Lori Moore

Healthcare Marketing: Social Media is NOT a Numbers Game

Social media success is not how many “likes” you have but rather how many relationships you have.

Hospital marketers measure success for their social media efforts in several different ways. The easiest, and probably most often used, method is how many likes you have.  It’s quantity.  And why not, when attempting to show success it’s easy to point to the number of likes your site has.  In fact, it can look pretty impressive in a performance review.

But does that really measure true success?  Sure, it’s providing exposure to your brand.  And sure it shows some level of affinity to your hospital and it’s services.  So it certainly has value.  Quantity is important.

But perhaps more important is quality.  What is the quality of relationships with those social media friends?  Is it just a bunch of contacts who are casual friends with whom you have a passing and shallow relationship?  Or is it people with whom you have a real, meaningful relationship?  People with whom you have regular contact and you share information and there is value in the friendship?

I would suggest the true measure of success is the latter.  Not necessarily how many friends you have on social networks but the quality of those relationships.  It’s better to have 200 highly engaged followers on Twitter who interact and share your information than 2000 who hardly even notice your tweets.  And it’s much better to have 500 Facebook friends who are engaged, regularly posting and interacting than to have 5000 that just skim over random, and meaningless posts from your marketing department.

Maybe the numbers won’t be as impressive but engaged relationships are worth more than casual friends or followers. 

But this kind of success, like any true friendship, requires time and work. It requires going deep.  It means taking the time and effort to provide meaningful interaction.  It’s not about selling yourself but rather about making yourself available and committing the time to demonstrate how important the relationship is to you.  It means understanding your friends and their needs and providing the information, advice and help they want and need. It means investing in the relationship.

Building fewer but deeper relationships may not look as impressive as a large quantity of followers or likes, but it can mean a much higher ROI to your social media efforts.

 

Healthcare Marketing: Customer Service Expected Component of Social Media

Almost half of Facebook followers of your brand expect a customer service component.

Consumers are expecting brands to provide customer service options in their social networks.  A survey conducted by Oracle found that online users of social networks expect pathways to customer service from the social media site.  The expectations include click thrus to customer service departments and instant messaging.

Forty-six percent of Facebook users expected brands to provide customer service options through the social network.  Twenty-nine percent of blog followers expected customer service options compared to just seventeen percent of Twitter followers.

Not only do consumers expect customer service options, they also expect quick responses.   Over half of Facebook users and eight out of ten Twitter users expected responses within 24 hours or less.  Social media is always on and responses to concerns and issues are expected quickly.

The most common reason to follow or like a brand on social media networks is to have access to information.  The second most common reason is to access comments from other consumers.  And the third reason, at forty-three percent of the respondents, is to receive direct response to questions and concerns.

So as healthcare marketers become more active and engaged in social media, it’s important to provide customer service options as a key component to meeting consumer expectations.

As stated in eMarketer concerning this research, “the potential return for brands that stay engaged on social networks is significant.  Customers who have a great experience on social media can easily become brand advocates, and are already in the right place to spread the word.”

Healthcare Marketing: Fight Fragmentation with Integration

With the plethora of media options, marketing channels and consumer touch points, integration is essential for maximizing marketing success.

In the not too distant past, marketers had a rather small number of options for its marketing message.  TV, radio, print and outdoor was about it.  Then traditional advertising mediums began to offer new alternatives.  Cable television, satellite radio and custom direct marketing.

But then the web showed up.  And the choices became seemingly endless:

  • Websites/SEO
  • Search marketing
  • Web advertising
  • Email
  • Social media
  • Tablets
  • Mobile
  • Apps
  • Blogging
  • Gaming

And the list could go on and on.  There is strength in this enormous growth of marketing options.  There are new ways to reach consumers, we can target them more narrowly (demographically, sociographically, geographically and psychographically), we can sometimes measure effectiveness more effectively and we can be much more creative with our media options.

But it creates fragmentation.  Fragmentation of our brand’s message.  And that is not a good thing.  The challenge is to integrate our message over all our marketing and messaging platforms and options.   Yes it includes, but certainly not limited to using a common tagline and a single color pallet and enforcing a strict and consistent corporate identity.

As Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork wrote in an article for Bloomberg Businessweek, “Integration means communicating a consistent identity from message to message, and medium to medium, and (more importantly) delivering consistently on that identity. It requires not only the identification of a powerful, unifying strategy and compelling voice for your brand, but the discipline to roll it into every aspect of your organization—from advertising to sales, customer service to customer relationship management programs (and beyond). It’s not for the faint of heart”.

McKee is correct and it’s not easy.  In fact it can be an enormous task to integrate the brand message over all messaging channels both externally and internally.  And perhaps it can never be fully accomplished.  But as healthcare marketers our task is to try.  Make it a priority.  It’s difficult enough to build a strong healthy brand, but to not have consistent integration of our brand message, voice and tone, makes it even more difficult and perhaps unlikely.

It requires knowing our brand.  Knowing who we are, our brand personality and brand attributes.  And trying as hard as we can to be consistent over all channels and mediums.  Those healthcare organizations that do it the best will be the most successful in this age of hyper-fragmentation.

 

Healthcare Marketing: Average and Ordinary Equals Fresh and Credible

Featuring real people in our advertising provides a freshness and credibility that can really connect with the audience

Pepsi did it.  Remember the Pepsi Challenge when ordinary people were asked to take a taste test and decided which tasted better, Coke or Pepsi?  And Folgers did it with hidden camera ads to promote Folgers crystals.  NutriSystem switched from celebrity endorsements to real people. Red Lobster put their own employees in their ads.  Ford now has actual customers talk about buying a Ford at a mock press conference in their “Drive One” campaign.  And probably the best and most influential example of all is Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign where they featured women who represented the average women and encouraged women to embrace the beauty of their bodies.

Real people delivering a message that’s real and authentic.  It speaks. It connects.  It resonates.  It’s… well, real.  And healthcare marketers should take note.  In a culture of consumerism, consumer-control and transparency, making our ads “real” speaks to the consumer.  Using real people in our advertising can be very effective.  They can be patients, family members of patients, employees, doctors or appropriate endorsers.  If delivered simply and very genuinely, it can be very believable.  Maybe it won’t be as slick, maybe not as polished.  But it can communicate – effectively.

Lucia Moses writing for Adweek discussed the current state of celebrity endorsements and contrasted it to the use of ordinary people in current advertising quotes Tor Myhren, president and chief creative officer of Grey New York, “Brands are asking for more authentic communications.  They are stepping back from casting and saying instead of using actors or celebrities, let’s use real people.”  He added, “People are taking control. Everybody can film themselves now. That immediately opens you up for user-generated content. Whether it’s on YouTube or Facebook, we’re so used to seeing less professionally done movies. Because we’re used to seeing things that are less slick, it becomes more acceptable for advertisers to do that. Because of how companies are becoming more and more exposed because of the digital age, part of this trend is that we’re going to make our communications a little more real, a little more honest.”

This is not to say all our advertising should be testimonials or feature real people.  But it is to say the authenticity of using real people can cut through the clutter and effectively promote our brand.  Consumers may question what we say about ourselves but they can’t question a friend or neighbor, a real person, either patient or employee, who speaks from the heart.  It is just naturally believable. 

In a time of skepticism and mistrust.  When transparency is expected and demanded.  When technology is so invasive.  When social interaction on social networks dominate computer time.  Maybe it’s time we just “got real!”

 

Healthcare Marketing: Death of Newspapers – Implications for Marketers

As newspapers close, convert to more digital content or reduce the number of publishing days, the implications for marketers are significant.

Advance Publications has announced that the New Orleans Times-Picayune, The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times and the Mobile Press-Register will all reduce their daily publications to only three times per week. This is a startling announcement in many ways.  These newspapers each have long histories, with the Mobile paper having published a daily for over a century. And it’s surprising for it to be happening in major markets like New Orleans and Birmingham.  This follows other newspapers that have either closed  (Tucson Citizen, Rocky Mountain News, Baltimore Examiner, Cincinnati Post) and others that have adopted hybrid online/print or online only models (Seattle Post Intelligencer, Detroit News/Free Press and the Ann Arbor News).

