Awards Programs Can Heighten Your Profile and Reputation

Dana Levin-Robinson, chief of staff at VirtualHealth

Competing for — and winning — awards can be an important part of your health care organization’s marketing strategy. Awards can help you raise awareness about your service lines, driving new business; recognize individual employees as leaders, improving staff morale and elevating performance standards; and promote your organization as a stellar workplace, helping to attract top talent.

Awards are also popular because they can be an extremely low-cost way to get recognition and promote your health care organization. But it’s important to be strategic about selecting what awards to pursue, because while the cost in dollars is often low compared to other marketing efforts, the cost in time and energy for a small marketing department can be high.

“I oversee all the PR work at VirtualHealth and how many resources (time and money) we allocate toward awards is something I think about often,” says Dana Levin-Robinson, chief of staff at VirtualHealth, a New York-based company that provides an SaaS care management solution for health care organizations. She points out that in the ideal world, an organization’s awards can really help sell the brand for clients and help differentiate from competitors. But focusing on the best award opportunities requires thinking strategically to target the most effective options as part of a broader plan.

“I started by looking to our competition to see what they were doing, and how we could do it better,” she says. This has led her to explore a medley of campaigns, some of which go beyond health care specifically to also recognize other traits, like best workplace, best benefits, outstanding employees, women leaders in business, and much more.

In our new article we’ll look at how VirtualHealth has succeeded with its award efforts — and what you can learn from its experience:

Prize-Winning Strategy: Using Award Programs to Spotlight Your Accomplishments

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President