The Healthcare Marketing Niche

I have been known to say, “Marketing is marketing is marketing,” implying that similar tactics and strategies apply across various industries. So, why do I specialize in healthcare marketing? And why is healthcare marketing regarded as so nuanced? Why do leaders often believe that only those with extensive healthcare experience can excel in this field? Allow me to share three reasons:

1.??????? Patients are consumers: While patients should be treated and regarded as consumers, customer service in healthcare differs vastly from that in consumer packaged goods (CPG). The patient experience can profoundly impact the entire brand.

2.??????? Old school versus new school: Traditional healthcare marketing, focusing on methods like fliers and billboards, contrasts sharply with the modern approach, embracing digital marketing, social media, and AI.

3.??????? Passion: Simply put, I love it.

Let’s delve deeper into the first point. When I transitioned from consumer packaged goods to healthcare marketing, I faced a significant adjustment. In CPG, if a product failed a customer, we could replace it. However, in healthcare, we can't simply offer a new knee if a patient has a poor experience. This realization struck me early on.

One of my first projects in healthcare marketing was to lead the launch of a Joint Commission Center of Excellence for Knee and Hip Replacement. (Sure…nice small, little project. Ha! Although, as someone who is known to not start small, this was very fitting.) And I remember asking the JC consultant about how to improve the patient experience as a CoE. He launched into the ROI potential of each type of surgery. He said,

“So, a live, vaginal birth is pretty cheap. The patient is just in and out.” (Maybe pun intended??) “But for a knee replacement, the margin can be very high.”

I was horrified. How could someone consider births and major surgeries like a commodity? I spoke to the lead nurse on the project about it and she explained that I needed to shift my thinking – to focus on the expertise of the doctor. The time and service from the nurses. The cost to use the space – that is what the patient is paying for.

Now, as an experience healthcare leader, I understand that prioritizing the patient experience is paramount. It is not about additional burden on the nursing staff to keep the patient happy, but the entire experience from how clean the space is to an easy discharge and follow up care. Truly understanding patient care and how to integrate the brand into it, is not something that can be understood overnight by an agency or someone without healthcare expertise. It can be learned eventually. It is the reason I do what I do – to help improve the patient experience and integrate it with every part of the brand.

Moving on to the evolution of healthcare marketing, the shift from traditional methods to targeted digital strategies has been profound. Patients today are empowered and engaged in their healthcare decisions, conducting extensive research post-diagnosis. In a 2021 report from the American Health Information Management Association Foundation, 42% of patients admitted to doing their own research after receiving a diagnosis or leaving the doctor’s office. Read the whole report here: AHIMA Foundation Consumer Survey. This necessitates a departure from mass marketing to personalized, content-driven approaches.

One of my favorite examples of how my team turned the Old School marketing method on its head was through a project to fill a cancer screening panel. Year after year, the focus on promoting the panel had been done in an old school and very expensive way: a billboard and direct mail (snail mail) campaign to all women over the age of 40. (In their defense, they did not have a way to drill down the mailing list to a more targeted group of people, such as women over 40, who were at risk for breast cancer – per the algorithm to consider their lifestyle and other comorbidities).

One of the members of my team took this and ran with it. She developed a targeted PR campaign – hitting local radio shows and local news media – both who had our same target audience. She utilized a highly targeted social media campaign to reach the target audience online and she drilled down into that massive mailing list for a targeted email campaign.

The result: the screening panel was full for the first time ever and in a matter of days. And to our bottom line – we only used a tenth of the budget allotted to this campaign. It was initially a very expensive campaign, for a free screening. Reducing the cost was a huge win.

Despite its challenges, I’m deeply passionate about healthcare marketing. It's a mission-driven endeavor, aiming to transform healthcare and enhance patients’ lives and I love getting to be a little piece of that.

In essence, healthcare marketing isn't just a profession for me; it's a calling.