Branding

The Transformative Power of Hospital Marketing

In the modern era of rapidly evolving healthcare systems, hospital marketing emerges not merely as a choice, but a necessity. The rise of informed patients and increased competition has propelled the importance of hospital marketing to a new pinnacle. This blog delves into the essential role of hospital marketing in shaping the healthcare landscape in India, highlighting its critical facets and the implications for the future.

Understanding the Spectrum of Hospital Marketing

Hospital marketing is no longer confined within the boundaries of merely advertising the services offered. It encompasses a myriad of elements such as building a strong brand image, fostering a sustainable relationship with patients, implementing patient-centric approaches, and ultimately, paving the way to increased patient footfall and a healthy bottom line. It’s a strategic process of outreach, engagement, and relationship building that cultivates trust and reinforces your hospital’s reputation in a competitive marketplace.

Navigating the Competitive Healthcare Landscape Through Marketing

India’s healthcare sector is witnessing an influx of multi-speciality hospitals, corporate medical centres, and specialised clinics. This increased competition necessitates that hospitals not only provide exceptional services but also implement innovative marketing strategies to stand out. Hospital marketing provides the critical competitive edge, enabling healthcare providers to retain their existing patient base and attract new ones, thereby driving growth.

Strengthening Brand Image

Brand image is a significant factor in a patient’s choice of healthcare provider. In an era of information overflow and numerous options, having a trusted and respected brand image is crucial. Effective hospital marketing strategies help shape the public perception of a hospital, showcasing its commitment to patient care, its range of services, and its professional expertise. A well-articulated brand image can instil trust and reliability in the hearts of current and prospective patients.

Promoting Accessibility and Reach

The Indian healthcare sector still faces a notable urban-rural divide. With a significant portion of the population residing in rural areas, making healthcare services accessible to all is an essential goal. Hospital marketing, particularly digital strategies, can play a vital role in bridging this gap. Effective online marketing can disseminate information about healthcare services to the farthest corners of the country, ensuring healthcare accessibility is not confined to urban areas.

The Indian Healthcare Sector: A Peek into the Future

The future of India’s healthcare sector appears promising, with significant advancements and growth projected for the coming years. Here are some insights:

Digital Surge: By 2025, it is estimated that nearly 75% of India’s urban internet users, or approximately 500 million people, will use online health services, according to a recent BCG report. This statistic accentuates the need for hospitals to establish a strong online presence to reach this vast digital audience.

Exponential Growth: The Indian healthcare market is poised for robust growth, with a projection to reach an estimated $500 billion by 2025, as per IBEF reports. This growth trajectory necessitates hospitals to adopt advanced marketing strategies to keep pace with the industry’s evolution.

Medical Tourism: India is fast emerging as a global healthcare destination, with medical tourism expected to reach $9 billion by 2023-24, according to the Ministry of Tourism. Hospital marketing strategies can help tap into this thriving sector, attracting international patients through quality healthcare services and specialised care packages.

The Future Belongs to Those Who Innovate

Hospital marketing is a dynamic and continuous process. In the rapidly transforming healthcare sector of India, hospitals need to adapt, innovate, and evolve their marketing strategies to stay ahead. Regular audits of marketing campaigns, strategic use of healthcare IT, maintaining an updated and SEO-friendly website, and creating engaging online content are just some of the ways hospitals can stay on top of their marketing game.

To conclude, marketing is not just about making sales; it’s about creating value, building relationships, and making a difference in people’s lives. And nowhere is this more pertinent than in the field of healthcare, where the ultimate goal is the well-being of patients. Remember, a well-marketed hospital is not just a flourishing business, but a beacon of hope and trust for the community it serves.

Author 

Akhil Dave

Founder & Principal Consultant, Trizone Healthcare Consultants

Founder Chairman , AHMP India Foundation

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/akhildave/episodes/THE-TRANSFORMATIVE-POWER-OF-HOSPITAL-MARKETING-e26rsm6

Important Reasons For Hospital Branding
Hospital Branding

There is a huge gap between availability of hospital beds and population required healthcare. At the same time there is a large portion of population in need of hospital or you can say your hospital but they are not aware of your hospital`s existence or not aware about services you provide. To run hospital in profitable manner healthcare business has to live around with more a stronger brand identity that ever. Branding is exactly that process which builds your identity with more values. Branding really convey your vision and mission of healthcare businesses.


