field notes

No matter if your hear "Yanny" or "Laurel", one thing we all can learn from this week's social debate is that the human brain has a magical way of constructing what we hear, see, and even feel. And this has huge implications for marketing.

By nature, social media sites are, well…social. That means that people use them for very personal and emotional reasons. Likewise, brands should have very different strategies for each channel. Especially at a time when Facebook is emphasizing more meaningful interactions, you should pause before posting the same exact content across all social channels. 

Much like your average cup of joe with cream and sugar, customer experience in healthcare has become a commodity. Patients don’t have any sort of loyalty to a particular brand. In fact, 23% of patients see 3 or more PCPs in just 2 years. And unless you’re delivering a great experience, they’re not simply switching to a new doctor in the same hospital. They’re making a wholesale shift to the hospital across the street. A Press Ganey survey found that hospitals with patient satisfaction in the bottom 10th percentile lost 17% of patient volume.

In a recent Webcast, we teamed up with Citrix's global strategy lead for audience & content marketing to discuss a modern approach to journey mapping that considers customers' psychological drivers.

Ahhh, tax season. It used to be that time of year that you handed a giant folder over to your accountant – not merely for convenience but because he actually knows how to navigate the complexity of tax forms. Until, that is, TurboTax reimagined the tax experience, empowering millions of consumers to complete their taxes all on their own.

The patient portal has become the primary consumer access point to a patient’s electronic medical record. Moreover, it is becoming an entirely new channel for the delivery of healthcare – a place where patients schedule online appointments, view messages and lab results, and take advantage of e-health services.  

I recently facilitated a discussion with a boardroom full of hospital executives about how to improve patient experience by making hospital quality data (mortality rates, average length of stay, and the like) more transparent. 

We’ve established that fear is the wrong emotion in healthcare marketing. But with 31 other emotions to choose from, how do we know which is the right one to target?