Q4400

How you choose to advertise and market your hospital to the communities you serve will help determine operational and fiscal success whether you are a rural provider, sole community hospital, stand-alone Medical Center, or large system with several locations.

Branding is reputation validated by patient and community loyalty as well as consumer perception and awareness of your hospital, what its strengths are, and who your physicians are.

The story line about your hospital must be strong enough for consumers to choose your hospital for health care services, thus it is important to differentiate your hospital from others in the market.

Over 60% of hospital providers now own their physician practices, so your physician providers are usually the point of entry to your hospital.

This can be via a PCP affiliated with your hospital or as a self-referral to one of your specialists.

Referrals from a PCP to a specialist speak to the strength of your primary care network as a major driver to an effective patient funnel. As a result, your brand strength always reflects physician reputation as well.

You’ve worked hard to shape and hone a favorable image in the communities you serve, thus you may wonder why a new branding campaign might make sense now.

The new health care is much more like a business than the old model where IP business drove more revenue, producing operational and fiscal success. The migration of services from the IP setting to OP services, led by OP surgery, continues.

You may face significant competition in your market from standalone surgical care centers and other hospital providers.

Perhaps one of your competitors has merged with an out-of-town system and you need to strengthen community loyalty and sharpen your brand.

The good news is there are multiple channels now to reach the consumer about your hospital services, including: your website, social media, digital marketing, sponsorship advertising, and traditional media like radio, outdoor, and cable television.

Creating a campaign to promote and strengthen brand makes sense, but first it’s essential to define the goal, identify your target audience, and discuss different possible messaging.

This sets-up the creative which will be the actual message for designated media.

Data performance metrics, trend analysis, and predictive analytics are more important now than ever when considering whether to launch a new branding campaign.

It is an absolute that each market is uniquely different, yet all markets share several key features.

The branding process begins with ideation, builds out to consideration of different channels to reach your target audience, and results in the creative piece for a new branding campaign to accomplish your goals.

There’s no better time than after dealing with COVID -19 effectively to highlight your hospital’s success in meeting patient and community needs.

The messaging could be to promote existing strengths or emerging ones, or simply to reinforce brand strength and awareness.

A well-conceived creative never fails to satisfy provider goals. We provide the data analysis necessary for a successful new branding campaign.

See what ‘Q’ can do for you!