Branding a campaign means more than just creating a logo. “Branding” encompasses the overall personality, look and attributes associated with your campaign. Learn about one community hospital’s branding successes that increased its neighbors’ awareness for quality healthcare right in their own “backyard.”
In today’s ever-developing, busy and media-rich world, it’s easy to get lost to consumers, especially when you’re up against a large neighboring hospital. But with a little extra effort, you can create a brand for your community hospital’s campaign to bring it more legitimacy and recognition.
Rowan Regional Medical Center (RRMC) of Salisbury, NC, recently launched two campaigns with distinctive and effective branding efforts. I was proud of my firm for helping RRMC establish recognizable faces for its campaigns.
Maternity Campaign:
To market its modern facilities and maternity center, RRMC launched a maternity campaign, complete with a branded style that was implemented on both the web and in print:
- ABZ Design developed a microsite for the Family Maternity Center. The site features videos of physicians, nurses and patients raving about the Center’s personable care.
- The site also acts as a resource for potential mothers and patients, providing information about maternity classes and pregnancy.
- The maternity branding was also utilized in print brochures and ads.
- Check out the videos and the campaign images!
75th Anniversary:
To celebrate its 75th anniversary, RRMC sought to involve the community in a big celebration. The ongoing theme of “CommYOUnity” was reiterated through a variety of advertising and merchandise.
- ABZ Design developed an iconic “75th balloon” which was coupled with “CommYOUnity” for the campaign’s branding efforts.
- From web ads and billboards to elevator wraps, light pole banners, T-shirts and stickers, this campaign’s widespread marketing efforts made it recognizable in the community.
- Check out the campaign with its variety of marketing products!
What Can You Do? Some Tips for Branding Your Campaign:
- Focus on three or four identifiable traits. Identify three or four traits that stand out about your brand, or in this case, your campaign, and then build your campaign’s platform around these traits for a more cohesive representation. What differentiates your services or programs from those of competitors? Read more tips about identifying your community hospital’s strengths and weaknesses in this article from Becker’s Hospital Review.
- Appeal to your audience. Tailor the look and feel of your campaign to your audience. Is it a somber cancer campaign? Is it an energetic pediatrics campaign? Is it an elderly services campaign? Every aspect — from the look and feel to your marketing strategies — should align with your intended audience.
- Stay up with the times. In order to maintain a competitive edge, your community hospital needs to be up-to-date with marketing technologies. The rise of Smartphones is rapidly making it essential to promote your campaign in a Smartphone-friendly fashion on the web, while QR codes are adding an interactive element and depth to traditional print design. Read more about hospital branding and technology in this article.
Content management system (CMS) websites offer your physicians the ideal solution for a branded website with the added ability to manage the site’s content.
What is a CMS? A content management system uses software and a database to manage and organize website content. Sites may be developed from scratch or built from a variety of available templates and then customized. The greatest benefit is the software’s user-friendly interface, which allows content to be easily added and edited without learning HTML or other coding languages.
Why should you use a CMS?
- No technical expertise is required. Individuals with average knowledge of word processing can add content, videos, photos, pages and links directly into the professionally designed CMS template.
- It is ideal for a collaborative environment. Users may simultaneously add or edit content simply by logging in to the “backend” of the website, where the content is stored. A CMS is optimal for a hospital or large practice where multiple people will be assisting in the upload of content.
- Better ranking on SEO. Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the process of improving your site’s visibility on the web by optimizing it for search engines. Most CMS have plugins or features to assist with SEO. Updating your site frequently with relevant content will also make it more visible to search engines.
- You can make changes immediately. You can effortlessly update your site with no delay. The moment you publish content to your CMS, it appears on your live website. Keep the community up-to-date on your practice’s awards, press releases, classes, announcements and media content.
- It will save lots of money. A well-designed CMS practice website template can help hospital marketers maintain branding by making it easy to share the template design with affiliated practices, creating a cohesive look. This lowers costs, as modifications can be made without the need of outside vendors or web experts.
- Security. The site administrator can manage what content is editable by other users or approved “authors.” This provides your content more protection from many standard website attacks.
- Social media integration. Your website can be easily linked to social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook, which allows practices to reach a broader audience of patients.
