| Today's Date: Friday, November 21, 2008 |
| Stop Thinking “Pink!” Part Two: Start With The Human Touch |
| Friday, August 22, 2008 |
| From the internet to word of mouth to commercials on T.V., there are plenty of ways to market healthcare to women; but what is the most effective way to grab them and pull them towards one particular program over the competition? Learn from our other successful marketing strategies and start with the human touch.
During the audio conference, “How to Successfully Market Your Women's Healthcare Program and Build Community Awareness,” hosted by Women's Health Professional, Tanya Abreu, president and national program director for Spirit of Women Hospital Network, offered her findings to help others market their womens health programs effectively. The five C's offer three examples and two points to strive for. First, Curves is a successful marketing model for any organization to use as a base point. The fitness industry can be focused on changing the way the individual looks and feels, Curves on the other hand focuses more on the woman as an individual realizing that they are not changing their client, but making them healthier and happier. “One of their other most successful marketing kind of bylines is not getting skinny, because think all of us that are in our forties and fifties know that the image of us in a size 2 bikini, running down the beach like Baywatch, is not going to happen. But it is about making the curves that we have healthier, not making them disappear,” explained Abreu, on how Curves understands the midlife market. The next marketing example Abreu served was Chico's, a clothing vendor targets the midlife market as well as making women feel comfortable by re-organizing the size chart to make the smaller sizes 0-3 correlate with bigger sizes of 12-18. This type of internal marketing draws in a crowd most vendors miss, the baby boomer woman who wants adventure, style and comfort, said Abreu. Chico's is also unique in satisfying its customers because it “helps you navigate. Those women that are in there navigate you all the way from choosing a blouse to choosing the earrings to go with the blouse, to signing you up for a VIP club, to sending you an invitation to a VIP party at the store that they're closing to the general public. It's a model that works. Once again, it's a model that's also profitable,” she said. The final example is the circus, Cirque du Soleil to be more specific. “Cirque du Soleil took the basics of the Barnum and Bailey Circus concept and created a brand new value proposition, from a tradition that was rife with perception problems. And this is kind of in many ways what we tried to do with women's health,” she said. “It has such perception problems – it's all about hormone replacement, it's all about having babies, it's all about, you know, getting the dowager's hump. We need to change that perception, and so how do we create a brand new value perception? Well, Cirque du Soleil created a paradigm shift of a what a circus meant.” No longer is a trip to the circus filled with mistreated animals or examples children can not live by, and women are always trying to do right by the family, said Abreu. With Cirque du Soleil everyone can enjoy the show and women are comforted with the clean entertainment, while tapping th emidlife market by appealing to their worldly and adventurous senses. “Cirque du Soleil appeals to Baby Boomers who want to be global, to appeal to the sense that everything is possible, and if you do anything with health care, make a baby woman believe that everything is possible, including feeling better at 50 than she did at 30. And believe me, the more I'm with 50-year-old women, the more I know that is possible,” she said. Next there is Connectivity, women are constantly searching for a community to belong to, market to their wants for a forum or a corner of the internet where they can come together to discuss or ask or just to be apart of the organization. The fastest growing online community is the 45-60-year-olds, said Abreu, they want to be connected to everything and everyone. One example of connectivity Abreu has found is hospitals, clinics and health programs are beginning to create their own Facebook or Myspace pages. In turn they then have their patients put up their testimonials and their pages, creating a visual and physical community online, while promoting the organization. The final tip she gave at the conference was Convergence. “I believe that convergence is the ultimate connectivity experience, and it's when we can be most successful. It is a marketing moment, when all human senses and intelligence align. And I think when we think about all those human senses, and intelligence aligning, we get this, “Aha!” excitement. In this click of convergence, you can earn a consumer's loyalty beyond reason,” she said. She cited the iPhone as a convergence example, “we want touch back,” she said, “we want to merge touch to technology, we want to go from hardware to 'heartware,' from software to 'spiritware' – we want a convergence. It's an incredible time we're in as marketers.” When applying this thought to her own practice she noticed a positive change in patient satisfaction “The human touch of hand upon hand, in that convergence of moments, would make a difference,” Abreu said about her experiment. Nurses were instructed to simply touch a patient's forearm for only 3-7 seconds. “And lo and behold, nurses [would] just touch the forearm and our patient satisfaction and scores would go up. Start with the human touch. And then ongoing communication and connection with women around life-convergent moments. Merging again, touch to technology.” “Opportunities for convergence, as I summarized, in health care marketing, start with the human touch. That is the most convergent of moments, especially in a hospital,” as Abreu offered her final tip, when marketing start with the basics and simply touch your patients. For more information on the audio conference and how to better market your women's healthcare program, please visit: http://www.healthresourcesonline.com/edu/womenshealthcare.htm. A CD-ROM recording of the speaker presentations and all conference materials for “How to Successfully Market Your Women's Healthcare Program and Build Community Awareness” is now available to order online or by calling toll free (800) 516-4343. For more information please visit: www.healthresourcesonline.com/edu/wib.htm. Editor's Note: Be sure to follow up part two with part three of the “Stop Thinking 'Pink!'” series, offering tips and insights on how to market your womens health program to increase patient census and improve the health of your community. |
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