Despite the fact that some larger newspapers like the New York Times are seeing success with paid digital subscriptions and Warren Buffet recently made a $143 million investment in the newspaper business by purchasing the 63 newspapers owned by Media General, change is coming sooner rather than later for the news industry.

Printing on dead trees doesn’t make as much sense anymore. The harsh reality is that printed newspapers are no longer the dominant method of receiving news and information.  Twenty-four hour broadcast news networks and the internet make news reporting and the receiving of breaking news instantaneous.  It won’t wait till the print presses run. And the media habits of younger generations who depend on the web for almost all of their news will make print news even more obsolete.

For guys like me who look forward to reading the newspaper every morning, this is difficult to comprehend.  And as these changes occur, the implications for healthcare marketers are real and substantial.  Here are just a few ways marketers will be affected:

  • News provided to newspapers may not be published in a timely manner unless they offer a strong digital alternative. 
  • Digital and broadcast news do not offer the depth of information as newspaper.  It will be more difficult to explain complex issues
  • With fewer editions, the competition for space will be greater.  No more getting a story because it’s a slow day.
  • Newspapers will no longer provide the print frequency or timeliness for our advertising.
  • Advertising in digital and broadcast formats is much more limiting than print.  We will not be able to tell a story or deliver a message as completely as in a print ad.

In many ways, inevitable changes to the newspaper industry will make our jobs more difficult.  From the perspective of utilizing both earned and unearned media, we will have to adapt.  Adapt more to a digital age of reporting and messaging.  It will require a change for us all.

Healthcare Marketing: Digital Newspaper Ads Effective

Newspaper digital ads provide a strong reach and reader responsiveness.

Newspapers are struggling.  Circulation and ad revenues are down.   Some newspapers have stopped the presses or reduced their days of publication.  In response, and to adapt to changing consumers habits, newspapers have put an emphasis on digital content.  And research indicates their efforts are delivering results.

A study by Frank N Magid Associates  commissioned by the Newspaper Association of America found from a survey of 2,518 online interviews among adults 18+, 60% have looked at an online version of a newspaper from a laptop or desktop.  The study also found 25% has looked at a newspaper from a smartphone and 12% from a tablet.   Considering the overlap, 67% of the respondents fell into one or more of the three categories.

The original survey was followed by 1,179 online surveys and nine focus groups.  The research also found that 66% of digital newspaper media consumers said they act on digital ads displayed with newspaper content.  Additionally 61% of tablet users said they act on newspaper tablet ads and 59% of samrtphone users respond to ads.

Erik Sass referenced the study and reported in MediaDailyNews that 65% of adults ages 18-34, have read a newspaper on a computer in the last week compared to 48% of adults 65+.  And 41% of adults 18-34 read a newspaper on a smartphone, compared with 11% of adults 65+.

This is good news for healthcare marketers it gives some confidence there is an audience for digital newspaper and those readers are responsive to online ads.  This does not mean marketers can just take print ads and put them in a digital format.  It will require new creative strategies. And digital ads also will allow click thrus and more interaction with consumers.

The future of newspaper advertising will definitely be in digital formats and content. That too can be effective for healthcare marketers but will require different strategies and new creative approaches.

Healthcare Marketing: 15 Social Media Facts for Marketers

It’s a very strange irony that socialization is happening using computers.  And face-to-face interaction is conducted on Facebook.

In a presentation given at OMMA Social during Internet Week, and reported by Adrants. ComScore Media Evangelist Eli Goodman rattled off a plethora of juicy social media facts and figures. Here are but a few for you to digest.

  • 1.2 billion people access social networks on their computers.
  • One of every five minutes spent online is on a social network.
  • 1/3 of social network users are located in Asia Pacific. 
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  • Five of the most engaged markets for social networking are in Latin America.
  • Facebook has 55% global penetration. It is the third ranked site in the world for traffic.
  • One in seven minutes online are spent on Facebook.
  • Three in four of all social media time spent online is on Facebook.
  • There are only five markets in the world where Facebook isn’t the leading social network.
  • In January 2012, Facebook surpassed Orkut in number of users in Brazil.
  • Males over 55 are the fastest growing segment of social media users.
  • Women spend more time on social networks but men are catching up.
  • Digital Natives (15-24) have largest decline in email and IM usage.
  • One in four display ads are on social sites.
  • Five percent of all U.S. display ads are socially enabled.
  • Google Plus is the fastest growing social network reaching 25 million users in one month.

