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Archives : branding
Health care branding…What to do when your customers don’t like you
I read an interesting blog post today from Turducken, which dealt – rather pointedly – about the frustrating maze of health care insurance brands that each own a piece of his mindshare even though he has (on the face of it) a single insurance provider. The writer goes on to explain that perhaps the confusion, dilution, and integration of a number of brands together when the consumer is dissatisfied with the services provided (as many are with their healthcare insurance companies) – is a good thing.
Branding, as a concept, is enhanced when brands are clear, relevant, and simple – so as to be memorable and perhaps even own a piece of our thoughts as we navigate our purchasing decisions. However, maybe it’s that the insurance companies don’t want to be remembered, and instead prefer to be entangled and intertwined as part of their marketing strategy, thus being able to land their share of the money that flows from member to insurer to provider without falling accountable to the harsh and oft debatable coverage decisions that are made.
You know, in most businesses, brand recognition is considered a highly desirable thing. How else will the customer know to request Acme products? I guess in businesses where your customers hate you, they want to make sure they don’t know your name.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Build your practice using Twitter and Facebook
Odds are, you’ve heard about Twitter and Facebook by now. But did you know these simple social media tools can actually help build your practice?
They can, and actually do for many practices throughout the country. Social media, while possessing mass appeal for the casual online user, has found a niche for both big and small businesses alike…and healthcare is no exception.
From hospitals to healthcare clinics, businesses are using social media to attract and retain new clients. Here are a few examples of healthcare practices that are using social media to effectively reach their markets.
Apex Physical Therapy (via Twitter)
Elmbrook Family Dental (via Facebook)
Detroit Medical Center (via Twitter)
In case you’re wondering…we’re using it too. Check us out below, and feel free to give us a “follow” if you’d like to see how we’re using the technology to help our clients.
Follow Vantage on Twitter
Follow Vantage on Facebook
And don’t hesitate to contact us if you’d like to know how you can build your practice with social media. It’s easier than you might think.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Twitter: What’s the point in medical care?…Trust me, there is one.
We love Twitter around here and use it all the time. It’s a great tool for medical practices, though there are many asleep behind the social medial wheel. If I told you I could help you market your practice in a way that was free, easy, fun, and effective…would you be interested?
If so, check out this article from MGMA that does a great job of speaking to the medical practice administrator’s use of Twitter.
If you’re asking yourself, “What’s the point of Twitter?” you’re not alone. Several medical practice administrators have asked us why they should participate in this form of electronic messaging. If you’re wondering, too, this guide is for you.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Everybody is the best. What you need is to be different.
This is a bit hard to stomach, but it’s the cold, hard truth: I’m no better than the next guy.
At least that’s what I need to tell myself. And you should consider the same.
The reason for this is pretty simple…everyone is the best. Now, you might be able to argue the case that this isn’t possible (I mean, how can everyone really be the best, after all), but for all practical purposes – all purposes that matter to the owner of a business – it absolutely, vehemently, 100% is the case, and should be treated as such.
Think of it this way: You’re marketing your practice to your community, your referral sources, and maybe even a payer or two. You need to give them a reason to use you, right? So, what do you tell them…that you’re mediocre? That you’re about half as good as the doctor’s office across the street?
If you’re still in practice you don’t.
You tell them that you’re the best, right? Sure you do – but guess what – so does everyone else.
So, you might have established that you’re the best – right along with the other 100 practices in your market – but what you’ve probably failed to do is establish that you’re different.
In competitive markets (which health care is, and will continue to be), being different is better than being the best. Being different in a way that people can remember, enjoy, and talk about will achieve a return on your marketing investment that far outpaces any returns you’ll achieve by letting everyone know how good you are.
You might be different because you own a piece of equipment that no one else has. You might be different because your approach is a bit off the beaten path. You might be different because your office is clean and plays nice music. And yes, in some cases you might actually be different because you are the best (just don’t get too caught up on this one).
If you look hard enough, you’ll find that you are different…and that’s actually what really matters in marketing. So, go ahead – be the best. I will too. Just do it behind closed doors and give people another reason to use you.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Lessons learned about social media from Domino’s Pizza
Try this out…go to Google and type in “Domino’s Pizza.” Do it now, this might not work forever.
Your first result will be Dominos.com – as it should be. Result two might be another legitimate Domino’s page (or sub-page from within their main company domain). Result three (on my computer) is the following: “YouTube – Disgusting Dominos People.” Hmmm…not great press, wonder what happened – let’s click to see.
Looks like some Domino’s execs acted quickly to get the video removed, but not soon enough to prevent more than one million YouTube viewers witnessing a couple of Domino’s employees from N.C. doing the unthinkable to soon-to-be-delivered food items. Yes, mucus was involved.