Here are 7 Important reasons for Hospital Branding

Defines your brand personality

With the help of effective branding exercise, you can project your brand personality in the most appealing way possible. Branding is capable of creating a wholesome picture of your services and facilities. Branding is capable enough of broadening a common man`s perception towards your Hospital. A well though process to build your Hospital brand can make people relate to you and remember forever that will have resulted in to prompt remembrance in case of medical emergency.

Stand out from the rest


In current an era of competition, everything is competing with everything. It is very important for hospital brand to stand out in the market and make some noise. By building thoughtful strategy hospital brand with your unique brand personality kept as the base makes your presence stand out from the market. When more and more noise you make and individually herd, the retention is more. Resulting in to more brand engagement.

Target Accurately

As a hospital business owner you have thought of investing or invested in healthcare business already means you know the need of the society. When you know your target market segment it is easy to catch their attention towards you. A brand which is planned and built on deep understanding of your organization`s geographic and socio-ecomonic through appropriate ground work will reach your target cohort more swiftly.


Short-term and long term benefits

Branding is a well thought process of intensifying your presence within a defined target group of audience. Branding helps to establish yourself in a defined market segment and then evolves in to an indispensable asset for your current and future business prospects. Thoughtful planned branding strategy can increase trust level towards your hospital. Customized modules with long term marketing goals will etch your brand in people’s memories.

Expand your market share

Increasing footfall in all aspects is any hospital`s goal, which looks far from their current position when the amount of competition is taken into account. Building your hospital brand from scratch carves a way that your counterparts can seldom cross. This leads to unique brand positioning which indeed takes your brand to markets your services previously left unexplored. The footprints of your brand image will gradually but in significant way increases your market share. To achieve this you may need to build and rebuild your hospital brand.

Develop brand loyalty

As you are creating your brand personality with thoughtful brand strategy, brand personality will leave an impact on the level of trust that your brand has gained. When every step in building a brand is well planned, curated and strategized with high level of understanding of local market or target marketing in mind, it increases the brand loyalty amongst your stakeholders like patients, employees, vendors etc. Increase patient referrals through word of mouth The most important marketing tool which increase footfall in hospital is word of mouth. Yes with thoughtful branding of your hospital you can increase patient referrals through word of mouth. Your past patients, employees, doctors, and their opinion perhaps the biggest sources to spread your brand. There is nothing more powerful in world of healthcare business than a word of mouth.

Branding is not about creatively you decorate your hospital or making it all look flashy rather it is about adoption a well though strategy process of projecting your brand personality & your quality of services in defined market.

To know more about How to Build your Hospital Brand, Consult Trizone Healthcare Consultants http://www.trizonehealthcare.com

Building Profitable Business through world-class marketing

There are three kinds of organizations; those who make things happened; those who watch things happen; and those who wonder what`s happened.

If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.

As the world spins into the challenging phase of economy, both citizen and business wonder what is ahead. There is not only change, but the rate of change is accelerating. A twelve-year old girl said of her ten year old sister, “She is of a different generation.” Her younger sister listens to difference music, plays different videos, knows different movie stars, has different heroes.

Organisation or companies often fail to recognize that their marketplace changes years to year. Last year winning marketing strategy may become today`s losing strategy. As someone observed, there are two kinds of companies: those who change and those who disappear.

Today`s economic landscape is being shaped by two powerful forces- Digitalization & Globalization. The Digitalization landscape today is dotted with new products & services offering, one would not have thought that one day world will be lockdown and everyone shall work from home, using various digital platforms. Making marketing & sales call through video calling, taking meeting through video conferencing, government will run their cabinet meetings through video conferencing digital platforms. Technology drives the second major force, globalization.

Besides digitalization & globalization, other forces are reshaping the economy e.g. deregulation, privatization, etc. As the pace of change accelerates, companies can no longer rely on their former business practices to sustain prosperity. Few point below compares business assumptions and practices that were practiced then with the one is being practiced now.

Earlier companies use to make & manage everything inside the company, Now companies buy more things from outside or outsource.

Earlier companies are product centric, now they are market and / or customer centric

Earlier practices mass marketing now practices target marketing

Earlier business was managing from top now manage up and down and across

Earlier operate in the marketplace no operate also in the marketspace

Earlier focus on the product now focus on value for the product and feedback on the product

And their earlier approaches and practices that were practiced then, which are not practiced now. Those who have not changed their business practices is locked in traditional practices.

Besides winning business practices, is there a set of winning marketing practices? Are there winning marketing practices?

Answer is Yes according to Kotler on Marketing there are nine one liner formulas of winning marketing practices.

