Subtopics: Reviews, Testimonials, etc.
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
// By Jill McDonald Halsey, APR; Dan Dunlop; and Jeff Steblea // “City of the Damned.” That’s the magazine headline that greeted Jill McDonald Halsey when she arrived as the new Chief Marketing & Communication Officer for Lawrence General Hospital in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The city of Lawrence had been dealing with a variety of challenges, Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // I usually try to interview hospital marketing departments and their advertising agencies for this column. And I often ask them identical questions. I justify this with an analogy concerning two people viewing an elephant from opposite ends. One party tells you the animal’s most notable feature Read More
St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers in Poughkeepsie, New York, wasn’t the first hospital to find itself drowning in a sea of financial troubles and it probably won’t be the last, notes veteran copywriter Peter Hochstein. Having filed for bankruptcy, “It was accepting bids for full acquisition from other hospitals,” recalls Barbara Kram, Senior Director, Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers in Poughkeepsie, New York, wasn’t the first hospital to find itself drowning in a sea of financial troubles and it probably won’t be the last. Having filed for bankruptcy, “It was accepting bids for full acquisition from other hospitals,” recalls Read More
By 2020, Merck Manuals wants to reach 3 billion people and give them current, accurate medical information, says Derek Mabie, President and Founder of Evolve Digital Labs. While Merck has been a trusted peer-reviewed resource within the medical community since 1899, he notes, the process by which medical professionals find the answers they are seeking 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
Early this year, says copywriter Peter Hochstein, “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 daily Toledo Blade. The ads Read More
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
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
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
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
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
// By Lisa D. Ellis // When your health system lives in the shadow of academic medical centers and urban-based powerhouse health care 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 Read More
By Lisa Ellis 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. This affiliation was approved back in 2009, after GRMC’s leadership decided to look for new ways to position itself so it Read More
When patients come to your hospital for services, do you take the time to spotlight your organization’s strengths and let them know how much you value their health and well-being? You should be marketing not only to prospective patients, but also to current patients when they come to your facility; you want them to know Read More
The internationally known Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is among the world’s few destination medical facilities. Popular perceptions were, and probably still are, that it’s where you go for the gravest cases, the ones that can’t be handled wherever else in the world you live. But now, in addition to its destination facility in Rochester, Read More
The trend of using online relationship sites continues to be a popular way for singles to meet potential mates. Now, some savvy hospital marketers are using similar types of matching tools to connect them with reporters and bloggers as a way to build strategic relationships to help promote their services to a larger audience. The Read More
Advertising Worth Noting By Peter Hochstein The internationally known Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, is among the world’s few destination medical facilities. Popular perceptions were, and probably still are, that it’s where you go for the gravest cases, the ones that can’t be handled wherever else in the world you live. Recently, changing conditions in Read More
Back in 2008, Saginaw, Michigan-based Covenant HealthCare saw an opportunity to “own the robotic surgery market in the region,” says Larry Daly, Director of Planning and Business Development at Covenant HealthCare. The specific focus was da Vinci Surgical System robots, high-tech devices increasingly used in minimally invasive surgery. “Our strategy was to purchase the latest Read More
By Lisa D. Ellis The trend of using online relationship sites continues to be a popular way for singles to meet potential mates. Now, some savvy hospital marketers are using similar types of matching tools to connect them with reporters and bloggers as a way to build strategic relationships to help promote their services to Read More
“Can you picture Brian Williams in one of those Southwest Airlines ‘Want to Get Away?’ commercials?” posits David M. Mastovich, MBA, President and CEO of MASSolutions, an integrated marketing firm based in Pittsburgh. Mastovich, of course, is referring to the disgraced NBC Nightly News Anchor, suspended for six months after misrepresenting events that occurred while Read More
Word of mouth may help to build your brand over time—but sometimes advertising really helps get the ball rolling quickly. Such was the case in and around Phoenix, Arizona, where Arizona OBGYN Affiliates (AOA), now the largest OB/GYN practice in Arizona, consolidated from several smaller practices in 2007. AOA soon found its future growth and Read More
Fresh Care. Delivered Daily. The concept is simple, yet this hand-picked brand message represents Columbia Memorial Health (CMH) perfectly. It also hits home on many levels for the hospital’s target area, which consists of Greene and Columbia counties of upstate New York. The CMH network has a total of 120 individual multi-specialty practitioners, a hospital, Read More
By Lisa Ellis Fresh Care. Delivered Daily. The concept is simple, yet this hand-picked brand message represents Columbia Memorial Health (CMH) perfectly. It also hits home on many levels for the hospital’s target area, which consists of Greene and Columbia counties of upstate New York. Hospital Tries To Overcome Past Reputation The CMH network has Read More