the science of color.  What colors are associated with health and wellness?  What colors are more likely to affect the response we are tying to obtain?  Yeah I know, yet another thing healthcare marketers must know and understand.  But we need every edge or advantage we can get.  Understanding the psychology of the consumer’s mind is one thing healthcare marketers should study and understand as much as possible.  And the science of color is part of that psychology. 

Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, wrote an article for Fast Company, Why Is Facebook Blue?  The Science Behind Colors In Marketing. It’s interesting, informative and entertaining.  The link to the article is below.  I think you will enjoy the read.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3009317/why-is-facebook-blue-the-science-behind-colors-in-marketing