When you use an agency to set up and design your CMS template, you benefit by producing and establishing a branded look for your web presence, which can then be applied to affiliated practices. You will save time and money with the ability to easily add and edit your own content.
Examples of sites created using a CMS:
- Ovarian Cancer National Alliance – This organized and content-rich site was built using WordPress as a CMS. Check out this article on using WordPress to build your hospital website.
- Let’s Get Healthy For You! – This fun and clean design was also done using WordPress as a CMS.
- Baron Therapy – This creative and informative therapy services site was built using Joomla! as a CMS.
- Spine Health – Another content-heavy site, this one was built using Drupal as a CMS.
Physician practice websites will increase your community hospital practice’s visibility, build its reputation in the community and give your marketing budget the most value for every dollar spent.
The Internet is an absolutely essential tool for physician practices. I am amazed at how many rural practices that I talk to who have virtually no web presence.
Online Healthcare Empowers Consumers. Your practices need websites to acquire patients in an increasingly tech-savvy world.
In order to build a bridge between healthcare providers and patients, a website must also project the right image to your target audience. The appearance of the practice website and the information it presents greatly impact your visitors’ first impressions of your services. Their initial perceptions are completely in your control. How do you want your practice to be seen to the public? As reliable, modern and informed? As friendly, warm and welcoming? Build your site to reflect your practice.
As healthcare marketers, we talk a lot about mobile and social media campaigns, QR codes and email communication. None of these are effective if we have no coherent destination or website to which we can direct patients.
Developing your practice website is the first and most effective form of communication today!
Essential website content:
- A short description of your practice and specialties
- Physician biographies and certifications
- Personalized facilities and staff photos
- Explanations of procedures and services
- Before-and-after case studies showcasing your skills
- Hospital affiliations
- Office hours, office policies and accepted insurance plans
- Directions and maps to the practice
- Patient education articles
Getting ahead of the competition:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social media integration
- EMR patient portal
- Physician videos
- Electronic patient forms
- Interactive maps and driving directions
- Patient education videos
Successful Practice Websites:
- Desert Institute for Spine Care – Physician videos, Patient education videos, Patient forms
- Cardiovascular Longevity’s MyEliteHealth – Patient Portal Integration, Patient forms
- Dr. Cooper-Lall – A dentist who understands the power of social media
As a mom and healthcare shopper, I take charge of my family’s health. Healthcare consumers go online for an increasing variety of healthcare information including looking for their doctors.
A website for your practice is more than just a way to “keep up” with your competition – it’s a way to get ahead.
It’s likely that a vast majority of your employees are already using social media, so why not use social media to promote your brand?!
Encourage your employees to talk about your community hospital and its related issues via social platforms, but be sure to follow some important guidelines.
Assess Who’s Using What
First determine what social media outlets are being used:
- MySpace
- Flickr
- Blogs
Ways to Take Action
Target the particularly active social media participants to lead initiatives:
- Write a blog post related to your community hospital. The topics could range from an explanation of a common procedure to a description of the new hospital wing — anything goes! Your patients will feel more connected to your hospital by having the inside scoop.
- Create a LinkedIn group to bring unity and act as a resource. Employees will be professionally linked to one another, making it easy for patients to skim their profiles and view their qualifications.
- Post on Twitter or Facebook about hospital events and happenings or related medical topics. Encourage interaction from the fellow hospital employees as well as patients.
Promote!
The only way for your community hospital’s voice to be heard through social media is if you promote your efforts!
- Feature an employee’s blog post on your community hospital’s web page.
- “Retweet” and repost employee’s comments and notes on Twitter and Facebook.
- Participate in status updates on LinkedIn, and encourage employees to include a link to the hospital’s website on their profiles.
The Dos
- Create a social media policy to set standards for your employees. For a comprehensive list of good practices, check out this article.
- Act respectfully. Be careful to refrain from making offensive remarks about competitor hospitals. Be politically correct. You don’t want obscenities and insults to be associated with your community hospital!
- Always identify yourself! Employees should not pose as patients in order to boost your hospital’s image. They should ALWAYS identify their affiliation with the hospital. This will keep discussions open and honest.
