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Has your health brand become lost in a sea of sameness?

Do your marketing assets feel stale and out of touch with your audience?

Did your business neglect to establish proper healthcare branding from the beginning?

Whether your current branding isn’t servicing your business anymore or your brand has evolved beyond your existing branding—it’s time for a rebrand.

Most brands evolve every three to ten years, but healthcare rebranding doesn’t have to be scary or daunting.

The healthcare industry is evolving, too, so it’s crucial to stay ahead of emerging trends—like the rise of healthcare consumerism and the intrinsic value of creating a positive patient experience—or risk falling behind your competition.

Healthcare rebranding is the process of reshaping how target consumers perceive your business and can include everything from your brand perception, name, and tagline to your logo and visual identity to your healthcare website and marketing assets.

5 Signs It’s Time for a Rebrand (or at Least a Brand Refresh)

Here are five signs it might be time for your business to consider healthcare rebranding.

You’re Not Serving Your Ideal Clientele

Growing pains are normal in any successful business. What may have been your ideal consumer five years ago may no longer fit within your evolving business goals or offerings.

Whether you're targeting a new audience or notice a shift in your existing target market, a rebrand might be necessary to attract and convert your updated target audiences.

Being responsive to and aligning your brand values and personality to the current market can help differentiate your brand and keep it relevant for your ideal clientele.

Everything you do with your healthcare marketing materials, messaging, and strategy should pique their interest, fit current trends, and lay the groundwork for future growth.

Your Health Brand Has Become Lost in a Sea of Sameness

Healthcare consumers will associate your logo, imagery, typography, and messaging with your products or services and their benefits.

Today’s healthcare businesses face new and aggressive competition on multiple fronts. In addition to their traditional, long-standing competitors, healthcare organizations must compete with large brands determined to improve access, ease provider coordination, and make care more affordable as consumers continue to take greater responsibility for their overall health.

These market disruptors generally have large marketing budgets and are willing to spend that budget on web design, sleek graphics, search engine optimization (SEO), and more.

That’s why it’s crucial to differentiate your brand and its offerings. Healthcare organizations must ensure they’re meeting their target audience’s wants and needs—and building much-needed trust and loyalty.

Your Marketing Communications Have Become Dated and Out of Touch With Your Audiences

Healthcare branding is more than just communications and marketing collateral. It is the sum total of a patient’s experience.

However, keeping your logos, colors, graphics, and typography aligned with evolving consumer preferences and cultural and societal expectations keeps your brand fresh, modern, and approachable.

If the way your branding looks and feels doesn’t match the demographics of your target audience, you’re likely losing business.

By understanding what motivates and concerns healthcare consumers and rebranding your marketing collateral to align with them, you can more effectively attract, engage, and convert a larger number of high-value patients.

For example, the weight loss industry has undergone a major branding shift in recent years. Long gone are the days of focusing on the act of losing weight. Instead, weight loss companies lean on messages around health, fitness, and feeling your best—all aligned with today’s cultural preferences.

Addressing the changing needs of your target market is one of the most important reasons for healthcare rebranding.

Your Target Audience Has Changed

Over time, your target audience can change—whether from shifts in the health market, consumer behavior, or within the business itself.

If your audience has evolved, it’s time to evolve with them. A rebrand can help your healthcare business shift focus through updated visuals and messaging that better reflects its new strategic direction.

Common reasons your target audience may change include

• Your target audience is too small to generate adequate profits.
• Your target audience is too diffused to market effectively.
• Your target audience does not have sufficient buying power.
• It’s time to expand your products and services and engage a new target audience.

When this happens, your business must reposition itself to align with the values and interests of your new target audience, and a rebrand is the best way to do this effectively.

Negative Reputation

Warren Buffet once said it takes years to build a positive brand reputation and only five minutes to ruin it. I couldn’t agree more.

Bad reviews, poor publicity, and negative word-of-mouth are all reasons to change your philosophy and reintroduce your business.

However, rebranding your business will not change the root cause of your reputation issues. Before embarking on any rebranding efforts, you must first look within your business and correct the issues causing it.

Rebranding can be a great way to separate your brand from negativity, help consumers see you in a new light, and regrow brand loyalty.

Planning for Healthcare Rebranding

Partnering with a specialized health marketing or healthcare branding agency can help you reshape, reimagine, and reposition your brand for growth.

While every branding project is unique, here are some of the key steps our agency typically recommends for healthcare branding and rebranding

Conduct a comprehensive brand audit and analysis

Before beginning any successful rebranding effort, healthcare businesses must first have a deep understanding of their current brand, its identity, values, and market presence.

It is crucial to examine all of these elements (and more) through the lens of their desired target audience and identify ways to better align with patient or potential customer values and their own evolving business goals.

Budget permitting, remember that the best rebranding efforts begin with researching the current perceptions of both your internal stakeholders and external audiences. Both quantitative and qualitative research can help guide your strategy or repositioning to ensure your new or refreshed healthcare brand will resonate with customer needs and market opportunities.

Define the rebranding objectives and goals

To ensure healthcare rebranding success, businesses must clearly identify the “Why?” behind it. Setting specific, measurable goals will keep your rebranding strategy on track. To get started, ask yourself these questions

• Do you want to increase patient (or HCP or customer) trust and loyalty?
• Are you expanding your products and services?
• Do you want to target an audience with more buying power?
• Do you want to differentiate your brand and stand out?

Identify the target audience and stakeholders

Clearly identifying your target audience is fundamental because it will drive all rebranding decisions. You must consider the needs, wants, and preferences of patients, healthcare professionals, referring physicians, and other internal and external stakeholders.

