CTAs can be used in every type of marketing message. There are a variety of calls to action and they don’t necessarily have to be focused on generating sales.

Some examples of strong calls to action that produce results include: 

• Subscribe to an email list
• Become a Facebook fan
• Become a follower on Twitter
• Participate in an online conversation, such as a physician led web discussion
• Purchase a product
• Watch a video
• Schedule an appointment
• Listen to a podcast
• Read a blog
• Visit a website
• Donate money to a cause
• Register for an event or seminar
• Come to a health screening
• Tour new facilities
• List condition-specific questions to ask your doctor
• Upload photos from hospital events
• Offer welcome packets for new residents in your service area
• Offer a free physical for a particular demographic

Hospital marketers need to focus on bringing people into their hospital by integrating calls to action into their marketing messages. Calls to action that will encourage the members of the community to attend a free screening event or seminar will help build relationships with them and turn them into future patients.

For hospitals, calls to action are a crucial component in creating strong brand awareness and acquiring new patients. Hospitals can put all their effort into promoting and selling their services but when it comes down to it, people are not going to use a hospital’s services until they absolutely need them. That is why it is so important for hospital marketers to focus on building relationships and brand awareness with the members of the community instead of merely focusing on generating sales. Hospitals can’t sell a service such as surgery like a company that sells consumer products, and this is what differentiates hospital marketing from all other types of marketing.

Here are more tips for strong CTAs:

1. Effective language is important in generating results.

a) Make sure you’re conveying value, and make the offer clear, not just call this number for more information.

b) Use subtle language that doesn’t appear to be ordering people around but is more of an invitation.

2. Differentiate your calls to action from rest of text so they stand out. This will increase their effectiveness. Use color and white space, possibly a different font, to accomplish this.

3. Use multiple CTAs throughout your marketing, but have a small number of distinct actions.

4. Use active words.

5. Include multiple ways to respond, such as phone or website.

6. Make them measurable. By using measurable calls to action you will be able to track the reach, impact and influence of the marketing messages containing calls to action. Almost all of the calls to action listed above are measurable in some way.

Overall using calls to action will allow you to track the reach, impact and influence of your marketing messages, which will help you determine the success of your marketing efforts.

Which of your calls to action have seen the most success?

No matter on which side of the debate you fall, this is not likely to be resolved anytime soon. The fact also remains that whether or not Medicare is using patient satisfaction scores to reimburse, patients have always relied on the opinions of their relatives and friends, as well as past experience to make decisions regarding their health care providers.

Who hasn’t asked a friend if they can recommend a good doctor? But not everyone defines “good”, a subjective term, in the same way. You may put a lot of stock in bedside manner, while I put more weight on results.

There’s no question that hospitals will continue to focus on improving patient satisfaction. Our question: How are hospitals using this information to promote themselves? Are you promoting your scores? Do your marketing materials highlight the areas that rate the highest in patient satisfaction?

We’d love to hear from you.

A friend of mine recently said she didn’t understand why any business would have a blog. “Isn’t a blog just someone’s opinion?”

No, a blog can be much more. While many blog posts do function as personal journals, so many more include research, news, and other factual information.

Perhaps this misunderstanding is one of the reasons that few hospitals have embraced this format. According to Ed Bennett’s hospital social network list, there are only 149 hospital blogs. Although there are other reasons, such as the amount of work required to keep the blog fresh, fears about violating HIPAA, or just not knowing if there would be any benefit.

Here are a few of the reasons hospitals would benefit by creating a blog:

• SEO—by linking the blog to the website, and the website to your blog, you improve your performance with search engines.
• A blog is a way to provide more frequent updates than you do on your website
• A blog lets you go deeper with content than you can on Facebook or Twitter—and you can link from those sites back to your blog
• Provide health education to your community
• Share patient success stories
• A place for a community, such as new mothers or bariatric patients, to find and share information

Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, for example, just launched a blog featuring medical news, health information, research innovations and perspectives from both clinicians and hospital staff. Readers are encouraged to engage by sharing posts on their own social media sites.

Blogs are a fantastic way to reach people in your community who are online and position your hospital as a valued resource. To blog…that is the answer.

The internet and social media have provided marketers with cheaper and faster ways to reach their communities, but not the most effective ways to deliver all marketing messages. Although digital solutions are great for businesses with tight marketing budgets, research shows that print media and direct mail are more effective at delivering complex messages.

Royal Mail conducted a neuromarketing study last year that studied how the brain processes marketing messages through different channels. Results of the study showed that print media (i.e. direct mail) is more effective for delivering more complex messages to consumers while online media is more effective at delivering short, simple, easy to read messages.  

