I want to thank Dan Dunlop, Principal at Jennings Healthcare Marketing, for co-authoring this blog post with us.
“Nothing kills a bad program faster than great marketing.”
Those are the words of a client of Market Street’s who was directed by the leadership at a health system to try to fix the negative image of a problematic program through marketing. The problem was, the negative image was well earned and represented an existing customer service challenge that had not been addressed. Both Market Street Research and Jennings Healthcare Marketing run into situations like this regularly. This typically happens in circumstances in which a hospital has a negative or weak brand image that’s clearly based upon adverse experiences that patients and their families have had with the hospital, as confirmed not only by the quantitative marketing research we have done for the hospital, but also via online reviews and patient satisfaction scores.
We get very concerned when the leadership of a hospital with an experience-based negative brand image thinks that the problem can be solved by more or different marketing that claims that they offer great patient experiences. Spending money to create an expectation of an experience that your hospital can’t fulfill is worse than not marketing at all. It’s like putting lipstick on a pig! The marketing creates an expectation that the organization will have great difficulty living up to.
Many of us have had the experience of going to a restaurant or seeing a movie that’s had great reviews and been decidedly underwhelmed because we had high expectations. Our disappointment is much greater than it would have been if we weren’t expecting a great experience. The same thing happens when hospitals over-promise and under-deliver. Not only are you unlikely to see that patient again, the negative word of mouth is likely to drive away other potential patients.
Years ago, Jennings was retained by a major academic medical center (AMC) to conduct a brand assessment. The client was having challenges hiring and retaining employees, and wanted the AMC to be positioned in a new marketing campaign as an employer of choice. What the assessment revealed was that this medical center was not an employer of choice and it would be a failed strategy to position it as such in the new campaign. But that’s not the end of the story. What Jennings learned during the study was that employees who thrived at this institution were those who loved a fast paced, challenging environment where change was a constant.
Therefore, Jennings recommended a campaign that positioned this medical center as a great place to work for people who can think on their feet and who thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment. This positioning was true to the brand and led to a significant uptick in new hires and a fairly dramatic boost in retention among those new hires. In essence, the employees who were recruited through this campaign knew what they were getting themselves into. Their experience as new employees matched the expectations that the campaign created.
That is a formula for successful marketing!
— Posted by Julie