Consumers are socializing.  But it’s with a computer. The challenge is for healthcare marketers to discover how to join them there and engage them. It’s new ground.  It’s not an easy task.  We must continue to experiment, observe and learn. The task at times is daunting.  But the rewards could be substantial.

Healthcare Marketing: Face-to-Face with Facebook Advertising

Some brands are questioning if Facebook advertising actually delivers.

One in five clicks on the internet happen on Facebook.  Astonishing!  Is there any place that touches so many people?  No.  So if there is that many people on Facebook, then obviously that’s where we should advertise.  That’s what logic and common sense would tell us.   And therefore brands have rushed to get and maintain a presence on Facebook.

But as of late, questions have arisen about the effectiveness of advertising on Facebook.  There has always been skepticism about Facebook advertising but GM’s decision to pull the plug on $10 million of Facebook advertising has certainly brought the issue more to the forefront.   Although GM is in the minority, it certainly raises eyebrows.  Especially when GM gave the reason for their retreat being the inability to effectively track an ROI for Facebook advertising and the general belief that it was ineffective.

Some advertisers agree with GM and therefore don’t advertise with Facebook although they have a heavy Facebook presence.  GM in fact still devotes an estimated $30 million to building and maintaining a Facebook presence.  Others argue the problem is not Facebook but rather the strategy and execution of the Facebook advertising.

Another example is P&G’s Secret Deodorant’s anti-bulling campaign “Mean Stinks.”  Although P&G has a strong presence on Facebook it has bought Facebook advertising not during the build up but after the launch and strategic times since.

Others argue Facebook advertising is not good for brand building but only for specific promotions or offers.

All of these arguments have some validity.  So where does that leave healthcare marketers when considering Facebook advertising?  I think the key to success is to determine your objective and then gauge if Facebook advertising can deliver on that objective. 

Our agency has rarely used Facebook advertising for our healthcare clients strictly for image building.  I have my doubts about whether that is effective.  But we have used for Facebook advertising for events and specific services.  And have seen very good results.  We have targeted Facebook audiences who would be interested in a hospital’s special event and believe the advertising contributed to the event’s success.

More often, however we have used Facebook adverting for specific self-referral services.  We have used it quite often for such products as sleep services and spine centers.  In each case, from a landing page we offer a way for the consumer to request an appointment.  And those efforts have been successful. The financial investment is modest but we get direct click thrus with consumers requesting appointment.  And they come at various times during a 24-hour period. But most frequently late at night when a person is on their computer because they can’t sleep or their spouse’s snoring is preventing them from sleeping.  Or because their back pain is hindering their sleep.

Facebook is where the consumers are.  Hospital marketers should consider having a presence there for their brand and engage the consumer with meaningful and helpful information.  And Facebook advertising can be effective. But only with a well thought out objective and a solid strategy.   And just to be sure its worth the expenditures, make sure you can measure the response.

Healthcare Marketing: 4 Strategies for Improving Patient Experience

Marketing must take the lead in patient experience.

Marianne Aiello recently wrote an article for Health Leaders Media about how to improve patient experience.  Aiello makes some excellent points.  The article is republished here in its entirety.

Picture this. One day while watching TV you see an engaging hospital commercial, depicting smiling providers who whisk a patient through the continuum of care. The end of the spot directs you to a website, which has a fresh design and smartly describes the organization’s many service lines and resources.

A few weeks down the line you need to schedule an elective procedure, and, based on your positive memories of the ad and website, you choose this hospital. But upon arrival, the parking lot is confusing. When you finally stumble across the waiting room, the desk worker passes you some forms to fill out without raising his head. Your procedure goes well, but afterward it’s unclear how to schedule a follow-up.

