Are Your Employees Engaged? An Employee Engagement Video Can Do Double Duty For Your Healthcare Organization

April 2, 2012 Leave a comment

By: Mike Milligan, President Legato Marketing & Communications

What is the weirdest question you’ve ever asked your doctor?

This is the backbone of the “Everything Matters. Everyone Counts.” video we helped create for Southwest Health Center (SHC) in Platteville, Wisc.

The video debuted in March at the Chamber of Commerce’s “Business After Hours” event. It shows patients –played mostly by Southwest employees –asking the doctor some very strange questions like “Why can’t I see my feet anymore?”

The point? To let the community know that no question is too silly when it comes to your health. We used this humorous approach to share a serious message about the importance of your annual physical and feeling comfortable discussing anything with your doctor.

This video was possible because of the employee participation. And it lets them be actively involved in SHC’s marketing efforts.

That’s the first benefit of an employee engagement video – it serves as a great marketing tool.

In the case of SHC, it allows the employees to be ambassadors of the SHC brand. They are part of the message, so now it’s personal to them. Employee involvement also provides a connecting point for other members in the community who may know a hospital employee.

And this video serves as the perfect complement to traditional advertising too. Place the url on your print, radio and direct mail pieces and there’s your call-to-action.

SHC’s video is also an effective way to harness the power of the internet. YouTube and Facebook are free to use and once the video is on these sites, the sharing opportunities are endless. Employees can post it on their personal pages and easily forward it to friends and family.

Double Duty

We’ve discussed the first role an employee video plays, but what’s the second?

It’s employee engagement.

What I mean is having your employees fully involved in and enthusiastic about their work and the company they work for.

What’s in it for employers?

Well… higher productivity, safer employees, more customer-focused employees and decreased absenteeism are a few of the benefits. In terms of hospitals, this can mean more efficient care and higher quality care.

Effective engagement can also help cut turnover costs. Show your employees that you genuinely care about them and in turn they will feel more loyal to their jobs and less apt to leave.

How to get engaged?

There are so many different ways to engage healthcare employees. Celebrating things like nurse’s week, birthdays and work-related anniversaries, as well as setting up recognition programs to acknowledge exceptional work are some traditional methods.

But today we live in a much more social world, which is why a video like SHC’s is an influential tool.

Proven examples

The following two cases demonstrate the engagement and marketing power of an employee video.

Created in 2010, St. Mary’s of Michigan’s “We are St. Mary’s” dance video used 2,000 of the health system’s employees.

It launched at the annual associates picnic, which prompted several thousand employees and their families to attend –a huge sign of engagement. The hospital also saw a 13 percent increase in their associate survey participation between 2009 and 2010.

But hospital employee videos probably got their biggest break with Providence St. Vincent Medical Center’s “Pink Glove” video.

Employees, all wearing pink gloves, danced around the hospital to boost breast cancer awareness. This video went viral and now has over 1.3 million views on YouTube. It’s also been the inspiration for many pink glove sequels.

Your call-to-act

Just think – 1.3 million views means that many people are seeing what a great place your organization is to work at and work with. And it was free to market to all of them via YouTube and Facebook.

So pick a cause that your employees can rally behind like SHC’s “Everything Matters. Everyone Counts.” or pick a service/department in the hospital that you want to promote. Either way, your video is serving double duty. It’s getting your employees involved and it’s getting your message out.

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Are You Marketing Your Strongest Asset?

March 13, 2012 Leave a comment

 By: Mike Milligan, President Legato Marketing & Communications

What is your hospital’s strongest asset?

While a few may beg to differ, most would say their physicians top the list. If you agree, you should be marketing your docs to the nth degree. Are you?

Keep in mind that it’s just as important to market a physician’s ‘human’ side as it is to highlight the high points of a doctor’s experience. That means putting consumers in touch with your physicians and vice versa. We all know that docs don’t have the time (not to mention the desire) to get out and press the flesh, so what’s a marketing professional to do?  Think ‘personally’ – ‘virtually.’

