The Toolkit of a Successful Healthcare Marketer

12/16/2022 Matthew Tilley

Healthcare industry marketing requires balancing patient and community engagement with the growing needs of a complex healthcare organization.

On a recent Business to Human podcast, Leslie DiStefano, Director of Communication and Public Relations at Samaritan Health, located in northern New York state, shared how her organization has achieved marketing success — from implementing marketing campaigns to interpreting user data and understanding the priorities of senior management.

Working within organizational capacity to support the marketing program

A common perception is that local health centers located in rural communities typically have everything needed for routine visits and wound care, but often lack advanced robotic care and surgical specialties. DiStefano, however, aims to redirect this kind of misrepresentation.

“It’s a challenge to ensure that the larger community is truly aware of all the services you offer,” she says. For example, she points out, by incorporating cancer care affiliates that provide protocols and guidelines, Samaritan is well-equipped to handle a wide range of patient needs.

Another factor in DiStefano’s marketing efforts is a major military installation located within her service area. Because the installation doesn’t have its own schools or healthcare facilities, it relies heavily on local resources. Making sure individuals connected to the installation are aware of where they can seek care requires a twofold educational approach:

• Through the general community: The transient population will primarily rely on word of mouth; educating the public is vital
• Through events: DiStefano uses event platforms to get in front of the community and explain the health center’s offerings, furthering public education

DiStefano is also careful to balance mass and finite marketing: “When we start to do finite targeting, we instantly see a change in social media engagement because it’s too small of an audience. So we have to, in some ways, do a lot of mass marketing to even hit that finite population,” she explains.

Creating and maintaining brand awareness

DiStefano uses a mix of print and digital marketing to target every age group, tailoring her marketing tactics to a combination of baby boomers and younger generations. Sometimes, however, her marketing efforts can work too well.

“Imagine you’ve just hired a dermatologist and want to create exposure for them. Your marketing activities are so successful that, suddenly, the demand for services exceeds the dermatologist’s ability to keep up,” she explains. When this happens, DiStefano scales back her marketing to support a good experience and quality care for patients as well as physicians.

She points out that it’s also important not to undersell offerings. For example, DiStefano strives to make sure people are aware of Samaritan’s 24/7 coverage for general surgery, a service that’s particularly unique to the area.

“It’s about promoting the lines you know you can provide coverage for and what makes sense,” she says.

Advice to healthcare marketers

DiStefano shares many of the same challenges as her peers in the healthcare industry. Her encouragement to other industry marketers: “Force the hand of your senior leadership to tell you what the priorities are for the year. And really home in on that, because everyone will be asking for something.”

Realistically, she adds, you cannot align with the goals of every entity within the organization. So make sure you focus on those that matter most. “We have weekly check-ins on our corporate goal so we can ask, ‘Hey, have we done anything to help meet this goal that I haven’t quite met?’” DiStefano says.

Did you enjoy the content? Listen to the full Business to Human episode.