Tailoring your brand messaging and visual elements to speak directly to these audiences - whether doctors, hospitals, patients, or health insurance companies - will help ensure rebranding success and grow your business.

Defining the new brand positioning and messaging

How do you want your brand perceived by your audience, patients, and stakeholders?

Positioning and messaging go hand-in-hand and require comprehensive healthcare brand research and analysis to ensure you hit just the right note. Engage and connect more effectively with these steps

• Market research—As outlined above, research can help you understand the changing needs and expectations of your audience.
• Competitive analysis—to find a unique positioning that will set your company apart. Understanding competitors is a crucial step in rebranding. Identify gaps and opportunities in the market, pinpoint what sets your business apart, and use these unique qualities to your advantage.
• Core values and mission—to ensure they are aligned with your new brand positioning.
• Differentiation—to identify your business’s unique strengths and unique attributes.

Updating Your Healthcare Brand Identity

Your brand identity tells your target audience who you are and what you stand for. We recommend beginning with these steps to leave a positive, lasting impression and connect more effectively with your audience, patients, and stakeholders.

Importance of a strong visual identity for healthcare rebranding

Your visual identity is how patients and stakeholders remember your business. It must communicate trustworthiness, professionalism, and a commitment to high-quality care.

Design or refresh visual elements

Your name, logo, color schemes, typography, images, and other visual elements must be memorable, cohesive, and effectively communicate your brand values.

Whether you’re designing a new logo or refreshing an existing one, it’s important to consider how it represents your values and aligns with the values of your audience.

Healthcare consumers attach feelings to certain colors (e.g., blue as trustworthy and black as luxurious). Those color associations can influence their perception of your brand. In fact, that article mentions that up to 90% of an initial impression of marketing materials comes from color.

 A well-chosen color scheme conveys a sense of calm, trust, and professionalism—be sure to choose colors that align with your rebranding goals and convey the right message.

Likewise, typography can impact the readability and tone of your health website and marketing collateral. Choose font families that are professional and accessible to your target audience.

Create consistent design guidelines for all brand collateral

Once you have identified all the pieces that make up your brand identity, creating healthcare brand guidelines and sharing them with internal stakeholders and marketing partners is crucial for maintaining the integrity of your brand’s identity across all digital and printed marketing materials.

Don’t forget to announce your new brand properly

Crafting a comprehensive healthcare marketing and communications strategy around a new brand launch is essential for effectively conveying your rebranded messaging to your audience. It should be clear, unique, relevant, and evoke emotion. Your new message must encompass the entire essence of your “new” brand—its mission, values, benefits, and more.

Optimize the Patient Experience so That Your Organization Lives Up to its New Brand Promise(s)

In today’s competitive landscape, carving out an unmatched patient experience from start to finish is as critical as delivering top-notch medical care. Your new design and messaging will be meaningless without recommitting to a superior product, service, and patient experience.

Strategies to improve customer service and overall patient experience

• Staff training—to ensure all physicians and medical staff are aligned with and embody the new brand values.
• Better internal processes—to ensure a positive and patient-focused experience that eliminates bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Offer digital alternatives like online appointment booking, telehealth, and patient portals to improve access and convenience.
• Personalized care—to meet the rising expectations of healthcare consumers and keep them loyal to your business.

Upgrade physical facilities and technology systems

Do your exam rooms feel old or outdated? Does your waiting room feel cold and sterile? If so, it’s time for an upgrade. Creating a warm and welcoming environment instills a sense of trust and loyalty among your patients.

Invest in updated signage, appropriate furnishings, uniforms, and leading-edge healthcare technologies to improve the in-office patient experience.

Protecting and Improving Your Online Reputation

Irrespective of all the branding and communications strategies and tactics you may execute, remember that today online reputations can make or break a business.

Incorporate opportunities for feedback throughout the patient journey to build a robust library of online reviews. Not only will this build your reputation and boost search engine rankings, but it will also help reshape your healthcare business’s rebranding efforts.

Try things like surveys, focus groups, patient advisory boards, community events, and social media interactions to encourage more reviews. Be sure to respond promptly to demonstrate your commitment to their health.

For more information about responding to patient reviews, read our blog, “How to Respond to Patient Reviews (+FREE Examples).

Address previous issues to regain trust

In healthcare rebranding, reputation management is crucial—especially if you are trying to overcome a negative perception of your brand. Identifying and addressing previous issues is crucial before and after launching your rebranded business.

Address previous issues and build trust

• Open and honest communication
  Be transparent about previous challenges and the steps you’ve taken to address them.
• Demonstrate a commitment to quality care
  Implement new protocols, if needed, and communicate them to your patients and staff.
• Train physicians and staff
  Invest in training to ensure the same issues will not resurface, and all members are aligned with the new brand values.

Improve the quality of care and highlight new initiatives

• Patient care metrics
  Prioritize, implement, measure, track, and publish quality of care metrics to illustrate your commitment to patient satisfaction.
• Patient education
  Keep patients informed and actively involved in their healthcare to ensure their preferences and needs are always top-of-mind.
• New initiatives
  Showcase any healthcare initiatives that can differentiate your business and further demonstrate your patient-first commitment.

