The Role of Physicians in Healthcare Marketing

Getting Physicians to the Ah-Ha Moment in Hospital Marketing

Recently, I attended a physician cabinet meeting for one of our hospital clients to present the results of last year’s cardiac campaign and the new campaign that our agency developed for 2013. Physicians are generally in favor of marketing because it can help them fill up their schedules with new patients and hit their quarterly numbers. However, sometimes they think the only way to achieve this is by putting their faces on billboards or in print ads. Promoting individual physicians in mass media is very expensive and doesn’t support the hospital brand, which is a conversation that I was preparing to begin when a breakthrough happened.

One of the physicians spoke up before I could introduce the new creative. He told his colleagues a story about a patient that he treated on Friday. This particular patient was seeing a cardiologist at a competing hospital and decided that he was unhappy with his care. He went online to conduct a search for cardiologists and landed on our client’s website. The patient then went through all of the physician videos on the cardiac page and find-a-doctor page and decided that he liked this one physician the best. He called the office and the receptionists were able to get him in for an appointment the next day. Forty-eight hours later, he was at the hospital for a stent procedure and was very happy with his results.

This patient had a complete on-brand experience from start to finish. The marketing may have helped to draw the patient in, but the physicians, nurses, and staff all participated in the bigger picture by delivering the experience that the marketing promised. It was great for this physician’s peers to hear this story from him because it is more inspiring and tangible than listening to our recounts. And stories like this help motivate physicians to participate in the marketing efforts and act as advocates for the hospital brand.

Learn more about the role physicians, staff and CEOs play in healthcare marketing in the issue of Protocol titled The Politics of Healthcare Marketing.