Unfortunately, scenarios like this one happen all too often at well-meaning hospitals. Often the problem lies in the marketing department’s detachment from operations, which—like it or not—controls the patient experience.

For the marketing chief to be considered a key leader within the hospital hierarchy, marketers must bridge this gap and take full responsibility for the patient experience.

1. Align promise with experience.

The positive hospital ad/negative hospital experience described above showcases the hypothetical organization’s inability to align its brand promise with its brand experience.

“No longer can healthcare organizations be a lot better in their ads than they are in reality,” Gary Adamson, chief experience officer of Starizon told the April issue of Healthcare Marketing Advisor. “There is too much consumer information and power for that approach to be viable any longer. The marketing department must become responsible for the melding of the promise and the experience into a powerful and fully differentiated brand.”

In order to merge the promise and the experience into a differentiated brand, Adamson suggests thinking of the two as overlapping circles. It is ultimately the marketing department’s duty to not only make the area of intersection larger, but to eventually create concentric circles.

To do this, marketers must integrate operations and communications.

“By working with cross-functional teams, marketers can help organizations keep a finger on their patients’ pulse and develop communication materials that heal and strengthen relationships,” Tom DeSanto, principal, Tom DeSanto Strategy and Communications, told HMA. “It’s like multispecialty care for the patient experience.”

2. Start with first point of contact.

Naturally, aligning the brand promise with its experience is a daunting task. A good way to start is to focus on the patient’s first physical point of contact with your organization. The patient’s perception of your parking lot, lobby, and front-line desk staff make a lasting impression on their overall experience. This is why many organizations choose to employ valets and greeters; to construct warm, spacious entryways; and to extensively train staff in customer service.

“Marketers should consider all of the variables that will impact the patients’ and their families’ or visitors’ impression of the building and the people inside,” Shari Short, research director and strategist for Aloysius Butler & Clark, told HMA. “For example, if the parking lot feels unsafe or if the elevators are broken or too slow, consumers note these factors as part of their experience.”

Once the patient enters the treatment phase of their visit, clinical care takes precedence. But there is always room to craft a positive patient experience.

“For many healthcare workers, the patient experience is about clinical health outcomes, but for the healthcare consumer, it is about the levels of comfort and customer satisfaction that determine whether it is a positive patient experience,” Short says. “Marketers need to be present and involved in designing the patient experience from parking, to driving away after discharge, to keep the voice of the healthcare consumer in the conversation.”

3. Improve staff communication.

Staff attitudes, from disengaged desk workers to pressed-for-time caregivers, has a profound impact on the patient experience. The first step toward correcting any unsavory behaviors is education. Many staff may not realize that the way they are acting has such an impact on the patient’s satisfaction and perception of their care.

You can “inspire frontline patient care staff through simple, ongoing quality and satisfaction communications that praise their efforts and challenge them to improve,” DeSanto said. Also, “develop simple training and motivational materials to help improve performance in areas that have low satisfaction ratings.”

Furthermore, it’s important to report individual successes and overall progress in improving the patient experience to staff members, as well as patients and the hospital community.

4. Improve the patient experience.

Providing patients with friendly, uncomplicated, and practical information about what to expect from their hospital stay will help the patients feel more at ease even before they step foot in your facility.

This virtual or paper first point of contact can be just as important in making a positive impression as the physical first point of contact.

It’s also important to “examine and improve all aspects of communications with patients from initial contact with the physician referral line through episodes of care to interactions around insurance and billing,” DeStanto says.

Much like how the patient experience can begin before the patient enters the hospital grounds, it can continue long after the patient leaves.

In order to stay competitive in today’s healthcare environment, marketers must be responsible for much more than advertising and public relations. Not only must marketers communicate the brand, they must create and sustain the brand.

“If marketing is ever to evolve into the important strategic discipline in healthcare that it is in other industries, then the marketing department must take the lead role in orchestrating the patient experience,” Adamson says.

“For those marketers who choose not to leap across this chasm with excitement, however, they will be dooming themselves and the departments they lead to more of the same frustration that has been vocalized since the advent of healthcare marketing.”