Honors, Awards, Recognitions...what to do

Do you wonder what to do about the awards your hospital has received? Do they matter to your community? To your staff? To your physicians? Do they set you apart from your competition? Will your patients understand the points you make?

So, HealthGrades® has just awarded you five stars...or designated you a Center of Excellence; you’ve decided that you’d like to use this, but you’re not sure how to go about it. TJC has just named you a certified Stroke Center. You have great patient satisfaction scores this quarter, and don’t know if it’s too soon to celebrate.

You’ve been using the same slogan and tag line for a while now, and you feel like your marketing team is doing a good job, but shouldn’t the hospital be making some splash with all this great news?

Consumers today are facing more choices than they ever have before. If they are willing to pay differentials, the world is their oyster. How do you lure in those who are willing to pay for the best care available? What avenues do they use to decide which provider is better than the next?

It seems that consumers still trust their physicians as their number one source for expert advice, but more and more are beginning to do their own homework. While traffic to the CMS site and HeatlhGrades® site is still modest, consumers are consulting hospital websites for a closer look at what organizations are saying about themselves.

Consumers are then stacking this information up against what they hear from family and friends and comparing their options.

Is your market ready to begin promoting these honors....these distinctive advantages that are at best difficult to understand? Your best bet...ask your target audience. See how your website is being used today. How does your content drive action? What pages are your visitors lingering over? If it’s parking directions, you might not be ready. But if it’s the quality data you have posted, then perhaps there are some good uses for these honors and distinctions. But remember, if you use the data, explain it. And be ready to defend changes in your status over time.

New Marketing Structures/Skills Needed

Is it time to rethink your marketing organization? Are you prepared for the new social media world? Is your website performing? Does your staff have the skill set and mind set for the new challenges the organization is facing? Do they recognize the new consumers? Are they ready for the new shape of healthcare reform? And, who, if anyone, owns growth in your organization?

The healthcare marketing world is changing. New times call for new tools, new methods, new mediums, new messages. Is your team organized to support each other, drive growth for your company, embrace the new social media tools, and maximize the effectiveness of both messaging and reach?

Many healthcare teams have evolved over the years, with staff skilled in writing, journalism, public relations, graphic design, strategic planning, analysts, sales teams, and general marketing staff. Today, most of us have at least one or more staff proficient and skilled at web design, delivery, and content development. But is this what we’ll need going forward?

Where do you get the data that tells you where the growth potential is for your organization? Can you find the critical few service lines that have a high margin, and build the relationships you need to meke them a key focus for your organiation? Are you able to convince your leadership team that the noisiest doctor with the most expensive technology isn't necessarily the most important focus for your organization?

Combine these pressures with the fact that consumers are being asked to grasp and make critical choices regarding their healthcare and it is more and more obvious that no one is taking the lead on helping consumers with this daunting task. As the growth champion, senior communicators and business developers, we have a new opportunity within our marketing organizations. Redefining the relevance of our role in educating consumers, informing staff, engaging patients, setting service line priorities, and enlisting physicians as partners should be the gist of our job descriptions.

But these opportunities are surrounded by challenges. Do you have the right talent base to help you with these? For instance, which tools will be most effective? How can you leverage your current media messaging and placements to allow you to maximize not only the return on those directly, but to also allow you to break into new medias? Do you have a facebook page for your hospital? Videos on UTube? Do you twitter breaking news, important reminders? Are you relevant to today’s decision maker? Are you at the table along side the CMO, CNO, COO, CFO, CEO?

It will take new talents and new thinking to succeed in the next ten years. Will healthcare reform open up access in ways never-before contemplated? Are you ready? How will you reach these people?

Marketing in a down economy

Is the economy making you ask yourself, “How much should we be spending on our marketing efforts? How do we know we are maximizing our position? What might we do differently to stand out in the market place? Could we focus some efforts to do more with less? If you have these questions, you are not alone!

The economy has everyone challenged today. Bad debts are rising, elective procedures are on hold, and the unemployed ranks are rising. Your market share may be holding, but the bottom line seems to be shrinking.

Where do you start? Cut the marketing budget? Increase it? Stay the course? Change your focus? Before you answer these questions, consider the following:

What do you know about your current patients and most loyal followers? What do they need from you right now?

In many markets, what those most loyal to you need is assurance that you are there with them during these hard times... that your mission includes them... that whatever they face, you face it with them.

This is a great time to look at your outreach activities, and expand them...give away screenings and help those on cholesterol lowering medications afford their liver function tests...keep those free cholesterol checks out there....find ways to be relevant to those most likely to bounce back with the economy.

Consider walk-in clinics that offer free blood pressure checks, reduced rates on flu shots, etc.; try to provide those items good for the individual that are also good for the general public. For example...flu season...consider flu testing to help stop the spread.