Physical media, like direct mail, generated more activity in an area of the brain associated with the integration of visual and spatial information, while online marketing materials generated activity in an area of the brain associated with filtering irrelevant information in order to tend to a task.

As a result, this suggests that print direct marketing materials are perceived to be more “real” by the brain, and act as a cue for memory prompting responses that suggest a greater amount of “internal” thinking. This means that this information is more likely to be processed in relation to the consumers’ feelings and memories. In contrast, online materials prompted responses that demonstrated a greater difficulty to focus.

Direct mail also delivers strong ROI and is very effective at influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions. A 2010 study by the Direct Marketing Association revealed that for every dollar spent in 2010 on direct mail resulted in an average of $12.57 in direct marketing-driven sales, a $0.04 increase from 2009. Print in the Mix provides a great chart showing an ROI breakdown of the amount of direct marketing-driven sales per dollar spent on direct marketing advertising based on the results from this study.

Direct mail marketing is definitely not dead. Some benefits of using direct mail include:

• Target a larger audience
• Reach people who are not online
• Deliver complex messages effectively
• Generate strong ROI
• Drive consumers to your website
• Influence on purchasing decisions

Having a true mix of channels in your marketing mix is the best way to deliver all of your hospital’s marketing messages. By using online direct marketing more for brand awareness and reinforcement messages and print direct marketing for introductory messages, new brand campaigns, and more complex messages, you will be able to effectively deliver your marketing messages to your community.

Writing blog posts for a hospital or medical practice? Follow these tips to set you apart from the other content vying for your audience’s attention.

1.  Remember, “What’s in it for me?” The internet is full of tempting distractions, and readers’ attention spans are short. Your posts should focus on benefits to the viewer/reader: how to prevent illness, learn about new technology, etc. Get to the point fast.

2.  Write snappy headlines. If you don’t entice them from the get-go, chances are they won’t read the post.

3.  Use graphics wisely. An arresting image along with a snappy headline will attract attention. Don’t shy away from featuring “real” people (as long as you have the necessary release forms). And use informational graphics with captions in lieu of words to get your message across.

4.  Focus on the adage: “less is more.” Aim for fewer than 300 words.

5.  Use bullet points whenever possible. They break up the text and enable readers to scan more easily.

6.  Link like crazy. If readers are looking for information, you can support your posts by linking to other web pages.

7.  Vary posts. There are different types of posts and you should include several variations to keep things interesting. These include.

Tutorial – Think of these as being akin to following a recipe. The reader follows certain steps to achieve a desired outcome.

Tip – This alerts readers to a tidbit of information, such as factoid, new book on the topic you’re writing about, other useful resource. It often contains a plugin.

Interview –These can be written, following a Q&A format. Or you might consider a video or audio.

Guest blog – Experts on a particular topic, some of whom have published research, can offer their perspective. Briefly.

Discussion – Showing the give-and-take that takes place is a good way to encourage readers to check in and offer their opinions.

News – Anything that’s relevant to the readers, including new research, updates, book reviews, patient experience.

 8.  Update, update, update. Plan to do so every day or two. Yes, it takes discipline but this will entice readers to return again and again.

 9.  Invite comments. If you want to encourage a dialog with your audience, inviting comments is the way to go.

• A subscribe button allows users to follow anybody’s public updates.
• Revamped friend lists makes it easier for users to organize their friends.
• A real-time ticker will allow users to stay more updated by adjusting content based on the last time the user checked it.
• And changes to the News Feed by allowing users to mark and unmark stories in their feeds as a “Top Story.”

In addition to these most recent changes, Facebook also announced at its F8 conference that it will launch Facebook Timeline, which is going to give marketers a real challenge.

Now you are probably wondering what all these changes mean to marketers. Well, first of all companies will have to stop depending so much on the amount of “Likes” they have because “Likes” will not mean as much with the “new” Facebook since users will have more control over their news feeds.

Instead, marketers are going to have to be more clever and create content that encourages Facebook users to share and interact with their brand. It will be more about providing users with something of value rather than trying to get them to “Like” your brand and collect as many “Likes” as possible. Marketers are going to really have to work in order to gain a spot in a person’s news feed.

Not only will marketers have to think about creating exciting and engaging content, but they will also have to think about what their brand pages look like. To be consistent with the new Facebook Timeline, Brand Pages will have a whole new design. We found some examples on Mashable of how some brand Pages could possibly look with the new layout and design.

How will you change your approach to using Facebook for your brand?

