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.

The 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

Healthcare Marketing: Patients Want to Use Social Media to Manage Healthcare

Study indicates patients seek health information and services from social media.

Patients’ use of social media has been well documented and discussed. They are active with social engagement on Facebook and other social networking sites. Now research has found that consumers want to discuss their healthcare concerns on social media sites. And they want services provided in social media that will help them manage their healthcare.

In a survey of 1,060 U.S adults by the PwC Health Research Institute found that a third of respondents are gravitating to social media as a place for discussions of healthcare as reported by Pamela Lewis Dolan in an article in American Medical News. In addition to the web, consumers are now also turning to social media sites for meaningful healthcare information.

The PwC report showed that 40% of consumers have used social media to find health-related consumer reviews of treatments or doctors; 30% have sought information related to other patients’ experiences with their disease; and 25% have posted comments about their health experience.

When asked whether information on social networks would affect their health decisions, 45% said it would play in role in whether to get a second opinion and 41% said it would affect their choice of a specific doctor, hospital or medical facility.

And because of this, healthcare organizations should alter their social media strategy from being marketing focused to one that is engaging and interactive with consumers. They should consider providing the same type of healthcare information on their social media sites as they do on their websites.

The study also indicates that patients want tools on social media sites to help them manage and facilitate their healthcare. When asked what types of services they would find valuable if offered in social media, 72% of patients answered the availability of appointments, 71% appointment reminders and 70% said referral to specialists.

The study found that embracing social media potentially could help healthcare organizations reduce workloads by moving some interactions that are currently done by phone or in the office to social media platforms.

As healthcare marketers become more patient focused it’s important to provide information and avenues of access in venues desired and preferred by consumers. One of those areas will be social media networks. Yet another reason to develop and implement stronger social media strategies.

Marketing Your Hospital

Traditional, Social & Digital Marketing Ideas for Healthcare Marketers – By Jimmy Warren

Healthcare Marketing Agency

Hospital Marketing: 5 Tests to Keep Your Brand Relevant

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Healthcare Marketing: What is Your Color?

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