- Monitor your employees’ social media activity. They are representing YOUR hospital! Designate some “social media police” to ensure employees are protecting your hospital’s interest. And be sure they AREN’T doing any of the following.
The Don’ts
- Don’t violate privacy: In a hospital setting, a lot of specific details about medical cases and issues are confidential. Be sure your employees follow HIPAA and other medical standards when engaging in social media.
- Don’t engage in conflicts of interest: Prohibit employees from identifying or referencing business partners or clients without permission. This could result in serious legal ramifications.
- No “astroturfing” — don’t disguise your efforts! This goes along with always openly identifying your affiliation with the hospital. Warn your employees against having hidden personal agendas as they engage the community through social media.
Using a few simple tricks, learn how to modify your community hospital’s YouTube channel to meet brand standards and make your channel visible to search engines.
Why YouTube?
- Hospitals across the country have been increasingly using YouTube and other social media to strengthen their presence in their communities.
- YouTube is an easy solution offering a primary location for video activity — a place where you can send your customers and patients for updated health stories and information.
Customizing Your Community Hospital’s YouTube Channel
Michael Miller, author of YouTube for Business, offers some tips for customizing your YouTube Channel, which is the “home page” for all of your posted videos.
Once you log in to your organization’s YouTube channel, use the menu bar above your featured video to adjust everything from fonts and colors to what information is displayed.
Settings
- Name: Customize your channel’s name (incorporate the name of the hospital!)
- Channel Tags: Direct search engines to your channel by adding words or key phrases related to your hospital — such as the hospital’s name, well-known departments, medical specialties or any other phrases that patients associate with your hospital.
Themes and Colors
- Theme: Pick a theme and then select “Advanced Options” to customize fonts and color schemes to match your hospital’s brand.
- Background: You can upload a representative image, logo or even texture to act as the background display for your channel. Select “repeat background” to repeat the image.
Video and Playlists
- Featured Video: Select your “featured video” — which displays large and plays as soon as users visit your page, immediately engaging them.
Optimizing Your Hospital’s YouTube Channel
Drawing from YouTube’s tips for nonprofit channels and Larry Kim’s list of tips for optimizing your channel, try the following techniques to increase your channel’s visibility on the web:
- Tagging: Aside from just using channel tags, also place relevant keywords into each video so that your videos will be found by search engines. You could even place the URL to your hospital’s website into each video’s description.
- Interact: Comment on related videos on YouTube, leaving a link to your own video.
- Promote your videos: Post your video across multiple platforms, embedding your videos on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and even your own website, in order to ensure visibility to a variety of viewers.
Some Good Examples
- Presbyterian Healthcare goes the extra mile to integrate its YouTube channel into the Presbyterian brand, using a banner logo with multiple links to different sections on the Presbyterian Hospital site. Each video has an introductory clip denoting what part of Presbyterian Health it relates to, such as “Women’s Issues,” “Sleep Issues” or the Children’s Hospital.
- Stanly Regional shows a simpler but likewise successful branding of its YouTube channel. With the hospital’s logo at the top of the channel, across the background and at the beginning of each video, the channel clearly belongs to Stanly Regional.
- Akron’s Children’s Hospital’s logo is repeated across the channel’s background. The channel’s playlists offer a series of related issues on topics such as “family safety” and “teen issues.”
By conducting a review and evaluation of your hospital’s and competitor’s marketing materials you can improve, coordinate and deliver more cost-effective materials.
Your community hospital has a heart and soul. Shouldn’t every piece of marketing that reaches a patient’s hands convey the right message?
Your marketing team is aware of the need in consistency in all the internal and external marketing materials. Selling a review of all your hospital’s ads, brochures and websites to the leaders is difficult with today’s budgets.
Create an awareness to leaders that the steps you take to evaluate your brand will assure quality to potential and current patients. This quality is the most valuable asset you have!
Don’t be swayed from evaluating your communication materials because of the time investment or size of your hospital.
Audits can be tailored to need and can be as simple (service line audit in weeks) and complex (over a couple of months for the whole organization) as needed. You can speed up the process by gathering the marketing materials to review and clearly summarizing the hospital’s mission vision and values to your independent auditor.
