Four critical areas of focus for every health care marketer, and how to make it happen! // By Lindsay R. Resnick // Spurred by the convergence of the Affordable Care Act, an extraordinary medical technology revolution, and our new on-demand, sharing economy mindset, America’s health care ecosystem is now set up to revolve around the Read More
// By Colleen Fahey // This two-part series explores the concept of audio branding and looks at how a tailored audio vocabulary can boost your brand influence more than you might ever expect. In this first section, we focus on social media in the quirky world of hospital marketing and introduce the subtle way branded Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // One size fits all. That’s the concept Kaiser Permanente is embracing these days when it comes to shaping marketing messages that will resonate with its diverse target audience. While the idea is obviously appealing—after all, one universal marketing campaign is always easier than many nuanced ones—finding just the one Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // Old and familiar hospital names sometimes die hard. A case in point: In 2007, the former Saint Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center in New York’s borough of Staten Island changed its name to Richmond University Medical Center. Three years later, the hospital hired Wax Custom Communications of Read More
Find Out How Her Writings Helped a Children’s Hospital Make a Personal Connection with Parents—and in the Process, Spread Some Important Public Health and Safety Messages // By Lisa D. Ellis // With so many marketing and health messages out there today competing for people’s limited attention, how can your organization differentiate itself to form Read More
// By Aron Ezra // A specialty outpatient clinic was struggling with a problem common to many health care providers: Patients weren’t showing up for their appointments. The problem was particularly severe for this clinic, where the no-show rate was close to 50 percent. Doctors weren’t able to bill unless the patient showed up, and Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // This is a story about hospital advertising that’s also very substantially about numbers, all of them very nice numbers for a hospital to have. In the small city of Peoria, Illinois (population 116,513), OSF Saint Francis Medical Center (609 beds) used a very small media budget Read More
// By William Maples, M.D. // Your marketing department relies on strong communication skills and effective message development to promote your services and draw more patients to your facility. But have you thought much about training the rest of your staff and clinicians to be effective communicators with one another and also with your target Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // There’s more pressure today than ever before on hospitals and other health care organizations to provide high-value, patient-centered care for a growing audience. As a result, marketing departments are being pushed to find creative ways to leverage their shrinking budgets and resources to help achieve these ambitious goals. If Read More
// By Derek Mabie // By 2020, Merck Manuals wants to reach 3 billion people, giving them current, accurate medical information. The nonprofit organization has served as a trusted peer-reviewed resource within the medical community since 1899, providing health information to medical professionals and individuals seeking information on everything from flu vaccines to complex cancer Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // In southeast Massachusetts, residents can shop for fresh fruit and produce at community farmers markets sponsored by Southcoast Health. This is part of Southcoast Health’s commitment not only to take care of its patients but also to protect the health of a high-risk community. And in the process of Read More
We are proud to announce that on Wednesday, Nov. 18, Theresa Komitas, Marketing and Public Relations Director at KishHealth System, and Tim Hanners, Chief Healthcare Strategist at TrueNorth Custom, will present a new webinar on content marketing for hospitals and health systems. This comprehensive session, “Health Care Content Marketing: How to Drive Awareness, Engage Customers, Read More
Initiative Builds on Commitment to the Health of Area Residents and Helps Attract Talented Staff // By Lisa D. Ellis // While most health care systems today are going to great lengths to promote healthy living for patients and staff, Florida Hospital in Orlando is extending its visions beyond the confines of its medical campus, Read More
What if your flagship hospital were directly across the street from your biggest—and most worthy—competitor? Would that threaten your market share? It could for some community hospitals, but this doesn’t seem to be the case for Mon General Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia.
// By Lisa D. Ellis // Publishing your health care organization’s print newsletter can be a time-intensive—and costly—endeavor. You may wonder if it’s really worth the investment, since the results can be challenging to measure. With people increasingly getting their news and health information online, you could even be tempted to retire your print efforts. Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // This article is part 2 of Yes, Your Newsletter Can Still Be Relevant: How One Community Hospital Rewrote Its Own Story—and How You Can, Too.
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // Early this year, a group medical practice called the Toledo Clinic in Toledo, Ohio, got what must have seemed like a bright marketing idea. With the help of a mom-and-pop advertising agency called Modern TECHnique in Avon, Ohio, the clinic ran a full-page ad in the Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // Sometimes simple messages can be the most effective. That’s what Signature Healthcare learned recently when it set out to promote a new relationship with The Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center. This partnership brings highly respected Boston pediatric specialists to Signature Healthcare Brockton Hospital (about 25 miles Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // This is a story about a hurricane, a hospital system, and two advertising campaigns. It’s gleaned primarily from an interview with Kerry Graham, Vice-Chairman and CEO of Bohan Advertising in Nashville, Tennessee. Bohan was the advertising agency for the hospital system, Ochsner Health System, from 2007 Read More
// By Jason Skinner // The decision process of a health consumer is changing, and as a health care marketer you must understand how to find and engage your audience using the power of content marketing. Consumers are bombarded with an average of 5,000 marketing messages a day. New research shows the average attention span Read More
Neuroscientific research is helping marketers better understand how to reach the inner recess of our audience’s brain, which, because it has been evolving for millennia, still makes decisions better suited for survival on the savannas of Africa than in today’s world of modern health care. Understanding the subtle nuances of neuroscience—and the evolutionary-biased brain—will provide Read More
How to Embrace a Similar Strategy … and Keep Patients Coming Back // By Lisa Ellis // Ever wished you could get a bird’s eye view of what your competition is doing so you could use the information to sharpen your own efforts and make them more effective? Some health systems are turning to secret Read More
A picture is worth a thousand words—and that’s especially true when you’re talking about adorable babies. Premier Health, a multi-hospital southern Ohio health care system with 1,892 licensed beds and more than 868,000 annual outpatient visits, was looking for a fresh way to to reassure future moms that its health care system offers lots of birthing Read More
// By Ritch Eich // In my youth, I played several sports, like many boys of my generation. My friends and I didn’t know what sports camps or private lessons were. Often, our playing field was the street or an abandoned field next to the train tracks by an old cannery used to store excess Read More
When your health system lives in the shadow of academic medical centers and urban-based powerhouse healthcare brands, its takes real work to compete. Cape Cod Healthcare (CCHC) has undergone a transition to do just that, according to Patrick Kane, Senior Vice President of CCHC’s Marketing, Communications, and Business Development. A series of organizational changes have Read More