Leverage positive patient stories and testimonials for reputation enhancement

If you have a selection of positive patient stories and testimonials, it’s important to highlight them across several platforms to build and bolster your brand reputation. Here are a few places you can share positive reviews after your healthcare rebranding is complete

• Google Business Profile
• Corporate website
• Location-specific landing pages
• Blog
• Social media
• Paid ads
• Printed collateral

Implement strategies to manage and monitor online reputation

Managing and monitoring your online reputation is just as important as building it. Here are a few strategies for keeping it as positive and healthy as possible

• Actively monitor and respond to online reviews on platforms like Google, Yelp, and healthcare-specific review sites. Address positive and negative feedback promptly and professionally. Do not get offended by negative feedback—instead, address the issue appropriately, and when possible move the conversation offline.
• Stay active on social media and engage with your audience. Share timely, relevant, and valuable content, and respond promptly to comments and messages.
• Implement search engine optimization strategies to elevate positive feedback and reviews in search rankings.

Optimizing Your Online and Offline Presence

Your digital channels are often the first points of contact potential patients and stakeholders have with your business. Once you’ve reimagined your brand, it’s time to

• Build/update your rebranded website
  • Ensure it reflects the new brand identity (e.g., logos, color schedule, fonts, messaging, etc.)
  • Make it an optimal experience for users search on mobile devices
  • Review and update content so it accurately represents your new brand, any changes to services, and brand initiatives, values, etc.
• Optimize your website to enhance search engine visibility and user experience
  • Implement on-page and off-page SEO. Focus on keywords, meta tags, and high-quality content.
  • Ensure your website is easy to navigate and has an intuitive user path that guides users to desired actions.
  • Improve page load speed to increase engagement and improve search engine rankings.
• Leverage digital marketing channels to increase brand visibility and reach
  • Develop and share a regular cadence of high-quality, relevant content.
  • Use personalized email campaigns to increase patient engagement.
  • Invest in Google Ads or social media ads to increase your health brand visibility.
• Incorporate social media strategies to engage with the community
  • Create and post engaging content regularly to increase engagement.
  • Engage with your community and respond promptly and professionally to build trust.
  • Use visual elements (e.g., images, infographics, videos, etc.) to increase engagement.
• Traditional advertising
  • Be sure to consider traditional advertising media such as outdoor, television, radio, print and direct mail.

Healthcare Success’ Own Rebranding Case History

Finally, I’d like to share an anecdote about Healthcare Success’ recent rebranding. It is an excellent example of how branding can elevate your brand and attract more of the customers you want.

As mentioned, brands evolve over time, and our healthcare marketing agency is no different. In fact, the company we founded back in 2006 is a far cry from the agency we have become today.

If you’ve been following us for a number of years, you probably noticed that starting in 2022, we reimagined our healthcare brand, repositioned our content, and rebranded our visuals to appeal to new audiences.

Why did we do this?

We realized our healthcare branding and messaging no longer reflected the work we were doing today, nor was it consistent with our target audiences and strategy going forward.

We knew a rebrand was needed in order to keep us differentiated in the market and attract more of the clients we are best suited for today.

After following all of the due diligence we recommended above, we redesigned (and reimagined) every aspect of our marketing, including our logo, website, PowerPoint decks, trade show booths, content, speaking schedule, and more.

The results have been spectacularly successful for us. Our marketing is once again congruent with both our target audiences and our strategy. As a result, we are enjoying record growth.

If you’d like to explore how we can help you build or rebuild your healthcare brand, start by reviewing our portfolio, or reach out to us to discuss our process and next steps.

Pomona Valley Health Centers experiences true success via the agency of record.

Challenges

Goals

Branding: Establish a stronger, more consistent brand identity, market awareness, and differentiated, competitive edge for PVHC

Attract new patients through an optimized paid search strategy

The marketing partnership that skyrocketed new patient volume for Pomona Valley Health Centers

Illinois Dermatology Institute Rebranding by Healthcare Success

The Work

Brand

Website

Social

Landing Pages

Partner With a Skilled Pharmaceutical SEO Company to Build Trust and Credibility

Drive High-Value, Organic Traffic to Your Site With Specialized SEO for the Pharmaceutical Industry

Pharmaceutical SEO Services

Technical SEO

Content Marketing

Off-Page SEO

Competitor Analysis

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Mobile Optimization

Reputation Management

Analytics and Reporting

Social Media Marketing

Ongoing SEO Monitoring and Maintenance

Differentiate Your Products and Gain Market Share

Transform Your Business With a Skilled Pharmaceutical SEO Company

You understand that it’s crucial for improving the overall patient experience and health outcomes for people of all socio-economic classes. 

But are you up-to-date with the latest patient engagement strategies?

In this blog post, I’ll share ten targeted marketing campaigns to help you increase patient engagement. 

But first, a primer on why this is a savvy investment for any hospital or health system.

What Is Patient Engagement?

According to the National Library of Medicine, patient engagement involves developing and fostering a collaborative patient-provider relationship to actively engage healthcare consumers in their decisions. 

It has application in value-based care, patient population health, accountable care organizations (ACOs), and health management organizations (HMOs). It is often used as a lever for establishing more meaningful patient-provider relationships, empowering patients to take better care of themselves, and influencing increased consumer loyalty.

Why Is Patient Engagement in Healthcare Important?

Spurred by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, patient engagement trends have significantly influenced the healthcare landscape by introducing various provisions to improve the quality and accessibility of healthcare services. It has also empowered more healthcare consumers to demonstrate increased engagement and active participation in decision-making to ensure they receive the treatment they feel best meets their needs.

While patient engagement strategies are vital for all demographics, they hold particular significance for older, non-English speaking, and low-income populations. 

