When thinking about how to efficiently and effectively advance his or her organizational business goals, the hospital CMO has more than enough to consider, including industry consolidation, downward budget pressures, the rise of urgent care centers, patient portals, accountable care organizations, media fragmentation and the social and digital enterprise. Regardless of these challenges, today’s hospital CMOs need to be more strategic and less tactical as the movement to lean organizations kicks in and demands more from marketing.
Here are six key business-driven ideas that can be implemented by hospital CMOs right now.
1. Be more focused on physician relations: Physician relations isn’t sexy or hip in the hospital marketing world. In many hospitals, it is a standalone department with its own business objectives, staff and goals.
At this time in the business lifecycle of the industry, good physician-relations strategies can be highly accretive to hospital marketing strategies. The cost-per-customer acquisition for establishing a physician as a “customer” is far more efficient on a per-dollar-spent basis than traditional service-line or brand marketing.
Yes, it’s sales. Yes, its business. But hospital marketers must embrace physician relations as an important part of their integrated marketing strategies and as a business imperative in order to advance their business agendas. With more consolidation, your hospital’s physician enterprise will grow, and hospitals need to cultivate those physician relationships for continued growth. We believe hospitals that find synergy between marketing and physician-relations will be more efficient in the ultimate business goal of acquiring patients.
2. Drive brand through service line-focus only: Hospitals are famous for fuzzy messaging as they try to gain both referring physician and patient mindshare. The reality is that type of messaging leaves consumers — both physicians and patients — with a “meh” feeling about your messages. Hospitals must take the time to better understand the buyer journey, just like retailers, airlines and other industries.
Hospitals and hospital systems have many services they have to sell, but before we discuss them, let’s take a moment to look at McDonald’s. Yes, McDonald’s. The famed global restaurant spends millions of advertising dollars every year just promoting coffee. Why? Because they know that consumers can really only focus on one item, and not the hundreds they have on the menu. Once the consumer comes in for coffee, McDonald’s sells them other items.
Hospitals have to take the same approach in order to make their advertising more efficient. Focus on service lines, preferably those that make the hospital profitable or those that can help advance the brand. Then, as patients respond, help them learn more about other services.
We suggest your service lines become the major brand, with the hospital as the subordinating brand, simply because it speaks more directly and specifically to patients’ needs. Moreover, this strategy becomes even more important in the age of digital and mobile advertising as you roll out search engine marketing ads. This approach speaks directly the buyer’s journey, and helps separate you from the competition. Moreover, you can directly measure the success of your marketing because you can tie your service line revenue directly to campaigns.
3. Lead nurturing and closing: Everyone wants to see a return on investment, but hospitals still shy away from “selling” their services. That mindset is passé and must change. Hospitals spend hundreds of thousands on campaigns to drive interest and leads, and when calls come in, what happens? Far too many hospitals leave money on the table at this juncture, resulting in opportunity and revenue loss.
Whether through in-house central scheduling or scheduling partners who field calls, make sure your call scripts are designed to close the sale, both on the phone and in person. Train your service line administrators to be passionate advocates for their area of responsibility and watch the volume needle move in a positive direction over time. This takes work, but in the words of the famed author Maya Angelou, “Nothing will work unless you do.”
4. Your social enterprise is a distraction and inefficient: I don’t think we’re going on a limb when we call organic social marketing on social media platforms for hospitals inconsistent at best and a failure at worst. While anecdotal evidence of social media success abounds in trade publications and should be celebrated, it’s hardly reliable. According to Forrester’s 2014 North American Consumer Technographics Customer Life Cycle Survey, “In fact, 45% of U.S. adults stay in touch with the brands they like by visiting those brands websites, while just 16% stay in touch by visiting brand’s Facebook pages or becoming Facebook fans…”
To be clear, there is plenty of activity and hype in this sphere, but there is no credible evidence that organic social marketing produces the same consistent results as traditional advertising or search engine marketing. Organic social platforms like Facebook and Twitter do offer opportunities to create “digital events” that can drive more engagement and offline PR. Digital events are more tangible and valuable to your integrated marketing strategies. But be careful where you drive engagement, meaning these campaigns should be carefully crafted to drive traffic to your website, and not to your social media pages since space in social is effectively “rented” by your organization.
We’re big on ownership of our media and our audience. One of the more critical ways for hospitals to think about organic social marketing is from a customer service perspective. Long a successful staple by industries such as retail, hospitality, airlines and others, hospitals can find delivering good customer service through platforms such as Twitter or Facebook as an excellent way to drive patient satisfaction and customer service. With proper policies, social customer service can easily be HIPAA compliant and implemented seamlessly across your organization.
5. Seek value: Needless to say, hospital marketing budgets are not the size of Coca Cola’s. Hospital CMOs who face budget challenges must find new ways to extract value from their enterprise, including renegotiating media contracts for better terms, prices and value adds. You may be surprised to find just how much outlets are willing to deal. The fragmentation of media may be frustrating, but it also presents ample opportunities to redirect budget and leverage one media against another to grow your marketing footprint.
You may also consider managed marketing organizations to drive down the costs of human resources, administration, creative, media buy, web, events, PR and social media marketing. Managed marketing organizations have long been used in other industries, and they can deliver real value to your hospital’s bottom line and a more agile approach to your marketing enterprise. You negotiate one set and predictable fee for all of their services. The trick, as always, is to find a reliable partner, but they are out there.
Speaking of owning your media and audience, patient portals are yet another place to gain value. Think of them as your very own private social network dedicated solely to your patients. While implementation and rollout may be at its infancy for some institutions, the marketing and promotional opportunities in that space could prove to be very beneficial to improving both patient’s health and your hospital’s bottom line.
6. Be an entrepreneur: The time for hospital CMOs and CEOs to be entrepreneurs is never better than right now. Establish an innovation team to look at how your hospital can deliver better services more efficiently, explore revenue-generating partnerships or expand your services via digital or offline subscriptions. That may require a culture shift in your organization, but it’s worth it.
We often talk of innovation in terms of medical technology or some new cancer drug. The CMO is the perfect leader to drive business innovation in the healthcare space because the nature of the business requires in-depth knowledge of the hospital, the competitive space and the coming technologies or business trends that may affect the business. Start with your innovation team and build from there.
Abe Kasbo is CEO of Verasoni Worldwide, which delivers marketing, public relations, advertising and digital strategies across channels in the United States and around the world. Since its founding in 2005, the firm has developed strategies for companies ranging from Fortune 500 and middle-market firms to venture-backed start-ups. Hospital clients have included Raritan Bay Medical Center, Hurley Medical Center, Health Alliance of the Hudson Valley and Chilton Medical Center.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker’s Hospital Review/Becker’s Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.
