Posts Tagged ‘Hospital Marketing’

Email Campaign Tips from the Online Marketing Boot Camp

Led by email marketing guru Sundeep Kapur, The Good, the Bad and The Ugh-ly was one of the hot panels at Austin’s recent Online Marketing Boot Camp. Designed by the Online Marketing Summit, the boot camp featured training and refresher courses on social media, search engine marketing, mobile marketing and Email 3.0.

Kapur’s talk included tips on building email lists, retaining customers and improving conversion rates — many of which are crucially relevant to the healthcare field. Here are my favorite takeaways: Continue reading »

Nine Health Sessions I’m Looking Forward to at SXSWh

Tag your tweets with #SXSWh and they'll show at SXSWh.com for all your friends and coworkers back home.

Seems like just yesterday the Twitter streams were filled with requests to vote for SXSW sessions. You could tell from the volume that this year was going to be big.

Now it’s here upon us and it’s time to fill the schedule. The new and improved #SXSWh hashtag and aggregator site is the perfect place to start – we’ve laid out all the health sessions for you. Plus all the South By Health tweets will end up here – ideal for friends who want to keep up but can’t make the trip.

So let’s get to it! Here are my nine SXSWh picks for 2012: Continue reading »

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 »

The Art of Campaign Teasers: More Bang for Your Budget

Last week, we blogged about rebranding California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) without using clichéd images. In this blog post, we’ll tell you how we launched CPMC’s rebranding campaign with an outdoor reveal.

When California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) approached HCB about positioning and rebranding the San Francisco-based hospital group, all parties agreed that the approach would need to be special. The brand positioning we created revealed and elevated what CPMC does best — medical care delivered on a truly personal level.

San Francisco is a dynamic, vibrant city. It’s an attractive market for advertising, but many organizations, marketers and media planners find it difficult to deliver powerful product messages through all the clutter. Companies that had succeeded there in the past usually sported more recognizable products and bigger ad budgets. Continue reading »

A Name Without a Face: How We Rebranded a Hospital Without Clichéd Images

Many times in healthcare advertising, we see images of smiling people walking along the beach, dancing through fields of daisies or playing with grandchildren. It’s understandable that these images are used so often; after all, the end benefit of any healthcare product or service is that you get to experience life with health and happiness.

But we all know that the market has become saturated with the same imagery. Recently, HCB Health decided to find a way to show personal care — without showing the face of a person.

The image of two hands in the shape of a heart became an icon of the campaign.

California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco asked HCB Health to create a new branding campaign to help them compete against aggressive academic hospitals, where several students may perform various parts of a procedure. CPMC, however, has renowned physicians who want to be hands-on with each patient. The Hands-on Healing theme line was born from this brand differentiation and sums up the brand’s promise in a warm and memorable phrase. Continue reading »

Hospitals Resuscitating Their Ad Budgets

Click the image to read the original article in full.

A September 2011 article by Marketing Forecast examines the need for increased hospital ad budget spending as a result of institutions feeling the growing competitive pressures, higher expenses, decreasing reimbursement from insurance providers and the prolonged economic downturn.

The article gives helpful insights, like focusing on one benefit that differentiates your institution from the competition. It also encourages the need for hospitals to step outside of comfort zones of traditional media such as television, newspaper and billboards. Continue reading »

Five Ways to Test the Strength of Your Hospital Brand

I’m often asked to speak to hospitals around the country. East Coast, West Coast and everywhere in-between, I’m always happy to have those conversations and consequently I’ve gained firsthand knowledge about the struggles many have with their branding. Of course every hospital and hospital system is unique to its market, but there are some key questions to ask before a brand is launched or relaunched to the community.

Tell your stories in a way that communicates a broader benefit.

1. What’s your elevator pitch?

We all know how slow hospital elevators can be but imagine having to describe the essence of your brand between floors 1 and 2. Could you or any of your employees do that? Does your organization believe in its relevance? Would you need more time to explain it?

2. Do you promote your successes?

I’m amazed at how little hospitals do to tout their accomplishments. To some it may feel braggadocios but letting the world know what great things you’ve done helps perpetuate quality inside the hospital and out. Don’t let those high quality scores or those amazing procedures fall by the wayside. Just make sure they’re told in a compelling way. Continue reading »

Hospitals Should Stay the Course and Brand One Single Message

With a striking image and manageable content, this Menninger Mental Health Epicenter ad has stopping power and is not a chore to get through.

Hospitals are a commoditized business and often try to be all things to all people. But sometimes healthcare marketers forget the most important detail – brand one single message.

More often than not, hospital marketers will cram all their service lines, quality measures and other accolades into one single communication. And that just doesn’t work.

If you’re lucky, consumers will only remember one or two things about your organization. So it’s crucial the one key differentiator that separates you from the rest of the competition is your lead. The message must be simple, believable and most importantly ownable in the consumer’s mind. If that message is overcomplicated or attempts to do too many things, the brand will be diminished. Continue reading »