Does Your Hospital’s Newsletter Need a Makeover?
// 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.
Speechless in Toledo: A Group Medical Practice Ad Compared Its Prices to Those of Local Hospitals. But Suddenly, Nobody Seems Willing to Talk About It.
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
The Proof Is in the Pudding: Educational Campaign Mixes Up a Winning Recipe to Promote New Pediatric Hospitalists
// 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
Successful Health Care Marketing: Lessons from the Savanna
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, according to health care marketing consultant Dan Fredricks. Understanding the Read More
Develop a Strong “Bench” of Future Health Care Management Talent
“The bench, which fuels [the] pipeline of an organization’s future leaders, is just as important in business as it is in sports,” says Ritch K. Eich, Ph.D. “Unfortunately, many health care organizations and hospitals underestimate the value of developing future leaders or developing a culture in which current leaders teach or mentor others to follow Read More
Does Your Internal Culture Match Your External Messaging?
Does your hospital or health system really live up to the brand portrayed in the messages you send to your audience? Honestly, does it really? If you’re like many health care groups around the nation, you may have a serious disconnect between how your internal culture operates and the image you try to convey to Read More
Hook Into the Headlines To Create a Powerful Media Blitz
Everyone who works in public relations or marketing knows how difficult it can be to get good media coverage for a product or event. Philips, a leading technology company that creates innovative products and solutions in health tech, decided to try to generate publicity around the idea of doctors using Google Glass during surgery to monitor Read More
Tips for Marketing to the Booming Millennial Generation
“Millennials, who are defined as individuals between the ages of 18 and 34, will surpass Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living generation in 2015,” note Ruth Padilla, M.A. and David Zirkle, Ph.D. “Also known as Gen Y, this group is becoming an increasingly important target for health systems, given its size and purchasing power.” Read More
How Louisiana’s Ochsner Health System Turned Dry Statistics into a Powerful TV Campaign
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
Sending a Clear Message: Content Still Reigns Supreme
// 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
The 3 Pillars of Successful Health Care Marketing; Lessons from Recent Neuroscience
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
Secret Shoppers Provide Key to Unlocking Customer Improvement Efforts for Health System
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 Cute Solution To A Common Health Care Marketing Challenge
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
Leading Health Care in the Future
// 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
Your Hospital Call Center: Costly “Extra” or Powerful Marketing Tool?
“A hospital ‘call center’ often has been considered an irritating expense health care organizations have to endure, because people use phones and want to reach a doctor or patient in the hospital,” Andrea Simon, Ph.D. says. “But maybe it’s time to ask, ‘What if we’ve always been wrong?’” Andrea J. Simon, Ph.D. is a corporate Read More
A Rebrand That Keeps Residents From Fleeing To The City for Health Care
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
Building a Brand in a Crowded Market: One Large System’s Success Story
So let’s say you’re out to build a hospital system’s brand. And let’s also say you’re in one of the biggest markets (Dallas-Fort Worth) in one of the biggest states (Texas), competing against some of the biggest regional names in health care. While you’ve got a $2.7 million budget to work with, exclusive of direct Read More
Match Play: Rework Your Internal Culture to Match Your External Marketing Messages to Score More Points in the Marketplace
// By Lisa Ellis // “Say it. Live it.” This concept sounds simple, right? But do you and your employees really live up to the messages you regularly send to your audience? If you’re like many health care groups around the nation, you may have a serious disconnect between how your internal culture operates and Read More
It’s Personal: How One Woman’s Story Helped Spread the Word About a Community Hospital’s Oncology Services
// By Lisa Ellis // “I have breast cancer. I need a mastectomy. Possibly more. I found out earlier today, and my mind is still reeling …” These words are from the journal of a 38-year-old woman named Megan, who lives in Lawrence, Kansas, and recently went through a roller coaster of emotions after being diagnosed with Read More
How One Company Used a Prototype Launch to Create a Media Frenzy—and What You Can Learn From Its Example
// By Lisa Ellis // Everyone who works in public relations or marketing knows how difficult it can be to get good media coverage for a product or event. So when Philips, a leading technology company that creates innovative products and solutions in health tech, decided to try to generate publicity for a proof-of-concept solution Read More
Meet the Millennials: Your Newest Health Care Customer
// By Ruth Padilla, MA and David Zirkle, PhD // Some savvy hospitals are turning to the latest technological advances to engage younger health care consumers. Millennials, who are defined as individuals between the ages of 18 and 34, will surpass Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living generation in 2015. Also known as Gen Read More
Think It’s Difficult Getting People to Read TV “Supers” Listing Medical Outcomes? Premier Health of Ohio Found a Cute Solution
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // So let’s say you want to reassure future moms and about-to-be moms in your region that your health care system offers lots of birthing options and has lots of medical expertise—whether the moms turn out to have normal deliveries or deliveries with complications. Backing up that Read More
Health Care Convergence: Are You Ready for This New Model?
In pursuit of high-quality, cost-effective care that revolves around the patient, many health care organizations seek new ways to foster system-wide collaboration. This concept involves breaking down barriers that have traditionally separated payers, providers, and patients to enable everyone to work more closely together to meet common goals. Such a way of doing business, commonly Read More
Action! When (and How) To Use Video in Your Health Care Marketing Efforts
“Videos can be a powerful marketing tool for hospitals and health systems. When used to their full potential, they accomplish multiple goals, including sharing your organization’s story to attract more patients, helping your target audience understand your services, and encouraging them to take a more proactive role in caring for their health,” note Lori Moore Read More
Could You Gain by Affiliating with a Larger Health Network?
Is bigger better? For Grinnell Regional Medical Center (GRMC), a 49-bed rural hospital in Grinnell, Iowa, affiliating with the larger Mercy Health Network in Des Moines has certainly had its benefits. Back in 2009, when GRMC first decided to explore creating an affiliation with a bigger network, there was growing recognition that for a community Read More