Truth #2: Healthcare marketing needs a serious shake-up
The Truths We Hold Self-Evident: Second in a Series
Recently, we worked on an initiative with a small clinical group, and we were discussing the need to be very clear about our target audience. The group was building a specialized program aimed at a tiny subsegment of cardiac patients, and to emphasize the point, I joked: “At least we don’t have to worry about billboards this time.” Laughs all around. Until the next meeting, when one of the cardiologists spoke up: “I know we were joking about billboards last time, but maybe there’s an intersection in town where the traffic patterns might make a billboard a smart option.” Sigh.
The “billboards will solve everything” suggestion would be funnier if it didn’t happen so universally, so often. Not that we have anything against billboards – we’ve created dozens, believe me. They obviously have a place in the universe of potential marketing tactics. But the clarion call of “let’s put up a billboard” is one of the more obvious signs that hospital and health system marketing needs to shed its rudimentary, tired approaches and join other industries in embracing sophisticated and innovative marketing strategies.
Old School Thinking
Hospitals and health systems are burdened by old-school thinking that permeates their approach to marketing and branding. How so?
- The use of traditional media channels for communication – such as television, print, and yes, outdoor – still dominates the typical marketing plan, despite the erosion of viewers, readers and effectiveness.
- The same tired approaches are used over and over and over again, from straightforward patient testimonials – “Snowflake Hospital really cared for me” – to the use of supplier photography to promote new technology investments – “Popeye Clinics now offers the BS4000 triple-scan microfritter.”
- Broad-based consumer advertising is used when business is so often driven through referring physician channels. How many of you have been pushed to promote general surgery services with an advertising campaign? I can see the billboard now: “The next time you need your gall bladder removed, come to Periwinkle Health System.”
- Many marketing messages forget the marketing 101 mantra of showing the audience “what’s in it for me,” instead delivering communications that are self-promotional or feature-oriented. A great example of this is the staid tradition of running an ad in the local paper announcing the hiring of a new primary care physician. That’s great for you (clinic or hospital), but unless I’m one of the very few who happens to be looking for a new doc at that time, it’s meaningless. (A recent study from the Center for Studying Health System Change reported that in 2007, only 11 percent of American adults looked for a new primary care physician.)
Why is healthcare marketing stuck in a rut?
Hospitals and health systems have only recently had to leverage marketing and branding. Up until the 1980’s, the need for competitive strategies – and thus marketing – wasn’t often required. That means the industry as a whole is still low on the learning curve when it comes to these disciplines.
The result is a class of leadership that is, in general, behind when it comes to marketing.
In so many cases, marketing and branding are simply not understood – or worse, not valued – by those who lead our organizations. No matter how smart or creative the marketing department is, how sophisticated the strategy, how clever the campaign, if the CEO or the head surgeon doesn’t get it, it won’t fly. In their defense, many of these leaders don’t have formal marketing education or experience. But in its absence, instead of trusting their marketing leaders, they fall back on what they’ve seen before or what they see out in the healthcare market. Because both of these sources typically reflect bad or “old school” marketing, the cycle repeats itself. There’s also political pressure internally to “make the physicians happy,” which ostensibly means giving in to the demand for wrong-headed marketing tactics like promoting a lung cancer program using billboards and newspaper advertising. So often we hear from our clients, “Yes, we know it’s not effective, but do it anyway. It will make them happy.”
How can we move the ball forward?
Despite the challenges built into the system, we must all work harder to advance healthcare marketing and branding. For one, there are an increasing number of new entrants into the provider market that understand these disciplines, which gives them an advantage over traditional healthcare providers. Second, the world of media is changing all around us, from the rapid growth of social networking to the death of newspapers. Like all industries, we need to learn to adapt. But perhaps most importantly, our customers are changing. The rise of more clinical alternatives, the breadth of the Internet as a resource, the growing number of outside influencers on care decisions, and the rise in consumers spending more of their own money on healthcare – all of these lead to a more empowered healthcare consumer. And that demands more sophisticated and innovative marketing strategies.
So what can you do as a healthcare marketing leader?
- Embrace innovation – don’t rely on the tired-old strategies of the past. Question the same-old same-old and constantly look for new and better approaches.
- Always find ways to measure the results of your efforts, to help demonstrate the value of marketing to your organization.
- Explore and embrace more sophisticated tools and techniques, from CRM to call center implementation to brand building.
- Forget looking at what everyone else in your market is doing, and do something different or better. As stated by a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School in a recent BusinessWeek article, “A leader is someone who doesn’t do what everyone else does.”
- Try creative new approaches to reaching your customers – don’t be afraid to dance on the edge.
And perhaps most importantly of all, never give up the fight. At times you may feel like Sisyphus, pushing that rock up the hill and watching it roll back down yet again. Look for any victory you can and build on that success. The industry will never move forward unless those of us who understand the true value of marketing and branding push it there, even if it’s kicking and screaming every step of the way.
- Published: January 26, 2009
- Filed under: Innovation, Marketing