Learning To Shift Fearlessly In Healthcare Marketing

Working with physicians in marketing has been similar to working with bridezillas a week before their wedding.  It’s hard to tell them after they’ve been planning, or practicing, a certain way for so long, that they’re doing it all wrong. Shifting without fear is possible with the right plan though.  No one is saying to lead the warpath of differentiation off a cliff of destruction, guns-a-blazing. However, a series of small changes and perspective shifts can transform a practice for the better.

Step One: Think Like Your Patient

The hardest thing for physicians to do when it comes to marketing is to forget the clinical aspects of their services. Of course it's important to patients that their doctors are top notch and that they are equipped to care for their lives, but everyone knows patient care goes beyond just wellness. What keeps you with a practice for years and years are the relationships you build. What captures the attention of new patients is how you relate to them, understanding their needs and standing out in comparison to the others that simply do not.  Terms like “clinical expertise,” “fully accredited” and “high quality services” are over used and ambiguous and mean about as much to patients as this:

Step Two: Get In Front Of Your Patients

When was the last time you made any purchasing decisions based on a billboard or commercial you saw? Okay so the E*TRADE baby is pretty hilarious, but I only recently discovered what the website even did and I still don’t use it. So why is it that DOCTORS think the greatest place to advertise is on local cable and on billboards on random highways? Never have I ever driven down the interstate and thought to myself, “Yep, today I am going to get an MRI from that white haired man in front of that big white machine.” No matter how spectacular their font is, telling me that they have weekend appointments is not a decision making call to action. You need to capture patients where they are actually making their decisions, and that is ONLINE. To quote NBC’s The New Normal:

JANE: “The internet is for people too rude to write a proper thank you note, besides I’m a people person. I did fine in Ohio with just a flyer and an ad in the yellow pages”

ROCKY: “Well you know in today’s world, if you don’t exist online, you don’t exist.”

Harsh, but true. If you’re not taking the steps to develop an online presence, you won’t even be in the running for patients searching for “family practice doctors in Tampa.

Step Three: Think Like a Sea Cucumber

Yes, you read that correctly. Everyone keeps saying that transparency is necessary but seemingly impossible in the health care industry, so taking the steps to give your patients transparency will automatically set you apart. So what do we mean by think like a Sea Cucumber? If you remember from high school biology, sea cucumbers do this crazy, gross trick called evisceration, where as a defense mechanism they turn themselves inside out and show off their organs.

Somewhat gruesome analogy, but practices can use the little buggers as inspiration to show off the inner-workings of what makes them great. We’re talking price transparency and quality transparency. Show your patients why you’re the best with testimonials, videos, resources and a glimpse into your practice. Don’t want to show people the behind the scenes? Time to shift. Not sure your pricing is competitive so you want to keep that behind the curtain? Be sure that you’re matching quality to cost. Showing patients this side of your practice makes you memorable and trustworthy as a care provider.

Step Four: Always Exceed Expectations

If you want something you’ve never had, then you have to do something you’ve never done. It is a pretty obvious statement, but it is abundantly true. If you want to build volume and revenue in a time of lower reimbursement and decreased utilization of care while reaching and helping new patients, you have to step out of the box and go beyond expectations. 

Don’t be afraid to be a little different with the delivery of your messages. For example, take a look at your website in comparison to other practices in the area. How do they compare design-wise? Be different. Are other practices only open certain hours? Be more convenient than them. Send birthday cards out, it makes your patients smile. Hand out lollipops to kids and adults that wish they were kids. Have fun things for people to do in the waiting rooms. Hold events. Don’t be absent in your patients’ lives and make them have an experience when they’re in your office. Don’t settle for standard.

Step Five: Embrace Marketing

Health care marketing is a broad term, but it's kind of like that confusing IKEA shelf you put together one time. So many screws and parts, but if you don’t use them all correctly then your TV is going to fall off and crash into a million pieces. Keep in mind the pieces of marketing: Advertising (online/print)

• Public Relations (events/media relations)
• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media
• Web Presence
• Face-to-face Marketing with Physician Relation Representatives

 If you have a creative and effectively executed meld of all of these components, you’re geared for success.

