Integrated Branding Blog | Movéo

Driving Patient Loyalty and Hospital Revenues Now

Some conventional wisdom…

1. The healthcare industry fared better than most during the recent recession. 

2. The healthcare field continues to be less advanced, savvy and competent versus others when it comes to technology, marketing and customer focus. 

3. The practice of cultivating existing customers is far more profitable and productive today – or at any time – than seeking new ones. 

While the first assertion (the healthcare industry is healthier) is true, providers and hospitals are not immune from the effects of the current economic condition. Higher unemployment means fewer people are insured, resulting in fewer admissions for non-emergency procedures – not to mention an increase in provider costs for non-covered, indigent care. Nurses are being laid off. Philanthropic donations and state Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are declining, according to the American Hospital Association. 

The second assertion (the healthcare field is less advanced) is also a fact; but this means now there is a great opportunity for the progressive hospital to stand out and gain competitive advantage in the market. The third assertion (it is better to focus on current customers) is correct, too, and relates to that opportunity. 

How to compete and drive results

What can a hospital facing some strong headwinds do in order to improve marketing effectiveness and patient retention? What can a provider do in the short term to drive desired results and in the long term to increase customer loyalty, brand competitiveness and strength?

Today many hospital marketing heads have been forced by CEOs to cut marketing and communications budgets. Many are now focused on immediate, quarterly based, measurable direct and e-marketing tactics. Few may be considering market research, as patient and community studies do not actively generate revenue and there are often issues with speed of execution and actionability.

But a simple, powerful research metric – the Net Promoter Score^® (NPS^®)* – has emerged, which a notable few providers are employing. NPS shows a strong linkage between survey results and the bottom line — hospital profitability, customer loyalty and brand value.

The static, status-quo hospital research

Actually, most hospitals have been conducting patient and stakeholder satisfaction surveys for a long time. But how have they been applying the results? Toward building patient brand loyalty? Improving the care or service? The reality is that very few provider marketers or staff know how – or if – the survey information is applied.

Much of the impetus for patient satisfaction surveying is driven by the federal government’s quality mandate and establishment (HCAPS). Moreover, enterprising satisfaction survey research companies have taken full advantage of the need for hospital compliance to successfully sell ongoing survey products (not consulting) to providers – in effect creating client loyalty to the patient satisfaction survey process. But few employees in a hospital (including marketers and executives) really know how the complex survey reports, tables and data symbols are used or who within the organization owns the program. Does the hospital’s CEO regularly keep tabs on the ratings? Are strategic marketing or customer service plans created based on the feedback? Doubtful.

NPS may even have greater relevance in the hospital, where the customer experience is defined by so many intangibles, touch points over time and people. So a provider that can successfully apply NPS will have a good chance of standing out in the market, driving needed change and building powerful stakeholder loyalty … creating real economic and brand value.

*Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

By Kevin Randall, Director of Brand Strategy & Research Movéo Integrated Branding

Why Health Professionals Should Pay Attention to Local Search

image credit: And so it goes in Shreveport

Proximity and word-of-mouth have always been influential (if not the most influential) factors in choosing a hospital or doctor. I recall hearing my mom mention that she often used doctors that her sisters had visited. She also took my siblings and I to the same doctors that my cousins saw.

Location was always important as well. If one was short on recommendations, they could pick up a trusty old phone book and find a provider nearby.

This is still true today as it was in the past. But in a different way. "Word-of-mouth" recommendations now include comments from Online communities and social media contacts. And younger generations are more likely to check local listings Online with a Google search or local site like Yelp or YellowPages.com.

Both of these methods are related to local search, which is why it's important providers pay attention. It should be a priority for doctors and hospitals to manage their local listings. You'll want to make sure first and foremost that you have a listing and that it is accurate. Much of the data provided for local listings is pulled from data providers like Localeze and infoUSA, so make sure to check with them first. If they get an address or phone number wrong, it could be shared with dozens of other sites, including Google.

Somewhere along the line, you'll also want to monitor any ratings or reviews associated with your listing. Clearly, negative reviews can have a large impact on whether prospective customers take the next step in contacting you. It's a good idea to ask satisfied patients to leave a review for you.. Sometimes a nudge is all it takes. And if you do have negative reviews, use them to improve the way you do business. These can be valuable insights into how people view you from an outside perspective.

