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.
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.
Your repertoire among local physicians greatly dictates your community hospital’s ability to gather a client base. Learn how to tailor your services and marketing campaign to increase your physician referrals.
It may be helpful to dedicate one individual to act as the face of your community hospital when reaching out to other physician practices. A personal relationship is the key to successfully obtaining physician referrals, because physicians will refer to a practice that they trust and respect.
Build A Network
- Assess the physician practices and primary care doctors in your area. Reach out by sending a letter of introduction or inviting the physicians to visit your hospital or attend a seminar.
- Involve your own physicians. Their interest and involvement is crucial to developing a referral strategy. They may have insights into local physicians and practices with whom you can connect.
- Cultivate relationships with existing referrals and potential referrals using the following techniques:
Cost-Effective Marketing
- Establish a presence on the web: Keep your website up-to-date with information for both referring physicians and patients. Ensure your web content is compatible with mobile devices, as recent studies have shown that 80 to 90 percent of doctors have a smartphone.
- Utilize social media: Use sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to keep in frequent contact with patients and physicians. Use “tweets” and “status updates” as a way to briefly but frequently touch base with other physicians. Show your physicians to be both personable with patients and knowledgeable about medicine.
- Email marketing: Send out business-to-business emails systematically and share the latest news about your programs and services.
- Advertising in physician-only networking sites: Register with a physician-only networking site such as Sermo (largest MD-only online community), iMEdExchange or Ozmosis.
- On-site/in-person marketing: Just because almost everything is moving online does not mean you have to abandon traditional marketing techniques. When time permits, have a representative visit local practices and spread the word and reputation of your hospital.
Provide Optimal Customer Service
This post from Rx MD Marketing Solutions suggests how to “make it easy to work with you and your office”:
- Report back quickly to the referring physicians about their patients. Do all that you can to assist them with paperwork or prescriptions related to their patient.
- Refer back to the physicians who have referred you. If you see a patient who needs a primary care doctor or a specialist service that you don’t offer, refer him to a local practice that has referred you.
- Demonstrate good customer service by treating the referring offices with respect. Be prompt with their calls and requests, and consider sending a thank-you note to the physicians who have recommended you.
Mobile-tagging, or QR Codes, provide immediate response for return on marketing investment and simplify the marketing challenge of integrating social media with your ongoing community hospital marketing efforts. Best of all, it is practically FREE!
What is a QR Code?
QR Codes – or “Quick Response” Codes – are small, scannable, 2D barcodes that can link to a multitude of digital content. These little square modules may be read by any smartphone or mobile phone with a camera, and they instantly connect users to additional encoded content such as text, videos or specific web site URLs.
QR Codes may be placed in newspaper ads, magazines, billboards, posters, direct mailers, email messages, web sites, blogs and just about any other medium, offering consumers simple and convenient information retrieval.
Your healthcare audience will be able to quickly access additional content, while you will be able to immediately measure the effectiveness of your campaign (by tracking the QR Code interactions).
FREE QR Code How To’s
- Generating: Marketers can create free codes from one of the many QR Code generators such as delivr , myQR or Kaywa.
- Tracking: For additional services such as tracking or analytic dashboards, registration or premium versions of programs may be required. myQR offers free QR tracking.
- You can also use Google Analytics to track the code.
- Scanning: To scan QR Codes, users need a QR scanner application on their mobile devices. Check out this comprehensive list of QR Code readers.
- Click here for more information on QR Apps.
Healthcare Marketer Uses of QR Codes
Partner and Simmons Healthcare Blog makes a few suggestions for how QR codes may be used by healthcare marketers:
- Use a QR Code to link an ad to a video or product page, offering more detailed information about the advertised product or service
- Initiate a call with a doctor’s office or to a find-a-doctor tool
- Solicit opt-ins for your email newsletter
- Offer quick access to an event web site or live polling
- Collect contest registrations
- Provide event or health seminar information, maps and RSVP forms
On the “Manage My Practice” blog, Mary Pat Whaley’s article tells “22 Ways You Will use QR (Quick Response) Codes in Healthcare in the Future (If You’re Smart),” adding ideas such as using the codes in television ads for pharmaceuticals or using them on food and medication products.
Real-Life Examples
- One hospital, TriStar Health System in Nashville, recently announced that it will begin incorporating a QR Code in its Fast ER Wait Times campaign to link consumers to information about the average emergency room wait times at hospitals in Middle Tennessee. This puts real-time information in people’s fingertips when time matters most.
