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Showing posts from October, 2020

17 Past Posts from Healthcare Marketing Matters for Application to the SARS-CoV-2 Resurgence

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  Image by Sebastian Thone from Pixabay Over the past several months, I have written in Healthcare Marketing Matters about the hospital response to the pandemic requiring the patient, community, and marketing engagement. Critical themes in these troubled times focused on leadership, accountability, engagement, and becoming credible sources of information via marketing and public relations. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Some blog posts addressed that since your community was no longer a hot spot and hospital admissions declined, the hospital could not fully return to business as usual with the pre-pandemic marketing messaging. It was incumbent on the hospital to maintain the momentum and reinforce its leadership and credible source of information standing by leading the community to bolster efforts to slow down community spread. Especially important considering the coming flu season. Some hospitals continued their SARS-CoV-2 leadership of the community once the first wave pass...

Building the Hospital 2021 Marketing Budget & Plan – Ten Key Strategies

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The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has played havoc with hospital budgets overall. Rapidly declining revenues saw marketing budgets and operations, the first department to be cut. That is understandable as every dollar saved in marketing flows directly to the bottom line. The unfortunate reality is that when the hospital begins to emerge from the pandemic's first wave, any market momentum has been lost, and marketing is in a restart position. Image by StartupStockPhotos on Pixabay Looking into the crystal ball, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that hospital marketing budgets, for the most part, will continue to decline as a percent of revenues and operating costs for 2021. With 2021 planning already started in some organizations or nearly ready to start, the time is now for change. The market has shifted dramatically. Consider the seismic shifts that took place due to the pandemic for the plan and budget development   – acceptance of telemedicine, the patient using socia...

The Importance of Communicating the Value of the Hospital During a Pandemic- Not Features

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With the resurgence of COVID-19 combined with the start of the flu season and colder damper weather, and so much uncertainty, conflicting viewpoints, gaslighting, and outright false facts in society, how is the hospital and health system communicating value? Image by Yogesh More from Pixabay Why value and not features, benefits, and awards? Patients and the community are scared, and there has been a loss of trust exhibited by patients not returning for care at pre-pandemic levels. With so much uncertainty, is it time to move healthcare marketing beyond "all about us" to the value and benefit brought to the patient and community? Unless you are a new provider in the market, features and services or vague quality and excellence claims may be falling on deaf ears.  Image by Tumisu from Pixabay It's about value, benefit, price, and convenience on the patient's terms in today's world. It's about answering the patient's question of trust and benefit of using y...

Your Definitive Guide for Making a Hospital Patient-focused in a Pandemic World

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  Image by Igor Link from Pixabay The old rules of marketing and attracting patients are being cast aside like leaves in a storm. The acceleration of healthcare transformation into a personal technology-driven digital and convenient service point changes the hospital's rules to adopt a higher patient-centricity level. But we are patient, and customer-focused is the cry. But the answer to the question is not a simple as it may seem. There is no checklist of "if I do this and this, I will be a customer-focused hospital or health system, and the patient or consumer will think so too." The answer to the question is a two-part answer. And a hospital cannot arrive at the promised land of being a patient-focused healthcare enterprise unless it accomplishes part two of the solution.   Part One- The Patient as Health Care Consumer Think of your own experiences when interacting with a customer-focused company.   One is engaged and highly satisfied. Interaction with the company...