Here’s a look at each demographic is more detail:

• Older generations
  Older generations often face one or more complicated healthcare challenges, requiring tailored marketing approaches that resonate with their preferences, address their specific needs, and help them navigate our complex and often confusing health systems. 
• Non-English speaking communities
  Non-English speaking communities require targeted outreach efforts that bridge language barriers and build trust, ensuring they receive adequate care without feeling marginalized. 
• Low-income populations
  Low-income populations are more likely to encounter financial constraints that affect their access to healthcare resources, making it imperative for marketing strategies to inform and empower them to utilize available services.

By encouraging higher levels of patient engagement across the board, healthcare providers empower healthcare consumers to 

• take a more active role in their health, 
• better understand their medical conditions, 
• participate in treatment decisions, 
• adhere to treatment plans, 
• and make healthier lifestyle choices. 

Leveraging the benefits of patient engagement often lead to improved patient satisfaction, better health outcomes, and more effective healthcare delivery.

10 Marketing Strategies to Increase Patient Engagement in Healthcare

As healthcare organizations strive to meet consumer expectations by creating patient-centered care experiences, modern marketing strategies play a crucial role in fostering patient engagement and driving positive health outcomes.

By leveraging these modern patient engagement strategies, your healthcare organization can better understand the importance of patient engagement in healthcare, proactively promote patient-centered healthcare, nurture stronger patient-provider relationships, and empower patients to take charge of their well-being. 

These strategies not only help improve patient satisfaction and overall wellness but also work towards reducing costly emergency room visits.

Here are ten modern marketing strategies your healthcare organization can leverage to proactively promote patient-centered care, nurture stronger patient-provider relationships, and empower patients in healthcare decision-making.

1. Promote and empower healthy lifestyle choices and preventative health measures Create targeted marketing campaigns and educational materials encouraging healthcare consumers to adopt healthier lifestyle habits (e.g., regular exercise, quality sleep, meditation, a well-balanced diet, etc.) to prevent or improve chronic health conditions. This strategy should also tie in the value and importance of preventative health measures like regular check-ups, screenings, and vaccinations.
2. Make healthcare accessible
   Access to care is a barrier for many rural and underserved populations. These areas often struggle with limited healthcare options, availability, and the time and distance required for travel. Though access to care is easier in suburban and urban areas, it can be complex and confusing for healthcare consumers to navigate—especially for older and non-English speaking populations.
   
   Support each of these audiences with clear information about access to care on your website, email, social media, direct mail pieces, and right in your office. Common access issues include
   1. Hours of operation
   2. Provider availability
   3. Geographic proximity
   4. Public transportation
   5. Parking
   6. Accepted health insurance
   7. Payment options
   8. Languages spoken
   9. Telehealth options
   10. Nurse navigators
   11. In-office signage and wayfinding systems
   12. In-home visits
       
3. Invest in patient education
   Empower healthcare consumers to make informed healthcare decisions and actively participate in their healthcare journey with comprehensive and easy-to-understand educational materials about their specific health conditions, risks, causes, and treatment options. Identify and share this information across preferred communication channels (e.g., website, social media, email, printed marketing materials, portal messaging, etc.).
   
4. Encourage patient feedback
   Use surveys and email nurturing campaigns to invite healthcare consumers to provide feedback about their healthcare experience. These help bolster patient engagement and increase patient satisfaction. Responding to this feedback is equally important for building positive patient-provider relationships. Ensure systems are in place to answer honestly, transparently, and in a timely manner.
   
   While we do recommend providing easy access to and promoting frequently asked questions, they should never be used as a replacement for an authentic, human response.

5. Nurture consumers via timely communications
   Timely and relevant communication helps build stronger patient-provider relationships and keeps healthcare consumers engaged with your healthcare organization. Ensure your healthcare consumers feel heard, supported, understood, and empowered through regular opt-in email, newsletter, direct mail, opt-in text message, and social media communications. One effective way to enhance your patient engagement strategies in healthcare may be timing a cadence of communications between vital members of their care team.
   
   
6. Prioritize internal communications
   Encourage employees and clinicians to increase internal communications to foster a consistent, and positive patient care experience. Clear and open communication channels between departments help retain staff, foster a positive workplace culture, and address internal issues before they become outward-facing. These all work together to enhance patient satisfaction and improve health outcomes.

7. Automate patient engagement
   Enable personalized communication strategies like appointment setting, medication reminders, and access to health information to focus on automating and improving patient engagement opportunities. Technology solutions like patient portals, mobile apps, or online chat can also help streamline these processes.
   
8. Segment patient populations
   Optimize patient engagement in healthcare by creating custom communication and targeted marketing campaigns for different patient populations. Ensure your messaging is relevant, meaningful, and engaging. Here are a few common demographics to consider
   • Gender
   • Age range
   • Ethnicity
   • Race
   • Health condition
   • Health history
   • Insurance information
   • Education
   • Income
     
9. Start engagement before a patient visit
   Don’t wait until check-in to engage with healthcare consumers. Invest in pre-visit relationship-building tactics like intake forms, clinical reminders, appointment reminders, and follow-up communications. Allowing healthcare consumers to fill out paperwork at home and sharing pre-visit reminders creates a positive first impression, promotes patient satisfaction, and sets the tone for their upcoming appointment.

10. Engage throughout the visit and following the visit
    Transactional provider-patient relationships are a roadblock to high-quality healthcare and patient engagement. When patients connect with their providers through personalized interactions, they are more likely to be transparent about their health, follow specified treatment plans, and adopt healthy lifestyle changes. Following up after the visit with post-care summaries, lab results, care instructions, or additional resources builds upon the patient-provider relationship and encourages ongoing patient engagement in their care.

As you learn how to increase patient engagement in healthcare through targeted marketing campaigns, be sure to follow all applicable laws and regulations (e.g., the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA) to protect patient privacy and confidentiality.

