If you have money to burn on digital advertising, then pay no attention to this article. But if you’re like most health systems, you’re scrambling to prove that the ad dollars you’ve been allotted are netting great results that warrant bigger budgets. So what happens if a big chunk of your online ads is never Read More
Is it wrong to post ER wait times prominently on your homepage? It’s a fine strategy if you’re content to solve for a tiny fraction of your site visitors, say 2 percent. Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, suggests instead: Why not create content and marketing strategies that meet the needs of 100 percent Read More
Imagine if the CEO of your top-rated health system turned to you and asked you to use marketing as a lever to change the culture of your organization. Sounds like a dream come true, right? For Paul Matsen, CMO of Cleveland Clinic, this level of support and confidence from the highest levels of the organization is not a Read More
At Intermountain Healthcare, patient engagement is a top priority, and the organization is tackling the issue from all sides. We spoke with Craig Kartchner, Senior Director of Marketing, to get an update on Intermountain’s digital strategies, successes, and challenges. “We want it to be convenient and easy for people to access tools and resources that Read More
Last year, we spoke with Michael Sengbusch, then Chief Technology Officer at Brightwhistle, about Facebook advertising trends like custom audiences and lookalike audiences. We asked Sengbusch, now General Manager, Digital Marketing Cloud at InfluenceHealth, to give us an update on paid advertising on Facebook for hospitals and health systems. He continues to be very bullish Read More
The most influential source in selecting a physician may be a recommendation from a friend or family member, but it doesn’t stop there. “When you get a recommendation from someone you know, one of the first things you do is look online to find more information about that physician,” says Matt Gove, Chief Consumer Officer Read More
“Organic search is a valuable source of website traffic for hospitals and health plans,” says Jeremy Dietz, Executive Digital Editor at Coffey Communications. “To capture relevant search traffic, healthcare marketers need to build and maintain websites that meet current best practices for search engine optimization (SEO).” While the best way to make a site rank well is Read More
IBM’s cognitive computer Watson became a household name and overnight sensation in 2011 when it beat two of Jeopardy’s top contestants, smoothly handling the show’s lineup of cleverly named categories and obscure facts. Soon after Watson’s victory, IBM began to get inquiries from physicians, particularly oncologists, interested in knowing if cognitive technology could be applied Read More
The eHealthcare Strategy & Trends Editorial Advisory Board is made up of leaders in the digital healthcare marketing field who are committed to shaping the future of the industry. They offer ongoing feedback on our editorial coverage, write occasional articles, and point us to developments and people our members should know about. I’m very pleased Read More
We interviewed Chris Boyer, Senior Vice President, Digital at ReviveHealth, following his presentation with Chris Bevolo, EVP at ReviveHealth, at this year’s Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit. Their presentation “Personalized Marketing: Moving From Persona to Person” offers a vision of what healthcare marketing can become with the right strategies, competencies, tools, and technologies. Where is Read More
By now, most of us have heard that the number of mobile users is finally surpassing the number of desktop users. Although this doesn’t necessarily mean desktop is going away—78 percent of digital users use both desktop and mobile platforms, according to a 2015 report from ComScore—what is startling is that the other 22 percent are Read More
“Dr. Will and Dr. Charlie Mayo were our first social networkers,” says Lee Aase, Director of Mayo Clinic Social Media Network. “They really believed that to do the best care for patients, they needed to learn from others, and they felt an obligation to share what they were learning in their practice.” The Mayo Clinic Social Media Read More
In our self-service, digitally enabled world, healthcare consumers get annoyed when they can’t do something as basic as scheduling an appointment online. Ignoring patient demands for access and convenience can be a costly mistake, resulting in low satisfaction scores, or worse, losing out to competitors. A few years ago, Clinical Care Associates (CCA) decided it was time Read More
Do you have a hard time getting your physicians to tweet or blog or post anything at all on social media? So did University of Utah Health Care (UUHC) before the organization found a way to crack the code. “I’m not going to lie, most of them needed some convincing,” says Libby Mitchell, Social Media Read More
Are your website visitors captive customers? When an organization fails to meet customer expectations—and the bar has been set high by industries outside of healthcare—the impact on brand can be great. More than a third of visitors to health system websites surveyed by Greystone.Net and Klein & Partners, creators of gSight™, a healthcare and hospital Read More
A March 2016 editorial in JAMA authored by three University of Michigan physicians, “Health System Loyalty Programs: An Innovation in Customer Care and Service,” begins as follows: “Many people belong to loyalty programs for coffee shops, hotel chains, or airlines. Despite a highly consumer-oriented approach in some health systems, similar types of loyalty programs have Read More
Patients are consumers. They want convenience—especially online. They expect it, and when they don’t get it, they don’t like it. When they don’t like it, they may tell other people. If they’re really upset, they may use the large megaphone known as the Internet to tell the world. Wouldn’t it be great if they told Read More
“If talk of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) brings to mind comically unfashionable goggles, a dearth of useful applications, and headache-inducing graphics, we’d understand. Until two or three years ago, we thought the same—they were technologies of the future and always would be. But we’ve come full circle in our thinking and so Read More
If you could get a physician to refer 100 percent of his or her patients to your hospital or health system, what would that be worth? If the physician refers to specialists, such as neurosurgeons or orthopedic surgeons, it could be worth $2.5 million to $3 million in annual revenue, according to Bryce Bartel, CEO Read More
Could your health system launch a brand-new digital marketing campaign on four weeks’ notice? When funding for a marketing campaign materialized in the fall of 2015, Lahey Health’s Specializing in You campaign was fast-tracked, with a mandate to be in market by October 1. “The first email I got from our [marketing and communications] team Read More
Is retail strategy relevant to your work as a healthcare marketer? The answer is a resounding yes, according to Ken Robbins, Founder and President of award-winning digital agency Response Mine Interactive (RMI). “Techniques used to increase conversions for larger retail organizations can be very successfully applied to healthcare,” he says. He offers the following stats in support Read More
In early April, the Economist Intelligence Unit released results of its latest survey of top marketing executives, The Path to 2020: Marketers Seize the Customer Experience, commissioned by marketing automation company Marketo. The report captures the insights and opinions of global marketing leaders spanning multiple industries. We followed up with Marketo’s Chief Marketing Officer Sanjay Read More
“Massive amounts of private health information (PHI) are stored in Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) ready for analysis by those in the healthcare industry for the benefit of all,” notes Suni Munshani. “[But] the healthcare industry must find new ways to defend itself and its sensitive data from bad actors also keen to leverage the wealth Read More
When it comes to selecting software, implementation, or design vendors for major technology upgrades such as a content management system (CMS) or customer relationship management system (CRM), there’s a lot on the line. Even small healthcare organizations may have to pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars; for larger organizations, it could be in the Read More
Online billing: From the patient perspective, it seems like the best you can achieve is a silver lining to an otherwise dark cloud. But Memorial Hermann health system in Texas has implemented an online payment solution from Simplee that is garnering rave reviews. “We understand that paying a healthcare bill isn’t always pleasant, that healthcare is Read More