Hospitals Need to Take a ‘Boston Med’ Approach to Marketing

By Jenn Riggle

Hospitals, once viewed as the heart of the community, are suddenly the bad guys.

In the past month, both Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Forbes have taken a critical look at hospital business practices, calling into question market consolidation and looking into allegations of price-fixing.

This got me to thinking. Hospitals could benefit from taking a Boston Med approach to marketing. You may have watched the eight-part series that aired Thursday nights this summer that focused on what happens every day at three of the nation’s top hospitals: Mass. General, Brigham & Women’s and Boston Children’s Hospital. They told stories.

With hospitals coming under increased scrutiny, the conversation must shift away from balance sheets, quality scores and market share numbers and instead tell the human stories.

Sangeeth Varghese wrote a great article that talks about why CEOs need to be storytellers. However, CEOs avoid storytelling and stick to their data points and graphs because this is where they feel most comfortable. Patients aren’t motivated by reason alone. Compelling stories convey loads of information while also appealing to our emotions.

Social media (particularly Facebook and YouTube) provide a great forum for sharing the stories of doctors and nurses, as well as the patients they treat. Video is probably the best way to do this because as we all know, a picture is worth a thousand words. In addition, video has a 50 times better chance of getting to the top of search rankings than text.

But don’t limit yourself to social media. Use these testimonials in your marketing materials, community newsletter, website and TV ads.

Eddy Moratin writes in his blog that the “metaphor for marketing has changed. It isn’t the brand that can afford to make the most noise who wins, but the one that can tell the most compelling stories.” The same is true for hospitals. Human stories transcend numbers because we all want our loved ones to get the best treatment – and ultimately, have the best outcomes.

Accountants can tally up the cost of procedures, but we’ve all known people who’ve battled disease. Saving the life of a loved one is priceless.