Speaker 1: 10 ways hospitals and healthcare facilities can optimize their current marketing strategy. This is based on our experience over the last 18 months consulting with several different healthcare networks, assisted living, nursing homes, regional hospitals, and major networks. So the first thing is audit your current efforts. So many marketing departments, they don't audit their efforts enough. They're auditing them on a quarterly basis and they're just looking kind of at the superficials of it all. It's not being tracked enough. There's too many vendors that are being managed and things are kind of in a disarray, especially if you're looking at a larger hospital network. So audit your current efforts. A lot of the times it helps to bring in an expert for them. And you really want to think about, you want to work backwards. So before you audit your current efforts, you want to think about what type of patients do you want to drive to the hospital? What service lines are most profitable that you really want to attract patients for? What target populations are you not topping into? So on and so forth. So if you want to drive more private pay into your hospital, that marketing is going to be different than driving commercial insurance patients, than driving government assistance Medicaid and Medicare patients. So that's the power of understanding what type of patient populations you want to drive and also what type of patient populations are in the surrounding areas of your hospital. A lot of people also forget that there is a heavy Latino population or there may be another minority population in your local area and you may not be tapping into that. You also want to think about auditing. We've seen this before where the organic marketing department does not necessarily communicate with the paid advertising department. Let's say the marketing department all in all is compartmentalized into like five different mini departments. It's very important that those mini departments are working towards the same goals. And a lot of the times just because they're inundated with, you know, trying to produce and create, it's almost like that connection gets lost. So that connection really needs to be forged. It should be all efforts, you know, surmounting into one pinnacle of like the same goals. So the first step is to audit your current efforts. How much is being invested into the marketing? What are you seeing as a result of that? Look at kind of the last six to 12 months. Are the efficacy of the efforts declining? Are they improving? Is the spend declining? Is it improving? Do you know where the spend is most effective? So on and so forth. Are the vendors being honest in the reports that they're giving you? Yes. Another thing that we see is a lot of the times, you know, the marketing, the head of marketing has to contract vendors and they may not necessarily understand the niche that the vendor is in. So they don't really know if it's working or if the clicks in the click through rate is just kind of made up numbers. The efficacy has to be there. So if you look over the last 12 months and you see that the marketing spend has increased 50 percent, but that there have been no real increases in the type of patients that you're trying to drive to the hospital, it's time to go back to the drawing board and see where is this misspend happening. And if you don't do that, then it's just going to continue to be like a bucket with several different holes. It's just going to continue to pour water into the bucket and it's not going to go anywhere. Number two, like we said, have clear goals with realistic expectations and realistic time frames. You want to understand that organic marketing is a long term game. It's a marathon. It's not a sprint. You don't want to pour so much into your paid advertising that you're basically you're basically squandering any potential of your organic marketing to work. So you really want to balance that spend paid ads and stuff are more for the immediacy. They're more immediate. The conversions are, you know, you're paying for those conversions. But the organic marketing is essential. And what we've seen recently is that these health care facilities, especially after covid, they've kind of neglected their social media presence prior. So now they're like in a panic and they're just throwing paid ads. They're kind of misspending. They're kind of not knowing how to track their own vendors. And they're basically neglecting organic marketing entirely, which they are going to regret come 18 to 24 months from now. So you really have to balance that blend. So number three, within your marketing department, it's essential to create a culture of engagement and curiosity. A lot of the times interns, marketing assistants, even the head of marketing, if they're if they're not given the freedom to do so, they may be afraid to try new things because they're afraid that that that may fail and that they will get fired. So within your marketing department, it's essential to create a culture of curiosity and to make it known that it's OK to test things. You're not going to get fired, obviously mitigate that risk, you know, take calculated risks with these tests. But the more you test, the more you'll be able to know really what works for your hospital. Because what we've seen so much is that certain hospitals just try to be copycats of their competitor. They'll look at Essie and Rush, they'll kind of do the same thing, but they're not really thinking ahead. Data is going to tell you what's what happened yesterday, maybe what's going to happen today, but it's really not going to tell you what's going to happen tomorrow. That's sort of a balance between data and intuition. So you really want to look at kind of the trends and you want to be the innovator. You don't want to just be a copycat because even if the competitor is 10 miles away, that may be a completely different population and it may not work as effectively for your hospital or with the spend that you have. Number four, create a winning strategy and collaborate. So make sure that all the sections of the marketing department, they know the clear goals. Let's say the goal is over the next year to increase patient population by 10% or increase commercial insurance patients by 25%, increase private pay patients by 10%. Whatever it may be, have clear specific goals and then create a creative winning strategy that includes those tests, that includes new things. Because if you don't do new things, you're just going to get the same results. We go into hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities that have been doing the same type of marketing for the last five years and they don't know why they're not growing. They don't know why they're not getting any new results. And it's because they're not trying anything new. They're not taking calculated risks. They're not looking at the trends. They're not looking at where the future is going, such as voice. They're not investing in the right kind of thing for their niche population, patient population. So always remember that create a winning strategy and make sure that it includes new tests. Number five, put the right people in the right places. We see this misspend a lot where, and it's not, it's not the fault of the marketing head because they're so inundated with pressure, right? So they really trust some of these vendors that they come