This week Darren Char over at HealthLeaders takes a look at the current state of healthcare branding. He points out that currently branding in the healthcare industry takes two forms.

1. Tagging the organization’s name on every building and service that is affiliated with the organization. (Example: Smithville General Hospital, Smithville General Hospital Outpatient Surgery Center, Smithville General Hospital Internal Medicine Clinic).
2. Slapping a logo and a tag line on to signs all over the organization’s property and in advertisements.

Char proclaims that these attempts at branding are woefully insufficient. After watching the horrible attempts at branding in my own community and hearing about those in others, I must agree.

Char also emphasizes that all healthcare organizations, from large integrated hospital systems to small private or group practices should be thinking about branding.

The branding process is more than selecting corporate names, logos or advertising tag lines. Instead, it is a complex business process that is planned, strategically focused and integrated throughout the organization. It is designed to create an emotional, rational and community image of an organization within the mind of the consumer that allows him or her to rank the value of an organization and their services against those of competitors. Simply, you want your customer/patients/consumers to like you and think that you are the best to do the job.

Char goes on to offer the following words of wisdom:

" For new healthcare branding efforts to succeed, healthcare organizations must disassociate themselves from their own experience with the brand, and evaluate both the current brand and the ultimate goals and objectives of their branding strategies."

First Steps

So what do you want your message to be? Here are a few questions to get you started.

• What do your customers know about you? Feature-based branding strategies capitalize on historical and verifiable information. They can help you to communicate the services you provide. You can set yourself up to be a specialty provider or a convenient one-stop-shop. They can also emphasize your expertise or strengthen your position in the community (example: oldest internal medicine practice in the city, largest hospital in the county, award-winning hospital).
• Do your customers know how cool you are? Attribute-branding strategies highlight characteristics of your organization that are perceived to be related to delivering quality care (Examples: Board Certified doctors, state-of-the-art equipment, competent and caring staff, customer satisfaction).
• Do your customers know how you feel about them? Value-gained branding strategies focus on relationship issues between provider and patient. It highlights what each party gains from working together. (Example: Healthcare providers are inspired by patients and feel like they are making the community a better place. Patients feel care for on a personal level and this eases the suffering associated with illness).

Just as in real-life, it takes time and exposure to build a relationship with your customers/patients. By providing services, a healthcare organization or provider is constantly in a position to make a impression on a person that elicits a positive emotion. Branding is the process by which you carry that outside the one-on-one interaction.

It is important to remember that branding is indeed a long process and it cannot be done overnight. Additionally, there are many avenues and tools available that can help you in this process.  However, the key to success is to become actively involved in making sure your message continues to be delivered even when you are not around.

Toby will be the first one to tell you that word-of-mouth is powerful stuff and that even if you don’t think so, people are talking about you. It could be good or it could be bad. Nonetheless, the only way to have any control over your message is to contribute to the conversation.

TTYL!

Toby & Carol 

For more information about marketing and blogs, please visit Toby's Diva Marketing Blog and Carol's Driving in Traffic Blog.

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