We've established that our industry is an incredibly complex beast, and it's a beast that keeps growing and evolving. The most important thing you can do for yourself as a healthcare marketer, or anyone in the healthcare industry, is to not be afraid of change. Learn to shift without fear, because the rest of the world is doing it, and it’s only a matter of time before the health care industry will be swept up in it too. 

10 Tips For Healthcare Bloggers

Blogging for healthcare isn't easy. Why, you may ask? The answer is simple. Every day you're faced with the challenge of creating content for a stereotypically boring industry that will be exciting, interesting, and engaging to readers. One of the pitfalls of healthcare blogging is that it's such a specific industry, which makes coming up with ideas for content hard. Really hard.  Because here's the thing. There are plenty of people out there who love reading blogs about baking or gardening or beauty products or humor. There are a billion DIY-ers who eat, sleep, and breathe on blog. But healthcare? Do people really care?

The simple answer is yes, and it's important that as a healthcare marketer you firmly believe this. If you write something interesting, something useful and intriguing, something relevant, something that connects on an emotional level, then people will read it regardless of the industry. If it's relevant to their daily lives or the lives of their loved ones, they'll take the time. If it makes them smile, if it makes them cry, if it makes them think? They'll read it. You just have to think about the people in your community and determine what aspects of health they actually care about.

That being said, we know it can still be difficult to come up with ideas for content on your healthcare blog, especially if you're blogging multiple times a week. If you're struggling for inspiration, here are a few go-to ideas for healthcare blog content that will go a long way towards boosting your website's volume and engaging your audience! We've also included a few tips on what to do with that content once you've go it as well. Distribution is key. 

1.     Share the love. 

Your blog isn't just a place for self-promotion, it's a place to celebrate the healthcare industry as a whole. Spread some love around and spotlight other local practices. Maybe there's a new chiropractor in town who could use a shout-out, maybe there's a referring physician's office that you want to show appreciation to. You should always be looking for ways to better network with your referring physician community, and there’s no better way to add value to your relationship and let them know how much you care than by giving them some free publicity! Share a blog post about them and rotate different offices each week.

2.     Spotlight your staff.

If you’re looking for a way to incentivize your staff without giving them bonuses or gift cards, a little old fashioned attention can go a long way. Spotlights are an awesome way to do this, and when they're featured on the blog it's easy for employees to share this recognition with their family and friends through social media. Staff spotlights also give your blog readers an insight into your practice, and help them establish an emotional connection with your crew. Personal relationships are key, especially in healthcare.

3.     Consider highlighting video interviews. 

It's important to remember that great blog content doesn't have to be text. You can use videos or photos for a blog post either in conjunction with or in lieu of text. In fact, these types of posts are often more engaging! Film a few short video interviews with your staff, physicians and even willing patients. (Be sure to have them sign a waiver that says you can do this.) Post them on your blog, this is GREAT for search engine optimization.

4.     Throw some image content in there. 

If you have photos of staff or your office or if you have images with inspirational quotes or facts, post them on your Facebook, but ALSO post them on your blog. Then, you can link the photos from your blog to Facebook or websites like Instagram, so that when people click through they will land on your website. Not all blog posts need to be information heavy...sometimes it's nice to just have a few photos to scroll through and bring out a smile. 

5.     Repurpose your previous posts. 

Although this won't work if you're just starting out in healthcare blogging, it's definitely something you'll want to remember for later down the line. For those of you who have been blogging for years, this is one of the best tips we can give you. Don’t forget about the blog posts you worked hard on in the past. Chances are you've got a gold-mine of content archived on your blog where no one is likely to stumble upon it, and a lot of that content is still relevant to your readers. Don't be afraid to use it! Go back a year or so, find one of your best performing posts, snazz it up a little bit and repost it. It'll save you time if you've got a crammed work week, and it's great for SEO purposes. (As a general rule, even if you're not repurposing you should always remember to link back to older articles that relate to the topic you’re covering. This is good for SEO but also it helps your readers navigate your site.) 