Improve patient satisfaction, support better health outcomes for all healthcare consumers, and grow your business with these integrated marketing and patient engagement strategies. 

If you need help getting started with a healthcare marketing plan & strategy, we can help.

Request a proposal today.

In fact, patient reviews of doctors come in third as the most influential driver in consumers’ decisions¹ (after insurance acceptance and location).

Today, virtually everyone should use reputation management software (RMS) to solicit, manage, and respond to reviews. 

Hospitals and multilocation practices especially require sophisticated platforms to manage reviews effectively at scale. What’s more, they can supplement their reputation management software platform with grassroots efforts focused on soliciting more positive reviews at the local level.

Today, we’ll review the most important RMS features and show you the best way to ask for a review at the office level.

Reputation Management Software: Important Features

Here’s a quick primer on reputation management software and what to look for when choosing one.

First, consider whether your existing practice management software (PMS) has a reputation module built-in or (very likely) if you need to engage with a third-party RMS for more robust features that allow your business to scale. 

If you choose to integrate with a third party, ideally, you can find a solution that integrates seamlessly with your existing PMS.

There are many healthcare-specialized RMS providers available. We partner with several depending on our client’s unique needs for reputation management.

RMS features vary wildly, but here are some of the most important

• Scalable capabilities
  To manage reviews for multiple providers and locations
• Intuitive enterprise-level dashboard
  To easily oversee all locations
• Role-based dashboard
  To streamline workflows at each location
• Automated alerts for not-so-stellar reviews
  To ensure nothing falls through the cracks
• Scoring compared to baseline
  To help you compare your patient experience across your brand, locations, and providers
• Review responses
  To address all reviews in real-time, supplemented with rules-based templates
• Automated review requests
  To capture consumer reviews, especially shortly after leaving their appointment

So, What Else Can You Do to Encourage More Positive Reviews?

It’s simple.
Ask, and you shall receive. 

Put another way, the scaled solutions are vital and helpful. However, motivated offices, staff, and providers can supplement your software-driven solutions.

While asking for reviews can feel awkward or self-serving, patients usually love sharing their opinions; they just need a little extra encouragement.

Let’s explore how to equip your on-site teams with the tools and knowledge they need to build your online reputation with online doctor reviews by patients.

When and How to Ask for Google Reviews (and Others)

Strike while the iron is hot to improve your chances of getting a review. Learning how to ask patients for Google reviews (and others) is easier than you think and can be done at several points along the patient journey, for example:

• When they share praise
• In the treatment room
• At check-out
• Right after they leave the office (via an automated email or text)

Along with a verbal request, your business can and should make it easy for patients to leave reviews by

• Giving staff and doctors links, they can text patients directly
• Adding review links to websites and all patient communications (e.g., email follow-ups, appointment reminder texts, and social media messages)
• Posting QR codes and other signage in the reception area and waiting rooms
• Including review links and QR codes to take-away materials (e.g., brochures, business cards, appointment cards, prescriptions, receipts, etc.)

Asking Patients for Reviews: Examples and Sample Scripts

Email your staff explaining the value of asking for positive reviews in person. 

Let them know you’ll provide a toolkit to help them effectively and naturally ask for patient reviews of doctors in person, over the phone, or via email. 

Here’s a sample memo/email you can send to your staff:

Disclaimer: The sample scripts below are a springboard to help you get started. Beware of violating HIPAA regulations, and never share personally identifiable information (PII) when requesting or responding to reviews.

Teach Your Offices How to Ask Patients for Reviews

Here are sample scripts that can help your provider locations request patient reviews of doctors in person, over the phone, or via email or text. 

Along with these scripts, it's important to ensure these steps become integral to their daily routines—and they leverage automation to ensure all reviews receive a timely response. 

Sample Script: How to ask for patient reviews in person

Sample Script: How to ask for consumer reviews over the phone

Sample Script: How to ask for patient reviews via email response

Sample Script: How to ask for patient reviews via text

We encourage you to combine these tips and sample scripts with automated software to build a robust online patient review strategy for your business.

A combined approach for soliciting, monitoring, and responding to patient reviews of doctors is the best way to take your local SEO, brand visibility, and growth to the next level.

1. https://patientengagementhit.com/news/72-of-patients-view-online-reviews-when-selecting-a-new-provider

But, these benefits come with several unique marketing challenges. 

The good news? They also come with remarkable marketing opportunities. 

In this article, I identify several common challenges and how to overcome them with effective marketing strategies. 

12 Marketing Challenges Unique to Multilocation Brands

Multilocation businesses typically prioritize revenue cycle management, billing, coding, collections, and other cost-cutting methods. 

While these are undoubtedly important, many fail to consider that a comprehensive marketing strategy can offer a significant competitive advantage and the power to drive substantial growth.

Here are some of the most common challenges of running a multilocation business and how to overcome them with strategic, data-driven marketing.

1. You don’t have a multilocation marketing plan

If each location runs its own marketing strategy—you're losing time, money, and resources. You’re also delivering confusing and disjointed messages to doctors, staff, patients, and referring doctors.

A multilocation marketing plan requires careful consideration of the unique needs and characteristics of each location while also maintaining consistency and alignment with your overall brand messaging and marketing goals. It must address these key areas

• Listen
  It must listen to and understand what healthcare consumers say about your products and services. 
• Engage
  It must engage your target audience on their preferred channels. 
• Connect
  It must connect with consumers personally to build trust and loyalty.

