| | April 201819CIOReviewBy Matt Bakaitis, Senior Director, Cleveland ClinicDigital marketing in healthcare is tricky. Patient privacy issues, complex services that are ultimately personal in nature and an evolving marketplace present unique challenges when deploying digital marketing tools that are routine in other industries.At Cleveland Clinic, we have the guiding principle "Patients First". When planning marketing efforts, the principleis powerful. Helping digital visitors, whether patients or not, becomes a primary function of marketing through those channels. Name recognition, volume metrics and other typical marketing objectives are best served when helping a visitor is the priority.Relationships are not transactionsThe best example of the "Patient First" approach guiding marketing tactics is Cleveland Clinic'sinvestment in content that educates or informs as opposed to those explicitly calling for volume-generating activities (scheduling appointments, etc). Our site visitors often feel vulnerable and anxious about health concerns, coming to us for information.It's true: Providing visitors with healthcarecontent that assists them serves a general good. Instead of having a site that's purely transactional and suggests a commodification of services, we begin building a relationship that's crucial for successful patient-physician relationships. We offer something that can help the patient at the moment they most need it: comforting information.As that relationship develops, whether through shared content or as a successfully scheduled appointment, the digital channels support that growth.We recognize that the end result is ultimately a human connection between patients and physicians, as an appointment or as a visitor reads expert information. Therefore, we must respect that relationships are an investment that grows out of earned respect and trust.Describe content as it is consumed, not how it is createdWhere things get exciting is when a broad content library can be used to begin generating pages with dynamic, up-to-date content. The magic to make this happen is a common enterprise taxonomy that lets writers, videographers and other content experts describe their work in a way that builds links between similar materials in the master library.A useful, human-friendly taxonomy is hard to develop, even when there are existing examples out there to use. A DIGITAL MARKETING CHALLENGES IN HEALTHCARE
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