field notes

Last April I wrote that mobile and wearable technology will become integrated marketing program differentiators for hospital marketers by offering patient experience strategies that support both the sick and the healthy.

I’ve been talking a lot lately with Dan Greenwald, White Rhino CEO & Chief Creative Officer, about our perspectives on “what’s next” for the agency’s healthcare provider clients. Not the next SEM ad, new page of web content, email blast, microsite or magazine ad. A much deeper and farther-reaching conversation about the future of healthcare provider marketing.

This edition of Rhino Radio is a recap of the 2014 Greystone Healthcare Internet Conference presentation on "What's next in healthcare digital marketing?" 

A recent PwC study quote recently got me thinking: “As ‘patients’ behave more like ‘consumers,’ health care organizations need to deliver a higher level of personalized service, satisfaction and overall experience – or risk losing business to the competition.”

Gone are the Mad Men days of consumers dutifully eating up marketing messages served to them on a silver platter. Today’s consumer is in the driver’s seat. But the real challenge for marketers is how to navigate consumers in the right direction and willingly engage with their brand. 

This is especially difficult when the road is littered with distractions that, ironically, we created? In Don Draper’s day, the average consumer saw 500 ads a day. Today, that number is as high as 5,000 with no shortage of boilerplate info-graphics, whitepapers, blogs, videos and microsites vying for consumers’ attention. Couple that with a serious case of device ADD and complex B2B messages – it’s no wonder that today’s marketer has trouble making connections that translate into real business value.