You know omnichannel marketing is smart—now try doing it with 12 departments and a budget of $12

Healthcare marketers know the best way to achieve their goals is to create broad campaigns that reach multiple audiences in multiple ways. This omnichannel approach is straight out of Marketing 101.  

And in the healthcare field, inconsistencies in the way your brand communicates undermines your efforts to build trust in your audience. When your social media messaging, print advertising, and patient engagement don’t align, people will question whether they can trust you with their mental or physical healthcare. 

You know you need to communicate consistently across channels, but your best intentions often run straight into roadblocks. Tight budgets, tight staffing, and even tighter time constraints. Organizations that don’t understand or value marketing as a business discipline. Too many competing priorities. We get it: You’d love to be able to operate in a multichannel way, you know it’s essential to keeping your brand strong, but it’s tough with all the departments and doctors and demands on your resources. 

Omnichannel Marketing Basics 

First, let’s reiterate the basics of omnichannel marketing in the healthcare field. Then, we’ll get to some recommendations for how your marketing team can reinforce the strategy across your organization. 

1. Understand the patient journey

To implement an omnichannel strategy, you must first understand the different audience segments you’re targeting and map out the patient journey:

• Awareness The patient becomes aware of you as a provider.
• Consideration They research options for care and look to you as a possible resource.
• Decision They choose a provider or treatment plan.
• Treatment They access whatever treatment they need, set appointments, etc.
• Post-treatment They get follow-up care and continue to see your organization positively as a resource for their future healthcare needs. 

2. Create consistent messaging across all channels

Patients and prospects need different kinds of information from different sources at each stage. Large-scale, repetitive (not in a bad way) brand awareness campaigns that reach every communication channel let people know your organization exists and starts to build trust at the awareness stage. When someone begins to consider your organization for care, they’ll spend time on your website, and a deep library of educational content will support their consideration step. Seeing patient success stories on social media and talking with friends and family will prompt them to make a decision. When they’re ready to seek treatment, they’ll return to your website for scheduling tools and details about hours and locations. And in the post-treatment stage, your broader brand awareness messaging will reinforce their trust in your organization.  

Your omnichannel marketing plans are anchored in a strong brand strategy. Your brand isn’t just a tagline; it’s a combination of your healthcare organization’s mission and values and the way the community feels about who you are and what you stand for. A strong brand foundation ensures that every marketing activity — from your website’s accuracy and ease of use, to the way you show up on social media, to the patient experience at your physical locations — looks and sounds the same. 

3. Integrate digital and offline channels 

Blend both online and offline touchpoints into a single cohesive experience. A few examples: 

• If you offer a mobile app for appointment scheduling, reminders, or accessing health records, integrate it with your website and email campaigns.
• For patients who prefer direct communication through text or phone calls, ensure that your messaging via SMS matches the content on your website, and that your call center representatives are equipped with the same information as your online team.
• When people visit your office locations, make sure signage, posters, and print materials align with your online content. 
• For patients who prefer virtual consultations or follow-up appointments, integrate telehealth platforms into your omnichannel strategy. 

Managing campaigns for your organization

We understand the reality that healthcare marketers operate in (because we work right alongside our clients). In large medical networks and smaller, rural healthcare organizations, different departments are headed by people who are well-intentioned and lack marketing expertise. Specialty practices that have been acquired may resist letting go of their old website or marketing activities. Business unit managers feel pressure to deliver results and take matters into their own hands. To these folks, running marketing through the proper channels can seem frustrating or bureaucratic. 

Think of these people as your internal clients on a customer journey … they need to be aware of your expertise, to consider your services, and to engage with your team as you’ve communicated. 

You have a powerful tool to demonstrate your expertise: data. As you monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as appointment booking rates, patient engagement levels, and website traffic, you can prove the effectiveness of your team’s work. Digital assessment and analysis like A/B testing of social media or email headlines, content, and CTAs demonstrate what resonates best with your audience. Share campaign metrics with management and department heads to show you’re expert partners.  

Annual marketing plans and quarterly campaign plans present a big-picture view across all channels, so leadership understands the value of a strategic, omnichannel approach. This also reminds everyone that their individual practice areas are part of a whole and reinforces the importance of a cohesive patient experience. 

Practical resources like a brand standards guide helps keep everyone on the same page, and creative briefs for individual projects document agreed-upon goals and metrics, keeping the brand consistent. If you’re constantly battling department managers who create their own marketing assets, consider introducing a tiered marketing system with packaged campaigns at different budgets that practice leaders can implement. Tool kits with approved assets and templates allow people outside the marketing team to run their own campaigns within brand guidelines. 

If you know how important omnichannel marketing is — but struggle to implement it in your organization — let’s talk. We can help you regain control of your brand.