Come to find out, the food was never delivered – or so they say. But guess what, the damage is done. No matter what Domino’s does to unwind this mess created by a couple of immature, disgruntled, or malicious employees (whatever their reason), they can’t undo this. Want to put a price tag on the incident? I bet we’re talking millions. Easily.
Though there are many lessons to be learned by this unfortunate incident – the main one is very simple, and very evident: While social media can instantaneously build fame and fortune – it can destroy decades of reputation and loyalty in the same instant. Understand it, train your staff, and put policies in place that clearly outline ground rules for use of social media for your company.
Oh, and Domino’s response to the incident…you can follow that on Twitter.
Social networking is for real. In healthcare too.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website.
Branding: Healthcare professions – We identify with them
One of the keys to a strong brand is the ability to connect, or identify with a customer. A brand that stands for something positive, has a nice [aesthetic] image, and attracts others like ourselves can be very successful in developing a strong following.
This is, of course, true of consumer brands such as Starbucks, McDonald’s, and Budweiser, but is also very true of professions such as medicine, osteopathy, physical therapy, acupuncture, and dentistry. With regard to consumer goods, you probably know people (maybe even yourself) that would NEVER go to Starbucks, ALWAYS prefers Budweiser to Coors, and would NEVER be caught at a fast food giant, namely McDonalds. Now, NEVER and ALWAYS are strong statements, which illustrates the power of the brand to help consumers identify with a good or a service.
A brand stands for something. It’s a promise of a certain experience, a certain expectation, a certain way of doing things. Because a brand represents something greater than itself, it can have much power over an audience to influence feelings, emotions, and behaviors – even to the point of making consumers ALWAYS or NEVER do something. Pretty powerful.
The same is true of the healthcare professions. Healthcare professions, while looking different than consumer brands, have all of the same attributes and are used in the same way. Consumers (i.e., patients) identify with certain healthcare professions, and not with others. I know people that will ALWAYS seek a physical therapist and NEVER a chiropractor. I know others that would ALWAYS seek a medical doctor prior to seeing an osteopath. Now, is this because a chiropractor is unable to help someone that needs physical therapy, or would an osteopath necessarily take a patient down the wrong path compared to a medical doctor?
No, not at all.
This is the power of branding. By identifying with a certain consumer group or patient segment, healthcare professions, like other consumer goods and services, can influence behavior to the point of the ALWAYS and NEVER statements illustrated above.
So, how does this impact my healthcare practice you ask? It impacts your practice and your profession (whatever it might be) because it is the brand conveyed to your target patient population that will drive whether or not you are successful in attracting patients in your area. Whether or not patients in your community identify with your practice or your profession is a critical piece to the overall success of your practice, and it is wise to consider this as part of your overall marketing strategy and communication plan.
Make sure that your practice and your profession are finding ways to identify with your target patient population, and you will find yourself on the receiving end of the ALWAYS statement mentioned above.
Branding: From airlines to healthcare, brands make the decision process easier
I fly fairly regularly. This said, I had yet to fly Southwest Airlines until this past weekend on my way to Orlando, FL to attend the Private Practice Section meeting of the APTA. As I headed to the conference to do a talk on the topic of branding as it relates to the physical therapy profession, I had branding on my mind almost the entire time. This is not too much of a variance from my day-to-day though, as I often think about branding as I go about my daily interactions with the world. I’m a bit of a nerd like that.
For each decision we make, we rely on brands to help us out. We may not realize it, but without brands we’d have a heck of a time making decisions about what to purchase, where to go, and how much we should pay for stuff.
When my business partner tried to convince me to fly Southwest Airlines this weekend, my initial response was that of hesitation. One thing I hate is uncertainty, and the Southwest brand that lives in my mind simply states, “cattle call.”
That’s how you get on the Southwest flights, right? A cattle call of sorts, finding your own seat according to some loose boarding structure based on a boarding “group.”
My second thought when he suggested Southwest though, was that of good customer service and low fares. I’ve seen plenty of Southwest ads over the years, and that much has become clear – I should expect to be treated well and won’t have to pay too much for it. So, when I confirmed this with a price tag of about half what I usually pay for a cross-country trip, I made the decision to give them a try – how wrong could their brand be?
Well, it wasn’t wrong. The low fare, the good service (it did happen), the cattle call; they were there, all three, just as promised by the brand.
And so goes the story with healthcare. In my talk on Saturday, I spoke of the “brand promise” that we make as healthcare practitioners, and how our promises help our patients (i.e., customers) make decisions about who, when, and how to seek our services.
