instantly health

I may seem like I am asking a silly question, but truth be told, beyond the customer or patient satisfaction numbers, chances are, your employees may not like your customers or patients all that much.  I am not saying that your employees are treating customers and patients with open disdain or contempt. They may be exhibiting behaviors and using language in internal meetings that demonstrate a lack of respect in a “we know better than you attitude.”   Really?   The lack of employee concern and caring, communicated verbally and non-verbally in the workplace, with average to mediocre employee satisfaction surveys, may be a pretty good indication that leadership behavior is sending a powerful unspoken message. When little differentiation exists (a service, is a service, is a service) to tell vendors, hospitals, doctors, and other providers apart, employees are liking their customers, can set you apart from your competition. And with little opportunity existing now, and in th...

How does this grab you? Thirty-eight percent of all internet searches are now by voice using a digital assistant like Siri, Alexa, Echo, and others on a smartphone or home voice internet connected device. Additionally, most voices activated searches are using the term “near me” sometimes combined with the term “near me today.”  Putting it another way, will the healthcare consumer and potential patient voice searching for a physician, find the hospital via your “Find-A-Physician” portal on your website? I ask the question about finding a physician because I don’t think people are going to voice-search the hospital, except maybe to get directions. And the other reason is that no matter the payment system, the hospital still needs a physician’s order for any diagnostic testing or treatment. What to do? Now that I have your attention and it very well could be an OMG moment, with now I have something else to worry about, optimizing the hospital or health system website is possible in sh...

Think about the headline question a little. If the real aim is medical care delivered at the right time, in the right place, at the right cost, it follows that the centralization of healthcare around a hospital is not the right model for marketing. Think about this like a distributive computer network model sharing the work across many computers instead of a single large computer.  If one examines the pace of change and innovation, it’s easy to envision marketing’s role more on the experience and demand management side of the equation, by building a hospital or health system brand that is distributive with the service and treatment location that best suits the healthcare consumers or patient’s needs.  It’s all about meeting the medical needs of the consumer or patient in the “distributive network” and building the brand among connected network touchpoints. Touchpoints that are not separate but a connected whole. A distributive approach to your branding significantly changes th...

And it’s not about “putting heads in the beds.” The marketing mission is now engagement, experience, and demand management. From what I can see, the great majority of hospital leadership still believes hospital and system marketing is the “all about us” story. The story of being “world-class” with dazzling high-tech equipment, state-of-the-art buildings, awards, and all the features of care as seen as important to the hospital or health system, without any mention of the value and benefit to the end-user, aka, the patient. Old and tired from the 1990s, that kind of marketing and content doesn’t work anymore. This is the new mission of hospital marketing in a value-based world. Consumer and Patient Engagement More than a buzzword, engagement is the way that one binds the healthcare consumer and patient to the hospital or health system network. In an age where the changes over the last decade mean that a person only needs a hospital for three items- emergency care, care for acute complex...

A funny thing happens when you get older.  Brands, especially those in healthcare, suddenly decide that based solely on age, that one is now in need of senior services, specialized care, and other age-based items. I particularly enjoy the direct mail pieces for Medicare supplement insurance from Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare, and others with the rhetorical question, “Are you turning 65?” in the headline. Really? Do I have a choice in whether I’m turning 65? I never imagined it was a possible choice.  And here is the big one for me, Consumer Cellular, your ads portray “seniors” as bumbling fools who need help to understand that “new-fangled technology.”  Nonsense. Just nonsense. Age-based segmentation is wrong on many levels. Age-based marketing does not reflect the new market realities of how someone of any age uses technology, their experiences or expectations as individuals, as well as how they relate to the world, their beliefs, self-perceptions, at...

Bright social, where you can see your handiwork, and revel in the brilliance of your content in attempts to influence the choice of the healthcare consumer and patients in selecting the hospital and physicians for treatment could be falling way short. Falling short you say? Not entirely mind you, but with the changes in all of the social media platforms as a result of fake news, phony followers, misuse of user data, etc.,  Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and other social media platforms as restrictive content publishing houses only represents one-third of all the activity in social media on the Internet of Things (IoT). Where in the world is this going? Two-thirds of internet social media activity occurs in what has been termed dark social. I am not speaking of the nefarious activities of drug dealers, gun runners, blackmailers, etc. using TOR or another program that allows one to search the web anonymously. I am referring to all the social media activitie...

As the provider market for the healthcare consumer continues to consolidate through merger, acquisition, liquidation, or disintermediation, there is one clear outcome. Fewer providers mean heightened competition within hospitals or health systems in a bid you stay atop the food chain. But with the consumer's realization that they need a hospital for only three things, emergency care, intensive care, and care for complex acute medical conditions, they are more in control with their physician of the buying process that providers want to admit. To become part of the consumer's choice for healthcare, successful providers will recognize that understanding the healthcare consumer buyers' journey is the new way of thinking about marketing, how it impacts growth, and can drive the organization in a better direction that is more customer-focused and responsive.  Customer Buyer Journey In this environment, providers are already losing meaningful differentiation. Marketing campaigns f...