across. And let's say for Facebook advertising, they may just choose a vendor, you know, that talks the best talk. And the thing is, is that then that they get into like a six to 12 month agreement that that spend is gone and it doesn't work. And then they just think that all the other vendors are kind of whatever. So when you're looking for a vendor and you're the head of a marketing department, really make sure that that vendor has social proof. So if they're the best at, they say they're the best at Facebook advertising, make sure that they have a ton of case studies, not just testimonials, but case studies to back it up. Make sure maybe that they're doing the same thing for their brand. A lot of the times where people reach out to us, especially for help with LinkedIn growth, because we are that social proof. We've grown over 400,000 followers on LinkedIn in 16 months. We've generated over a hundred million views in 16 months. So we, if we could do it for us, we could do it for other people. So make sure that you're not just going with the vendor that talks the best talk. You really want to see who walks the walk because that will allow you to be more resourceful and do more with your money. So put the right people in the right places. That's how you do it. You kind of pay attention. You kind of see who has that social proof, who has those case studies, and you choose not the vendor with the shiniest suits and stuff, but the vendor that's actually doing the best. And don't be afraid to give new vendors a chance. And we've been given that chance and we've done great with the chances that we've been given. So don't be afraid. If you look at some of your vendors and they, let's say you've been working with them for over a year, they're canceling your meetings, they're maybe not doing as well. They're, you know, falling behind on their reports and they're just getting complacent. Maybe it's time to either talk to them and be open and be like, listen, we're, we may be open to using another vendor if this doesn't get better because they've probably grown and maybe have other priorities and that communication is essential. Or it may just be time to give a new vendor a chance. Maybe use that spent, split it between three different new vendors on a three month trial period and see what works best so that you could optimize your resources. Number six, stay consistent. So whatever strategy you come across with, whatever vendors you choose, it's important to stay consistent for at least 90 days and make sure that your vendors are doing the same. You can't get a baseline for tracking unless you are consistent for 90 days and you do what the vendors kind of need you to do. Seven, empower your providers. We have seen this recently where, you know, big hospital networks are just buying up more and more private practices. So one of the things that they need help with is how do they connect with community when they're such a big entity? And a way to do that is to empower your providers. But so many of these large healthcare networks, they don't really communicate with their providers. In fact, many of their physicians are afraid to grow their social presence and become influencers within their specialties because they're afraid that HR may see it. They're afraid that they may get fired, so on and so forth. Let's say you have a leading testicular cancer research center in your hospital. It would be a strategic thing to empower those providers to become influencers within this space. It would open doors to connect with more patients online. It would open doors to connect with more, let's say, journals and just press opportunity. So be strategic about empowering your providers and create a culture where they know it's okay. Especially after COVID-19, so many physicians are afraid of how they may be able to connect with their patients, you know, that now they're looking to invest in their social and even if they work for a hospital network, they want that freedom. So that would be something that obviously needs to start at the top. It's a bigger conversation, but just think about that. Number eight, measure outcomes and do so effectively. Don't just get like reports that are like, oh, this ad was clicked 20 times. They got 20 calls, blah, blah, blah. Let's say that an ad produced a thousand calls. You need to go further than that. You need to say the ad produced a thousand calls. There were 10 appointments made and out of those 10 appointments, five appointments showed up and five of those appointments were, three of them were commercial insurance, two of them were private pay. You have to really go further so that you know the compounding kind of effect of that marketing campaign. If you just look at clicks and stuff, you don't really go to the end, then you don't know the investment because if you just look at there were a thousand calls, what if none of those calls converted into appointments? Is there a problem with the customer service? Is there a problem with the type of patients that are calling that let's say the insurance is not accepted at that particular clinic within the health network? Whatever it may be, you have to go further and then even break it down even more out of the five patients that showed up for their appointment that had the commercial insurance or the Medicaid, the Medicare, the private pay, what services did they get? What patients produce a more profitability? Because the more you focus on what works, the more you can magnify that. That brings me to number nine, focus and enhance what works. You have to continuously trim the fat every single 90 days of your marketing campaign. The thing is, again, people do the same thing over decades and they expect different outcomes. If you look at your marketing campaign every single 90 days and you say, okay, this is where 80 percent of our efficacy is coming from. Let's trim the fat. Let's trim the fat. And then you just continue to niche down and you find what works best for your community and innovate along the way. Don't be afraid to trim the fat, enhance what works and remove what doesn't. Number 10, repeat kind of like what I was saying. You have to do this every single minimum 90 days. The people that do it really, really with like they have the span and the optimization and the tracking and the team to do it would even maybe even do it every 30 or 45 days. So but you have to just continuously repeat. Marketing is not a strategy that you put together and it's going to work forever. Why? Because technology, social platforms, where people spend their time, how they spend their time online is continuously changing and it's changing very fast. So you have to continuously just watch, repeat, watch, repeat. And that's the that's the fun and the innovation that comes with optimizing your marketing strategy. If you need consulting or if you need any kind of guidance, we do thorough audits and we can run a campaign from beginning to end. It's also important that when you're choosing a vendor, you have vendors that understand the health care space. You have vendors that understand that marketing for a Medicaid, Medicare population is completely different than marketing for a private pay or, you know, high quality commercial insurance population. Just remember that you want to optimize your spend. You want to get the right people in the right places because you want to be resourceful and you want to win.