A guide to turning up your marketing efforts

Transcription

1 Advanced Marketing Program : A guide to turning up your marketing efforts

2 Customer Marketing Assistance the hitachi way For more than 20 years, Hitachi Medical Systems has been providing comprehensive marketing assistance to its customers. As Hitachi pioneered open MRI, we also introduced the industry s first customer marketing program. Marketing initiatives with healthcare facilities continues to be among the top four drivers of growth in the next five years. The Hitachi Advanced Marketing Program provides our customers strategic level creative marketing design as part of our customer support services. Many hospitals and imaging centers have taken advantage of this industry unique added-value. Note: The marketing examples in this book were concept proposals presented to hospitals and imaging centers.

3 A CREATIVE (or strategic) briefing is a must before starting any marketing endeavor. Through a briefing, you develop a plan of exactly how you would market the best use of your resources to achieve your objectives. By brainstorming strategies, evaluating your options and determining which best meet your objectives, you are setting your facility up for a better chance of successful implementation. What is the perception of your facility in the community? What physician specialties are you targeting? What is your marketing objective? Who is your target market? Questions to ask 65 What are their needs/wants? Where are they located? How can you meet 8 7 these needs? What challenges do you need to overcome? briefing

4 Perform a Web Site Analysis Navigation Can you find information easily? Are links and headlines bold and logical? Do you have Web pages for each modality? www Internet presence is your foundation Graphics Do all graphics support your mission statement? Special features Do you provide a media section with videos or patient pages for download? Are you updating your site frequently with new press releases or dates promoting upcoming activities? Testimonials Do you post patient satisfaction results or quotes from patients? your home base. Therefore, your Web site needs to be more than just a flashy advertisement for your facility. While photos, biographies and hours of operation are important, patients will come back to your site if you become the go-to source for useful and educational information they care about. marketing

5 Web banners Whenever new collateral is posted anywhere on your site, make it easily accessible by linking it to your home page using a Web banner (static or animated). Advertise that new procedural video or testimony. Boast about an upcoming facility event or a new press release. Make it easy to find, click and read. Your patients will be more apt to see your facility as an up-to-date usable resource with them in mind. patient downloads Patient downloads allow a patient to, not only read about certain products or procedures, but also acts as a free marketing piece to referring physicians. Patients will be able to print out a download and bring it to their doctor to ask questions or request a referral. MRI? LOURDES Magnetic Resonance Imaging Services Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is one form of imaging used by physicians to obtain clinically useful diagnostic information. Incorporating advanced technology, MRI produces images of anatomy without the use of radiation required with other imaging modalities, such as x-ray or computed tomography. MRI combines the physical properties of strong magnetic fields with radio waves to produce computer-generated soft tissue images within any plane of the body. You ve Found OASIS The Patient Magnet Unmatched open architecture for patient comfort and high throughput. High-field strength, Zenith RF technology and fast gradients for uncompromised image quality. These Hitachi advancements are on the OASIS 1.2T vertical field open architecture, with Hitachi's established easy-to-learn-and-use platform. OASIS meets today's standards for high-field applications. And features Hitachi's legendary reliability to meet the most demanding workflows. Diagnostic confidence. Patient comfort. And investment value. This complete array of benefits position OASIS ownership as a powerful differentiating opportunity for your MR imaging services. This popular imaging technique can be used as a primary diagnostic tool to provide a quick and accurate diagnosis for your physician. In some situations, this procedure can reduce the need for further diagnostic procedures or invasive procedures, such as exploratory surgery, that may have associated complications. How does MRI work? 3. A radio frequency coil picks up the signal 2. Radio frequency waves and transmits it to are absorbed by the the computer. protons and then emitted as a signal. 1. The magnetic field is used to align hydrogen protons in the body. 4. The computer processes the data and an image is generated. OASISmri.com Ask yourself, If you saw this, would you click it?

6 While society gets increasingly tech-saavy, print marketing still remains a proven technique for reaching customers. However, the approach is changing. Medical facilities who used to focus on their location s benefits and services, are now putting their newest products in the limelight. Laser-focus on new technology allows facilities to, not only educate the patient on the benefits of using the technology, but labels the facility as cutting edge, state-of-the-art exactly the place patients want to put their trust. marketing

7 direct mail Creative direct mail pieces can still prove valuable to your facility because of their measurability. Provide a call-to-action on every piece you send out. Tell recipients to visit a Web site. Call a phone number. Send an . Text. Use the responses by customers to measure effectiveness. Be creative with your mailer design. Make it an odd shape or a special fold, which needs to be opened. Send a small package or stuffed envelope. Handwrite the address. Ask yourself, If you flipped to this, would you stop to read it?

