February 15, 2012
Top 5 Things That Matter In Marketing This Week – Healthcare
Reed: Hi I’m Reed Immer our Digital Marketing Specialist, and this is Carolyn Walker the managing partner here at Response Marketing, and these are the five things that matter in marketing this week. This week we are focusing on Healthcare Marketing. Ok so first off, the Walgreen owned Take Care clinics have announced that they will be allowing patients to book appointments at their clinics through an online appointment scheduler and then also through in store kiosks. I think just in terms of brining your business to the digital sphere and allowing your patients to interact with you in a more casual, yet informative and easy to access way is huge for Take Care and Walgreens and I think it offers a ton of potential for other health clinics and what they can do in the digital sphere.
Carolyn: Yeah, I think it’s unbelievable and I feel like geeze this is a really cool thing, what took so long actually? So you know, if you think about what happens when you yourself go to a doctors appointment and you sit there for a half an hour, forty five minutes kind of waiting for someone to even see you, its really frustrating. And so, for them to offer this service, which I think is really smart, given who is staffing the facilities too, with PA’s and Nurse Practitioner’s it really makes a lot of sense. These are people that aren’t making rounds at hospitals so they can be dedicated to serving people within the Take Care facilities. And so, I just think it’s brilliant, I think there’s a lot more that they can do from a digital stand point. I think the next step would be really smart if they actually reminded people of their appointments via text, I think that’s probably coming down the road. In fact, I was at CES a month ago, the Consumer Electronics Show and they had an entire area dedicated to healthcare technology and what’s happening in that space. I just think you’re going to see a lot of things popping up in the healthcare industry, to make peoples interaction and the way they are serviced by healthcare providers a lot easier in the digital.
Reed: Definitely, and I think especially a service like this and the people who will be using it are finally getting to a digital point where they are comfortable. Like, 10 years ago if this came out, no body would know what’s up. I think now people are really embracing what the possibility of something like this could be.
Carolyn: Absolutely, and I think hopefully long-term, what digital does to healthcare is it reduces the cost. Because your taking care of so many more things, either at home, or over the phone, or over the web and not having actually to go into a provider. What Take Care is doing and their facilities in Walgreens though, is really the first step in a really, really good direction.
Reed: Second up, the Ashland Health Clinic in Ashland, Kansas has combated their 8th month long problem of finding nurses, doctors, and administrators for the very rural isolated town in Ashland, Kansas, by offering doctors 8 paid weeks a year of missionary leave. Which would allow them to go anywhere in the world, do whatever sort of service project they want. I think in terms of setting your hospital apart, your brand apart especially in a market like this where small rural towns are competing for qualified practitioners is huge and it just sets your unique value proposition a league above everyone else.
Carolyn: Yeah you know, and I think what they’re doing is niche marketing at its finest, right? It’s not for everybody, if you’re in a bigger town or bigger city where you are trying to attract tons and tons of doctors, its not going to work. But because they only have a couple of positions to fill and by creating a unique way of communicating their brand to the doctors across the country, they’re only probably getting a handful of people who want to do this. But they are getting the right kind of people that believe in what they’re doing and what they’re saying. And they are attracting the right kind of person for their little town. It makes it special and it makes it a little bit different and its something that keeps them separated from all the other small town competitors out there that are also trying to get doctors. So, I think it’s a really smart thing and like I said, I think its niche marketing at it’s finest.
Reed: A recent national assessment of adult literacy has reported that 77 million Americans have below average health literacy skills due to their below average, below 8th grade level reading skills. Again, health literacy is just being able to read doctor’s order, prescription information, basically any sort of health information, that a health provider is giving to a patient to communicate whatever message. And this is a huge problem, because it means that a huge portion of Americans are not understanding what their providers are trying to get across to them. And I think that if these providers want to be successful, they need to make sure that their messaging is as clear as humanly possible and they need to make sure they approach the messaging from the patient perspective, instead of the health perspective.
Carolyn: Yeah I totally agree with you, I think that this is a very common problem that we see in healthcare marketing. If you look at some of the things that certain hospitals have done over the years, you’ll see that they talk about topics and use terminology that is very familiar to them and they forget that they are doctors and nurses and have this education level and have this vernacular, the way they speak is so much different then the late person. No body is on the same page as you, does any body really know what an EKG is? Or how to read a brain scan? I mean, this is a piece of advertising that we saw from Mount Siani, and is anybody really going to recognize it or even how to read this brain scan? I mean come on, its crazy.
Reed: Right, if you’re a doctor it makes perfect sense.
Carolyn: Right? But you have to remember who your audience is and your audience doesn’t know this. As a matter of fact, it probably scares them quite a bit to see something like this. Versus, you know there’s other health care advertising out there. This one is for Mount Siani, and you know its talking about what a repaired heart valve looks like. You know, meet me at the end of the marathon, and that is something that someone can relate to. That takes the scariness out of the medical issue and says ‘hey this is how you’re going to help me and you’re going to get me back to normal’.