6.     After posting, send out snippets. 

Got a lot of content on your blog that you know people would read if they just knew about it? This is where distribution comes in. It's one thing to write great content and post it, but it's another altogether to get people to actually know it exists and read it. Snippets are a great way to accomplish this. Do you have an email list? Send out the first part of your blog post in an email or electronic newsletter with a “Read More…” link to the full post on your blog. It could help bring some of your email leads to your blog if they haven’t read it yet!

7.     Remember to take advantage of those tags. 

You know that section where it says "add tags" on your blog posting site? Please don't ignore that. Tagging your blog posts is incredibly important, not just for SEO but also for archiving and organizing your posts by topic. You should use anywhere from 2-4 tags to let search engines and readers know what your post is about. For this article for instance, I will use: "blogging", "healthcare marketing", "tips for healthcare bloggers", and "healthcare blog ideas". 

8.     Sharing is the pathway to success. 

Don’t just assume that if you post an article on your blog that tons of people will immediately be notified and that they will start reading and loving it. You are not Mashable or Buzzfeed or The New York Times, and unless you already have a super strong and loyal blog following (you're in healthcare, so we're going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't), the reality is that if you're not sharing that content on every platform possible, it's likely that no one will see it. Be sure to share links to your articles via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ so your friends and followers will know they're there! Tip: see if you can get other members of your staff to share company posts as well. The more people you have sharing, the more people you'll reach and the higher your chance for success will be!

9.     Easy access is key. 

This goes hand in hand with the concept of "sharing". If your readers can't find your blog, they won't be reading it! Be sure to have your blog built into your website and positioned as a link on your homepage in a spot that is easily visible to your visitors. Avoid having it as an unlinked page, since the likelihood of people finding your posts in search probably isn't great. 

10.  Remember that it's not about you.

If you don't take any other tips to heart, be sure to remember this one. You're not writing for you, you're writing for your patients and providers. Don't let your personal biases cloud your judgement or impact what you write about. When you're coming up with topics, keep in mind what your patients and referring physician offices would want to read about on your blog, because they are your target market, not yourself! Try to avoid covering topics that are too “medical” because people will lose interest. It’s okay to be educational, just be sure that it’s interesting, understandable, and above all relatable. 

See, healthcare blogging really isn't that tricky after all! If you read that list and are feeling overwhelmed, at a loss, or incredibly intimidated, don't freak out. The best thing about healthcare blogging is that you don't have to do it yourself. Most healthcare providers don't have time to blog because they're, you know, saving lives. That's why we're here! If you're looking for help with your healthcare blogging, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We've got a lot of experience and tons of great ideas to help you kickstart your content marketing!

"The Importance of Infographics": As Told By An Infographic

If there's one thing we all know with certainty, it's that we're in the age of the infographic. At first it was all about content marketing: write as much as you can, make it compelling, churn it up and expel it onto as many platforms as you can. Then things changed, and it wasn't just about content anymore, it was about visual content marketing: don't just write as much as you can, find a way to make it pretty, make it visual, make it engaging. We're still living in what will most likely end up being the decade or even century of visual content marketing, but it's clear that we've already segmented even further. In today's marketing world it's all about infographics, baby!

When you look at the statistics out there, it's obvious why marketing has shifted in this direction. We came across Hubspot's 37 Visual Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know In 2016, and we found some visual content and infographic statistics that were literally eye-popping. We don't have time to share them all, but here were a few that we thought were particularly relevant:

1. Researchers found that colored visuals increase people's willingness to read a piece of content by 80%. That's insane.

2. 65% of senior marketing executives believe that visual assets (photos, video, illustrations and infographics) are core to how their brand story is communicated. We can tell you for sure that this is 100% at our company as well.

3. Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images. 

