What elements are necessary to implement a successful awareness campaign?

Awareness campaigns are often the first step to introduce your audience to a new service, staff member, program or facility.  Unfortunately, awareness campaigns have been used as a stand-in when more substantial marketing, branding, credibility or trafficking campaigns may be needed. 

By definition, awareness campaigns are designed to build familiarity and create top-of-mind brand affiliation.  Do not count on an awareness campaign to do more than it is designed to do.  It is not the best method to convey complex messages, emotional appeals, branding messages, lists of services, building credibility or traffic.  Awareness campaigns should leave your audience with a simple name and affiliation that can be recalled when they need it. The very succinct message or name should have a sustainable ring that stays with your audience – “Remember X when you need it.”

A progressive, modern awareness campaign has:

1. Support from top management. Leadership must walk the walk, talk the talk and reinforce the message constantly.
2. Measurement/metric thresholds that can be repeated with exacting accuracy before the campaign, three months, six months, one year and several years later to account for trending and awareness campaign investments.
3. A simple name, icon or message. If you have more than three words for your audience to remember, your statistical chance of unaided recall is significantly diminished.
4. Longevity.  Your awareness message needs to be an essential element in future marketing, branding or communication campaigns. It doesn’t have to dominate future campaigns, but it must be present.
5. A viral appeal. The best awareness campaigns are repeatable by your audience.  If you don’t use your audience to springboard your message, you’ve missed out on a million-dollar opportunity.  They spread the word.
6. Natural integration ability.  In our modern world of communication, your message has to be not only compatible with social media, existing web messaging as well as traditional modes of message delivery, but also include incentive for your message advocates to persuade them to incorporate the message into their own social communications. 
7. Easy access to more information. Don’t forget to include a “go to” element – a site, microsite, phone number, etc.
8. Unaided recall.  If your audience can’t remember it, you’ve wasted your time and money. There is no such thing as an awareness message being short or too frequent.

Follow these guidelines and you will have a productive and measurable awareness campaign.

Elizabeth L. Scott
escott@ravennewmedia.com

How can marketers create campaigns that break the “healthcare mold” but still resonate with consumers?

Most health care marketers follow one or more of the following themes:

• Attractive doctor telling the story of how he or she is “just like you;”
• Lineup of “star” doctors with a voiceover paraphrasing, “you deserve the best and we have the best doctors around;”
• Patient giving a testimonial stating that they had given up hope until they found XYZ hospital and their capable doctors;
• Artistic shots of high tech equipment or research prowess; or
• In the case of children’s hospitals, photo shots of kids with obvious aliments, smiling and happy as they receive treatment in the hospital or resuming their normal lives.

All can be effective. 

While many campaigns are good, very few health care campaigns are great.  They fade quickly — leaving us to scramble for the next creative concept designed to capture three seconds of attention we are often allotted by the consumer.

Where are the health care campaign equivalents of “gecko” ads or Mac vs. PC ads? Can hope and healing become so captivating that it goes viral and becomes a YouTube phenom? Possibly.

So how can we breakout and create effective and memorable campaigns?  Currently, we spend a significant amount of our advertising funds on concepts, designs and production. 

1. Consider engaging with an out-of-market research group with no ties to your system or your agency to conduct consumer preview testing.  Do not get too concerned with local participation.  Local audiences come to the research table with their own biases. Health care consumers often align with community demographics – rural, inner city, or suburbs, etc.
2. Use advertising to build your brand and increase awareness.  Advertising is rarely the influential factor in health care decision-making.  Effective marketing to health care consumers requires a complex combination of traditional advertising, public relations, community participation, physician support, new media and patient advocacy.
3. Your breakthrough, experimental “playground” is new media.  Try applying formulas that are successful in other industry verticals and test it with consumers through new media.
4. Bring in fresh ideas by engaging with local college marketing, communication or advertising students in campaign development or formal brainstorming.  Let them have creative license to think about creative messaging.  It is a fertile ground for new perspectives.