Leverage your website to:

  • Build trust in your physicians by promoting their professional experience and their passion for their careers. How? One idea is to stream videos of doctors in action to emphasize their capabilities and their love of their profession.
  • Let consumers get to know your docs as ‘people’ — not just professionals. Feature a doctor of the week by including a personalized human interest story. For example, if a doc enjoys kayaking, capture his or her love of the outdoors with a photo essay.  Introduce a doctor’s spouse and children, a family pet, a favorite recipe … Give consumers a glimpse into the ‘softer side’ of your physicians and you’ll create a greater level of comfort and confidence in your docs.
  • Schedule live web chats that allow consumers to ask doctors questions – and get responses – in real-time. The ability to have two-way conversations like these can shoot your consumer trust and loyalty scores through the roof.
  • Give patients the ability to email appointment requests. The more convenient the appointment process is, the more likely consumers are to use your clinic.

Today, patient trust and loyalty is critical to the success of every hospital. But in rural communities, the stakes may be even higher. Here, ‘Neighbors caring for neighbors’ isn’t just a cliché, it’s a way of life. It’s also an expectation – of your clinic, your hospital – and your doctors.

If you’re not marketing your biggest asset, the time has come. Do it well, and step up your market share, increase volume and build ever-important patient loyalty.

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Leverage your Intranet And Net The Benefits

March 7, 2012 Leave a comment

By: Mike Milligan, President Legato Marketing & Communications

How many of you view your hospital’s intranet as a communications tool?

No surprise there.

OK. Let’s take it one step further … How many of you use your intranet as a powerful marketing tool? If you do, are you squeezing every ounce of marketing opportunity out of it? You should, you know. Here’s why.

Your intranet is a top-down/bottom-up, horizontal/two-way, multi-faceted marketing vehicle. It can be powerful. Economical. And it can put you on the fast track to increasing employee satisfaction, improving efficiencies and building brand — if you leverage all of its strengths. I’ll give you a few examples to state my case.

Employee satisfaction: Your intranet allows management to get timely information to employees. But don’t make it a one-way street. Internal employee blogs, feedback forms and user-specific dashboards give you the opportunity to hear what’s on employees’ minds so you can respond. Open communication plays a big role in employee satisfaction. And your timely response to staff’s suggestions, concerns and questions ups the ‘satisfaction’ ante.

Improved service: Employees throughout the organization (and in multiple locations) can use the intranet to exchange information and best practices with one another. That can improve customer service by helping employees fulfill your organization’s brand promise.

Brand ambassadors: Your intranet can provide employees with updates they need and information they want, as well as other ‘perks.’ Examples:

  • Employee benefit information about insurance options, open enrollment – even free flu shots, health screenings and more.
  • Fitness and nutrition tips that promote a healthy lifestyle. (Healthier employees translate into a healthier organization all the way around.)
  • Local events, family activities and volunteer opportunities that connect employees to the communities you serve.

In other words, don’t just talk about life/work balance, promote it. Encourage it. Show your employees you care about them both professionally and personally, and your staff is more likely to speak positively about your organization and make referrals to family and friends.

The intranet is a powerful tool that is often taken for granted. Don’t overlook the obvious or underestimate its marketing potential. Log in now and see what opportunities are staring you straight in the eye. And one more word of advice: Before you jump in too deep, be sure you have an intranet governance model in place. You’ll want to have enough flexibility to allow individual departments to use the tool but not at the expense of your brand.

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Are Your Social Skills Fully Developed?

February 27, 2012 Leave a comment

By: Mike Milligan, President Legato Marketing & Communications

With all the buzz about incorporating social media into the marketing mix, many organizations believe they have left no stone unturned or Twitter un-tweeted. But take a closer look and you’ll find that many haven’t fully developed their ‘social skills’.

While most hospitals and clinics have developed a functional website and have dabbled in social networking, many have overlooked other ways to tap into the social web to reach business goals. Take training for example.

Including social media in healthcare training initiatives can provide:

  • Participants a forum to ask questions and engage in discussion before and after training.
  • Allow presenters to receive immediate feedback from participants (e.g., do trainees fully understand a subject or is more information needed?).
  • The opportunity to complement marketing efforts by sharing presentations or video from training sessions on Flickr and other social sites.

Another example: Using social media channels to get coverage from mainstream media and industry publications.

One way to do this is to share success stories from innovative treatments, surgeries or medical research via forums, blogs and microblogs. Roughly 70 percent of journalists say they use social networks to assist them when reporting. Take advantage of this fact.

Another example … While it may not happen often, a natural disaster such as flooding or a tornado can take its toll on a community within minutes. And hospitals are often at the center of it all. Healthcare providers can leverage social media networks to provide real-time updates both for those directly affected by the crisis and those watching from afar.

