Protect Your Game: Hospital for Special Surgery’s Portal for Golf

by Julie Pelaez and Dagmara Scalise

As a hospital marketer, you might have had this scenario play out in your head: Droves of new patients show up at your hospital simply because they know it offers them exactly what they need. And you didn’t even have to tell them about it! Instead, someone they trust, respect, and admire told them about your great doctors and care and urged them to seek out your hospital.

More likely than not, it’s then that you wake up and grab your morning coffee or pick your head up off your desk, straighten that stack of papers you were drooling on, and get back to the marketing plan.

Fantasies of unprecedented levels of unaided brand awareness, new rev­enue streams, and door-busting patient volumes are just that – fan­tasies. The reality is that most hos­pitals are dealing with a declining number of inpatients and a market­place that is only growing more competitive by the month. Con­sumers are confused about how your hospital differs from the one down the street. It’s no wonder the pressure for hospitals to market in a dif­ferent way is getting fierce.

Marketing differently

What does it mean to market dif­ferently? For many hospitals, it means reaching out to consumers more directly by partnering with or­ganizations that not only have high consumer awareness and loyalty, but can also benefit from the hospital’s offerings. In other words, creating a positive association of your hospital in the minds of prospective patients and, ideally, providing them with a value they wouldn’t get otherwise.

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