Category: Healthcare Communications

Successful Healthcare Advertising

Successful Healthcare advertising depends on…

  • The healthcare need in question
  • The goal of the advertising
  • The time needed for behavior change
  • Where people are during the advertising
  • Why people are where they are during the advertising
  • What people are doing during the advertising
  • The degree to which the need is felt as a want
  • The expertise marketers have in behavioral economics
  • The design of every interface before and after the advertising

It’s the last part – the design of the interfaces before and after the advertising which is most critical.

There is no grand unifying theory for advertising in Healthcare because there is no one problem in Healthcare.

One ad in Healthcare is unlikely to win any big scores. This is the source of confusion which the Web has thrown into the marketing mix.

Last century’s conception of advertising arose out of limited Interfacing technologies. That’s what’s changed. Thinking about advertising as a discrete, stand-alone process no longer holds up.

The discrete view of advertising worked last century because limited channels held in the flow of attention. The Web has broken open the channels into infinitesimal pours, and so attention leaks out of every pour.

Rather, the key to understanding advertising in light of the Web is the Interface.

What is the Interface? It’s everything:

  • The printed page
  • The television screen
  • The radio sound
  • The desktop
  • The laptop
  • The mobile device
  • The pharmacy counter
  • The physician’s office
  • The grocery aisle
  • The electronic billboard
  • The QR code or MS tag
  • The online community
  • The unexpected place

But here’s the thing: you must forget to think about desktop, laptop, mobile, email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs. They’re all Interfaces.

So think Interface. Think about Interfacing.

Advertising is just one of many Interfaces along an ever-growing continuum of interfaces.

Once you understand the continuum of interfaces which you could build online, offline and the yet-to-be-explored interfacing in between those worlds, you’ll have a better understanding of what makes successful healthcare advertising.

If a social interface is needed, go build it. If simple scheduled messages are needed, build the app. If video content is the enhancing interface for eduction, shoot the vid.

Successful Healthcare Advertising depends on an understanding of Interface in all of its forms.

Successful Healthcare Advertising depends on forgetting about thinking about just Advertising and on starting to think about Interfacing.

Just know: Interfacing is hard work. Which is why you must pour love into every part of your work.

@PhilBaumann – @HealthIsSocial – Newsletter

Why Hospital Blogs Fail

They don’t have to fail, but here’s why the do:

  • Fear of failure
  • The word “blog” – it’s ugly and to conservative enterprise peeps evokes something of Dungeons & Dragons
  • The false belief that hospitals don’t have any stories, in spite of the hundreds that happen everyday which the staff, the people they serve and the family members who love them would happily share if simply asked
  • Reliance on Twitter and Facebook
  • Twitter? Why hate on Twitter? Twitter gives the illusion that longer content is dead. Plus it encourages creative laziness. (I’ve earned full rights to critique Twitter btw.)
  • Incomplete communications strategies – or lack of any cohesive strategy.
  • Overstating the risks of HIPAA while understating the risks of never being found in Google
  • Misunderstanding the role of blogging in communications
  • Lack of long-term investment discipline
  • Lack of resources – more specifically: lack of resourceful use of resources
  • Lack of confidence
  • Lack of desire

You can be trained to overcome all of the above…except…

…all except the last one. That’s the one can’t be instilled.

But if it’s there, it can be enkindled.

Desire for excellence burns down all obstacles.

That’s true in nursing; that’s true in medicine; and that’s true in communications.

The real failure of blogging – and the resulting skills needed in today’s communications gained from blogging – is a failure to understand today’s behavioral economics.

You don’t own your tweets. You don’t own your Facebook updates.

The only thing you can own on the Web is your own domain.

Why on earth would you willingly leave your only home abandoned and failed?

@PhilBaumann – @HealthIsSocial

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The Unsubscribe Punch

You work hard (and smart). You build great things, interact with people but something obviously just isn’t working out. Nobody reads your tweets. Nobody Likes you on Facebook. Nobody comments on your blog.

You’re passionate about your ideas but now you’re alone in the silence, hurt by the apparent rejection and failure of it all. C-suite’s gut about social media was right, wasn’t it!

Then that Unsubscribe comes along – that’s the punch in the gut. Who cares about Twitter unfollows or what happens on Facebook. But that Unsubscribe  - that’s the slice.

This is all going to happen to you online – as well as off. It’s part of life in today’s world.

Yesterday, I wrote something straight out of my heart – an appeal to respect for nurses in general, and Healthcare communicators in particular. I got great reaction. …Except: one Unsubscribe from the Newsletter showcasing the post.

I get Unsubscribes as a matter of course in this business – happens, and it’s cool. Clearly it would be psycho to go off.

But that one – that one from a Healthcare communicator hit me right in the gut. The frustration of driving away the very person who I was appealing to do something with her skills.

Here’s what’s important though:  my feelings aren’t reality – and that’s something you will need to remind yourself: you don’t really know what people think or feel, nor do you fully understand their intentions. Misinterpretation is easy – especially online where information isn’t complete.

For all of our efforts to market our passions, there’s always the chance that the market isn’t there; or you’re in the totally wrong market; or you’re style isn’t matching with the market’s.

But, I guarantee: this problem will drive you nuts – especially if you’re truly passionate. The Unsubscribe isn’t just the literal one – it’s in every interface of your strategy.

This Web stuff isn’t easy as some (i.e. the inexperienced) would have you believe. It’s actually a Healthcare issue in itself: people working in this business will have to learn to cope with the good and the bad: negative comments, blasts, threats, etc. That’s why organizations need to have support systems for their employees.

So my advice is as follows:

  • Be willing to accept that your passion may not be shared by others
  • Your definition of the market, may not be the market
  • Consider that you may have to trade a bit of your passion for the reality of the market – if you want some way of helping who you’re tying to help (your way isn’t the only way, no matter how passionate it is)
  • Know that the essence of passion is love – and love without risk and disappointment and heartbreak isn’t love
  • In the 21st Century, Marketing without love is like a hand without fingers
  • You can always give up on your job – but never give up on your love
  • Don’t confuse your passion with you – that’s when the ego rises and crushes the passion

If that Unsubscribe doesn’t punch you in the gut, you have no guts.

@PhilBaumann –  @HealthIsSocial

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Beautiful Visualizations of DNA

Attention Marketers and Educators: here’s a template for fascinating your audience while accomplishing the difficult task of transferring important messages. It’s a video visualizing the activities of DNA and RNA.

The remarkably produced video illustrates four phases of genetic mechanisms:

  1. DNA chromosome wrapping
  2. DNA replication
  3. Transfer of DNA and RNA;
  4. Translation of RNA to protein

Here’s the video:

[Can't see video? Click here.]

My studies of genetics would have been rapidly faster, more fascinating and more productive had videos like this been available to students.

Think of the implications of this kind of marketing or education in Healthcare!

Can your agency produce stuff this re-markable? Anything less today is dreck in today’s attention-deficit economy.

Healthcare Marketers and Educators: that video is your bar today.

Start doing pull-ups on that bar.

@PhilBaumann - @HealthIsSocial - News of the Cosmic Dance