by adminHealthcare Consumerism: How to Attract Modern Consumers with Strong Hospital Branding
Healthcare consumerism has come up a long way. However, now we are noticing a paradigm shift in their behavior. But why is it happening? Well, it is simple. Patients are now the modern consumers. Gone are those days when patients were fine waiting in line. Today’s consumers want things right now. Previously patients used to blindly follow the orders given by the healthcare providers, but now modern healthcare consumers make their own decisions. They want effective communication, transparency, delivery of promised services, and more.
With this, they now anticipate hospitals to improve their services based on their feedback and expectations. However, it is difficult to keep up with the demands of modern consumers. But you need to worry! Instead of being overwhelmed, one should listen and respond to them effectively. But how to create a strong hospital brand that attracts modern consumers? Well, we give bring you 5 stages through which you can achieve this:
5 Ways to Leverage Healthcare Consumerism
Understand your Brand Identity: The first and foremost step is to identify your brand vision. Modern consumers are quite savvy about the brand’s vision, mission and purpose. They are more inclined to know about your brand’s core values and the actions you take to implement that vision. Your brand has a deep effect on your hospital marketing strategies, right from the design and logos to website content, social media posts and messaging. If you have not devised a plan, then it is high to do so to help these consumers to relate to your values and vision. However, as you start to examine your core values as a brand, you might find them aligned with who you are. That’s a wake-up call for you to develop a better identity that fits better today, which can be easily achieved by a rebranding campaign.
Understand your Target Audience: Once, you have aligned your core identity with who you are, now it is time to look at your target audience. Today’s healthcare consumer expects hospitals to be aware of their needs and wishes. A top-rated hospital understands its patients’ perceptions and provides them with the best experience. With your brand strategy in place, you can attempt to comprehend the modern healthcare consumer needs. Defining your target audience shifts the marketing perspective from “This is what we think you need” to “This is what you are interested in.”
You can easily get to know your target audience much better through various methods including email, patient surveys, comment cards, and more. Although this help to improve patient experience, it also provides you with persona information. With this, you can easily improve your marketing strategies and messaging that reflects their needs.
Find out how Consumers use the Internet to Search Hospital Departments: Modern healthcare consumer looks for all the medical information online. As they search for hospitals, they also come across its competition, patient reviews, and more. So, the question here is: what kind of phrases or questions are they using to find you? That can be easily identified using organic search data using various SEO and marketing tools.
What phrases or questions are they using to find you? You can find out by organic search data, including keyword research using various SEO and marketing tools. Using this data, you can then customize your digital messaging to include the information consumers want to learn and know before choosing your hospital over another. It’s also vital to evaluate how people use smart devices to find hospitals online.
Make your Brand Presence Felt Online: Now you know your brand identity, your target audience, and what they are search about you. Using this, you can now start creating your brand messaging. Consistent brand messaging is the key here as it conveys your value proposition to your current and potential customers. However, we have seen that hospital marketing strategies struggle to maintain this consistent messaging in online channels.
Before crafting the brand message, you should consider a few points: What is your tagline? What is your brand’s value proposition? Are sending the right message to your target audience? Use these answer to craft your unique brand messaging, which will be crucial for your business.
Maximize your Content Reach: The final step is to maximize your content reach to every nook and cranny of the digital world. Since you already your target audience and know how they are trying to reach you, make sure to identify the channels through which your potential and current patients might find the information. Also, don’t forget to optimize for SEO so that you don’t lag behind your competition.