Here are a few elements to consider when building your plan

• Competitive landscape
• Target audience
• Market positioning
• Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analysis
• Budget
• Patient experience
• Strategy and tactics (e.g., traditional advertising and digital marketing)
• Metrics and reporting
• Staff training
• Public relations

2. You don’t know what you stand for

As you develop a marketing plan, articulating your guiding principles is essential for maximizing efficiencies, improving the patient experience, and driving growth and profitability. 

These principles also set brand expectations with new acquisitions as your business grows.

• Define a unique selling proposition (USP)
  Your unique selling proposition sets your brand apart from competitors and gives patients a clear reason to believe. It should be precisely defined and communicated consistently across all locations.
• Create a strong brand positioning statement
  Clearly communicate each location's unique value proposition, target audience, and key benefits, and consider their local market conditions and consumer preferences.
• Create clear and consistent messaging
  Your brand messaging must align with your USP and positioning and be consistent across all locations. This includes your tagline, mission statement, website content, social media profiles, and shared content.
• Standardization
  Building and implementing standard operating procedures (SOPs) for each location is essential for maintaining consistency across your operations, services, and products. A big part of this includes training staff to deliver the same level of service, quality standards, and messaging across all locations.
• Patient experience
  Develop a personalized patient experience at every consumer touchpoint to build trust and loyalty and have teams quickly respond to consumer inquiries or complaints to retain and build patient volume. 
• Continuous improvement
  Build processes that continually identify areas for improvement and implement changes as needed. Examples include conducting regular performance reviews, analyzing patient feedback and online reviews, and tracking key metrics.

3. You haven’t chosen a brand architecture model

Brand architecture defines the relationship between the parent brand and each location (and their unique offerings). An established brand architecture ensures your brand stays organized across locations while giving each the flexibility to adapt to their local market.

Multilocation businesses have several options when it comes to choosing a brand architecture

• Branded house
  A single, strong parent brand that is applied to all products, services, and locations.
• Endorsed brand
  A single, strong brand that supports each location, while each has its own brand identity.
• House of brands
  Multiple sub-brands that operate independently, each with its own brand identity.

No matter which architecture model you choose, every brand that knows what they stand for has 

• Purpose—your reason to exist beyond just making a profit.
• Vision—something to strive for; a big, hairy audacious goal.
• Mission—how you will work toward reaching your goals.
• Values—that guide your communications and actions.
• Personality—how you act and speak to your doctors, staff, patients, and referring doctors.
• Position—what sets you apart from competitors.

4. You aren’t delivering a consistent message

Creating and promoting consistent messaging across all locations and channels is essential for building and maintaining brand equity, trust, and loyalty among your patients, doctors, and staff.

Consistent messaging can also help improve operational efficiencies by streamlining marketing efforts (saving time and money!), improving employee training, and increasing brand recognition among patients. 

For example, how do you want to handle inbound inquiries? Do you want phone inquiries, emails, texts, and form submissions to continue going to each practice, or would you prefer to have them re-routed to a centralized call center? 

5. You don’t have doctor alignment

Regardless of the ownership structure, it’s important to remember that doctors are a highly influential force in any hospital or practice.

As your healthcare brand grows, getting continuous doctor feedback, buy-in, and cooperation on your overarching medical philosophy is essential to its success.

Everyone within the business must remain flexible and cooperative to ensure a smooth transition. To do this, provide doctors with a clear outline of internal and external benefits following the acquisition:

• Consistent patient experience
• Better quality of care
• Easier access to improved technologies
• Improved compensation and benefits packages, 
• More buying power
• Fewer practice management tasks and responsibilities

6. You haven’t created a culture of buy-in around your brand

When doctors and physicians are aligned with your integration plan, getting buy-in and cooperation from all stakeholders (e.g., clinical and administrative staff, employees, suppliers, and patients) will be a much easier task.

As with any organizational change, there is a period of uncertainty and unrest. Support your doctors and physicians by building a people-first culture that makes your staff feel valued and delivers a consistent patient experience in each location at every transition phase. 

Here are a few benefits of creating a culture of buy-in:

• It leads to a more cohesive and successful brand.
• It ensures all locations are aligned with the brand values, mission, and objectives.
• It improves employee engagement and satisfaction.
• It leads to higher employee retention and a more positive culture.
• It encourages innovation and creativity.
• It delivers a more consistent experience among locations.

7. You’re not retaining patients

There are several things a multilocation healthcare brand can do to retain patient volume, even if they’re currently experiencing a decline.

Start by taking steps to improve the patient experience. Help patients feel valued, listened to, and respected. For example, you can start by providing convenient and accessible services (e.g., online appointment booking, telemedicine services, and mobile apps) and minimizing wait times.

Understanding the unique pain points of your local audiences, improving internal operations, building a structured communication strategy around alleviating their fear, uncertainty, and resistance, and managing their perception will be well worth your time and effort.

Also, your front office staff is crucial in assuaging patient uncertainties. Prioritize training for front office staff and those dealing directly with patients so that they can respond positively and persuasively to questions and concerns.

8. You don’t understand your local audiences

Multilocation businesses need on-point healthcare marketing services catering to all brick-and-mortar locations—not just one. This ensures each that location gets the appropriate attention and online coverage to adequately inform their communities about their products and services. 

Here are a few questions to consider

• Does each location offer a unique specialty?
• Are the locations urban, suburban, or rural?
• Are you tailoring services to meet local needs?
• Are you tailoring your messages to ensure they resonate with local patients?
• Do you understand the cultural and demographic differences that impact their healthcare needs and preferences?
• Are you adapting your services to serve those needs better?

