Archive for the ‘Healthcare Professional Marketing’ Category

8 Tips for Successfully Marketing Physicians

A 2010 national survey by Strategic Health Care Marketing showed that 89 percent of hospitals marketed employed physicians, while 59 percent marketed non-employed medical staff physicians. Marketing, public relations, physician relations and Web departments were most involved in these marketing efforts.

For hospital (and healthcare) marketers, this shift in relationships with doctors means a tremendous change in strategy to support both non-employee community physicians and hospital-employed physicians. It’s critical to approach this landscape with an eye on the future because even more changes will occur as healthcare reform issues are debated and addressed. In the meantime, there are solid strategies to help position employed and non-employed physicians for success.

Speaking from experience, both on the corporate hospital setting side and the agency side, healthcare marketers deal with several similar issues on a regular basis. One of the universal issues I’ve experienced is how to tackle successful physician relations marketing through the lens of the marketing professional. Continue reading »

RIP SOPA/PIPA: Why Healthcare Marketers Should Take Note

In the aftermath of recent Internet blackout protests, featuring big players such as Wikipedia, Reddit and Major League Gaming, the Web community rallied against proposed Internet regulation laws — and won. The people have spoken, and the bills are dead.

So, what does this have to do with medical marketing? Let’s look at the facts. Continue reading »

Hospital Websites: Beauty is in the Eye of the User

In April, we featured a blog post entitled What Do Consumers Want from a Health Plan Website?, which encouraged health plan companies to tailor their sites to consumer needs. But hospitals and clinics should also ensure that their sites don’t leave a user feeling confused and frustrated.

Hospitals face a complex balancing act. On one hand, visitors to a hospital website want to accomplish many tasks, including finding a doctor, getting directions, making an appointment and evaluating the hospital. But they also want clear and concise pages that are user-friendly. In the information age, in which 140 character tweets and text messages rule the air, people want a multitude of information in quick spurts.

The problem is that hospital stakeholders may not even realize that there’s a problem! It becomes automatic for them to click through a series of links or deal with a messy homepage. The best strategy for an employee wishing to revamp the site is to sit down and pretend to be a prospective patient. Picture yourself as a mom whose kid has a weird-looking rash or someone with an emergency.

Once you have taken on a persona, look at your site with their eyes, and focus on four main questions: Continue reading »

Taking a Broad-Spectrum Approach to Healthcare Marketing

Change is everywhere.

Click the image to read the article in full.

Pharma pipelines are thinner, devices are gaining in sophistication, hospital systems are preparing for healthcare reform and insurers are looking to build their brands before 2014 health exchanges come into effect. What does this mean to us, the brilliant minds who build strategies and brand preferences for healthcare clients? Opportunity.

At HCB Health, we practice broad-spectrum healthcare marketing to gain a fuller understanding of the interconnected parts that contribute to improved health. In fact, we wrote an article about it for the MM&M Viewpoint.

Join the conversation below, if you’re so inclined. Thanks.

Insert Your Device Name (Here) with Product Placement

Sales skyrocketed after Reese's Pieces appeared in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Photo credit: Jason at clicker.com)

All in an episode’s work?

Sure, product placement is nothing new. Hate it or love it, it cannot be ignored. But, one thing is for sure, there is no denying its impact.

Remember the yellow, orange and brown candy that made its big appearance during the movie E.T.? Although Reese’s Pieces were introduced in the market in 1979, it was not until 1982, when the blockbuster E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial featured the candy, that it instantly became wildly popular. Sales of the peanut butter-flavored candy shot up 65% in June, the month after the movie’s release. Continue reading »

More Ways to Reach Physicians Online

Doctors dig digital. In a recent article published by the New York Times entitled The Rise of Desktop Medicine, Dr. Pauline W. Chen says she and fellow colleagues are finding themselves in front of their computers more than at their patient’s bedside.

Computers offer what a doctor’s “clinical acumen” may not — syntheses of clinical findings and measurements, complex statistical models and risk factor calculations. According to Dr. Chen, using these tools to help treat patients has taken healthcare from traditional, bedside medicine to desktop medicine.

HCB Health’s own Anne Pratt recently told us of the current mobile boom and its expected growth in coming years. Just as they do desktop medicine, physicians rely on smartphones to help care for their patients, with an estimated 81% of physicians using smartphones in their clinical lives. Continue reading »

Try Something New in Your Healthcare Marketing Mix

The next time you create a marketing plan, think outside the box a little and try something new — your only limitation may be your imagination.

Let’s face it, in the not-so-distant past, your toolbox consisted of print, radio, TV and billboard. Now you have more tools: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs about your service category (like this one), long form commercials, smartphone product-branded shout-outs, client sponsored games, product placements in movies — and that’s just for starters.

"I am on a horse" — the Old Spice campaign was a hit on TV and online.

But what combination works? One consumer success story is the Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign. Old Spice was, well…old, in the consumers’ minds. They needed to freshen up and appeal to a younger demographic. By running traditional print and TV ads, they reached a wide swath of people, but the younger, more digitally savvy audience was being overlooked. With a little extra money, YouTube videos were introduced and went viral. Millions watched the young funny guy with chiseled abs tout a product that was considered for old fuddy-duddies, and sales increased by an incredible 107%. Continue reading »

Medical Device Recalls 101: My Device Was Recalled. Now What? (Part 2 of 2)

Part Two of a two-part series

The FDA’s overarching position (PDF) is not that they expect a company to be “recall free,” but they expect a company’s recalls to be conducted properly. Device marketers have to be on top of their game when responding — because, let’s face it, recalls happen. A locked-and-loaded communication strategy is a must.

Bottom line: you can’t always control the action, but you can control your reaction.

Depending on the class of the recall, you will have varying positions and responses. Here are some rules of thumb to get you over the hurdles:

FOUR-STEP RECALL RESPONSE CHECKLIST

1. Plan Ahead

As a marketer, you should be heeding the Boy Scout motto, “be prepared,” by putting together your crisis communication plan in advance. Make it a part of your annual strategic planning process. Consider various scenarios for potential recalls, and appropriate actions (and point persons), in order to react as swiftly as possible. Continue reading »