  1. Win Through Higher Quality
  2. Win Through Better Service
  3. Win Through Lower Prices
  4. Win Through High Market Share
  5. Win Through Adaptation And Customization
  6. Win Through Continuous Product Improvement
  7. Win Through Product Innovation
  8. Win Through entering High-Growth Markets
  9. Win Through Exceeding Customer Expectations

So out of above What Constitutes a Winning Marketing Strategy?

Clearly there is no on marketing road to riches. Instead of relying on one major differentiations or thrust, a company needs to make their own unique strategy of marketing activities.

Remember Knowing is Knowing and Doing is Doing, it is not enough to do most things a little better than the competitors.  We at Trizone assist businesses to weave its own unique tapestry of marketing qualities and activities.

www.linkedin.com/company/trizone-healthcare-consultants

#Trizone #TrizoneHealthcare #HospitalMarketing #HospitalBranding #MarketingStrategy #WinningStrategy #MarketingConsultancy #MarketingConsultant

Hospital Internal Marketing

http://www.trizonehealthcare.com/

There are three kinds of organizations; those who make things happened; those who watch things happen; and those who wonder what`s happened.

If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.

As the world spins into the challenging phase of economy, both citizen and business wonder what is ahead. There is not only change, but the rate of change is accelerating. A twelve-year old girl said of her ten year old sister, “She is of a different generation.” Her younger sister listens to difference music, plays different videos, knows different movie stars, has different heroes.

Organisation or companies often fail to recognize that their marketplace changes years to year. Last year winning marketing strategy may become today`s losing strategy. As someone observed, there are two kinds of companies: those who change and those who disappear.

We at Trizone always believe in Knowing is Knowing & Doing is Doing, hence we keep on inventing new strategies which really works for our healthcare clients.

In this blog you will know more about Internal Marketing & how to create brand ambassadors. In a competitive and dynamic environment, healthcare organizations need to continuously revolutionize their business practices so as to deliver better value for their patients. The healthcare sector is subject to transformation and advancement; and in order to sustain their business performance, these organizations need to be well informed about the present market trends and formulate strategies in accordance. While facing the various challenges of marketing strategy development and implementation, branding, positioning and assessment of the market and ever changing clinical demands, these organizations also has to uphold their performance amidst uncertain market behavior.

Objective:

  • Create Your Brand Ambassadors
  • Create positive attitude & ownership towards Organization
  • Engage Maximum Footfall & capture their eyeballs on your Brand
  • Cross Selling of offered services
  • Word of Mouth
  • Engagement in social media
  • Utilization of Existing workforce & footfalls to increase business

Step involved in Internal Marketing

Phase 1:

  1. Articulate Vision & Mission
  2. Gauge the existing scenario
  3. Segmentation of existing workforce
  4. Communication Plan
  5. Execution of communication Plan
  6. Internal Events
  7. Measure impact & re-planning accordingly

Phase 2:

  1. Feedback [Patient, Relative & Visitors]
  2. Cross Selling
  3. Social Media Engagement
  4. “Thanks for Trust on Us”
  5. Patient Welfare Officers /Floor Managers
  6. Delight Team
  7. In-house referral scheme
  8. Data Collection

PHASE 1:

  1. Articulate Vision & Mission

For Example: Some Hospital has following:

Vision

Striving with excellence to create world-class integrated healthcare delivery system, entailing finest medical skills to fulfill the needs of the community in its chosen field of medical treatment

Mission

To become a global healthcare institution, which encompasses latest technology and best medical practices with an emphasis on ethical principles, in a caring environment, to preserve and enrich the quality of life with a respect for human dignity

Values

Setting the best practice standards in services, continuously improving performance and exceeding the expectations of patients as well as their families.

Believe in building and maintaining long-term patient relationships, so as to become an essential resource for their well being.

We believe in:

Training and developing the best medical practices as the key to deliver superior service.

Consistently investing in technology and infrastructure to match international benchmarks.

Continuously educating the community in the context of women and children welfare

  • Gauge the existing scenario [internal Customers]:

One can do the Gap Analysis between Vision, Mission & actual practices on the basis of following parameters:

  • Ownership
  • Commitment
  • Opinion Poll
  • Word of Mouth
  • Segmentation of existing workforce:

Understand the existing Gossip centers in and Around hospital thru Identification of common gossip topics & gossip mongers, Corrective steps & policy

Healthcare organizations must have defined their SOPs for each process, It should also well communicated amongst the team members so that they will understand work segmentation and their individual roles & responsibility for the particular task. Following are the few points on which organization can do segmentation of existing workforce:

  • Understand the existing patient, relative visitors flow
  • Segmentation of workforce according to their skills & ability
  • Medical & Non Medical
  • Creation of Communication Plan:

Identification & creation of various groups & align communication strategy accordingly

In today`s world communication is very easy but at the same time right communication at right time is also very important aspect of the communication. Healthcare organizations must create their master plan for various communications. 