Long story short … Social media has many applications. Don’t get stuck in a web of doing what everyone else is doing. Constantly refine your social skills. Your efforts can pay off in many forms—from building trust and improving patient care—to gaining media coverage, and attracting new patients and staff.

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Ladies and Gentlemen: Start Your SEO Engines!

February 13, 2012 Leave a comment

Have you ever done a web search for “healthcare marketing?” Ever look at how many results come up? I did: About 19,000,000 just today. Or how about “rural healthcare marketing?” Just a measly 11,000.

For both of these terms, I’m pleased to report that Legato consistently ranks in the top 5 of organic Google listing, and often is #1. I say this not to be boastful, but rather, to make the point that these results don’t just happen. They’re part of your marketing strategy, or, at least they should be.

Of course, I’m talking about Search Engine Optimization—or ‘SEO’ in techno-talk.

Put simply, SEO strategies use keywords to maximize the amount of traffic—relevant traffic—to your website. It’s a targeted way of driving people to your site who are specifically looking for the services you provide.

SEO can help you:

  • Get targeted traffic to your site. If consumers or patients have entered your website’s keywords/phrases into a search engine, they’re already interested in what you have to offer.
  • Strengthen your brand. If your site gets a higher ranking than other hospitals, more people see your name and become aware of your services.
  • Stay ahead of your competition. Showing up on a page before your competition can help increase the perceived position of your hospital in the marketplace.
  • Build brand credibility. When consumers find you organically, they’re usually more likely to bookmark your site, spend more time on your site and return to your site and/or use your services.

SEO is a powerful tool. But maximizing search engine rank-and-return positioning can be complex. If you don’t have the internal staff to help you develop an effective SEO campaign, it’s worth the investment to seek some help.

Surveys indicate that up to 85% of Internet users find websites through search engines. However, the majority (some say up to 90%) of Internet users don’t go past the top 30 search engine results—at most. They simply type something else in if they can’t find a relevant site.

With statistics like these, there is no doubt that the battle for pole position on the search engine leader board will continue to heat up.

So I ask … “Ladies and gentlemen: Are you ready to start your SEO engines?”

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Is Your Website Out of Sight?

February 7, 2012 Leave a comment

OK, so you’ve invested a lot of time and money into developing a website that will WOW your customers. But building your website is only half of the battle. Marketing it is the conquest that follows.

I won’t get into the technical aspects of getting people to your site (at least not in this post). Instead, let’s focus on some basic marketing tactics to drive people to your landing page.

Think you’ve already thought of everything? Think again. It never hurts to check and cross-check to make sure you’re leveraging every opportunity to drive traffic to your site.

Sometimes, the most obvious avenues have been overlooked because, quite frankly, they’re blatantly obvious. Have you ever received an invitation to an event or run an ad that inadvertently left out a date, a time or a call to action? I rest my case.

Many organizations assume they have all of their marketing bases covered when it comes to promoting their website. They put their URL on business cards, letterhead, brochures, invoices—everything that’s fit to print.

Good start. But let’s not forget the other not-so-top-of-mind marketing opportunities, like:

  • Becoming an active member in, and contributor to, forums that are related to your site. Be sure to include your website link in your forum signature.
  • Submitting your site to healthcare industry-related directories.
  • Including your URL on videos you post on YouTube or other video-based sites.
  • Exchanging links with reputable and respected sites that are related to your business.
  • Putting your URL on employee uniforms under the logo.
  • Including the URL on employee nametags—at work, community events—wherever nametags might be worn.
  • Including your URL in your phone book ad.
  • Putting your URL on company vehicles.
  • Labeling your waiting room magazines, “Provided by …” with your URL listed.
  • Joining an industry chat group that allows your URL to be your login.

Don’t let an opportunity to promote your URL pass by. With an estimated 366, 848,000+ sites on the worldwide web, you can’t afford to have your site out of sight—anywhere—anytime.

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What’s All The Buzz About Blogging?

January 24, 2012 2 Comments

By: Mike Milligan, President Legato Marketing & Communications

To blog or not to blog, that is the question.

Whether ’tis nobler in the minds of marketers to suffer from the absence of a blog or to take arms against the competition and join in the posting revolution … Now, that’s another question in itself.

