Large hospital networks, community-based mental health providers, specialty medical practices — they all typically serve patients through multiple offices within a region. And when you have different locations, your marketing strategy should be consistent but flexible.
That can be challenging for healthcare marketers. How do you create a comprehensive integrated marketing system that cohesively represents the brand, and also allow each office to stand out?
As organizations open new locations or acquire other practice groups, their marketing teams often wind up with a collection of parts that they have to fit together. For example, one our clients, a large medical network, had several subsidiaries, each with its own website. Even though there was a common brand look across those individual sites, the voice and focus and content were different — so the brand was diluted and erratic.
As we’ve observed in our work, inconsistencies in the brand — things like different tones in copy, inappropriate use of the logo or typefaces, a look and feel in social media posts that varies from the website — can emerge over time and be hard for the marketing team to notice. But in the healthcare field, a strong, believable brand is essential to building trust with patients.
Our healthcare clients typically serve patients through more than one location: inpatient and outpatient offices, specialty practices, doctor groups, main campus and satellite medical buildings. We’ve helped their marketing leaders build cohesive brands that can flex to accommodate new locations. Here are some insights we’ve developed:
Even if you have multiple locations, you should still have one website that represents all of those locations to minimize confusions for your patients. It’s the hub of all your marketing efforts, including recruiting employees, attracting new patients or clients, and educating the community. And it’s the ideal place to tell your brand story — including the strengths and benefits to patients of having multiple locations. From a practical standpoint, it’s much easier to update a single site rather than three or four.
Make it easy for people to find care closest to them with highly visible elements on your homepage, including:
While it’s important to maintain consistent brand standards across all communication, social media and blog content are great opportunities to highlight the unique features of each office. Especially if your organization straddles different states or regions — both urban and rural, for example, or if your footprint includes a vacation destination — social media messaging can reflect the communities you serve. If the organization operates an urgent care clinic in a ski town, a blog post on avoiding ski injuries should highlight that location. Patient stories, provider profiles, and volunteer spotlights should all have a local focus. And be sure to add location-specific keywords to posts in your content management system.
Your search engine marketing strategy should focus on location. You can create a business profile in Google for each location, and keep those profiles updated. That way if someone searches your business “physical therapy in Burlington,” for example, your listing would show up. You can also request reviews for each location. This will make your location become more searchable and reliable. The more positive reviews you have on your site, the more people will be wanting to come to you for the services that they are looking for. You may have to set up some sort of system to make sure this is being managed properly, such as a feedback form that’s emailed to patients after a visit.
Does your company or organization have defined rules for how the brand is used? It should. (It’s an important deliverable in many of our client projects.) A brand standards guide isn’t a massive manual that no one will read, but a simple tool that establishes the brand look and feel — proper use of the logo, approved brand colors and typefaces, even a gallery of photographs. It’s also smart to create templates for social posts and print materials including sample language and a selection of photos that other employees can download and use. In an organization with multiple offices, the more centralized the marketing function is the more successful the brand will be. We advise our clients to assign a marketing manager to coordinating and reviewing what affiliate offices do to avoid brand dilution.
Despite the advancement of telehealth, physical location is still an important part of healthcare. As your organization adds offices, maintaining a strong brand identity becomes more critical. And that’s what we do. Let’s talk about how we can help you.
Tenth Crow Creative is a brand marketing agency that creates, aligns, and promotes messaging for health and wellness organizations. Through insightful branding, engaging design and compelling marketing campaigns, we help these essential organizations find their identities and effectively communicate with their stakeholders so they can fulfill their missions.
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Tenth Crow Creative
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Healthcare Marketing, Marketing
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#healthcarebranding