All right, from the start I have to admit that this one is gonna be a little more difficult to wrap up in a nice ten minute tip. When we were brainstorming this idea internally, we wanted to present small ideas that can help you perform your job better and hopefully be easy to do. I want you to know that I understand that this one isn’t going to be something that you can implement in 10 minutes.

Branding is Important

These are NOT the Air Jordan's you were looking for!

Imagine how excited I was last night when my wife got home from the semi-annual children’s consignment sale / presale. Normally she comes back with coats, dresses, lots of pink shirts, oftentimes a doll house add on… all kinds of things for our daughters. As I am unloading all this stuff, I spot a shoe box that from afar looks like it has the Air Jordan logo on it. Now, I am 6′5″ with a horrible hook shot, but I would love to be able to lace up the sneakers and get out on the court with my daughters.

Then I get closer to the box and immediately recognize that the logo was indeed NOT the Air Jordan logo. The box did not contain a pair of basketball shoes. It contained a pair of ballet slippers.

Your Hospital Branding is Important

OK, so obviously this has nothing to do with hospital branding. But it did spark a reminder to me that defining your brand and holding your branding standards should be of utmost importance.  Here’s why:

• Brand recognition and visibility: Once defined, your hospital’s brand should be recognizable and visible. It’s important to build a recognizable and visible brand in order to gain the trust and support of your audience, or patients and staff. Pretty much every service your hospital offers can be branded. We know that hospital’s have several internal brands—from cancer centers to children’s departments—and making these stand out without changing your hospital’s overall brand is the ideal way to go.

• Brand consistency: Once you feel like your brand is recognizable, you should make every effort to make it consistent amongst ALL initiatives, whether that initiative be flyers pinned on a corkboard in the heart and vascular wing promoting a blood drive, or a 15 second public service announcement about the dangers of texting while driving. The consistency of your brand (through the logo, font, graphics, etc.) should be held sacred and should not change. Consistency, recognition and visibility all go hand-in-hand.

Healthy Branding Begins Internally

Achieving a successful brand externally begins with a healthy brand internally. To be successful, it is critical that all employees understand, embrace and promote the brand attributes of your organization. In fact, your employees probably have more influence with your customers than any marketing initiate that you may be in the middle of. They will drive and enhance the external perceptions of your brand.

This is actually a topic that we are going to be discussing at the 14th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference in Las Vegas this November 15-17. Kim Marlatt, the Director of Marketing and Planning at MCGHealth and Tom Brand from AVID Design will be discussing how you can sell your brand from the inside out. They’ll be presenting a case study of how this was accomplished through an successful internal initiative that MCGHealth took on.

AVID Design is a leader in cutting-edge hospital Website design and SEO. Contact us today for a free 10-point SEO evaluation of your Website!

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After years of resisting the game—perhaps because of nearly as many years of repeated Caddyshack viewings that made the stereotypes about snobby country club culture overshadow the Zen-like beauty of the game—I have very recently become obsessed with golf. Needless to say, it was just a matter of time before a golf-related posting was going to soon grace this blog.

Image is everything? It’s hard to believe that anybody dressed like this could be responsible for selling millions of dollars worth of high-end camera equipment, but that’s precisely what a guy with a mullet haircut and Spandex shorts named Andre Agassi did for Canon.

But before you sigh and close your browser, hold on. I don’t want to wax about far-reaching metaphors that feebly attempt to bridge playing the game and hospital marketing. Instead, I want to look at the more closely and realistically related concepts of golf and hospital marketing and branding.

One of the first things I’ve learned about golf is that it’s an industry as much as it’s a game. Golf product companies want me to believe that one company’s products are better than another’s, and that by using them, I’ll be better. Does healthcare marketing sound all that much different?

The golf industry often attempts to sell (or at least introduce) that idea with any number of marketing techniques, such as endorsements from top players. As former tennis champ Andre Agassi used to say in his ads for Canon cameras, “Image is everything.” Although endorsements aren’t as common in healthcare, hospitals regularly try to promote an image that their brand can (literally) make you better.

Being the Best at Being Better

Although golf is just a game where one strives to be better (at the game)—as where hospitals deal with matters where being better is sometimes a matter of life or death—golf’s various products and brands differ in price, quality and function the same way as hospitals and their service lines and doctors.

But how does one discover which brand is truly the best at making you better?

A couple of months ago, I couldn’t have told you the functional difference between a pitching wedge and a lob wedge, much less the quality difference between Taylor Made clubs and Callaway Golf clubs. I can now, though—and I’ll spare you the explanations of the differences. But how did I discover those differences.

• Word of mouth (from friends)

• Referrals (from trusted professionals)

• Advertising (print, television and online)

• Customer reviews (print and online)

Now let’s assume that I was in a situation of needing to discover which treatment is best for a condition I have, or which hospital is better at performing that treatment. How would I do this? (Hint: It’s the same list as above).

Note that I didn’t mention statistical analysis, e.g., quality of care reports. It’s not that they aren’t useful or that I (or others) wouldn’t use them, but they typically aren’t primary techniques for researching hospitals. Instead, they are more likely to be used once people become aware of the leading brands and services.

Let’s now consider your hospital’s marketing and advertising. What does it truly mean to be the best…and what are you doing to be the best, or at least promote that image?

Are you perceived as a leading brand? Do you make it easy to learn about the treatments you offer and which is better?

And what about your competitors? Are they perhaps second-rate when compared to you…but project an image that implies something more?

AVID Design is a full-service healthcare marketing agency that builds progressive, cutting-edge healthcare Websites, rich media applications and physician videos.

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Our July 2010 newsletter feature story will examine an often overlooked asset for healthcare marketers: internal Website users such as doctors, physicians, clinicians, nurses and other hospital staff members. (Of course, if you do not yet subscribe to our newsletter, now is the perfect time!)

Among other topics, the feature will contemplate five ways to better engage your workforce so that they can be effective brand ambassadors.

On which of these have you focused for improving your hospital’s internal branding and marketing efforts? What other areas or techniques would you suggest?

AVID Design is an award-winning hospital marketing strategy consultant. Contact us to learn more about having your internal and external hospital brand awareness strategies evaluated.

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