In any industry, branding is critical, but in the healthcare business branding is unavoidable.
Patient choice is more important than ever in today’s healthcare. Every day, more direct-to-consumer healthcare brands are coming up with excellent features to meet their healthcare needs.
Healthcare branding is critical for any healthcare organization aiming to enhance patient acquisition and develop its business in an increasingly saturated industry.
With this in mind, let’s look at some of the most pressing concerns with healthcare branding:
What is healthcare branding?
Branding for any business simply means giving meaning to an organization or company. The main focus of branding is to shape a company’s image in the eyes of customers. Healthcare branding is the management of all components that makes a patient believe that the company is the top healthcare service provider and there is no other substitute.
So how do you define a brand?
Now, what is a brand? Is it your companies’ logo or the ads that you run for your business?
Well, it is none of those graphics, visual identity, or advertisements. A brand is how your customer feels about your healthcare services or you as a company. Simply putting it, branding is how much your patients trust your services.
Everyone has tried to be logical about their buying decisions. However, that doesn’t work out. We go for the service that feels awesome to us.
Why do patients favor a medical brand over another?
Simon Sinek outlines why certain businesses are more successful than others in his book Start With The Why. He believes that in order for brands to achieve and retain loyalty as well as to lead their markets, they must articulate and be outspoken about their “why.”
He meant “why” as in “your reason for creating your business” or “purpose.” Why do you love doing what you do? ( keeping the monetary benefits aside), and why should your patients be interested? It appears to be a simple task, yet it is surprisingly difficult to do. Most brands have a clear picture of what they do and how they do it, but only a few understand why they do it.
Our biological structure explains why conveying your goal is a competitive advantage. We place higher importance on meaningful messages than a robotic, dull value proposition. And we base our conclusion on the number of trust signals we received from the texts.
4 steps to create your Brand:
1. Do the Research
Understanding what makes a healthcare system’s brand unique among alternative providers is one of the most important areas of concentration for any healthcare system. Surprisingly, many businesses miss the mark when it comes to establishing their brand.
2. Start with your Employees
Start by looking into your employees’ problems. What are their pain points? How would they describe the organization and how does it differ if asked who they worked for?
Inquire from your employee, if they love working for your organization. about their experiences working for your company. Employees reflect your brand and are the ones you have got their point of view to tell you can start mending accordingly.
3. Know your Audience
Because you’re usually trying to reach multiple audiences, each message must be memorable.
Encompass Health, for example, carefully considered the viewpoints of the consumers and caregivers in their environment.
First and foremost, there is the patient. For Encompass Health, these are typically senior citizens who have had a stroke or experienced a brain injury; they are usually overwhelmed, and regaining their independence is their first priority.
The caregiver, who is most likely the decision-maker and a close relative of the patient, fights for the patient’s level of care. They are likely to be more tech-savvy and on the lookout for answers to difficult topics.
Acute care partners and referral sources are another important audience. The materials offered to assist the sales staff must contain a clear and straightforward message that resonates with referral sources, ensuring that referring professionals understand why the brand is the best option for their patients.
4. Keep it Simple
While going through a nationwide hospital marketing in India for a huge healthcare organization is anything but easy, it all starts with establishing a simple message for the proper audience. The simpler the message is, the easier it is for the audience to understand you. You should not complicate or contradict your brand’s message at any stage of branding.
The Bottom Line
Branding isn’t about sprucing things up or making everything look flashy; rather, it’s about following a well-thought-out strategy for portraying your healthcare brand’s best qualities and tying them in with your service quality.
