Service Line Marketing

Augusta University Health Gets Strategic To Improve Payer Mix

Augusta University Health System is no stranger to change. Over the past five years, it has undergone several rebranding campaigns and two consolidations. Yet through all of these fluctuations, one thing has remained the same: the need to find new and more efficient ways to improve its reputation and continue to grow market share. The Read More

Urgent Care + Uber Transport = Win for Orthopedic Franchise

Lisa D. Ellis

If you or a family member broke an ankle or dislocated a shoulder, what if you could just use an app on your smartphone to schedule a visit at a nearby orthopedic urgent care center and, at the same time, also arrange for an Uber driver to transport you? That’s the premise of a new Read More

Telemedicine Enables Remote Dermatology Services

Jennifer Sikora, VP of Marketing, Iagnosis

If you had a suspicious mole or rash on your leg, what if you could have it evaluated by a dermatologist tomorrow without having to miss any work or activities and could find out quickly whether the area is cause for concern? You’d probably find this approach invaluable. And so might many of your health Read More

Use Consumer Data To Improve the Quality of the Care You Provide

Keith Schneider, Director of Consumer & Brand for Professional Research Consultants (PRC)

“As a health care marketer or leader, you know your health care system doesn’t specialize in everything,” Keith Schneider notes. “By pairing the needs of your market with your unique differentiators, your team has chosen its investments wisely. “This intelligent approach allows you to focus on excellence. Yet you might be surprised that, despite service Read More

Emotional vs. Rational Health Care Advertising—With a Nod to a 1960s Hit Song

Peter Hochstein

Peter Hochstein, our crackerjack marketing writer, likes to interview hospital marketing departments and their advertising agencies for his column. “And I often ask them identical questions. I justify this with an analogy concerning two people viewing an elephant from opposite ends,” he notes. “One party tells you the animal’s most notable feature is a skinny tail. Read More

6 Ways To Spin New Life Into Old Marketing Concepts

Caren Begun, Vice President, Media Relations and Strategy, Green Room Communications

Savvy health care marketers recognize that people tend to trust what they know. Therefore, it’s important to remember that new isn’t always better. The reality is that even amid the shifting priorities of the health care field, staying grounded on your past accomplishments and trying to progress from there may get you further than trying Read More

Does Your Health Care Brand Need a Facelift?

Lisa D. Ellis

6 Ways to Make a Good Thing Even Better // By Lisa D. Ellis // How do you handle the pressures of marketing your health care organization’s products and services in 2016? With the growing emphasis on digital storytelling, social media efforts, inbound marketing, and patient-centered care all competing for your limited attention, you and Read More

Marketing Your Hospital’s Maternity Services as a Luxury Item? Yes.

Jackson Memorial Hospital Logo

While Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida is a well-regarded teaching hospital with a Level 1 trauma center, there was a perception that its facilities were outdated—which was particularly problematic for the facility’s maternity services. “When you’re talking about organ transplants, the quality of the room you’re staying in is not one of the top three concerns,” Read More

How To Build a Health Care Brand Post-Launch: The Next Phase of Promotion

Stacy Beers

“When a new brand takes hold as intended, one tough job is over—but another has already begun,” note Stacy Beers and Claire Hovis. “How soon is too soon to change gears from brand establishment to a new phase of promotion? Will new messages come across as mixed messages and muddy the clear impression you’ve worked Read More

How Behavioral Science Can Boost Engagement and Patient Action

“The key to successful health care marketing is being able to anticipate how patients will react to and engage with the messages you are putting out,” says Kirstan Cecil, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, which is part of the Ascension Health System. Saint Agnes Hospital is a 276-bed, Read More

Should You Sell Your Maternity Services Like a Resort?

For One Florida Hospital, It Was the Smart Way Out of a Marketing Conundrum. Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // For people trying to market the maternity services at Jackson Memorial Hospital, a huge institution in Miami, Florida, with more than 1,254 beds on its main campus alone, it must have felt Read More

One Hospital’s Approach to Tapping into the Subconscious to Motivate People’s Behavior, and 5 Steps Your Organization Can Try to Replicate the Results

// By Lisa D. Ellis // Every day, people make an array of decisions, from deciding what time to leave for work to determining what route they will take to get there, often without even realizing what factors are influencing their choices. But for health care marketers, an understanding of how the subconscious affects people’s Read More

Franciscan Alliance To Women: “We Love You Just The Way You Are”

As one of the largest Catholic health systems in the Midwest, Franciscan Alliance recently decided to reach into its religious roots in an attempt to make a deeper connection with females in the local market and build up the women’s services line. The result is a unique marketing campaign for the health system’s women’s services Read More

Health Care Marketing on a Shoestring: Small Budget, Big Results

Peter Hochstein

In the small city of Peoria, Illinois (population 116,513), OSF Saint Francis Medical Center (609 beds) used a very small media budget ($45,000) for one of its services and got some big results. The service was mammogram screening. And, yes, there were other costs for production and Internet usage and design, too. Richole Ogburn, account Read More