4. Infographics are Liked and Shared on social media 3x more than any other type of content.

5. People following directions with text and illustrations do 323% better than people following directions without illustrations. 

At this point it's undebatable that infographics are one of the hottest trends in our industry, and for good reason. That being said, not all infographics are created equal, and if you're going to put the time and money and effort into creating an infographic then it's vital that you're making sure it's one stellar information-packed piece of visual glory. Because we love the irony of this, here's an infographic from the content marketing geniuses at OneSpot that will help you do just!

3 Summer Campaign Ideas For Your Imaging Center

Summer is approaching quickly, and many of us in healthcare marketing are scrambling for ideas to ramp up our marketing this season. Whether you want to boost engagement on social media, drive traffic to your website, or increase brand recognition, summer is filled with endless marketing potential to adhere to your needs.

There are tons of awesome summer holidays for you to take advantage of this year, from your classic holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day to your less traditional but fun ones like National Ice Cream Soda Day. With so many options out there, healthcare marketers have tons of opportunities for campaign piggy-backs and contests that are sure to see strong engagement from patients.

Everyone loves summer. School kids are rejoicing at the nearing sight of summer vacation and families are already planning their summer getaways. This creates maximum marketing potential and gives your center the range to decide the theme of your campaign that perfectly fits your goals. That being said, with so many options it can sometime be tricky to determine what type of campaign might work well for your imaging center. Here are a few fun summer campaign ideas to help you get the creative juices flowing!

Tie Dye Event

At some point in everyone’s life, they’ve dragged a pile of white clothes outside and shaken up their dye bottles to create a tie dye master piece. If you want to increase your relationship with the public while simultaneously promoting your center and creating an event geared towards people of all age ranges, tie dye is an awesome idea. Offer the tie dye supplies and set up a large enough area where everyone can participate. Make a day of it, offering food and drinks and having some fun summer games set up as well. It might sound a little bit overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be! Team up with local businesses in the community, it’s a great way of getting sponsors and increasing participation. You can even tie dye for a cause, give participants the option to donate their shirts to a local charity that clothes the homeless.

Summer Fun Photo Contest

The summer months are the perfect time to gather your kids, significant other, best friend, etc., and start on an adventure. This is the season for camping, hiding away in cabins, and sailing away on cruises. Everyone is outside and fulfilling their summer vacation and this is your chance to capitalize on summer fun. Consider running a photo-based contest on social media where you ask participants to share a photo of how they are having fun this summer and give a description explaining their photo. You can offer a summer themed prize to incentivize participants—depending on your budget it could be something smaller like tickets to a theme park or even a sun n’ fun bundle of beach supplies. If you’ve got a larger budget, consider something a little more exciting like a weekend in a hotel or a vacation package! This is a fun way to increase engagement and encourage people to participate. Anything to keep the summer fun continuing!

Fourth of July Trivia

A lot of these campaigns are fun for patients, but what if your center is looking for a small contest to run just for referring physician’s offices? A trivia contest should hit the spot. An easy way to boost engagement among your referring physicians is to run a trivia contest that centers on not commonly known facts about this patriotic holiday leading up to the event. You can do this in the form of a crossword puzzle or a fill-in-the-blank trivia sheet. Pass it out to your physician’s offices, let them fill it out and fax it back in, and then randomly draw your winner. Whoever correctly answers the most amount of trivia by Fourth of July will receive a themed prized. For example, you could offer a firework bundle kit as a prize (even though that might not be the safest prize option!), or maybe even throw a Fourth of July party for the winner’s office. This is a super fun and easy way to get people involved and excited about a contest that you’re running.

Summer is a gold mine for your center’s campaign possibilities. These potential campaign ideas will be sure to engage your audience and get people excited to join your center in this summer fun. Just keep in mind, if your budget is limited, don’t feel as if you can’t participate in creating these contests. If you focus on creating a fun contest, users will be encouraged to participate simply because it is enjoyable in itself. Sometimes the point of entering in a contest is simply to get competitive and have fun! If you need more marketing inspiration for your imaging center, make sure to check up on our blog. We’re always posting fun ideas for healthcare marketing!