  • Identification of communication channels
  • Maximum utilization of Social Media Platform
  • Merchandise
  • Whatsapp Groups, Social Medias, E-mail [Education, motivation, promotions]
  • Execution of communication Plan:

To connect with internal customers effectively, organization should be more careful while executing the communication plan.

  • Work Station Posters
  • Workforce Education & Training on Who, Why, For What, When, How etc.
  • Social Media Platform
  • Merchandise
  • Whatsapp & E-mail [Education, motivation, promotions]
  • Events:

Internal events are essential for any healthcare organization, as we all know healthcare workers are in tremendous work pressure and stress, to feel them happy at work place, organizations must plan yearly event calendar for internal customers:

  • To create employee ownership & transform them in to Brand Ambassador
  • To increase synergy between internal & inter department functions
  • To increase bounding between all stake holders
  • Increase Brand ownership & loyalty
  • Events like Director`s Day, CEO`s Day etc to interact with all levels of internal customers, Team Building, Quiz, Get together, birthday celebration
  • Measure impact & re-planning accordingly:

Healthcare Organisation should measure impact periodically to understand strategy impact on business. On the basis of impact measures one should always re-plan the strategy acoordingly:

  • Feedback Overview
  • Result Overview

To measure the impact thru interview, observation, feedback, spy etc. & act accordingly

PHASE – 2:

  1. Feedback [Patient, Relative & Visitors]:

In today`s healthcare organizations, many of them are practicing patient’s feedback capturing practices at various level like OPD, IPD, Billing, discharge etc. but organization must follow the right way of taking feedbacks. Few points are:

  • Who is filling it
  • Who get it filled
  • Consideration of last few experience
  • Mental Status
  • How many forms
  • Satisfaction v/s Delight
  • Follow up Action
  • Feedback Process analysis
  • Cross Selling:

Cross selling means attract existing patient or attender to avail other available facilities at hospital like health check ups, package booking, etc.

  • Cross Department Selling
  • Create service awareness
  • Brochures
  • Digital / interactive signages
  • SMS, Emailer, Posters, Merchandise
  • Promotional Scheme
  • Package Scheme
  • To engage & convert existing customers for various other offered services
  • Social Media Engagement:

In today`s world of digitalization, organization must practice tactics to connect internal & existing customers to their social media platforms:

  • Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Google+, blog etc
  • To connect with patients & Visitors
  • Free internet access to main foyer
  • Kiosk to “connect with us”
  • Membership scheme
  • “Thanks for Trust on Us”:

Once patient or attender or internal customer depart or leave the organization after availing your services, one should always greet them:

  • Message card to each patient by consultant after consultation, on discharge, during ward visit etc.
  • Carry Bag / special bag
  • Souvenir
  • Create positive bonding between patient & consultant
  • Unique way to connect with patients emotions
  • Patient Welfare Officers / Floor Managers:

Healthcare service providers have to practice like hospitality industry does for their customers, on each contact point in healthcare organization there should be someone to assist patient and attenders e.g. patient welfare officers / floor managers who take care of:

  • For coordination between doctor and patient`s relative
  • Coordination between relative and hospital administration
  • Coordination between internal and external doctors
  • Patient`s support service monitoring
  • Delight Team:

To achieve higher success in healthcare businesses one should understand customer delight and monitor delight experience of each and every customer by appointing Delight Team:

  • Patients satisfaction v/s delight experience monitoring
  • To provide customized support services to patients
  • In-house referral scheme:

As we discuss in starting internal customers are best brand ambassadors for any organization, to motivate them one should start internal referral schemes:

  • Incentive scheme for employees on patient refer by them
  • Incentive scheme for clinical team on inter department patient referral
  • ‘Health Referral” Free/discount Health Check Up coupons to existing HCP clientele
  • Data Collection:

Last but not least, organization must emphasize on data collection tools and technologies.

  • Identification of available opportunities for data collection
  • Process establishment of Data Collection
  • Periodical updation
  • Utilization of Data
  • Dala Analysis for various schemes
  • Clinical Research

Hope this article must have given you the complete knowing on Internal Marketing and how one can utilize this for their business success.

Do Remember Knowing is Knowing & Doing is Doing.

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