Your brand + local search

Integrated branding requires delivering a consistent message across all marketing channels. An incomplete local listing (think Google Maps, Yelp, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, etc.) not only decreases your visibility in search results, but it sends a less than satisfactory message to users about your brand. And sometimes the listings are inaccurate.

I can speak from experience. One of my clients - through no fault of their own - had an incorrect address in infoUSA's database. It so happens that infoUSA supplies data to many Online players, so the incorrect address was listed all over the Internet. After a friendly chat with infoUSA, we were able to correct the problem, which in turn updated the listings of everyone they supply data to.

Users expect to see complete and accurate listings when they are searching. If any information is missing, they may not be able to contact you. And even if they find another way, you've provided a difficult user experience for them. To combat this, make sure to check your listings in all major directories. If you don't have a listing, create one. If you do, make sure the listing is complete and consistent with the format of other listings.

This can be a tedious task as you'll likely have to create an account on each Site, but is well worth the time. Here is a list of local directories to get started: http://www.localseoguide.com/how-to-update-your-internet-yellow-pages-listings-for-free/

Brand Transparency in a Social Media Age

Internet access provides consumers with endless amounts of information at their fingertips. To put this in perspective, let's compare our process of collecting information today to that of 15 years ago. Imagine a grade school student in mid-90's. If this person needed information they would probably start out by asking their parents or another family member. If that proved insufficient, the next stop would an encyclopedia or perhaps a trip to local library.

Image courtesy of flaivoloka on stock.xchng

Now compare that to today. You want to know how to tie a knot, cancer research, book reviews, etc. - it's all a search and a click away. And since this information has become available, we have become much smarter consumers. We care more about what's in our food, what effect our actions have on the environment and so on. If a brand is unethical in any way, we are going to hear about it and hear about it fast. It's the new word-of-mouth and it's much more accessible and viral.

This is why brand transparency has become increasingly important. Brands can't hide behind walls and tell us who they are. We decide who they are by how they act and the quality of their product. Our purchasing decisions will be made with more information at hand. To succeed brands will have to be open and part of the discussion so that consumers are aware of the value their brand has on issues we care about.

We've always been social, we just have the technology now to easily connect with others on a massive scale. Word-of mouth has never traveled so fast. Brands need to remember that with every decision they make.

3 Simple Ways Non-profits Can Promote a Cause Through Social Media

1. Tweet. Find people who are interested in your topic by searching conversations on search.twitter.com. Reach out by following them and sending them a personalized message. You'll be surprised by how many follow back or find you by searching through conversations. Once you've built a following. Share your important announcements and hopefully some of your followers will Retweet it to their followers.

Just make sure that you're not only tweeting about yourself. Converse with your followers by answering or asking questions that pertain to them. Be active within your online community.

2. Create a Facebook page. Add your cause to Facebook and Causes.com and share your story. Make sure to let your Twitter followers and others that you have a Facebook page.

3. Rich media. Create videos and upload them to YouTube. Take pictures and add them to Flickr. Not only are these sites search engines in their own right, but can easily integrate with other social media platforms. You might embed a video or slideshow on your homepage or provide links as references in a tweet or Facebook post. Content is critical when it comes to social media, so never stop creating it or sharing it.

Once you've mastered these tactics, you can look into some additional ways to get involved. Make sure others can easily share your content with the click of a button, no matter where it is located. You might even contact a popular blog or social media guru and ask them for an interview concerning your cause. Getting visibility on a site like Mashable or Digg can turn a campaign viral in the blink of an eye.

Query Parsing Explained

If you're running a geo-specific AdWords campaign you may have wondered why you sometimes receive, and thus pay, for clicks outside of the area you are targeting.

For example, you may be running a campaign for a local business in downtown Chicago. And to make sure that your ads only reach local searchers, you've indicated exactly which ZIP codes you want associated with your ads. However, when you sift through the analytics, you see that some of the users that are clicking on your ads are from outside the pre-determined ZIP's. They might be coming from New York or San Diego or a nearby town in Illinois.

The reason for this is query parsing. Google explains query parsing well in their AdWords Help forum, but we'll attempt to explain it here as well. The best way to do so is by demonstrating what it does.