There are also several things you can do to ensure your practices rank high in local search results

• Create unique paid search ads for each location
• Create unique landing pages for each location for better SEO and to avoid duplicate content
• Create a comprehensive Google Business Profile for each location
  • Be consistent with listings (e.g., business name, address, contact information, etc.)
  • Ensure all listings are complete, accurate, and up-to-date
  • Post regular updates and respond to patient reviews
• Implement local SEO strategies
  • Include location-specific keywords in their content
  • Create content that is relevant to local audiences
  • Use local schema markup
  • Get listed in local directories
• Encourage patients to write reviews
• Consider each location in your internal email communications (e.g., share local news, highlights, or spotlights for each location in your corporate communications)

9. You haven’t implemented a multilocation SEO strategy

Multilocation healthcare brands must consider and cater to their unique search engine optimization (SEO) challenges to improve visibility, target local patients, improve the (local) patient experience, and increase traffic (leads and conversions). 

Here’s what you need to do:

• Optimize each location’s web content to ensure it ranks nationally and locally 
• Optimize each location’s web content to ensure it ranks for multiple cities or business addresses within the same city

To do that, businesses must implement a multilocation SEO strategy requiring a skilled healthcare SEO agency. Along with various technical tasks, multilocation SEO includes local SEO practices for each location to enhance its visibility and credibility using consistent and accurate information. Tactics may include

• Local keyword research
• Local landing pages
• Google Business Profile optimization
• Directory listing management
• Review and rating management
• Local link building

10. You don’t have a strong doctor referral program

A strong doctor referral program is essential for increasing patient loyalty and supporting word-of-mouth marketing, which can drive long-term growth for the brand.

Recruiting, hiring, and training a team of physician liaisons can be essential to help your business grow through doctor referrals. 

What’s more, you can and should leverage your physician liaison “on the ground” strategies with “air war” content and B2B digital marketing strategies.

11. You don’t have a provider recruiting strategy

If you’re short-staffed in one or more locations, analyze the current compensation package and workplace culture before recruiting physicians, nurses, and physician assistants. A robust recruiting strategy is essential to adequately address workforce shortages, maintain quality of care, keep up with demand, stay competitive, and build your brand reputation.

While many doctors, physicians, and nurses want to do what’s best for their patients, they also want a lucrative compensation package and an organization that shares their mission, vision, and values. By developing an effective recruiting strategy, you can attract and retain top talent and ensure your multilocation healthcare brand provides high-quality care to patients. A healthcare recruiting strategy may include

• Clear job descriptions
• Competitive compensation packages and benefits
• Employer branding
• Employee referrals
• Recruiting events
• Recruitment partnerships (e.g., educational institutions, universities, or other healthcare organizations)
• Diversity and inclusion initiatives
• Interview process

12. You don’t have scalable programs

When marketing several locations, it’s important to consider the unique offerings at each (e.g., competitive outreach, levels of care, service offerings, priorities, specialties, providers, etc.) and build programs that can accommodate where they are now and where you want them to be in the future.

To ensure growth and success, it is crucial to create a unique marketing program for each office that follows branding and messaging guidelines and supports their individual growth needs and goals.

Tactics may include

Optimizing location pages for each business website

When it comes to local search, having a well-designed landing page for every location is crucial for dominating local search results.

Whether patients need a primary care physician or specialist, they often search for nearby health facilities. An SEO-optimized location page helps search engines rank your local businesses based on their proximity to user searches and present them to relevant audiences.

Leveraging online reviews

Online reviews are one of the top three ranking factors for local search. 

Encouraging patients to share feedback on their experience and developing a thoughtful response strategy can significantly impact your search engine ranking. Google's algorithm values patient reviews and greatly influences whether someone clicks through to your website.

The best way to manage Google reviews for multiple locations is to create a Google Business Profile (GBP), which offers location management functionality. To add multiple business locations, your business must first verify a primary GBP listing, then each location can be individually created, edited, updated, and managed.

Using directories and local SEO

Local directories make it easier for people in your community to find your business, products, and services. These directories can also help boost your local SEO strategy by increasing the online visibility of each location and building high-quality links back to their pages.

Add each practice location to these directories to improve your online presence and increase brand exposure to local searchers

• Google My Business
• Facebook
• Yelp
• Healthgrades
• Vitals
• WebMD
• RateMDs
• ZocDoc
  

Dominating Local SERPs (paid, organic, local search)

Combining the local SEO strategies above with comprehensive paid and organic search strategies that differentiate your businesses with location-specific keywords can help move your locations into the highly coveted Google Local Pack.

Building relationships with referring doctors

Leverage the skill, experience, and expertise of physician liaisons and providers to grow your business and create more opportunities with referring doctors in your area.

Examining analytics for each location

Once you build a primary Google Business Profile and add your practice locations, you can easily track and examine analytics for each using Google’s Looker Studio. This free tool lets you easily connect to various data sources (Google Ads, Analytics, and social media platforms), view data by locality, and share insights with stakeholders.

This data also provides crucial insights into location performance (e.g., total page visits, form submissions, phone calls, or other crucial conversions), allowing businesses to identify where additional optimization or different SEO strategies are needed.

Building and maintaining an effective marketing strategy for a multilocation business is challenging. However, with the right tools, tactics, and support team, you can streamline challenges of all sizes, outpace your competition, grow brand recognition, and increase revenue.

Here, you’ll find a few of our most timely and popular blogs conveniently organized by marketing topic. 

Start With Some Classics

Whether you’re a new marketer or a seasoned professional, take a deep dive into essential topics that can significantly impact your healthcare business. 