I can tell you from personal experience that blogging has it pros and its challenges. For one, it’s time-consuming. It also takes discipline to keep posts current and to provide content that people care about. So what’s the up side?

A blog provides an effective, low-cost alternative to conventional marketing. It can help rural hospitals level the playing field when competing with big-city hospitals with big-city budgets.

Blogs can also help community hospitals strengthen their connection with the community, enhance recruitment efforts, and position their medical professionals as experts in the field. For example:

Want to highlight a patient success story?

Put it on your blog. Localize it. And watch the news spread throughout your community—and beyond.

Looking for a specialist to fill an open position?

Ask one of your on-staff physicians or surgeons to be a guest blogger. He or she can highlight features and benefits of your hospital, and give a personal perspective of why it’s the right career move to join your organization and live in a rural community.

Want to leverage a health topic that’s getting national attention?

Start blogging about it. Have designated physicians, nurses, OTs and other professionals share their expertise. They’ll become recognized as local experts. It’s also a great way for community members to get to know the doctors and nurses on your staff.

So back to the question, “To blog or not to blog?”

While you don’t have to be Shakespeare to write a post, the content must be relevant and current. If you don’t have the time or talent internally to create and maintain a blog, consider outsourcing these services. If that’s not an option, err on the side of caution.

Remember, using a blog as a promotional tool is a great way to keep your website content fresh, and keep people coming back. But your site will only be as current as your last update, which ties back to the amount of time and effort that you invest in it.

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Employees and Patients: your most valuable assets or your most valuable marketing tools?

December 9, 2011 Leave a comment

By: John Corpus, Vice President, Client Services

Let us get the basics out of the way: employees are your most important asset; the patient is always right; brand = promise = experience! But, what does all of this mean?

Does your organization truly believe that its employees are its most important asset? More importantly, do the actions of your system demonstrate this? I am familiar with a number of healthcare entities that tout this message, giving notice to the public while trying to convince their employees at the same time. Yet, actions mean more than words and usually indicate otherwise.

Your employees are your strongest ambassadors: do they tell their friends and families how much you value them or how much you take advantage of them? Do they interact indifferently with patients and complain about various aspects of work or are they friendly and professional during patient interaction? Make sure that the answers here are positive, for believe it or not, your employees’ actions will attest more to how you value them than you stating it.

Is the patient REALLY always right? We know that this is not true. Does it matter? No! The concept of right or wrong is second to the experience. Instead, ask yourself if the patient walks away feeling respected, valued, and understood. Make your employees feel this way, and it will trickle down to the patients. In other words, treat them like they are your most important asset and they will do the same with their patients.

Has your organization constructed a brand promise it can keep? Perhaps even more important is whether the promise is meaningful or desired by the patient. Think about it: did you develop your brand promise based upon what patients want or upon what you think patients want.

Patient-/customer-centered service development and enhancement are paramount. Do it right the first time; determine what patients want versus what you have to offer; determine what patients want to buy before determining what you want to sell; continuously explore the needs of your patients instead of believing that you know what the patient needs.

Am I saying anything new? No. We tend to forget the basics however, often getting lost in the bottom-line once business is going well.

So, keep these points in mind:

  • Stop telling everyone how your employees are your greatest asset – it means nothing when every other organization is saying the same thing. Be different: treat your employees as if they are your most important asset; their actions and statements will speak for themselves and are worth more than anything you can say.
  • It does not matter if the patient is always right or sometimes wrong. What does matter is making the patient feel respected, valued, and understood, by turning any negative event into a positive experience.
  • Patient experience defines your brand promise. Make sure that you are focused on the needs and desires of your patients versus what works best for the organization and its bottom-line.

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WHO BUYS HEALTHCARE?

November 11, 2011 Leave a comment

John Corpus, Vice President, Client Services at Legato Marketing & Communications

IT IS NOT JUST THE END CONSUMER

CONSUMERS PAY for healthcare, BUT THEY DO NOT BUY IT.  Employers are the major buyers of health insurance, the decision makers. Employees only choose whether to participate in whatever plan the employers have chosen.

Consumers over the last five years are however, buying lower-cost healthcare services, due to employer cost shifting of healthcare expenses via higher deductibles (first dollars out-of-pocket) and HAS/HRA plans.  Employers have also transitioned to benefit plans based on healthy behaviors: healthier employees (and spouses) may purchase richer benefit plans.  As more consumers enter the “buying” phase of healthcare transactions, they are beginning to recognize the real cost of healthcare.