If you are bidding on "chicago grocery stores," someone in Oklahoma could see your ad, even if you targeted the campaign toward people living in Chicago. This is query parsing. Google looks at this searcher in Oklahoma as if they were in Chicago because of their intention with the search.

Query parsing is part of Google AdWord's algorithm for matching searches with relevant ads and you cannot control it. It makes sense, as someone in a different city could certainly be looking for products or services in Chicago for any number of reasons.

Building From the Inside Out

Many brand-building efforts begin with development of the strategy and then proceed directly to an external launch. The most important step is ignored — communicating the essence and relevance of the brand among all internal stakeholders — making it the fabric of the organization.

The most successful organizations understand that if employees are aligned with the brand strategy, including the brand promise, they will deliver a consistent expression of the brand to its customers.

Powerhouse brands such as Mayo Clinic and GE are prime examples. Each has dedicated itself to helping its employees understand the power of the brand and have reaped the benefits of a consistent brand expression delivered at every touch point.

Building a brand-based culture is not about creating short-term “buzz.” It is about developing a genuine and ongoing commitment.  To create a brand-centric environment, you have to ensure that employees are living the brand consistently on a daily basis.

Developing a vibrant brand-based culture requires the organization team members to go through three stages:

1. Merely being aware of the brand and what it stands for (“Hearing It”)
2. Understand their role in delivering against the brand promise (“Believing it”)
3. Becoming passionate advocates for the brand (“Living It”)

If the employees are not living this brand every day, it will fundamentally impede the growth and success of the organization. In fact, studies have shown that up to 86% of employees who interface with customers, are communicating inaccurate or incomplete vital information.

How well aligned is your organization with your brand?

Hosting videos on your Site vs. YouTube

Many marketers are already aware of the benefit of using video in B2B marketing. But once you’ve decided on this strategy, you still have to decide where you’d like to host the videos - your own Web site or YouTube. There are pros and cons to each, which I explain below.

The benefits of hosting videos on your site are that the user will be spending time on your domain and that links to the video will empower your domain and not YouTube.com. When a user is on your site, you have the added benefit of promoting your brand. YouTube does allow you to customize your channel, but control is limited.

Some companies may not have the time, bandwidth or resources, however, to implement videos on their site. There is a level of programming involved and you will have to embed some type of video player. If the technical issues are too much of an obstacle, you might strongly consider the YouTube route.

Creating a YouTube Channel and uploading videos is very simple and can be accomplished in a matter of minutes. You can also optimize your videos by giving them appropriate titles and tagging each one with related keywords.

It’s important to remember that YouTube is currently the second biggest search engine in the U.S. as far as volume of searches. Using YouTube allows your videos to be found by users who are searching within YouTube.com, as well as those who are using Google or Bing.

B2B Customer Loyalty

Brand loyalty is often associated with B2C companies, although it can be argued that customer retention is just as important (if not more) in the B2B realm.

In the past, we've discussed some of the differences between B2B and B2C in the buying cycle. More often than not, a B2B purchase is much more involved because of technical aspects of the product, higher price and multiple people involved in the decision process. Consider this and that the market for B2B products and services are smaller and you see that retaining customers is a critical component in B2B marketing.

We've recently conducted two studies on this topic. Read the results in our latest article, The Million Dollar Question: How Loyal are Your Customers?

B2B Videos for Search are More Important than Ever

Image courtesy of Search Engine Land

As search engines and social media continue to evolve, it has become more important than ever for B2B companies to use videos for search.

What does this have to do with search engines?
In today’s world, which is heavily influenced by social media, search engines return results that include Web pages, blogs, products, images, videos, maps, local businesses and more. It’s called social, universal or blended search. Because of this, it’s important for companies to create content in these ways so that they might have more visibility. Not every form of content is appropriate for every company, however, so it’s important to find which are relevant.

Why is video generally a good option for content for B2B companies?
This one’s pretty simple, if you think about it. In many cases a B2B purchase can be very technical and research intensive. Videos make it easier to explain content and give the user a break from having to read an extremely long document. In addition, it gives the B2B company a chance to show their product in action. This does not in any way mean that written content shouldn’t be available as well, just that having the extra option can make the process much easier for you and a potential client.

So, whether you create a YouTube channel or host the videos on your existing site, make sure to consider this option if you are a B2B company. Not only do you give the user what they want, but your videos have a chance to increase your brand visibility in search results.