Compile Your Existing Marketing Materials
- Hospital Logo and Service Line Logos
- Websites
- Social Media Sites
- Brochures
- Fliers
- Data Sheets
- Trade Show Materials
- Internal and External Signage
- Advertisements
- Stationary
- Online and Print Newsletters
After your pile of materials is laid out you may be shocked to see the inconsistencies in your hospital materials. These inconsistent marketing materials give the impression of an unstable hospital, one that’s in flux. The unfortunate result is patients get nervous, your market position is compromised, and mind share is at risk.
Review Your Messaging
Analyzing these communication pieces helps you sell to leadership that your hospital messaging could align better with their strategic priorities and core values. Now you will have the ammunition to sell improving the communication overall.
I always recommend a visual communications audit for all hospitals at the beginning of a hospital/agency relationship and every few years to make sure you don’t drift from your identity. Looking with a fresh and unbiased perspective, across all marketing materials, can unlock the communication roadblocks keeping your community from understanding the value that your hospital brings to its members, patients, families, providers and partners.
Some of the questions that I would ask are:
- Are you adhering to the graphic standards of your hospital brand. (images, logos, font, colors etc.)
- Is there consistency in messaging? Does it follow your brand promise?
- Are your hospital strategies focused and on-target?
- Do all the pieces look like they’re from the same hospital?
- Is your website up-to-date and maintained?
- Have your marketing messages adapted to the current market?
- Does your brand identity reflect the personality of your hospital?
- How do your communications compare with your competition?
For your hospital it is key to communicate either clinical care (product) or providing care (service). Once your audit is complete you will better understand how to deliver a unified voice to educate new patients about new machines, treatments and your unique patient care experience giving your hospital the competitive edge.
Benefits of Your Communication Audit
- Savings: Audits normally uncover items no longer effective
- Impact: Points out areas where small changes produce big results
- Planning: Becoming aware is the first step in deciding where to go in the future
Don’t wait on leadership changes or your leaders to notice the inconsistency in your marketing materials. Audits can be as simple or as extensive as your budget and needs dictate. The results will protect the visual consistency resulting in gained market share and profits.
Additional Communication Audit Resources
To effectively combat out-migration, community hospitals must reposition themselves from the inside out.
Your community may know your hospital name and location, but find it difficult to see it as a leading healthcare provider with the same comprehensive services, skilled doctors and specialists as larger hospitals. Refreshing your hospital’s brand and image is a great and effective way to reposition in the changing healthcare economy.
Re-branding Your Hospital Can:
- Provide an opportunity to communicate the shift of higher-quality healthcare services
- Allow you to build service lines and new audiences
- Communicate economies of scale to reduce healthcare costs
- Can help shed a negative reputation, or disguise negative events
- Communicate services through partnerships, including those with a focus on clinical quality
- Leverage positive community image through partnerships with a “high-quality/high-image” provider
- Aid in the recruitment of physicians and specialists
- Update your hospital’s mission, vision and re-engage employees
The starting place for re-branding efforts must begin with employees, your hospital’s best brand ambassadors. The internal input and buy-in must be early enough to ensure that your re-branding message is on target and can remain consistent.
To begin your hospital’s re-branding efforts, these 6 internal, pre-makeover tactics, will be helpful:
- Research the community’s preconceptions on your hospital.
- Test the brand promise. How do employees feel about it? Are they believers?
- Roll out the new campaign internally first. If they have bought into the message, then it can be delivered to patients.
- Give employees time and the tools to internalize the new campaign. The enthusiasm and commitment they see from your employees will help sell the new campaign.
- Once employees own the new campaign, display your new campaign message at your hospital. Employees and patients will be reminded daily of its new image.
- Look for innovative ways to integrate the promise into the daily lives of each employee. Think of efforts such as awards and recognitions, blog and Facebook stories for internal and external communication, and community initiatives that can elevate the campaign even further.
There are numerous benefits of first testing your hospital’s brand campaign internally:
- It is a good way to conduct research on how the community will respond to your new message.
- It can create loyalty and advocacy internally.
- It will help employees buy into the brand promise.
