Align Reputation Management with Patient Experience to Attract and Convert New Business

// By Patric Wiesmann //

Healthcare organizations are finding out that winning in today’s highly competitive and increasingly digital market requires a new approach — one that aligns marketing and brand management with patient experience (PX). And that alignment is happening more often on Google and not your healthcare organization’s website.

That’s because in this “feedback economy” that we live in — where feedback is omnipresent and immediate, and consumers are more informed and self-directed than ever — these two disciplines are tightly linked. And with patients increasingly finding what they need to learn about your healthcare organization on Google, brand management and the patient experience are converging on a healthcare organization’s Google properties, such as the Google My Business (GMB) listings for providers and clinical locations.

Historically, marketing has been a very separate function from patient care and experience, but that’s all changing, and here’s why: If your organization’s brand promise is to deliver exceptional PX, but the actual experience is not so exceptional, your brand image suffers. On the other hand, if you consistently deliver exceptional experiences, but your brand’s online reputation doesn’t reflect that, you’ll lose new business to the competition.

It’s no longer sufficient to simply tell consumers you deliver great care — the proof is in reviews and social commentary. Your current and future patients are online, reading those reviews and social comments and using that information to choose and validate where they go for care.

In this new environment, effective reputation management is the most critical factor in raising brand awareness, attracting and converting new business, and creating loyal customers who advocate for your brand.

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