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Showing posts from September, 2021

It’s Time for Providers to Understand & Market the LGBTQ+ Community

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  Gay pride image by naemi_a from Pixabay And meet their healthcare needs in the process. In an interesting article wittier by Eric Burger in PRWeek on September 22 nd , “ More than one-third of LGBTQ individuals say healthcare companies don’t understand them. The data comes from a study by CMI Media Group with Wells Fargo and Human Rights Campaign.” If you’re a healthcare marketer, I would suggest that you read the article and consider how you can become the champion in your provider setting to change the narrative internally and in your community. You can’t market what you don’t understand. That is the issue given the scant attention in most healthcare providers who ignore the LGBTQ+ community. Political and religious views aside, failure to understand and create those marketing communications messages, content, and appropriate LGBTQ+ friendly images is a deal-breaker. I don’t think it’s necessarily intentional. Still, as healthcare marketers focus on traditional markets, i...

Employee Recruitment Marketing – Is the Applicants Experience Supported or Disconnected?

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  Recruitment image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Employee recruitment marketing using current employees in providers and vendors comes and goes as a marketing recruitment tool. Carefully selected happy and long-term employees tout the culture, work environment, co-workers, etc., and why they have been there so long. It’s not uncommon to see comments about the mission-driven company and how everyone is treated with dignity and respect. I know because I have created and executed in partnership with HR these types of campaigns. Not only do they attract qualified candidates, but it provides employees the opportunity to be an active brand ambassador of the provider or vendor.   Then comes the job candidate’s experience, which may or may not reflect the marketing and brand claims. Best place to work awards, top company to work for, and other awards have people scratching their heads wondering what happened. How you treat the job candidate is as important as what you say in the co...

The Patient Brand Evangelist Posting UGC - the Next Hospital Marketing Frontier

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People Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Do you know who your patient hospital brand evangelists are, and are they posting User Generated Content (UGC)? I ask this question for a fundamental reason.  In an age where it’s challenging to define differentiation clearly and me too messaging amongst hospitals, in a pandemic that shows no signs of ending soon, how is a healthcare patient to make a choice? I realize that many healthcare leaders will dispute the above statement.  However, hospital marketing -traditional, digital and social, fall into one of four general buckets, ‘it’s all about you”, “look at at our technology,”  “our facilities and locations,” and “look at our awards.” In an age of pandemic uncertainty, the marketing and communication efforts focus on features, not patient benefits. Consider for a moment.  1.        Patients are now engaged in shopping behavior .  2.        Patients are pay...

Building the Hospital 2022 Marketing Plan – Eleven Considerations

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Planning meeting image by Startup Stock Photos from Pixabay 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 we thought we might be coming out of the pandemic in 2021, here comes Wave 4- the pandemic of the unvaccinated driven by the COVID-19 delta variant. 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 2022. With planning just beginning in some organizations or nearly ready to start, the time is now for change. The market has shifted dramatically. Business graph image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixaby. Consider the seismic shifts due to the pandemic for the plan and budget development ...