Beyond Advertising: The State of Healthcare Digital Transformation

Ask the Expert with Shawn Gross, Vice President, Digital Transformation at ReviveHealth

// By Jared Johnson //

Digital transformation is more than improving internal operational efficiencies, creating a digital workplace, or doing more innovative advertising. It means offering real improvements in convenience, usefulness, ease, and other qualities people value. Here, Shawn Gross, vice president, digital transformation at ReviveHealth, shares how the rules of healthcare marketing have changed to meet evolving consumer norms and expectations.

eHST: In general, where should healthcare marketers focus today, and how is it different from two to three years ago?

Shawn Gross, vice president of digital transformation, ReviveHealth

SG: First, the brand: Continued investment into your MarTech stack is important to expand marketing department capabilities, but not at the expense of turning marketing efforts into automated, mechanical communications that don’t reflect the qualities of what makes your organization unique. Remember that every word you write, every image you select — it all needs to map back to the hospital’s/health system’s “reason for being.” In a world of shiny digital things, brand has never been more important.

Second, data insight: There is increasing focus on using data to inform our strategies, optimize our tactics, and track and measure marketing investment. Being data-driven is the way to truly be user-focused, and increasingly relevant and personalized. The incremental impact then becomes easier to track. As a digital director friend of mine at a large Gulf South health system recently shared, “If I can show our CEO the ROI marketing generates, we’ll continue to expand staff size and grow capabilities across marketing, patient experience, and digital transformation.”

Third, marketing as experience: Go beyond using marketing only to attract prospective patients to your services by providing unexpected delight and uplift to current patients’ (and caregivers’) experience with the goal of increasing satisfaction, building long-term loyalty (retention), and creating differentiation.

Recent studies have shown many consumers prioritize experience over reputation, price, and other key factors, which is driving a lot of the digital disruption we see.

In the rest of the interview, Jared Johnson and Shawn Gross discuss:

• The definition of digital transformation (DX)
• Common mistakes healthcare organizations make when it comes to DX
• Where DX should focus
• DX’s influence on the role of advertising and marketing agencies
• Technologies to watch
• And more…

Log in below to access this content: