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.
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 shoppers to gather key information about what’s happening in their target area, tracking details like whether physicians Read More
// 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
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
“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 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
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
“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
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
“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
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
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
// 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
// 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
// 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
// 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
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