Resources from today's episode
Takeaways
Need for speed
- COVID-19 has accelerated change, requiring health systems and their marketers to find new ways to move faster. Safety protocols and legacy processes can make it challenging to adapt to change.
- Health systems can apply some agile marketing principles such as prioritization and iteration to serve COVID-19 demands but should be calculated in each iteration.
- Because the stakes are so high for healthcare communications, each iteration must carefully balance exactness and speed, as each iteration could potentially reverse public trust.
Setting expectations for responsive branding
- Faster change means our brands need to evolve faster to remain relevant and avoid sounding out of touch. Continually test messaging to see what’s working and what’s not.
- Health systems should consider diversity equity and inclusion as a central pillar of every branding conversation. Incident-based branding efforts can translate as insensitive and self-serving.
On the horizon for healthcare marketers
- COVID-19 has increased public demand for quality communications, and consumers will likely maintain these expectations in a post-COVID-19 world.
- Informative, relevant, actionable content marketing will be an essential function for health system marketing and communications, and consumer expectations for quality content will rise.
- Marketers may play a more strategic role in health systems because of familiarity with new technology and the ability to bring data to the table.
- We will have to continue to act as technology educators as virtual care becomes more embedded in today’s healthcare system.