Break the mold and perhaps you’ll be the one to take hospital marketing to the next level.

Elizabeth L. Scott
escott@ravennewmedia.com
Raven New Media & Marketing

Healthcare for your brand on a budget

When funds are scarce and investments are heavily scrutinized, you owe it to your shareholders to assess your brand’s state of wellness. Here’s why. –iMediaConnection.com

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100 ways to use Twitter in your hospital

“Nurses are an essential part of hospitals and can function as a communication lifeline to patients, doctors, and others in the facility. These days, there are lots of different tools you can use to communicate, but Twitter is an exciting one to consider, just because it holds so much potential. Read on, and you’ll learn about 101 different ways you can use Twitter in your hospital.” 

Great list from the LPN to RN blog!  http://ow.ly/BW9D

What are the best, cost-effective ways to increase patient satisfaction and the patient experience?

I’m going to take an unconventional stab at this one. “Patient satisfaction” can be simple…’hospital’ should be about hospitality and patient satisfaction is the result of helping people.

I may get some flak for saying that, but we, in health care, have made ‘patient satisfaction’ a beast to manage. The pressure to increase Press Ganey scores, the long litanies of procedures, policies and recommendations are often not helping our patients.  It is easy to become mechanical and too busy to take time to address anything outside of our immediate job responsibilities.

Most of us have been a patient at some point.  While it is natural to want to leave the worst parts of a patient experience behind us and just move forward, I would encourage us to remember one thing that was frustrating, frightening, overwhelming, emotional, isolating, impersonal or disappointing about an experience and find a way to make it better for the next person who comes along.  This means getting involved. Don’t just send an email with a suggestion. Get active. Consider the following:

Small changes in habits

• Set aside 10 minutes to get up from your desk, out of your department and head toward the parking garage, the hospital lobby or waiting room and help someone.
• Make it a personal mission to do at least one kind thing for a person you don’t know.  It doesn’t have to be a patient. Consider family, friends, hospital volunteers, etc.
• Give a sincere smile to everyone.
• Look into people’s eyes.
• Avoid shop talk in the hallways and elevators if possible.
• Pay attention.
• Slow down.  Don’t buzz pass visitors unless there is an emergency. 

Random acts of kindness

• Cover the cost of a cup of coffee or muffin for the stranger behind you in line.
• Feed a parking meter that is running low.
• Roll a stranded wheelchair back to its designated place.
• Offer to walk a lost person to his/her destination.
• Buy a couple of cafeteria gift cards and give them out occasionally to weary-looking people in waiting rooms.
• Donate books, crossword puzzles, or blank note pads that can be used in a doctor’s waiting room. Better yet, “adopt” a waiting room or busy hallway and get permission to help make it a friendly, inviting place.  May I suggest immediate care centers!

You can do it!

– Elizabeth L. Scott

Developing a Social Media Marketing Plan

Developing a Social Media Marketing Plan – www.healthleadersmedia.com

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Social Influence Marketing Strategies & Tactics to Win Customers

Lots of helpful hints for using social media to win business.

How do you see social media marketing for hospitals progressing over the next few years and what can hospitals do now to get a leg-up on their competition?

As a professional who is actively involved in helping hospitals and health care systems develop social media programs and policies, I am happy to address this topic.

I fundamentally believe that social media will transform communications and revolutionize hospital public relations. If hospitals embrace social media in the relatively early stages, the advantages over their competition will last for years to come. The later a hospital waits to get in the game, the more work, money and time it will take to make social media effective.

To get a leg-up on the competition:

1. Treat social media as a “program,” not a project. Build a plan. Learn about the multitude of social media options – there are thousands of channels. Become well-versed in the business advantages and disadvantages of the different types of social media – video sharing, social communities, micro-blogging, virtual worlds, etc.

2. Establish your organization’s name on social media channels. There are a limited number of identities out there. If yours is taken, you may have to resort to unintuitive options. Stake your claim.