- Children’s Hospital Boston tried QR Codes for the first time in its Winter 2011 newsletter, Dream, and reported more than 125 scans within the first few days of its drop.
- Patient stories are the hero of the cardiac campaign for Memorial Health Care System in Tennessee. Every part of the multi-media effort (including QR Codes) leads to a custom microsite where the community can further engage in each story, conduct an online risk assessment and find out how to choose a cardiologist.
Check out our five important tips for using QR codes at your community hospital.
Facebook recently announced a number of changes to its Pages, effective March 10, bringing the Pages to look and feel more like Profile Pages.
Use the changes to your advantage – learn how to utilize the upgraded Facebook Page to market and manage your community hospital brand.
Five Noteworthy Changes
- Profile Picture: Reduced to 180×540 pixels.
- Tabs Moved: Instead of being across the top, tabs will be listed on the left panel; a maximum of six tabs display above the fold.
- Photo Strip: The new photo strip, located above the page wall, displays five photos uploaded by the page. Any image could default to the strip — to remove an image, hover over it and click the “x.” Another positive feature is that images uploaded by fans will NOT be displayed.
- Wall Filter: Choose to see posts by “Everyone” or by only your page.
- Use Facebook as a Page: You now have the option to interact with other Pages on Facebook through your page. See details below.
Note: You can preview the new Facebook Page, but once you upgrade, you can’t revert back to the original. All pages will upgrade automatically March 10.
How to Use Facebook as a Page
The new Facebook page is a welcome improvement for community hospital Facebook administrators. Pages allow you to monitor and provide greater control over your brand!
- Receive notifications when other people interact with your page.
- “Like” other pages and post comments through your page.
- See Facebook’s recommendations for pages to “like” based on pages your fans like.
- View Newsfeed just for your page, and keep up with pages you’ve “liked.”
- Manually list terms to block by going to the “Manage Permissions” tab and entering words into the “blocklist.”
Note: Activate your community hospital page by going to “Account” and hitting “Use as Page.”
The Benefit
These new changes allow your community hospital to function the way individual users do on Facebook. Increased interactivity will encourage more page views, promoting your community hospital page.
Resources
- Read the new Facebook policy guidelines.
- Check out The Social Penguin blog’s run through page changes.
The Internet has become a primary source for healthcare information. With medical knowledge in such high demand on the Web, community hospitals must promote their brands by being a resource to online consumers.
Recent Findings From The Pew Internet Project
Click here to download the full 2011 report from The Pew Internet & American Life Project.
- 59 percent of the overall U.S. population seeks heath information online.
- Nearly two-thirds of these health seekers were looking for information about a specific disease or medical problem.
- 17 percent of cell phone users have specifically used their phones to look up health or medical information.
- Nearly half of internet users who go online for health information are searching on behalf of someone else.
What This Means for Community Hospital Marketers
- The online public is in need of a credible source for medical information.
- By establishing your hospital as an informed source on the Web, you will gain patient trust.
- The Web will direct a whole new audience of information seekers to your community hospital.
- This online community will only grow, so getting ready now is a must.
Get to Know Your Online Audience
According to The Pew Internet Project, the following demographic groups are more likely to search for healthcare information online:
- Women
- Non-hispanic whites
- Young adults
- Those with higher levels of education
Online Marketing Essentials
- Make sure your hospital’s website is easy to find on search engines, especially Google:
See 5 basic search engine optimization techniques - Send frequent e-mail newsletters of health data and information to your patient lists; include links to more information on the Web.
- If you have lots of health information available in digital form, consider establishing a searchable database for online patients seeking information about medical problems.
Hospitals With a Presence on the Web
- University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinic offers a complete online Health Information Library for online medical seekers. The site features a full index on topics such as symptoms and diseases, surgeries and procedures, nutrition and self care. You can also request an appointment online or browse the hospital staff to find a doctor.
- Presbyterian Healthcare of Charlotte, N.C., also offers an online Health Library with categorized searches for medical animations, interactive health tools and an assortment of health topics in both English and Spanish. Presbyterian also sends out regular e-newsletters on a variety of health topics, which are also available online.
Instead of just focusing on patient care within the hospital, engage your community: expand awareness of your brand and services through outreach programs.