Reed: And that’s what people want out of the whole process.
Carolyn: And that’s what people want. I think it’s really important for any one in healthcare to remember who their ultimate customer is because they are not going to know the terminology and they are not going to understand everything they know. They’re doctor’s, they’ve spent ‘x’ amount of years getting trained in school and doing rounds and internships and everything else and it’s just not the same, its just not the same. And so while I understand it for the words, the technical words, it also, to your point, goes all the way to, how these people are being spoken to even in their marketing messages. I think it’s really, really critical to remember who your audience is.
Reed: As Facebook has been rapidly expanding and been in the news with its recent IPO offer, also which has been expanded is their age range of users. Where as Facebook obviously started out as a college student social network, over the years it has been expanding and expanding to people in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and then now we are seeing a lot of elderly users on Facebook. And many doctors in hospitals have started recommending that elderly patients connect with each other on social media and also with the hospitals, to combat isolation, loneliness and depression. I think this opens a huge opportunity for more and more doctors to get in the social media communication with their patients especially the elderly ones, to not only communicate information, but also nurture that relationship between patient and provider.
Carolyn: Yeah, I think you know, doctors in hospitals have to be really careful because of HIPPA and what not. But you can have a Facebook presence or social media presence, and do it in such a way, where you’re not diagnosing them or treating them on the social media, but you are helping them, you’re giving them information. We’ve done this with Yale School of medicine, we’ve done it with Western Hospital, we’ve done it with North Stonington Health Center, and so there are ways to have social presence and really help people out. And I think your point about the elderly people or older people getting into social media is dead on. If you look at the numbers, the growth is definitely there, I mean my dad is 70 years old and he’s on it. You know, it’s like everybody’s on social media. And I think that, it has become a great way to connect with other people that have like issues, or are in like demographic groups, or what not. So I think about how, even myself getting onto Facebook, where you grew up with it, I didn’t. I’m reconnecting with friends that I hadn’t spoken to in twenty years or thirty years from high school. It’s just a totally different dynamic that happens with the older generations. And it is a great way to reconnect and feel like your no the only one out there. And you can find old friend and you can find other people. Even, they may be across the country or across the world that have a similar situation that you have. And I think it doesn’t stop at elderly, I think that we are going to see these kind of micro communities pop up inside of Facebook and outside of Facebook. Where people are connecting with common issues, maybe cancer groups, or like your saying the elderly people getting together. It could be a whole host of different things; we did a Facebook group for Yale for polycystic ovarian syndrome. You know, how many people in the world have that? But they are coming together and talking to each other in a single space on Facebook.
Reed: It’s breaking down all of those communication boundaries.
Carolyn: And like you said, not feeling alone. It’s just as good thing to feel like ‘gosh, you know, I am not the only one who’s having this issue or having this concern’.
Reed: Last up, a new documentary, titled ‘Moving Forward’, which chronicles the recovery of professional snow boarder Danny Toumarkine, has been released. And it’s basically a very moving 22 minute long public service announcement about the importance of wearing helmets while snowboarding. And I think what this video, moving forward, portrays is how powerful a public service announcement can be when paired with a very strong narrative, such a s a short video, just giving users that emotional side, that many public service announcements strive for, but ultimately lack.
Carolyn: Yeah it’s huge and I think that, you know, I think its interesting with this story because so many people have jumped on the bandwagon with the video. So you know, Burton is there, medical facilities are behind him, and all kinds of things. And so attaching your brand to such an emotional story is a huge benefit for the brand, but also, just to give support to the story alone, too, right? I mean this is a great message that unfortunately Danny had to go through the trauma of having an accident without his helmet on to realize, you know, ‘hey, I should have put my helmet on and maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation’. But he’s now spinning the whole story into a great cause, and into a great message to kids out there that may think that snowboarding without their helmet is cool and getting them to put it on. And I agree with you, I think that the more that you can connect on an emotional level with your audience the more it’s a stronger benefit between you and your brand and the ultimate customer. And it creates a bond that’s harder to break than just talking about, like your saying, you know, just the functional benefit of wearing a helmet. You’re actually tying it to something really emotional and it makes just a stronger connection and stronger communication piece. And I think, to me, it also speaks just to the power of video in general, right? It’s not just about reading something or seeing something static, it brings it to life. And it makes it such a powerful story. And I think those guys did such a great job and I’m so glad that Danny, after four surgeries recovered and he’s back on the snow again.
Reed: These are the five things that matter in healthcare marketing this week. Again, I’m Reed Immer, the Digital Marketing Specialist at Response Marketing, and this is Carolyn Walker the Managing Partner at Response Marketing. Thanks for watching.
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