3. Educate everyone – your C-suite, your employee population and your department. Social media is new to many. It is also misunderstood. It is your job to educate everyone appropriately and build advocacy from within first.

4. Test. Don’t do everything! Experiment and discover what works and what doesn’t. Be smart and selective. Don’t post every video to YouTube or spread your messages too thin among channels. Move quickly and stay nimble.

5. Commit to reporting your findings. Treat this program with the importance it merits. If you report your success or report choices to drop channels or convey specific messaging, it will help you map your program and support your planning strategy. You will also discover that by building awareness of your fans’ comments, you will find even more support for your program (internally and externally).

6. Use with care and take the high road. Do not use these channels casually. You are representing your brand. Don’t fall into the trap of marketing to your listeners. This is a conversational medium. Never use this as a gorilla tactic to slight the competition. Always be honest and transparent.

7. Understand the business value and use of the channels. It is fundamentally different establishing your organization’s identity in social media from your own casual social use. It is a business tool with measurable value.

8. Create a policy. Don’t leave your organization unprepared. Every hospital or health care organization has to understand the proper use of social media and how an employee should represent him or herself online.

9. Be creative and sincere. The public can sniff out a professional and will quickly lock you out. Speak as a person. Ask, ask, ask what they want to know or track about your organization. The public is in charge. Remember, they are bombarded by messages, so creativity counts.

10. Jump start your program with a professional. It is a challenge to get started and maintain momentum for your social media program. Bring someone in to help you with workshops, planning and even internship programs.

Drop me an email if you’d like more information, Elizabeth L. Scott escott@ravennewmedia.com.

Health System Uses Social Media to Recruit Physicians

Health System Uses Social Media to Recruit Physicians – www.healthleadersmedia.com

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What is the key to creating a successful long-lasting branding campaign?

Specifically, what aspects should marketers especially consider when crafting a campaign that will have a long shelf life?

A long shelf life for a branding campaign should be a requirement of new advertising and promotion development. Concepting, production, editing, designing and execution of a campaign is an expensive endeavor. You don’t want to spend your marketing dollars on new development every year or even every other year. It’s too expensive! I challenge you to think about your branding campaign as your ‘little black dress’ or your ‘favorite tailored suit.’ It never fails. It is a well-respected and classic piece of your wardrobe that can withstand trends and lots of wear.

Your Branding Campaign = Your Little Black Dress/Your Favorite Tailored Suit
Your branding campaign, just like your little black dress or a perfectly tailored suit, is meant to establish a go-to, classic foundation for your ever-changing “accessories.” You want to be known for your brand, just as a designer is known for a signature style. Coco Chanel can be picked out of any lineup – classic suiting, pearls, scarves and quilting handbags. Ralph Lauren is known for his classic, semi-casual polo style.

As marketers, we often find our conflicted. By the nature of being in a creative profession, we tend to like campaigns that are fresh, new, breakthrough and creative (trendy). Consumers tend to gravitate toward the familiar, comfortable, easily understandable and repetitively memorable (classic). Fortunately, we can support both in branding campaigns.

Keep Your Campaign Relevant = Keep Your Look Fresh
A solid, classic branding campaign should be able to keep a shelf-life of 3 to 4 years without any major changes. Consider a cycle such as the one below. Resist the temptation to mix it up too much or you will muddy your campaign.

Evergreen Elements
Mark/logo
Tag
Color language
URL
Voiceover/music

Changeable Accessories
Imagery elements
Patient stories
Videography style
Sub-fonts
Formats (TV, print, online, mobile)

To Change or Not To Change?
Your creative staff, as well as your vendor, will want change. Challenge them to think about platform creativity. How can we effectively translate our print version to a Flash version for use on web sites, social media platforms or mobile media?

We, marketers, often forget that our exposure to a campaign from concept to execution is much more intense than the campaign’s exposure to the public. We ‘wear out’ a campaign (in our minds) far quicker than the public. Keep it classic.

Elizabeth L. Scott
CEO & Principal Consultant
Raven New Media & Marketing