Now more than ever, people need to take care of their health. Are healthcare providers sending the right messages to them?

Communicating that it is safe to get preventative care such as mammograms is essential to getting healthcare kick-started. With the advent of consumerism and the preponderance of healthcare information, we now have an “army” of informed healthcare consumers in our country. Where have they been during this pandemic? What happened to preventative medicine or annual medical procedures/treatments?Read full post...

Telemedicine Is Here to Stay

It’s in the news every day. This pandemic is crippling some hospitals’ resources, while others are ready and waiting. But all hospitals have stopped elective procedures and are experiencing that impact on their revenue. Some have even been forced to furlough employees and staff. But what can we as marketers do to help?

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Free thank-you ads from AB&C

PWe’ve heard a lot about the importance of thanking essential workers during this pandemic. At AB&C, we’d like to make this a little easier for you. We have designed a series of posters/ads that we will customize for you to use as a print ad or as a poster displayed in your hospitals.

We will personalize any of the designs with your logo and color palette—and even resize them—at no cost to you. It’s the least we can do to thank you and your employees for all that they’re doing for your community and our country.
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A Brand Promise Isn’t Just for the Good Times: Living Your Brand Promise While Facing a Crisis

Healthcare organizations have become pretty marketing savvy over the past several years. They tend to excel in having a strong brand promise, backed up by people-focused missions, visions and values. People entering the industry—especially those in direct clinical care roles—tend to be extremely mission-driven. They want to help and serve others. And that’s what they do every day.
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Seven things healthcare marketers need to be doing right now.

Healthcare SEM in the midst of a pandemic.

One thing that we can depend on is change. It’s a constant. But the massive change we’ve experienced over the past two weeks has been unsettling. Marketers are beginning to second-guess all their marketing strategies. Many are fielding nervous questions from executive teams and wondering if they should put a hold on their advertising budgets—or scrap their digital marketing completely.

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Marketing that Made a Difference

Every once in a while, a campaign comes along, and you know that it’s special. Maybe it’s a cause that you strongly believe in, a story that needs to be told or the creative is just really unique. I guess that’s how I felt from the very beginning about MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute’s “Living Donor” campaign. For me, it was a combination of all three.

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Marketing Medical Groups: Your Front Door for Patients

Most health systems/hospitals have an affiliated and/or employed medical group. The exception is California, where the corporate practice of medicine prohibits employment of physicians by systems or hospitals.

Some medical groups are faculty models, while others are the result of groups that have merged under one umbrella, and can have primary care and specialty services as part of their cadre of physicians. What is true about all medical groups is that they are the front door to patients you want to attract to your system/hospital.

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Does My Hospital Need a Newsletter?

Every healthcare marketing and communications (MarCom) leader has heard this question from a service line or physician leader. Somehow, a newsletter is going to put their program on the map, drive volume, attract new referring physicians and make them profitable. But isn’t this the same fantasy thinking that supports billboards as business drivers?

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How digital solutions help healthcare organizations

Pew Research Center says 59% of U.S. adults have looked online for health information in the past year.

Pew Research Center says 59% of U.S. adults have looked online for health information in the past year.

We know you. You’re a hospital or a healthcare system looking to increase your brand awareness or service-line volumes in your noisy city. You’re one of many hospitals patients can choose from when they have an emergency, need a doctor or are looking for preventive programs. And you’ve probably noticed that when patients come in for appointments, they’ve done their research — they are informed.Read full post...

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Tackling healthcare marketing challenges

We’re proud to be partnering with our friends from MedStar Health and Scripps Health to present an Idea Workshop at SHSMD’s Annual Conference. Our workshop will tackle seven of the most common healthcare marketing challenges faced by our colleagues around the country. We identified these challenges through a brainstorming session with MedStar and Scripps, a poll of all AB&C healthcare partners and a survey of SHSMD Annual Conference attendees. Here’s a quick look at three of the challenges that we’ll be discussing at the conference.

Challenge #1: How do I choose what to market?

Plan, plan and plan some more. Your marketing plan is one element of your organization’s planning cycle, and you should take cues from the other elements: your strategic plan, facilities plan, operating plan, financial plan, business plan and communications plan. From those plans, identify the organization’s priority service lines. Then determine if they’re ready to be marketed:

  • Do you have clinical strength in this area?
  • Do you have positioning power?
  • Is it profitable?
  • Is there competitor vulnerability?
  • Is there spin-off revenue?
  • Is there a product champion?
  • Can they deliver on patient experience?

If you plan properly and can answer these questions, you’ll have an easier time prioritizing your marketing efforts.Read full post...

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Bringing home the gold!

Ecstatic, thrilled and maybe even a little overwhelmed — that pretty much sums up how people are feeling here at AB&C after learning that we won Best in Show, 11 gold, two silvers, one bronze and four merit award at the 30th Annual Healthcare Advertising Awards. Those numbers alone are pretty impressive, but what’s even more meaningful is that we won more gold awards than any of the other 268 agencies that submitted and that we had 14 different clients win with us.

These numbers validate what we already know: The healthcare marketing industry is just as competitive as healthcare these days. More agencies are entering into this specialty area, but this year’s success shows that we are ahead of the curve. Our healthcare team is steeped in expertise and our partners benefit from the years (even decades — yikes!) that we have been working in the industry.Read full post...

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Finding the right doctor for every age

How do marketers make patients “brand” loyal to their PCP?

The days of doctors making house calls may be making a full circle as the new focus for insurance companies is promoting the importance of the primary care physician. In a world where people change doctors like they change their socks, how do marketers make patients “brand” loyal to their PCP?Read full post...

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