• 15 Healthcare Marketing Strategies to Attract Today’s Healthcare Consumer
  To help you along your path toward marketing success, here are our always up-to-date 15 strategies to consider when developing your healthcare marketing plan.

• Integrated Marketing
  If you don’t know why integrated marketing is crucial for healthcare brands, you’ll want to read this. In it, we share why it’s important to create a streamlined, reliable, and consistent customer journey using an integrated marketing approach and six ways your healthcare organization can start doing just that.

• Healthcare Marketing Plan
  Did you know marketing plans are meant to be updated, altered, tweaked, and adjusted as needed to ensure optimal business growth?
  
  This post covers everything you need to know about the benefits of having a healthcare marketing plan and the critical elements you need to succeed.

• Google Business Profile
  This handy blog post on Google Business Profile is the best way to learn how to claim your own profile and make the most out of it to gain more healthcare consumers. 

• Online Patient Reviews
  Many health and wellness brands are reluctant to engage with online reviews due to potential HIPAA violations or other compliance issues, but it’s vitally important. 
  
  We developed this detailed guide specifically for responding to healthcare reviews. We’ve also included FREE templates to help you respond to online feedback in a professional, helpful, and HIPAA-compliant way that protects your brand reputation.

• How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Physician Liaison
  Physician liaisons are crucial to business growth. Here are eight mistakes to avoid and how to set them up for success.
  
• 6 Proven Ways to Market Any Healthcare Organization
  Did you know there are hundreds of strategies and thousands of tactics but only six building blocks that guide any healthcare marketing plan? Read this blog for a big ah-ha moment.

Marketing Insights By Demographic

Each generation has unique marketing challenges and opportunities based on their experiences growing up, the economic climates they’ve survived, and the things they’ve dealt with in their personal and professional lives.

It’s important to consider the collective experiences of each generation in your marketing so your messages resonate with the largest audience possible.

• Seniors
  Get our updated best practices, new strategies, and the latest statistics and insights on this large and influential demographic.

• Women
  With so much unrest surrounding women’s health, having a clear, concise, and transparent marketing strategy that resonates with their unique needs is essential. This blog lays out eight ways to more effectively market to women healthcare consumers.

• Doctors
  There are more than one million active physicians in the United States. It would be impossible—and foolhardy—to market your products and services to them in the same way.
  
  Learn how to define your doctor audience and create highly-relevant market segments to effectively market your products and services to them.

• Generation X
  With over 125 billion dollars in purchasing power and increasing responsibility for their aging family members, Generation X is quickly becoming the dominant voice in healthcare for multiple generations. Find out how to market to this group more effectively and win their business and loyalty. 

The Best of Branding

What does your branding say about you? Whether you’re focused on continued growth and expansion or staying relevant in today’s digital age, the following two blogs are must-reads. 

• Multilocation
  Are your newly aligned locations appropriately branded and marketed? Are they resonating with their respective communities, geographic locations, and target audiences? Use this ultimate banding checklist for multilocation providers to develop a better healthcare brand—no matter how many locations you have.

• Living Brands
  How can your healthcare brand stay relevant in the digital age? How can you expand your reach and increase social media engagement? In this post, we teach you how to adapt to your audience and their desired channels while remaining consistent with your core values and mission by building a living brand. 

Curated Content Marketing

What’s the best way to build brand awareness and grow patient engagement and retention?
Implement a robust content marketing strategy that 

• Educates potential patients
• Considers Google’s latest algorithm updates
• Leverages the skill and expertise of top-tier healthcare content creators

If you want to outpace your competition with we’ve got everything you need to get started right here:

• How to Build a Healthcare Content Marketing Strategy: A 10-Step Guide 
• The Levels of Content & Why Healthcare Can’t Settle for Lower Tiers 
• How to Optimize Your Website for Google’s Helpful Content Update

Strategic SEO

Did you know 80% of patients search online for information about hospitals and medical practices before scheduling an appointment? Search engines have become people’s most reliable (and convenient) research tools—but less than 1% look beyond the first page of Google’s search results. 

The next few blogs will help your business rank high, avoid the Google Blacklist, and circumvent common pitfalls that can negatively impact your page rank.

Check out seven technical SEO problems that can cripple your website’s visibility on Google and the perils of SEO over optimization to learn the do’s and don’ts of search engine optimization. Then get a primer on black hat SEO and learn how to keep it from harming your page rank.

Paid Search Insights

The paid search industry is constantly changing.
Get a better handle on it with our comprehensive paid search glossary. 

Once you have a better idea of industry terminology, review the seven most common paid search mistakes healthcare brands make and how to avoid them to ensure your paid search campaigns serve the right ads to the right audience and provide a positive experience for your users and search engines.

Next, discover 18 ways to optimize your healthcare landing page to maximize high-value visitors completing a desired action (converting). 

Savvy Social Media

More and more healthcare brands and companies are leveraging social media to build a loyal following, engage with existing patients, attract new patients, and grow. Here’s a three-part playbook for creating and maintaining a healthy social media presence: 

• 7 Ways to Increase Consumer Engagement
• 4 Reasons Facebook & Instagram Advertising Are Essential for Healthcare Marketing
• How to Create a Healthcare Social Media Calendar

Thought Leadership

We round out our best-of-blog series with a few blogs that offer our unique industry perspective on shifting healthcare consumer expectations, why healthcare workers are taking the brunt of patient frustrations, and why more physicians are choosing hospitals and corporate entities over private practice.

Thank you for reading, learning, and growing along with us. 

Please let us know if you’d like to learn more about a particular topic or are looking for specific marketing resources.