Many hospitals have already been making a difference:
“Eat Right, Move More” Program – Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital
- With obesity on the rise, Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital has partnered with Speer Elementary School in Arlington, Texas, to educate its second graders on healthy lifestyles with a new program called “Eat Right, Move More.”
- The program encourages kids to reduce their Body Mass Index by increasing physical activity and monitoring eating habits. In this video clip, one local mother praises the program for introducing fruits and vegetables into her son’s diet, as he has lost 20 pounds in just a couple months.
LiVe Mobile – Healthy Living Application – Intermountain Healthcare
- Intermountain Healthcare — a nonprofit health system based in Salt Lake City, Utah, which includes 23 hospitals and over 780 physicians — has released the free LiVe Mobile App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
- The application helps you set healthy eating and activity goals and then easily track your progress.
“Hunger in the Community: Ways Hospitals Can Help” – UMass Memorial Health Care
- For this initiative in Boston, Massachusetts, UMass Memorial Health Care and the Boston anti-hunger group, Project Bread, are working with federal, state and local leaders to help connect people who are hungry with existing food programs.
- A few successful hospitals: At UMass Memorial Medical Center, employees help patients apply for food stamps and find local food banks; Boston Medical Center has its own food pantry. Many other hospitals in the area screen patients for hunger and provide emergency food vouchers to local supermarkets for those patients.
What You Can Do
- Hildy Gottlieb lists seven suggestions for what your hospital can do to reach out to the community.
- Gottlieb’s list suggests engaging your community by involving it in community decisions and discussions about community issues and problems.
- Build upon the community’s strengths by creating programs that your community has a vested interest in.
- Work with integrity by acting respectfully as you address issues; this will build patient trust and positively affect your brand awareness.
Share your story — what is your hospital doing to help your community?
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.”
To achieve social media success for your community hospital, there are certain daily “chores” needed to build online relationships, long-term loyalty, retention and your brand ambassadors.
Your marketing team is either in two camps: one, you have built your Facebook fan page, Twitter account and blog; or two, you are considering all ins and outs of social media marketing–understanding that in order to receive participation, you need to allow for “daily social media maintenance” in order to develop your community.
I understand that tasking this social media checklist to an already overworked hospital marketer will seem overwhelming. But by doing this process every day your community hospital can reap the rewards your hospital leaders desire.
8 Daily Steps for Social Media Success:
- Open your tools: Bit.ly, Tweetdeck & Facebook.
- Read daily blogs for inspiration: I personally like Google Reader. Subscribe to a few blog RSS feeds and read your favorite, must-reads first to get engaged in the online conversation. For a hospital communicator it might be Social Media Examiner, HMC News, various agency blogs or a blog focused on “cancer” or another service line you are marketing.
- Organize and automate your tweet that day: Aim for 3-4 update “tweets”a day, which I schedule out using SocialOomph.com. I shorten all the links using Bit.ly and use those same links on Facebook.
- Post to Facebook: 400 million active users! This is the best opportunity to send your community a message, so don’t forget this step. Post a status message daily, something engaging or interesting.
- Inform your other team members so they are “liking,” sharing and re-Tweeting your information. If you have a team to help you, this is a great source for helping SEO and hospital brand visibility. Use your inner office chat program or have team members monitor throughout the day your new tweets with services like Tweetdeck.
- Respond: Respond back to at least two replies. Be open and approachable. Make sure your organization has a face and a personality. Accept comments online and respond in a timely manner. And make sure you respond honestly. Tell what you can do to correct a problem or address an issue. But be equally as candid in sharing what you can’t fix and why.
- Monitor: It’s important to track everything to analyze what posts viewers actually care about and share so you can post more of those in the future. Also respond quickly, personally and directly to any negative comment.
Tools to use: Twitter, try TweetDeck which allows multiple columns to be viewed simultaneously. Create a column for @mentions. This will make it easier to keep track of chatter revolving around your hospital.
Facebook platforms can be monitored by watching the wall to see what people are posting and e-mail notifications can be customized for important alerts when new messages are posted.
YouTube and blogs, enable settings in these social media sites to create an e-mail alert when there is a new comment or connection. - Research: Social media marketing is changing daily. Stay ahead of the curve and know how to deliver what your healthcare consumer wants to hear.
Maintaining your hospital’s online relationships can be a task. Grab your morning coffee, settle in for about an hour and complete these eight steps daily. Your job in the social media game is to guide your healthcare consumers, listen to them and follow their lead. When you do this daily it will move your hospital brand to a new level!
