Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

Measure Effectiveness and Communicate Value to Your Organization

By Brian Dailey

One of the great things about attending the Society of Healthcare Strategy & Market Development (SHSMD) annual conference is talking directly with our customers. If one were to build a Venn diagram of SHSMD attendees and Stratasan clientele, the circles would very nearly overlap.

A common thread I've heard in these conversations is that proving the value of planning and marketing to the rest of the business can be very difficult. Businesses want to see a very clear return on investment, and it's on marketing and planning departments to not only do their jobs, but also communicate the value of their jobs to the rest of the organization. This is especially true as the industry continues to do more with less (as has been very succinctly described in SHSMD's "Bridging Worlds.")

Tags: shsmd18, SHSMD, healthcare marketing, strategic growth planning

Online Marketing Strategies that Connect with Today’s Patient Needs

By Carly Farlow and Jennifer Keller

Today’s healthcare patients are searching the internet to understand medical symptoms, research diagnoses, and find trustworthy health information. They are also looking for providers and hospitals who can meet and address their unique needs and concerns. Rather than simply using the doctor down the street, today’s patient wants customized care over convenience, even if that means a longer commute to their provider of choice.

Healthcare marketing must continually evolve alongside patient needs, attracting patients by providing an online experience that is fresh, relevant, and reliable. A digital marketing strategy can be the key to reaching new prospects in a way that will convert them to satisfied patients. The strategy we use here at Stratasan, and one we highly recommend, is the methodology known as inbound marketing.

Tags: hosptial marketing, healthcare marketing, content marketing, marketing, marketing roi, targeted marketing

How Tanner Health Has Found Success Through Advanced Market Segmentation

By Kelly Meigs and Drake Jarman

Stratasan's Drake Jarman and Kelly Meigs of Tanner Health System led a breakfast session on “How to Create Planning and Marketing Initiatives Based on Real-Time Intelligence” at this year's GSHMPR Annual Conference. Attendees learned how, by geocoding internal patient data to the block group level, Tanner Health System can assess growth plans in real-time and pivot execution strategies as needed.

Download the slides from their presentation, here.

Tags: hosptial marketing, targeted marketing, marketing roi, healthcare marketing, data-driven decisions, micro-target marketing, success story

We hope it’s been a wonderful year of growth and learning through Stratasan's Strategic Growth blog series. As we close out the year, we thought it would be helpful to share the 5 most popular blog posts from 2017. These posts received the most hits and seemed to provide the most helpful strategic growth guidance to you, our readers.

If you’re traveling over the holidays, this is a great way to review helpful blog posts that you may have missed or revisit your favorites for fresh insight.

 

Tags: Blog, health care, healthcare, healthcare marketing, healthcare service area, healthcare strategic growth, marketing, physician recrutiment, physician relations, service area, strategic growth, 2017, software

Find Inspiration from these Forward-Thinking Marketing Teams

By Jennifer Keller

With so many avenues to interact with patients and prospective patients online, hospitals and health systems are finding new and creative ways to connect every day. In this post, find inspiration from four health systems making impressive and forward-thinking strides in their marketing programs. Each hospital has employed notable marketing, and particularly social media, strategies in an effort to engage their community.

Tags: healthcare marketing, marketing, social media, hosptial marketing, content marketing

Why the Right Referral Software is Necessary to Ensure Goals Are Being Met

By Jackie DeGroat and Sean Conway

Hospitals depend heavily on their referring physicians for patient volume and revenue, which is why developing and maintaining relationships with these physicians is so important. Physician Liaisons are the face, voice, eyes, and ears of this demanding effort. Physicians have a lot of options for referrals and this competition puts even more pressure on physician relations teams to effectively manage provider relationships.

Physician relations teams are responsible for strengthening relationships between physicians and their hospital or health system, with the goal of driving more referrals in-network. There are many components that make up a quality physician relations program, such as a strategic sales plan, effective encounters, and meaningful conversations. But to ensure program goals are being met, physician relations teams must track and measure their initiatives so they can successfully identify opportunities for improvement.

Tags: healthcare marketing, marketing, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare strategic planning, strategic growth, healthcare data, healthcare data analytics, Physician Pathway, healthcare physician strategy, physician referral, physician relations

Introducing Demographics for Launch Pathway

By Tony Camarata, Morgan Atkins, and Rebecca Groner

Demographic data is one of the oldest forms of strategic planning data available. The inaugural US Census was in 1790, which is relatively recent considering the history of census data. Today, demographic data is a basic commodity with detailed information being available on the Census Bureau's website. You can also get this kind of information from numerous established businesses or from a trade association.

While easy access to demographic data is convenient, simply having the information is often not enough. Businesses and organizations looking to use demographic data to find opportunities for growth will need the data to be filtered and organized in a way that makes it useful. This is especially the case for hospitals and healthcare systems.

Tags: healthcare marketing, marketing, marketing development, marketing roi, targeted marketing, launch pathway, healthcare strategic growth, healthcare strategic planning, strategic growth, demographics, healthcare demographics, healthcare data, healthcare data analytics

Why Healthcare Marketing is Worth the Investment

By Taylor Burke

Healthcare marketing is often overlooked. Since healthcare is a service we all need, it’s often placed into a lackluster stereotype in which it’s assumed either no or very dry marketing tactics will work to win-over new patients.  

But that stereotype is inaccurate for a couple of reasons. First, because healthcare is interesting. It’s about science, personal relationships, and self-care—all incredibly powerful topics. Second, despite the need for healthcare, not every provider is guaranteed patients.

The industry is expected to see massive growth in the coming decade, healthcare startups are booming and taking up market, and our most powerful consumer group, millennials, are less likely than any other generation to visit the doctor. With these factors at play, it’s critical that healthcare providers make intelligent marketing decisions that will help them stand out. The content is there, it’s what you do with it that counts. Here are seven marketing tactics healthcare providers should test out in the coming year to ensure continued patient growth and retention.

Tags: healthcare marketing, marketing, marketing development, marketing roi, targeted marketing

We hope it’s been a wonderful year of growth and learning through Stratasan's Strategic Growth blog series. As we close out the year, we thought it would be helpful to share the 5 most popular blog posts from 2016. These posts received the most hits and seemed to provide the most helpful strategic growth guidance to you, our readers.

If you’re traveling over the holidays, this is a great way to review helpful blog posts that you may have missed or revisit your favorites for fresh insight.

Tags: 2016, Blog, demographics, health care, healthcare, healthcare customer, healthcare marketing, healthcare patient, healthcare service area, healthcare strategic growth, marketing, marketing roi, patient population, physician recrutiment, physician relations, service area, strategic growth

Mass marketing, shotgun marketing, spray and pray marketing—call it what you like, but if your marketing strategy can be described in any of these ways, you’re likely wasting valuable money, creating marketing programs with no trackable ROI, alienating large patient groups, and missing opportunities to connect with your preferred population.

Shotgun marketing can be defined as an attempt to raise awareness about a product or service to a large, non-specific group of people, rather than advertising to a specific demographic. There’s a chance that your marketing could hit the right population group, but there’s no guarantee. Not to mention that if you do, there’s likely to be a lot of waste. With this approach, there is no data-based assurance that you’re aiming for patients who actually need the service your hospital is offering.

Tags: Blog, health care, healthcare, healthcare marketing, healthcare strategic growth, hospital strategic growth, marketing, marketing research, service line growth, strategic growth, targeted marketing