Hospital Branding

If you aren’t already using testimonials in your healthcare marketing plans, I hope that this inspires you to do so. Testimonials are a powerful tool that can persuade potential customers to buy or use your services. In fact, testimonials could be one of the most powerful marketing tools you have! People feel more confident engaging in a relationship when they know there are other satisfied customers. Through testimonials, you can give potential patients a reason to believe and a trusted opinion from a third party. Testimonials are effective because they: Build trust . Your customers share the positive experiences they’ve had with your organization’s services. Provide feedback . Asking for testimonials is a great psychological spur to encourage companies to continually strive for their best performances—and allows quick corrections if they begin to drift off course. Aren’t “salesy.”  Because they aren’t written in your corporate voice, they stand out as unbiased and auth...

In this evolving, technology-driven world we live in, phone books and directories are a thing of the past.  When it comes to finding the best restaurant, electronic store, bowling alley or even hospital, you must exist online. However, having just a website alone won’t do much good if no one can find you on the web.  In today’s competitive market, you need to have an effective website that is paired with search engine optimization, or SEO, to help visitors find your site. In short, SEO helps search engines, like Google, figure out what your website is about and how it may be useful for visitors. The best practices of SEO will ultimately improve user experience and ensure visibility on search engines, and if you don’t know how to deal with SEO, don’t worry, because there are professionals like the ones from  http://cultivateexpress.com/  that will be willing to help you at all times, and don’t forget that  at SEO Elements  you will also find some of th...

I just had a birthday!  My company did, that is.  Springboard Brand & Creative Strategy recently turned 15 and since only one third of new businesses last past their first decade, I feel pretty good about this accomplishment.  As I reflect over the past decade and a half, there are certain thoughts and ideas that surfaced that I wanted to share.   I hope some will educate, inspire, amuse, or just be a head nod to those who read them. The power of a big idea still surges.  From the “Mad Men” era until today, and I’m certain into the future, the advertising business still thrives on big ideas.  Sure, there are all sorts of new technologies to communicate and ways to “hide” behind production value, but strip it all away and – if there’s not a big idea that touches the heart and soul of your customer – you have nothing.  You know you have one when, years later, people still recall pieces of a campaign.  I’m proud to say there have been...

This week’s Modern Healthcare magazine, long a leading industry publication for healthcare and hospital executives, recapped the number of “mega-mergers” taking place in the industry during the first quarter of 2017.   The article cites four such mergers between eight $1 billion healthcare organizations.   According to a managing director of a larger international financial advisory firm in the healthcare industry, this is a trend that is likely to accelerate as hospital companies want “regional, if not national, reach to be more attractive to patients and insurers.” Additionally, the article cites that many academic medical centers are operating at near capacity and are seeking community hospital partners to take patients requiring less intensive cases.   This is opposite of a few years ago, when these same large academic providers were partnering with community hospitals to generate more referrals for their highly specialized programs that require volume to ...

Do you have headlines, copy, banner ads or other tactical elements that seem to be bouncing back and forth between you and your advertising agency?  Are you frustrated that your communication blends into the marketplace and doesn’t allow your organization to stand apart in a meaningful way?  Do internal stakeholders seem nonchalant over your new “branding” campaign or communication initiative? If you answered “yes” to any or all of the above, it might be time to rethink your strategy versus yet another redo to an existing concept or strategy that is either off course or has run that way. Too often, agencies and clients go round and round on creative executions and can’t quite pinpoint what it is that isn’t working.  Worse, yet, is the old “I’ll know it when I see it” conversation, that agencies seem to be hearing more and more these days. Keep this in mind:  If at three it’s not in sync, it’s time to rethink.  After a third revision, it’s not the execu...

When you check your newsfeed of your favorite social media site, there is always one – okay, many – of your friends, family, or co-workers whose updates are annoying enough to make you cringe. It may be posting a picture of every meal they eat, or sharing too many cat videos, a bad joke, or (especially this time of year) their political views. As much as you may “like” this person in real life, their actions have probably left you hovering over the unfriend button more than once. Individuals aren’t the only ones on social media who can be annoying. Brands are right up there. A report from Sprout Social titled, “ Turned Off: How Brands Are Annoying Customers on Social ,” contains some very interesting insights from a consumer survey centered around this topic. As you may have guessed, there are a number of things brands do to rub their audiences the wrong way, including: posting too many promotions, trying to be funny when they’re not, and not replying to their audience’s messages....

Summer is typically that season when, between vacations and short attention spans, your brand pretty much runs on autopilot.  Hello fall and the brisk change in colors and temperatures.  Suddenly, it seems that everything is due at once and demands on the marketing department have gone full throttle. Before you jump right back into it, now is the perfect time to give your brand a check-up to make sure it’s healthy, vibrant, and able to keep pace with the changing market.  The year-end is fast approaching, budgets are due, and performances will be measured. A suggested brand check-up is below and I recommend you schedule it on an annual basis.  There is just too much happening in the industry today to risk having your brand be at risk for the ills of “same ol’, same ol’.” Cleanse, clear your head, and breathe : The best prep and start for your brand check-up is to clear your head and breathe.  There are several hospital marketing conferences coming up (S...