Some professions, such as physical therapy, have much diversity and creativity to offer, landing physical therapists in a large number of different job settings. This, while valuable to the industries served, does not necessarily make the branding process easy. For a brand to help consumers make decisions it must be clear, concise, consistent, and regular. That is, it has to make the decision process a “no brainer” in order to be a powerful, successful brand.
When a patient injures themself or becomes ill, they make a quick decision about who to see, and when to see them; and they make the decision based on the information stored at the “top of mind,” not the information they will find in a marketing pamphlet or a private practice website. For this reason, it is important that a profession’s brand be abundantly clear to the consumer, providing guidance for both how and when to use the services in order to get better.
Branding: It matters for your practice
This week I’m attending a professional conference in Orlando, FL hosted by the American Physical Therapy Association’s Private Practice Section. I’ll be speaking on Saturday about the importance of “branding” to the future of direct access physical therapy, and on that theme will be posting a bit about branding this week on The Healthcare Entrepreneur.
Branding is of huge importance in all of healthcare; not just physical therapy. Branding is of significance to healthcare for the same reason that it is in consumer goods and retail – intense competition and a changing landscape require that we crystallize our messages to consumers so that they will best know how, where, and when to use our services.
At its core, a brand is a promise; a promise of something that will be delivered by your practice. A promise of quality, a promise of an experience, a promise of an outcome. Just as you use brands to help you make decisions about which detergent or soda pop to buy, our patients rely on our brands to help them determine where and who to go to for their healthcare services.
You don’t have a brand you say? Wrong. You always have a brand – you just might not have created it deliberately. There is nothing that says a brand has to cost a dime, that it has to be strategically developed, or that you even have to know what it is. If you have customers (i.e., patients), you have a brand; a promise of the experience that will be received when interacting with you, your practice, and your staff.
Do you typically run 20 minutes behind schedule for patient care? If so, that’s part of your brand – it’s what your patients will expect even after one behind-schedule experience in your practice. Is your practice warm and inviting? If so, you can bet your patients will understand this as well. These elements, while having nothing to do with a logo, brandmark, or marketing plan, have everything to do with the promise you are making to your patients.
When thinking about your practice’s brand, take steps to “promise” a deliberate experience; one that you would prefer yourself. This is the type of promise that is made through actions, which speak ever so louder than a crafty logo or brandmark can ever do.
Branding is more important than you think in healthcare
Before becoming a physical therapist, I remember working for a few PT practices that had “marketing personnel” on staff. I remember thinking, what a waste. For crying out loud, take care of your patients and people will continue to come to the clinic. Simple as that…I thought.
How funny it is that perceptions change over the years, especially when enlightened by a bit of real world experience, and in my case, the study of marketing in business school.
Healthcare, like any business, is not a simple as “do a good job, and people will come.” The inverse can actually be true however, whereby you can actually NOT do a good job, and people will STILL come, if the right experience and/or image is crafted, making the services look desirable (even if they aren’t all that good).
Now, there are definitely problems inherent with bad services that only look good, and I would never suggest that this is a route to take, especially in the practice of healthcare. I only bring it up to illustrate the power of crafting an image, as it is the image the precedes, and hence, creates [much of] the reality of the experience.
The practice of healthcare, whether in your small dental clinic or you burgeoning dermatology practice, needs a good image to attract customers. In marketing, “image” is somewhat synonomous with “branding,” and without getting too technical in this short post, it is the “brand image” that is responsible for your customer (i.e., patient) volume, or lack thereof.
A “brand” is nothing more than a promise. A promise of something good, or something desirable. For the physical therapy practice, the brand may be the promise of rehabilitation, or improved function. For the boutique medical practice, it may be a personalized, comfortable medical experience.
Many things can be done to craft a brand in healthcare, including (but absolutely not limited to) the development of an appropriate corporate message and brandmark. Deeper though, and more relevant, is the actual “promise” that you are selling when you ask patients to come back to see you again or when you solicit referrals from your peers. The promise that the experience will be desirable to those that use your services, and consistent from visit to visit – that’s what fills healthcare practices.
Here is a link to a great post from Bnet.com on the topic of branding, which includes a list of the “five things every manager needs to know about branding strategy.” It’s a great post, and well worth the read.
And branding, that’s even worse. It doesn’t help that the name conjures up images of branding cattle, or somebody being branded a criminal. How about that, branding has a branding problem. Ironic, isn’t it?
If you don’t get the irony, you really need to read this.
Here’s how it works. Your company and its products and services have associated attributes that affect customer buying decisions, employee morale, and investor confidence. They also affect your company’s market share, profit margins, and bottom line.
