When marketing healthcare brands, achieving top-of-mind awareness is good. Most preferred healthcare brand is even better. Most likely to return and to refer to others -- fantastic. But how about love for your healthcare brand? Read more »

People are talking about your brand. They could be telling each other glowing stories about their experiences, or complaining about the substandard service that they received. Your audience is building a brand narrative, with or without you—so if you want to help shape the story arc, you must participate in the dialogue. Read more »

Most hospital branding campaigns involve associates in the research or execution phase: interviewing or featuring the individuals who represent the hospital's brand. But hospital branding efforts rarely deliver those brand messages back to the associates, and we think that is a mistake. Read more »

Kenya Gibson, hosted a panel discussion today at the Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit on marketing Accountable Care Organizations and Medical Homes. With Population Health on the horizon, and an increasing number of providers developing ACOs and Clinically Integrated Networks, the discussion was part best practices and part therapy session. Read more »

A common meme in healthcare today is disruption. And there's a lot to be said for disrupting healthcare. A lot of healthcare is broken. Same goes for healthcare marketing, which lags behind other categories in engaging audiences. But looking for solutions often means starting with inspiration. I found inspiration for fixing healthcare marketing while eating at Chipotle. Read more »

For many hospitals, branding has lost its top spot on the priority list. For some, it’s the lack of long term funding. For others, it’s internal pressure to promote only service lines. Still others lack the marketing culture required to really implement such large-scale change. Regardless of the reason, it has resulted in many great hospitals not being known as great hospitals. Read more »

You may have seen our previous blog on taboo topics for women. Well, guys, you’re not getting off that easy. There are a slew of topics we know you’d rather sweep under the rug (and often do). These brands are winning over men by not being afraid of being provocative. 1. Viagra could have gone the way of punchlines. Instead, the brand’s newest campaign taps deeply into an audience of Boomer men who don’t run from adversity. Read more »

Cardiac services is one of the most popular services for hospitals and health systems to market to consumer audiences. For good reason. Cardiac services is often one of the hospital's most profitable service lines. (Even if you're a non-profit, remember the maxim, No margin, no mission.) Consumers "get" the need for advanced heart care. There's no need to "sell" the average person on why expertise is important. Read more »

Adapted from Franklin Street's Healthcare Marketing Trends Report Where's your smart phone right now? Chances are good that it's within arm's reach. According to a Morgan Stanley study, 91% of smartphone owners keep their phones beside them 24 hours a day. (An interesting office poll: ask your colleagues how many sleep with their phones. The number who do will surprise you.) Read more »

Adapted from Franklin Street's Healthcare Marketing Trends Report According to Ford's Trends report, 60 is the new 50 is the new 40. Thanks to medical innovations and prolonged life expectancy, consumers are staying young mentally as well as physically. In other words, we're living longer, and we're feeling younger. Consider: Many Baby Boomers with good health habits and good genes can expect to live past 90 years. Read more »