The Importance of Content Marketing in Healthcare

Content marketing is, without a doubt, the foundation of great marketing. Want to drive patients to your website and therefore your center? Want to simply find ways to engage with past, current, and future patients? It all starts with great content. As a healthcare marketer in the 21st century, one of your main jobs, if not your MAIN job, is not just to develop engaging content for your practices, hospitals or health care organizations, but also to place it where it's the most likely to drive business and engage patients.  For most healthcare practitioners, that's your website. 

Often times, health care professionals think their website doesn’t really matter when it comes to getting new patients. 100% of the time those health care professionals are wrong. A medical practice’s website is usually the first means of contact the modern patient has with a new physician. A patient’s first impression and experience depends solely on the content on that website, which means if your website is bogged down with irrelevant, boring, or even just poorly organized content, that first impression is going to be a bad one. On the flip side, if you can wow them with an awesome website full of meaty, informative, and entertaining content? Now you've got their attention. 

Let’s discuss some of the ways that great content can help your practice, and how bad content can hurt your marketing efforts.

What is BAD content?

It's important to first distinguish the difference between "great content" and "bad content". "Bad content" doesn't necessarily have to be content that's poorly written, it can be really well written content that's simply organized in a bad way. There are a lot of different things that determine what makes up "bad content", but generally speaking bad content looks like one of the following:

• Unclear or overly clinical language

• Content that's inappropriate for the audience you're trying to reach (i.e. content written for doctors when you’re trying to target patients)

• Duplicated content on multiple pages

• Content that is clearly stuffed with keywords in an effort to improve SEO, to a point where it doesn’t even make sense

• Lack of enough content

• Content that is poorly organized or doesn't "flow" right

How BAD content can HURT you:

1. If a patient can’t find what they are looking for in the first few seconds, they will bounce right off your website. We know this because we've done it.

2. When they leave your website, they will find another option with a more easily navigable website and they will call them instead.

3. A website with bad content could leave a patient frustrated, giving them a negative impression of you before they even walk in your doors.

4. If a patient can’t find an easy way to communicate with you through your website, you could see an increase in cancellations.

5. You could be seen as “old fashioned” and in healthcare, no one wants an antiquated physician who isn’t up on the most advanced technology.

What is GREAT content?

Great content is content that motivates your website’s visitors to take action, guides them through the website and provides the kind of information most of your visitors are looking for on your site. There are a lot of different things that determine what makes great content, but generally speaking it usually follows these rules:

• Content that is relevant to your customers

• Content that is easy to understand

• Content that's interesting and makes readers want to engage

• Content that's well organized and silows readers through to other areas on your website

• Content that utilizes proper spelling, grammar, capitalization/punctuation, and word choice (avoids using "big" words that confuse readers, but still sounds authoritative and intelligent)

How GREAT content can HELP you:

1. The best content can help improve your organic rankings on Google so you can reach more savvy patients searching for your services online.

2. Content can help you drive patients where you want them to go on your website, creating pathways for them.

3. If your goal is to get more patients to schedule appointments, the right content can help you drive more patients to fill out online appointment forms.

4. You can become a valuable online resource for patients, encouraging them to return to your site for more than just appointment booking, but for health tips and medical advice.

5. You will appear more advanced, giving you more control and being seen as an authority in your medical community.

6. Most importantly, great content makes you memorable. It keeps people wanting to come back for more. It's what determines your brand identity in the mind of your patients, and it's what makes them decide whether or not that brand is worth engaging with. 

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Creating content is easy, but creating great content? That's a little more tricky. It's a pretty impressive skill, but it's not one that everyone in the healthcare industry is going to have. That's where we come in. If you're following these guidelines but are still struggling to produce great content that's engaging and relevant to your patients, don't worry. We can help with that. It's not rocket science, it's content marketing, and it's what we do.