This is the time you can take those most loyal to your organization and lock them in for life... and those who are somewhat loyal will come over to very loyal.

As for the marketing budget, focus on the critical few, and use the resources to capture those few service lines with the most potential. Don’t spread a few dollars around everywhere hoping for the best. Even if you take your budget and spend it on your strongest service line, and/or the one with the most potential, you’ll come out ahead at the end of the year.

What are you experiencing? Share your ideas and opinions.

Emotional v. Rational: What works in Healthcare?

It's a debate that dates back to the late 1920's. Even the experts don't agree. In March, 2009, Advertising Age published a piece by Hamish Pringle and Peter Field on the topic. Their take? From their research, the data showed that emotional campaigns are almost twice as likely to generate large profit gains than rational ones...with campaigns that use facts as well as emotions in equal measure falling somewhere in between. They were able to document that successful emotional campaigns reduce price sensitivity dramatically. Additionally, there is an increased sense of differentiation causing greater endurance and a likelihood to survive new competing product launches.

Jack Trout would respectfully disagree. In his blog posting to Branding Strategy Insider on Jan. 10, 2009, he cited a study conducted by TiVo back in June of 2008 that measured which ad campaigns people most frequently fast forwarded through. His conclusions: The top three least fast forwarded through, thereby assumed to have been watched and "sticky", were more effective, and he states that they were all three rational by his definition (he doesn't exactly share his framework for his definition, however). They included the least which was Bowflex...he said that wanting to look like the buff, fit guy on Bowflex was somehow a rational arguement...hmmm...seems emotional to me, invoking desire, envy, etc. Let's look at the other two top vote-getters for sticky...Dominican Republic tourism...relaxation, fun, pleasure....seems emotional again. Ok, surely the last of his arguments holds....Hooters....of course! It's the food! Now we all know that's a rational argument.

Ken Orwig, in a white paper posted to his website, www.orwig.net, says the bottom line lies with the brand itself. The dominant mood (emotional v. rational) is best determined by the brand's elements, including uniqueness (the more unique, the greater the need for the rational argument); price (the higher the price for the brand, the more rational the argument needed, with the exception being purely luxury items where it's mostly an emotional purchase); the more defined the customer perception of the brand category also drives rational v. emotional; the more innovative or intangible the brand, the greater the need for rational messaging; and, the higher the importance to the target, the greater the attention to the rational messages.

Yet, Orwig notes that "neurological research as well as a substantial body of anecdotal evidence supports the premise (sic) that People buy on emotion then justify their decision with facts." He went on to quote Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who pointed out "At the constitutional level where we work, 90% of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections." Now we understand the debate in Congress over Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor...will she use emotion or rational reasoning in her decisions?

So what about healthcare? Let's look at the taxonomy of Emotional advertising...ads taking this approach must invoke fear, humor, fantasy, hope, compassion, relief or engagement, at a minimum. Ads using rational will feature technical expertise, scientific evidence, comparisons, or third party validation. Today's more successful brand campaigns involving health care organizations use some combination of emotional and rational. With the proliferation of transparency, they have to.  The debate will continue. I leave you with this question...what is word of mouth? Emotional? Rational? Hmmmmm...would love your thoughts.

What will it take to identify the brand that will work?

So, we start inside. But how? I suggest you interview your senior leadership, capturing how they see the brand, listen for key words that resonate from one leader to the next...then go to the managers...do the same...have them relate the brand to popular consumer brands....see where the themes take you....is it trusted? (Volvo) popular? (iPhone) big? (walmart) comprehensive? (P & G) is it synonymous with the category? (Kleenex) quality? (BMW) I have a colleague that works in healthcare research, Klein and Partners, and they have a great focus group process that uses this methodology in a tried and true way to get to this information and much more...(www.kleinandpartners.com) check out their website for much more.

Now, have some focus groups of the rank and file...what do they say...how do they describe the brand?

You should be looking for intersections in the brand descriptions...this is your starting point...based upon where and what you want the brand to be (or become) this information will tell you what obstacles you have to overcome to get it there...especially understanding that these are the people that will make the brand a reality.

Next issue, we'll look at key constituents and how their perceptions drive the brand identity. What do you think?

Hospital Brands

Hospital Brands rely heavily upon the patient's experience to validate, define, and advance. There isn't enough money in anyone's budget to create a brand simply by advertising. So many hospitals today try to skip this important step.

Over the coming weeks, follow this blog for useful steps in learning how to go about hospital branding the right way.

Step One...start inside. What do employees say your brand is? Let them describe what they feel their work means to those who experience it. Let them give you key words that resonate with them. Ask them what they think management thinks the brand is? What does marketing say it is? Are the words the same?

No brand can ever be stronger than the people who have to deliver the experience. Consumer brands are tied to the experience. So start inside...