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  Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Email I can see your eyes glaze over.   Done correctly, the hospital has an underutilized, efficient, and effective tool at its disposal to engage and manage patient expectations. Email also offers a cost-effective way to implement an ongoing engagement strategy when combined with social media. Email can provide relevant medical information, health and wellness tips, and practices to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic to maintain continuous engagement. Email is one of the few mechanisms that hospitals can control. It's a marketing tool to build brand loyalty, enhance the experience, and engage. Better than outbound interruptive marketing, where your general messaging reaches the broadest possible audience hoping that someone will respond, email is direct messaging to the patient, and should be a part of your inbound marketing program. But it just not a mail merge program to put a name at the top . And it's not buying an email list.  ...

  Image by Tumisu from Pixabay  One of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic are that patient experience, how it's managed and communicated, how expectations are set and experienced by patients are the new normal.     Hospitals have been required to communicate efficiently and effectively what the patient experience is in light of COVID-19 restrictions, revised procedures, and general interactions.  I have to say, the answer to the headline is yes and no. I have seen major health systems change their marketing to reflect the new normal in the patient's experience, mask-wearing, telemedicine, alternative site care, etc. From the website to messaging and communications, the "new normal," positive experience and expectations are being established.  I'd also have to say no, as many community-independent and unaffiliated hospitals are still heavily invested in the features approach to marketing and communicating to patients. Telling the "all about us" story ...

  Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay If the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic taught us in 2020, hospital marketers need to be agile and pivot on a dime. How have you allocated the hospital marketing spend for 2021? Can the hospital quickly change tactical direction by moving dollars to where they are needed?   Can one change messaging quickly to leverage a new opportunity brought about by the unknown? Now, I am not making light of a bad situation with the pandemic, as there is an opportunity to be leveraged. The leverage is not driving revenue, but as your community's source leader with credible, reliable information and care in combating the viral community spread. The influence is also being able to engage your patients on a meaningful level so that when the pandemic eventually comes under some measure of control, the patient would return to you because the hospital established trust. Enter 2021 Much of the allocations assigned to the strategies and tactics in the marketing plan ...

COVID-19 and the innovation that continues to rapidly evolve in patients' access and comfort in using digital healthcare can be transformational for the hospital. For example, the pandemic has placed the patient in charge of when, where, and how hospital services are utilized.  Suppose for a moment that the pandemic has taught patients how to change utilization behavior. In that case, telemedicine and digital healthcare teach that one only needs a hospital for a few medically necessary services that cannot be provided in a freestanding ambulatory center. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay The fourth wave of the digital healthcare transformation is an opportunity for the hospital. The patient is increasingly in control. Patients control their health and health data through wearables, mobile health platforms, telemedicine, and self-tracking devices. Patients have experience expectations based on previous non-healthcare digital experiences by selecting the most appropriate digital ...

  Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay While there have been great strides in hospitals and health systems adopting digital marketing, most marketing remains mired in traditional outbound marketing methods. That is, pushing low-value content out in display ads, direct mailers, and broadcast media, hoping that someone will pay attention and act. Calls to actions are generic , and there is a lemming-like approach by hospitals in the same market to do the same thing simultaneously. Today's practice is still a look at us with little value messaging of what is offered. Sometimes it is even those soft; we care kinds of messaging. Commonly referred to as interruption marketing, outbound is all about sending generic messages out to the broadest possible number of audiences with no customization of content or news, hoping that someone will respond. The pandemic defines today's hospital as it affects the brand promise, engagement, and experience. These are the difference makers bet...

Do you know who your patient hospital brand evangelists are? I ask this question for a very important reason.  In an age of little provider differentiation in the retail medical marketplace with me-too messaging, how is a healthcare consumer to make a choice? Now that being said, I realize that many healthcare leaders will dispute the above statement.  But the fact is it is little if any messaging differentiation.  I was there in the same place but made a conscious effort to move away from the “me too” messaging. So where am I going with this? Healthcare consumers and patients are demanding price and quality transparency, as is CMS, employers, and other key constituents. Maybe what they want is more price certainty and to know what the value is they are receiving for the dollar paid?  But few in the hospital or health system segment are listening to the needs and demands of the healthcare consumer. Then they howl loudly than a third-party releases data that is p...

It’s the consumer demand for the Amazon experience that is beginning to drive expectations and experience in health care.  Secondary to the headline question is, are healthcare providers prepared for that new marketing reality? Like anything in life and business, some are, but the majority is not.   But be that as it may, it would seem that healthcare consumer or patient engagement is not a part-time or some of the time activity comprised of hit or miss events.  My goodness, there are over 147 engagement and experience touchpoints with the insured consumer and patient with the hospital or health system. So when all of the interruptive outbound marketing that goes on with silly messaging of we have the best doctors, our nurses care more, etc., no wonder the insured consumer and patient roll their eyes during the engagement and experience process when reality meets fantasy.  What engagement should be viewed as is the opportunity to create, foster, and nourish a on...

And it’s not a quiz either. I try extremely hard not to call out individual hospitals or health systems for their lack of understanding of the healthcare consumer, their expectations, needs, and for knowing who their patient is. But sometimes the professional healthcare marketer in me gets the best of me when I receive some marketing material from a health system, through different incarnations, I have used for 22 plus years. That’s right 22 plus years.  Oh, and did I mention that my wife, children, and mother-in-law have used them too? PH has no idea after 22 years of utilization from being a patient, using the ER, to outpatient testing, WHO. I. AM. And here is what set me off. And I can guarantee you that many a healthcare consumer, aka former patient, feels the same way. The other day, I received a direct mail piece. It was a very nicely done, four-color, a heavy stock paper mailer that looked expensive with an offer for a chance to win a Fitbit.  But the catch was if and o...

With all the things that hospital leadership and healthcare marketing executives have on their plates and keeping them up at night, here’s a new one.  And unfortunately, it’s out of one's control, and no exceptions are allowed. With the economic shift from a product and service economy to an experience economy, providers are at a clear disadvantage by continuing to market like it is the 1990s.  Now that being said, it’s not all providers, but the vast majority.   Being paid for the production of care in the fee-for-service model is a product and service approach to healthcare.  Though the payment mechanism is changing, little has changed in provider marketing.   A vast majority of healthcare providers still taking the product marketing features approach. Notice that I did not say features and benefits marketing. Providers only go halfway choosing features or warm fuzzy improbable benefits but not both in their marketing.  I have yet to see a provider o...