- It can facilitate employees spreading the brand to patients and the community.
Here’s a good example of a community hospital’s re-branding campaign:
Danbury Hospital, a community hospital in Connecticut, recently developed a new brand campaign to convince consumers to look past their old-time preconceptions and see the hospital as a high-care provider. The imagery and campaign theme “A Higher Level of Care” blends patients with high-tech.
Clear and open communications with internal and external audiences provided outstanding results. Research found that ad recall is up 13 percent from the previous year in all markets, with unaided ad recall up 20 percent in the primary market.
Care to share your community hospital’s challenges and success through re-branding? Which internal tactics did you find the most helpful?
Community events (seminars, screenings, etc.) are integral to most community hospitals’ branding and marketing efforts. Social media will transform your next event with a more strategic approach for targeting your audience, building audience through social networks and finally tracking the event’s success.
“Event participants that adopted integrated social media tools increased their fundraising by as much as 40 percent compared to their peers who weren’t using the available online tools.”
Event social media marketing will:
- Connect like-minded individuals to your event.
- Allow easy sharing with your friends, associates and other fans in network.
- Market your event cost-effectively, either directly as the creator of the event or as a sponsor, advertiser, exhibitor or presenter.
- Encourage additional sales. Classes may cost. Encourage additional sales by easy access to signing up for classes and payment options.
- Enable attendee interaction before, during and after through Twitter, blog posts and comments, blogs, video, photographs and Facebook.
- Track event success.
- Provide user-generated comments that determine how your target market reflects on your community hospital.
- Give sponsor marketing opportunities.
Social media continues to drive new levels of success for hospital events by building awareness and support from your social networks. The social media tools that are making the strongest impact today include Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Hospitals using social media are reaching more of their target audience, increasing attendees and growing networks of new advocates.
Here’s the game plan to market your hospital event
- Twitter - start using a hashtag in all your related tweets and encourage other people to do the same when talking about your event.
- Facebook – is a great place to start counting down to the event date, add posts announcing seminar speakers and promoting sponsors too. Tie Facebook into your other social networking sites by adding a “Like Box” to your website, blog or other web presence.
- LinkedIn events to reach your professional network. Invite up to 50 people from your LinkedIn network.
- Foursquare and Gowalla. It’s free to set up and will promote you during your event. Increase the number of check-ins by adding signs and table-top displays reminding people to check in, and even sweeten the deal with a giveaway or random drawing.
- Live Blogging – If you have an all-day health fair wouldn’t it be great to blog about the morning seminar to draw people into the afternoon events!
Research conducted by Charity Dynamics and Blackbaud provides a more in-depth look at the growing impact of social media events. You will find more research on how an integrated social media event campaign can be the winning solution for your community hospital. Download the white paper: Making Event Participants More Successful with Social Media Tools.
If you are debating navigating your community hospital down a path of the new marketing channels (i.e. social media), make sure your community hospital brand is strong first. Start with a strategic plan, stay the course and don’t forget your overall marketing channels. Branding takes dedication, commitment and a strong foundation to be effective.
Now I ask you, “are you like the millions of Americans who reach for the newest workout product on the shelf?” Is your community hospital brand also reaching for the next marketing fad?
With all the new marketing channels today: YouTube, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, Flip camera, Podcasts, are you struggling to find the right mix for your hospital? How much time are you spending researching, writing and managing these new marketing channels for your organization? Are you taking time away from your traditional marketing outlets and letting your community hospital brand suffer?
Take a lesson from Orlando Health:
- They needed to better deliver their vision and mission more effectively.
- Starting with a strategy, they implemented a new branding system, naming and visual identity.
- A new brand culture was then established for physicians, staff, volunteers and partners.
- Offline and online branding education tools educated them on its new brand culture.
Results to date have exceeded expectations, driving increases in both internal engagement and external market measures (awareness, image, volume).
The new branding, launched in 2007, is vibrant, bold and spirited. Their strategy, implementation and commitment to the brand has kept it fresh in the minds of its patients and paved the way to their social media efforts today. Social media marketing is like all your branding efforts. It takes time and you can’t create it and hope that it will sell itself.
Are you committed to your brand?
