Last week I made the short trip to Orlando where Healthcare Marketers and Professionals gathered for Greystone’s Annual Healthcare Internet Conference (HCIC). It was great to catch up with colleagues and clients, meet new friends, and gather inspiration from presenters and exhibitors. I can’t say that there were any revelations or new trends this year that felt transformative. However, three common and important themes did emerge.
1) Reputation Management
According to HCIC sponsor Reputation.com’s 2019 Healthcare Reputation Report, Hospitals with a high Reputation Score earn $1.2MM more revenue per bed — each year. Ratings and reviews for health care providers are no longer optional. Patients are using consumer tools like Facebook, Google, Yelp, and others to sing praises or air grievances, and Healthcare organizations need to be proactive. It is “not about controlling the message. It is about listening and facilitating the conversation with patients and prospective patients” shared Annie Haarmann, Senior Director, Experience Optimization at Ascension. I agree with Annie. There are lots of Online Reputation Management (ORM) vendors, and they were out in full force on the exhibition floor. If you are looking for an ORM, be sure to vet thoroughly and ask them:
- How do you collect the review data? Do you have APIs with review platforms, or is it scraped across the web?
- Do you touch any patient sensitive data, and are you HIPAA compliant?
- Do you have the strategic consultancy chops to implement strategies to improve the organization’s reputation, or do you just aggregate data?
2) Its 2009 and Content is King (again)
84% of patients research treatment options online after a diagnosis, and 1 in 20 google search are health-related. There is a ton of content online, but publishers of that content are not making it easy to find, consume, or engage with it. Taxonomy expert, Jackie Martin declared, “In Healthcare, we do a poor job of organizing our content for consumers – putting the burden on them to dig around to find the info.” But, it is not only about the organization of the content, but it is also the quality and the tone of the content. As HCIC event Keynote speaker Brian Franzo bluntly put it, “there is no time for crappy content.” Consumers will spend 2 days binge-watching Game of Thrones, but only have an attention span of goldfish when researching their wife’s cancer diagnosis? Something is wrong here. It is always inspiring to hear from organizations that tapped into the right empathy vein. When the Cleveland Clinic Health Hub stopped creating content for service line owners and started writing for consumers, their following went from 200k to one million in six months. Their Instagram is one of my favorites, hands down.
3) Trust Always Matters
Trust is rarely built from one big gesture. In real life and the digital world, trust is earned through multiple small actions over time. In today’s world, there are so many ways to break that trust. Whether a security breach, careless management of private data, ad fraud, or just a good-old-fashioned promise-broken. As marketers, we need to do what we say and say what we do. Trust with our clients, and with their customers is a privilege that needs to be earned every day. While a digital handshake cannot replace an in-person one when we approach that digital relationship as a human being, transformative moments can emerge.