Turn the Page on Your Hospital’s Print Marketing Strategy
// By Lisa D. Ellis //
How do you get your news today? If the answer is mainly online, you’re certainly not alone. In fact, with fewer people reading printed newspapers and magazines than in past decades, you may be considering following the trend by ditching your health care organization’s printed material to focus your efforts solely on the digital side of things.
While saying goodbye to print publications can bring some obvious time and money benefits (after all, investing in paper, running the presses, and covering postage can be expensive), retiring your print pieces can actually end up being a costly mistake in the long run, according to Becky Smith, Marketing Communications Manager at Coffey Communications.
Smith works with health care organizations all across the country, helping many of them find the optimal balance among print and digital to communicate their visions most effectively.
Finding the Right Balance Between Print and Digital
One of her clients, Jimmy Phillips, MBA, Executive Director of Marketing/Communications for San Joaquin Community Hospital
in Bakersfield, California, recently worked with Coffey to revamp his quarterly print magazine to support his communication efforts.
Originally, Phillips had wanted to scrap the 16-page magazine and also a printed annual report, which the hospital had been producing in about the same format for the past six years. Phillips was not convinced that the payoff was worth the price, nor worth the time involved in the extensive production process.
As a millennial, Phillips says he prefers to get much of his information through digital means, and he says that he believed many residents felt the same way. But since printed messages can go a long way to supplementing online messaging, Smith and her team convinced Phillips not to throw in the towel on the magazine, but rather to rethink what the publication should be and how it relates to the faith-based organization’s vision to be the hospital of choice for our community and to serve people with high-quality care and compassion through every interaction.
“The sweet spot is creating good content that works across platforms,” Smith explains.