As you’ve probably heard by now, social media can be a very powerful tool for hospital marketers. More and more hospitals are joining social networks in order to build up their social media presence. What are they doing that works? Are they delivering a return for their hospital?

Although having a social media presence can be beneficial for hospitals, blindly posting content just for the sake of having some sort of social media presence will not be effective. Like all your marketing programs, you need to define your purpose, and ideally have an editorial plan. Then you can measure your success against your objectives.

Here are some of the ways that hospitals are using social media to their advantage:

Becker’s Hospital Review has an article which showcases five hospitals that effectively use multiple social media channels to accomplish a variety of objectives from communication to fundraising to community outreach.

The metrics for measuring success can vary and do not necessarily measure a financial return. Is the goal to drive people to register for an event, to drive people to the hospital’s website, to build a community of interest, or is it to publicize hospital news, to name a few? Each channel and each program may be measured differently.

With the variety of social media channels available you can easily and effectively use social media to achieve multiple goals and objectives. This is because the wide variety of channels gives you the ability to use each channel for a different objective or a single channel to accomplish multiple goals over time.

How are you successfully using social media?

To make sure that your hospital website provides visitors with a positive experience, it must be inviting, informative, professional, and reflect the quality offered by your hospital. This boils down to three aspects on which to focus:

• Structure
• Content
• Design

Structure is one of the most important aspects of a hospital website because visitors are often looking for information and unfamiliar with your website. If a person can’t quickly and easily find the information they want, it may turn them away from your site. Having a solid, organized structure is the best way to prevent this from happening.

Four steps to take to make your site’s structure more effective:

1. Structure your hospital’s website so that it easy to navigate.
2. Focus on visitors by providing easy ways to find the most important information.
3. Limit the amount of clicks to get to frequently searched information.
4. Include search features to help visitors find information in a timely manner.

Content defines your organization. With the appropriate relevant content and proper content management, your hospital can be viewed as a leader with a website that is a recognized resource for health information. Focus on clinical areas and service lines and provide content related to those specialties to demonstrate your hospital’s expertise in those areas, because ultimately visitors want to know if you can treat their specific conditions.

Enhance content by providing it in a variety of formats such as video or audio clips. Not all content has to be available in multiple formats, but should be selected on the basis of whether or not other formats can add more value.

Providing visitors with content in a variety of formats such as video or audio clips is a great way to enhance your content as well as connect with visitors on multiple levels. For some people, they prefer to get information through watching videos and/or listening to clips. Video and audio content can also reflect the technological ability of your hospital.

Also, make the content actionable, so that people can research physicians and easily make an appointment, for example.

Design is another important aspect of your hospital’s website, especially the colors that are used. Colors can project different feelings and be interpreted in a variety of ways, so proper color choice is crucial. The colors chosen for your hospital’s website set the overall tone of the site. When choosing colors, a good rule of thumb is to use colors that coordinate with your hospital’s logo. The “Best of the Best” blog by Adazing Design has a great post that gives and explains 10 examples of effective hospital websites based on their design.

The design of your hospital’s website should also coincide with its structure.  This means that the fonts and font sizes chosen for the design should not only look nice, but they should also enhance the structure of your website by being readable and functional.

Overall you want the design of your hospital’s website to reflect the quality of your hospital.

These three areas will make your hospital website more effective. Not only will people stay on your site longer, but they may also be more likely to choose your hospital over a competitor’s based on their experience.

Well, this recent post on the KevinMD blog will dispel your doubts about the value of healthcare social media. Last summer, Natasha Burgert, MD, decided to engage in a one-year trial to assess how social media might enhance her pediatric practice in Kansas City, Missouri.  When she began her efforts last summer, she didn’t know what to expect. 

Dr. Burgert’s one-year trial just ended, and she writes about her experience in one of her blog posts, “How Social Media Has Changed My Medical Practice.” Not only did she see “tangible, valuable benefits” for her practice but she also found that using social media also benefited her and her patient families.

Through her social media trial, she found that “offering online authenticity, genuine concern, and experience (sprinkled with a bit of sound medical knowledge) has created an amazingly powerful platform, and helpful practice tool.”  Based on her experience with social media, it is not surprising that she has decided to extend her one year goal until further notice.

Here are some of the benefits that we thought were worth noting:

• An increase in new patient traffic
• More effective use of time
• Awareness of and access to new resources (ie. websites, blogs, applications, etc.)
• Better communication between doctors and patients
• Improved SEO–new patients can find her
• Time saved in the long run

Convincing, isn’t it?