Articulating your healthcare brand position
Defining what makes your organization different
Organizational alignment begins with a position; a shared purpose, a brand promise that sets an organization apart from others in the competitive set. A successful position is part corporate mission statement, part emotional promise, distilled down to an engaging and memorable idea. It’s not what-you-do or who-you-serve, (otherwise all healthcare brands would be commodities that “deliver healthcare to sick people”or “keep people healthy”), it’s how you do it differently or better.
Finding that point of difference is hard work and an important undertaking, but it’s not the subject of this newsletter. (Read more about positioning and branding here). What’s relevant here is what you do next with your brand position.
Marketing: Creating multichannel messages
A brand position only gains traction and value when it’s understood by internal audiences before being communicated to external audiences. Occasionally, an organization builds a successful brand by sheer force of personality, but most do it by deliberate messaging, staff training and frequent reminders. It’s the marketing team’s job to create engaging messages and channel-appropriate executions for hospital staff and physicians, and then for patients, families and the community.
Channels for communicating the brand position:
- Internal communications: brand building language for leaders and staff
- Owned media: brand building and reminders in hospital environments
- Social media: awareness messages in social channels
- Other channels: physician referral messages, niche markets and inbound content
- Mass media: awareness and reputation building in print, TV, outdoor
C-Suite: Alignment from the top down
The CEO and executive team are responsible for communicating the brand within the organization, expressing its ideals and core values through the goals and daily practices of the hospital.
The position or brand promise becomes part of the organization’s vocabulary. It’s evident in the way people care for patients, in the conversations at board meetings, team huddles and chamber of commerce events. It’s in the shared stories and role models identified and shared throughout the organization. Through all of these things, leadership can create corporate culture that supports the organization’s brand position.
People look to hospital leadership for gestures, meaning and focus. By walking the walk, the executive can help the staff embrace the hospital’s core values and understand how they influence the patient experience.