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Event Highlights: Hospital Marketing and Communications Summit

October 19, 2016

Mbuy employee attends sponsorship booth at Hospital Summit

MBuy was a proud sponsor of the 3rd Annual Hospital Marketing and Communications Summit in Boston this year. Members of the MBuy team got the chance to convene with thought leaders from hospital and health systems on consumer-centric strategies to gain a competitive edge in a crowded marketplace.

A Customer-Centric Approach

Marc Mertz of GE Healthcare Camden Group discussed the shift in the industry to treat patients not as patients, but as customers instead. As a result, some of the innovations taking place in healthcare marketing are improvements to:

  • Customer understanding
  • Customer experience
  • Messaging to the customer
  • Methods of messaging
  • Use of Data

Healthcare providers tend to over estimate the quality of the customer experience while customers/patients rate the perceived quality of care as very poor, creating quite a perception gap. Moving forward, improving “perceived care” by the patients will require improving quality of care outside of the facility as well.

Utilizing Multi-Channels to Develop Brands

Brian Gresh, Executive Director, Multi Channel Content Marketing, Marketing & Communications of Cleveland Clinic spoke about how healthcare providers like his have had to take a comprehensive approach to content marketing by incorporating earned, owned and paid media. He stressed that media should include digital, mobile and be measureable regardless of your category.

What are some of the trends?

  • 62% of consumers use smart phones to find health info
  • 68% of email is opened on a mobile device
  • Facebook has 1.5 billion mobile users
  • Mobile search over took desktop in 2015
  • Snapchat reaches 60% of the important 18-34 year old demographics

And earned media is taking off. 92% of Cleveland Clinic’s content marketing budget goes to it, with the other 8% goes to print. This is a stark contrast to over 2 years ago when the budget was split about 50/50 between digital and print!

Is your healthcare organization employing these techniques today?

MBuy works with clients in this field to plan, buy & optimize across platforms every day to provide a true customer-centric experience. Connect with us to learn more!