8 What Should a Billboard Contain? Billboards serve as a tool for brand awareness a reminder of your medical facility. Drivers who see your sign have only seconds to make a correlation between the message and you. Therefore, it is important the billboard is consistent with your current marketing campaign message, graphics, fonts and colors. Drivers literally have only seconds to view your billboard and read your message so make that time count. A short, strong message: No more than one sentence 5 words or less. Consider a call-to-action. Just say no to Web or addresses and phone numbers. Drivers probably won t have time to read, remember or write them down. Bold photos: Make graphics convincing, not just pretty to look at. Go for out-of-the-box, eye-catching images, which could convey the same message without words. Fonts: Make your font match your message. A powerful call-to-action is stifled by a script font. Consider readability and go for sans serif whenever possible. Colors: While it is important to keep with your facility s corporate guidelines, remember contrasting colors are easier to see and read. If using a digital billboard, consider a bold, colored background instead of white. A white background tends to turn gray because of the digital technology.

9 Ask yourself, If you drove by this, would you look at it?

10 PHysician marketing When it comes to establishing partnerships (and ultimately referring business), standard boilerplate collaterals miss the mark. To reach referring doctors, target your marketing efforts with specialty-specific pieces Orthopedic, Vascular, Neurology, Bariatric, Pediatric, Women s Health and more. Boast how your facility s diagnostic imaging technology best meets these specific needs. Provide image scans in each specialty. Get testimonals from other referring physicians. The more targeted your efforts become, the better your chances of expanding your referring physician base.

11 Ask yourself, If you were handed this, would you read it?

12 design support Ever hit the creative wall? Can t get past the writer s block? Hitachi is available to get the gears going again.or if you ve been throwing around marketing concepts or made a mental list of the projects you want to start, call on our graphic design team to solidify your ideas and bring them to life.

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14 how does it work? Advanced marketing help is available for all Hitachi customers. We want you to succeed and here s how we do it: Our marketing team sets up a conference call with you to review your current market position and marketing goals. If requested, we provide a market assessment to establish your target areas. We develop a timeline for deliverables and request collaterals (company logo, corporate guidelines, etc) from your facility to get the ball rolling. Armed with your facility s collaterals, our marketing team pow-wows to create visual and copy, which best represents your message. No cutting and pasting here. We specialize in customization. So each piece we design is unique to your facility. After creation, we deliver a first round of proofs to your box for review. We are also available via conference call to go over the pieces in detail. If needed, we are willing to hand off your project to your graphics team or ad agency for further tweaking. When you are satisfied with the proof, we will provide you with a press-ready.pdf or the native files. We can also work with your printer to get them the files and formats they prefer.

15 how it worked Ephrata Hospital located in Ephrata, Pa., made a decision to aggressively market Oasis to both the medical and the local community. Like many hospitals, the marketing department is challenged with a reduction in the overall hospital marketing budget. Our first project was to develop an Oasis print advertisement consistent with the current hospital branding. After we delivered three different concepts to Ephrata, the Director of Marketing called HMSA and not only was impressed with our ability to professionally create a concept within their brand. The next question What else can you do? Hitachi created a comprehensive marketing campaign to position Oasis in their marketplace, which included patient downloads, print ads, Web banner, referring physician sell sheets, Open House flyers and more. The brand look and feel was consistent, there were call to actions directing the audience to learn more at the Web site, and the overall campaign was supported by multiple community billboards. Hitachi developed concepts for ads and worked closely with us to create final products that were consistent with our look. This was extremely important to us in our continued work to reinforce our hospital s brand in our community. -- Joanne Eshelman Director of Marketing, Ephrata Hospital

16 Hitachi Medical Systems America Inc Summit Commerce Park Twinsburg, Ohio Tel: Fax: Hitachi Medical Corporation Akihabara UDX Soto-Kanda Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo , JAPAN Tel: Fax: Hitachi Medical Systems America Inc. 0510/1000/DM# v1 All rights reserved.