Insight

EVERY THING HAS CHANGED—OR HAS IT? By Kaitlin Gunter Insight: In your presentation, Everything Has Changed and Nothing Is Different, you encouraged marketers to do things worth talking about. How can healthcare marketers apply that advice? Stratten: The marketer's job is to find things worth talking about and amplify them. It can be as simple as an e-mail campaign or posters around the hospital encouraging patients to acknowledge and recognize hospital staff who have made a difference. Sometimes, getting the story started is as easy as asking. I also encourage marketers to keep their ear to the ground to be able to share stories, or even better, keep their ear to the virtual ground and listen for people sharing those stories online. Insight: What's the best way for these marketers to plug into stories? Do you encourage building a network of departmental liaisons across the organization? Which channels should healthcare marketers have in place to encourage spontaneous storytelling? Stratten: I do think it's the entire hospital's job to catch employees in the act of doing good. Employees need to know where they should send stories worth talking about. For a small staff of marketers, you should tap into common platforms like the hospital Facebook page, Yelp, Google reviews and even rate-my-doctor type sites. Insight: You say that all members of an organization are brand ambassadors, whether they realize it or not. What's the smartest way for a healthcare marketer to spread that message within an organization? Stratten: Marketers have to get employee buy-in if we are ever going to have an entire organization believe they are the brand. For employees to know their marketing impact, they have to see it. One way to do this is by not only sharing the wins with the public but also sharing them internally—whether that's something in a monthly email to employees or a story pinned to the bulletin board. Insight: Selling the concept of being a brand ambassador could be a challenge to communicate to doctors or practitioners who have privileges at a hospital but are not employed there. How can marketers get buy-in from the nonemployee faction of the staff ? Stratten: The best way is to show examples. Eventually a story may surface, good or bad, surrounding someone in this classification. It is the perfect time to demonstrate that although their time at your facility may be brief or intermittent, their impact can be permanent. Insight: When it comes to responding to individual reactions to an interaction with your brand, you said that immediacy is hugely important. Is that as true for positive feedback as it is for negative reactions? Stratten: Immediacy is important regardless of positive or negative sentiment. When someone complains, especially online, one of the biggest things they're looking for is validation that they've been heard. That's also true when their feedback is positive. It's like they're giving the hospital a high-five— they would like the high-five returned. Insight: In the spirit of reacting more immediately, what are some tips for healthcare marketers for hearing when their brand's name is being volleyed about the social media courts? Stratten: You have to treat social media like any other communication tool. You wouldn't install phones and never answer them. You need to pay attention to your social channels in an efficient and timely way. There are many monitoring tools—albiet with pluses and minuses—that can make the job more trackable and scalable. When it comes to the reply you post, be careful of using humor in response to a negative experience because, in the hospital world, negative experiences usually have an exponential personal impact and heightened sensitivity. You'll never go wrong using sincerity, common courtesy, and accountability. Insight: What is the most important takeaway from Everything Has Changed and Nothing Is Different? Stratten: We believe so much that everything has changed and nothing is different, we have changed the subtitle for the new edition of UnMarketing to use the phrase. What it means is although there seems to be a new earth-shattering technology every week, the basics of patient care hospital administration and marketing hasn't changed. Focus on what's important, not necessarily what is new. Are you attending the 2016 Healthcare Internet Conference in Las Vegas? Don't miss Scott Stratten's Everything Has Changed and Nothing Is Different session on Tuesday, November 8. Learn more at hcic.net. For more from Scott Stratten, visit unmarketing.com. Scott Stratten President, UnMarketing U N M A R K E T I N G . C O M 10 INSIGHT V12N3 TRUENORTHCUSTOM.COM insight into MESSAGE DELIVERY

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