Repenting the 7 Deadly Sins

The role of creative in healthcare marketing redemption

Healthcare, in essence, is about life. It’s about the maintenance and improvement of living, breathing things. So why is it that so many healthcare marketing campaigns are dead on arrival? Many hospitals mistakenly think that a business as serious as healthcare doesn’t have room for creativity due to HIPAA regulations, malpractice suits and compliance departments. As a result, marketing campaigns tend to flatline. In this issue of Protocol, we will cover the seven deadly sins of ineffective healthcare marketing and how creative messaging can help produce results.

Sin 1: Perpetuating healthcare marketing clichés

Hospital awards, physicians standing in crisp, white lab coats with arms crossed, donning half-smiles, and surgeons in soft, green scrubs, faces half obstructed by masks, standing next to gargantuan medical equipment straight from Transformers. These are the things that come to mind when people think of hospital ads, and they don’t exactly convey what you want healthcare messaging to communicate. They’re a cliché for a reason — healthcare organizations use this imagery time and time again, and as a result, they all look the same.

The creative solution: break through the clutter by creating something fresh or unexpected. Instead of going for the same old ideas and stereotypes, find new ways to express or depict your message with creative imaging or language. Go bold with humor or outspoken dialogue. Instead of taking portraits of physicians in the operating room, place them in community hot spots or play into their hobbies and interests outside of saving lives. Avoiding clichés is about finding new ways to portray physicians, nurses and staff. It’s about placing them in new settings and showing their human side. Healthcare marketing doesn’t have to look like healthcare marketing, and creativity can be as subtle as a change of scenery, a new graphic identity or a clever tag line.

Sin 2: Mimicking the competition

A lot of healthcare marketing tends to promise the same things: personal care, medical expertise and a wide range of specialties. When all hospitals and physician practices promise the same things, patients don’t have a reason to choose one over another. It also doesn’t help your organization to go toe-to-toe with the region’s largest competitor if you can’t deliver on those promises. It will only create dissatisfied patients due to an expectation gap between marketing promises and reality.

The creative solution: focus on your own organization’s position and strategy, and develop creative messaging around it. This approach helps convey a differentiating brand positioning and stake your claim in the marketplace. Wake up your audience by demonstrating your organization’s brand promise and core values, and how they will impact their healthcare experience. Most importantly, make sure your physicians and staff can deliver on them. It’s necessary that your strategy matches your execution; a positive patient experience with minimal expectation gap will speak volumes about your organization, while promoting patient loyalty and word-of-mouth referrals.

Sin 3: Acute dependence on overly technical medical jargon

Healthcare is very complex. From medical conditions to treatment plans, it’s easy to get swept up in technical language, and it sounds impressive, too. The problem is that your polysyllabic onslaught will go over the head of the average layperson. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), only 12 percent of US adults have proficient health literacy, while more than a third of US adults have difficulty with common tasks, such as reading a prescription label. As a result, they’ll move on to content that’s more stimulating or accessible.

The creative solution: present healthcare information to patients as if you were talking to your mom or a friend. Use conversational language by writing the way your audience speaks. Everyone knows that physicians and healthcare workers are knowledgeable about medicine, but speaking academically could intimidate or frighten patients. Think healthcare for dummies. Provide them with the basics so they have the knowledge to discuss the issue further with their physicians, if necessary. It’s also important to present this information in an easily digestible format, such as short blog articles, lists, infographics and shareable videos.

Sin 4: Loss of feeling in core or extremities

The trouble with marketing is that you could have a brilliant message packed with important information, but if the creative doesn’t make your audience feel anything, it’s not going to be remembered. Arguably the most important component of creative is an emotional connection. Prospective patients need to connect to both the marketing message and to your brand.

The creative solution: make an emotional connection. Present your hospital’s services in a way that your target audience can relate to by tuning in to their interests and challenges. Rather than focusing on the technical side of a condition, such as heart disease, by presenting symptoms and causes, first draw patients in with an empathetic story about a child who wants her father to take care of his heart or a busy professional who puts everyone and everything ahead of her health. The goal is to have prospective patients see it and think, “That’s me.” Later you can provide more details on a landing page or brochure, but you need that emotional connection first to get patients to listen.

Sin 5: Short-term memory loss

The pitfall of creating an emotional connection to your brand is that you run the risk of patients missing the point of the message. After watching a web video, patients may walk away with a good feeling about your brand, and that’s great, but if that’s the only thing they walk away with, it’s not going to help your bottom line. (It’s also going to make it hard for you to justify the money you poured into your campaign.)

The creative solution: include a strong call to action. While you want your marketing to create an emotional connection with patients, you want it to influence their behavior even more. If you want patients to do something, whether it’s finding a primary care physician to eliminate emergency room visits or making appointments for preventive health tests, you have to tell them to do it. So much healthcare marketing today is measured by conversions and hard data, and the average patient won’t make the connection between a feel-good TV spot and calling their physician, unless it closes with some variation of, “Make an appointment today.” As we move forward with accountable care and wellness marketing, it will be even more important to change patient habits. This includes encouraging them to lead healthier lives and seeking the correct care when needed. Don’t let your prospective patients forget the main message by the time your :30 are up.

Sin 6: Hard sells and shameless self promotion

There’s a reason TV viewers often change the channel when a car commercial comes on. They’re loud, they’re obnoxious and they’re transparent. Nothing says hard sell more than yelling and over enthusiastic hand motions. The same can go for healthcare marketing. Hospitals can tout their big city expertise and standing championship of “top 50 best heart programs” all they want, but patients will probably tune it out because they know it’s only puffery.

The creative solution: demonstrate expertise through creative messaging. While your healthcare organization wants to inform the community about its services and specialities, this should be considered an afterthought. Rather than making this the subject of your marketing, appeal to patients’ lifestyles, interests and preferences, and then present your services as a solution to their problems. Use your expertise to empower patients to make educated healthcare decisions, not to pat yourself on the back.

Sin 7: Sterilized personality

Somewhere between malpractice cases and HIPAA enforcement, healthcare lost its personality. Marketers take it too seriously, emphasize technology and try to impress with big words instead of talking human to human. Without personality, healthcare marketing is cold, like when the stethoscope hits your back for the first time. Your organization’s marketing shouldn’t send chills down your patients’ spines.

The creative solution: remind patients that you’re human, too. Speak in a conversational tone and be sensitive to their feelings and motives. Don’t talk down to patients — show them that you have the same fears and concerns. Think about it: healthcare can be a scary thing, especially when you or a loved one is sick. At these times patients don’t want to hear about the robotic medical equipment that’s going to perform their surgery, they want to have an honest conversation with their community doctor. No one is immune to poor health, but you can work through the challenges together. It’s also okay to joke once in a while. People usually need to laugh the most when they’re facing hardships.

Bring your healthcare marketing back to life with creativity

You could say that healthcare got dealt a bad hand in the world of marketing; compared to fashion, beauty, cars and travel, it’s not exactly sexy. But the real sin is when healthcare marketers play it safe, dumb it down and forget their humanity. The trick is to draw patients in by presenting healthcare in a creative way by avoiding cliches, jargon and self promotion. Instead, focus on making your hospital stand out from the competition with an emotional connection, a unique personality and a strong call to action. Healthcare marketing is serious business, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be creative.