Smart employers recognize that the inherent cost shifting of higher deductible HSA or HRA plans is not the same as cost-savings: it is simply a change in the payer mix, more by the employee and less by the employer.

Smarter employers educate their employees regarding cost-saving behaviors, e.g., exercising, diet, annual age/sex related check-ups, smoking cessation, etc.

The smartest employers however, educate employees, in conjunction with the aforementioned smart tactics,  about appropriate access of care, e.g., going
to a retail clinic for a sinus infection instead of the emergency room; utilizing an urgent care clinic for stitches or x-rays; heading to the emergency room for serious/traumatic injuries or conditions.  For those who are unsure as to when an emergency room visit is necessary, think of it this way: you will decide when
to visit a retail clinic, a primary care clinic, or urgent care; others usually decide upon the emergency room because you are in no condition to do so.

Employers are the buyers, yet health systems focus the bulk of their marketing on the patient only and rightly so.  Health systems however, need to leverage
their relationships with employers.  A complete health system’s marketing plan requires a focus on developing strategies to demonstrate their commitment to 1) reducing employer healthcare costs, and 2) partnering with employers to develop their workforce health strategies.

Constructing strong healthcare savings partnerships with employers creates another vehicle for marketing to the consumer.

  • Imagine having an employer choose you as its healthcare partner because it believes in your mission, your vision, your philosophy, your integrity, and not because you are the lowest-cost option on its broker’s menu.
  • Imagine an employer serving as your advocate when holding its open enrollment sessions, instead of handing out a packet of information without regard for what is inside.
  • Imagine an employer working with your health system to define and design the future of healthcare in your community, from the perspective of all stakeholders versus the perspective of the health system itself.
  • Imagine the employees of business & industry voicing their preference for your health system to be the provider of choice or at least one of the providers in their employer’s health plan design.

Healthcare is not a game anymore.  In fact, it never was.  So let us stop playing the cost shifting games and the “cliché” games of quality and care, to focus on what really counts: healthcare versus sick care and meeting the needs of the buyers and the payers of healthcare through partnership, respect, and a sincere desire to provide the best experience possible for all concerned.

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Does anyone know what you do for a living?

September 21, 2011 2 Comments

By: Mike Milligan, President, Legato Marketing & Communications

I give up.

My Dad still doesn’t know how I earn a paycheck. But he is getting a little
closer.  I’ve recently heard him explain, “Michael does those ads for hospitals.”

Then last night, when editing my 15-year-old daughter’s Language Arts paper, I discovered that she, too, doesn’t understand “what Dad does.” Within parenthesis she had written, “Dad, write here what you do.”

It made me start thinking about what many of our healthcare marketing clients face. There seems to be a trend in which senior management isn’t necessarily knowledgeable about what marketing pros do. In their minds (not all), the marketing department develops clever advertising, period. It’s not the fault of upper management that they don’t always understand marketing’s role. While It might be hard to swallow, quite frankly, it’s the fault of marketing to not make its role clear—its ability to increase patient volumes and profit.

Your leadership team might know your job description: produce the external and internal communications. But, don’t let yourself be limited by that vague description. Your role is much broader than that. Marketing pros are the drivers behind understanding the marketplace, the organization’s culture, available opportunities, and what targeted audiences expect with the goal of increasing awareness, patient volumes, and profits.

That means looking at all of the elements of what brand is. It’s everything from how employees answer the phones, what the signage looks like, how patients are treated at the front desk, how long it takes to get an appointment—every action, every experience a patient has is your brand.

And here’s the kicker. Don’t just talk about it, show the connection between all of these factors and the results they can have—or have had—on the organization. And don’t just identify problems, bring solutions. Show you are a problem solver—and a strategist—by thinking about what questions your senior leaders will have, and have answers ready. Show your leadership skills. By doing so, you educate others on the value of marketing—not by preaching—by doing.

My years of healthcare management experience have shown that as time goes on, your CEO and other leaders will have a completely new perspective on marketing.  Sure, advertising still will play a clear role.  But more important, marketing is so much broader.  It’s strategic.  It examines all the components of the sales process.  It identifies barriers and overcomes them. It produces results. And that’s something your leadership team will understand clearly.

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