Branding strategy enables your company to measure and change the perception and affect of those attributes. It’s really important. No kidding.
You can’t be everything to everyone
Decision-making, despite its importance and prevalence in clinical care, has a hard time fining its way into the business side of healthcare. Let’s face it, decisions are hard to make for a cohort that cites risk aversion as one of the most common reasons for not starting a private practice in the first place.
And no other place within the business of healthcare is decision-making more hard to come by than with marketing.
It’s not the decision as to whether or not to market that’s so tough (though controversy exists there as well), but rather the decision about who to market to that reminds me of some of the most labor-intensive decisions we have to make in life. And while deciding on a market for a healthcare practice may rank up there with the other big decisions we make (you know, choosing a color theme for our bathroom linens, deciding whether or not to get the extended warranty for the DVD player), it really doesn’t have to be that hard.
The problem is twofold: (1) We generally think we’ve got one chance to get it right and really don’t want to blow it, and (2) we actually think we can be everything to everyone, so we give it the old college try.
Both of these are myths of course within private practice, and if we can dispel these and bring a healthy level of focus and distinction into our business strategy, odds are the decisions will fall right into place and we’ll not only know who our target market is, but we’ll be able to do a pretty darn good job of serving it.
Myth #1: We’ve got one chance to get it right. Generally speaking, we actually don’t want to screw up on choosing the right market for a medical, dental, or physical therapy practice – each requires a significant amount of capital, and for the risk averse, this by itself usually lends itself to healthy deliberation. The thing is, choosing a target market for a practice isn’t like trying to find the one blue marble in a bag of 500 red ones. Think of the bag as containing every shade in the spectrum from deep red to bright blue. Yeah, we don’t want to choose brick red, but it’s also OK if we don’t get sky blue the first time around.
If you’re starting a physical therapy practice and aren’t really sure if you want to go after the women’s health market or the general outpatient orthopedic population (as you’re dually trained), realize that there are commonalities to both (yes, women do have general orthopedic conditions that crop up from time to time) and that by choosing a direction, you’re not casting an eternal spell on your practice that will never allow you to change.
Now, there are some considerations that should be made when making this decision, including how to back out if indeed it doesn’t pan out for the long term, but these are well handled through a sound branding and marketing strategy that builds into it a flexible architecture and messaging strategy that can unfold in a couple of different ways depending on the direction the wind ends up blowing.
What generally doesn’t work however, is making the decision (not much of a decision actually) to do it all. Why wouldn’t you want to do it all you ask? Doesn’t that open up many more doors by casting a wider net? Well, yes, but in theory only. The reason you don’t want to do it all is because you likely can’t, which brings us to myth #2.
Myth #2: We can be everything to everyone. We’re not designed to think of ourselves as incapable of doing what we set out to do. In healthcare especially, the level of intellect and drive is of the highest around, so why wouldn’t we be able to go in multiple directions at once; be kind of a one-stop-shop to all who need us?
We can’t do it because like any other mortal, when spread too thin we can only scratch the surface in terms of quality, time, and energy (sort of important in healthcare), and even if we could do a great job at it, the lack of focus wouldn’t communicate to the marketplace that we are distinctly different from our competitors.
Surprisingly, being good – or being different, is just as important as communicating that we’re good – or different. Certainly an argument exists that many of us would rather be good than have others think we’re good – the problem is, that if nobody knows we’re good we can’t really help those that need us anyway. This is precisely what happens when we lack a defined focus in our selection of a target market and/or specialty for our practice.
Now, it’s important to understand that the takeaway here is not that one can’t be a generalist and survive in today’s healthcare marketplace – on the contrary, generalists are one of the most critical components of the system as a whole. What should be conveyed is that even a generalist who has selected her specialty (general practice) has many decisions to make about how to focus her practice around other elements that will influence the level of focus and distinction the practice holds in the market. Decisions regarding which insurance contracts to solicit (drives patient mix and revenue diversity), which age group to target, and which referral sources will provide the best partnerships for the life of the practice, will have longstanding effects on the practice, and aren’t amenable to a “straddle-the-fence” kind of approach.
By making decisions that limit the need for the practice owner to be everything to everyone, the quality, enjoyment, and overall experience within the practice is elevated significantly for those receiving the focus of the marketing and operational efforts; a big win for all involved.
Here is a post on the Entrepreneurial MD blog that speaks to this very point, and I recommend it as a succinct, quick read on the benefits of focusing on a target market.
In order to immunize your business against recession, you need to discriminate. While this is not a comfortable word for the politically correct amongst us, one of Webster’s definition of discrimination is “the quality or power of finely distinguishing”.
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