By Vanessa Orr

Consumers are bombarded by hundreds of messages a day, which makes it imperative for healthcare marketers to reach them with the right messages in the right way. While print ads and brochures might once have worked to reach a target market, today’s changing demographics mean that advertisers must not only understand who their customers are but use the proper tools to reach them.

“Millennials and Baby Boomers access healthcare very differently,” explained 40-year healthcare veteran Rudy Molinet, who teaches marketing and strategic planning at Florida Atlantic University and also serves as the chair of the board at Holy Cross Health in Fort Lauderdale, FL, where he is involved in developing strategy and advising on marketing initiatives.

“Gen Z has no problem doing a telehealth visit with their doctor while they’re drinking coffee at Starbucks, while the older generation wants real physician contact,” he continued. “How you create and craft marketing messages to different generations is important because no one size fits all.”

Marketing

According to Adjunct Professor Molinet, marketing is an adjunct to sales which is the process of uncovering customers’ needs and then meeting those needs. This requires a multi-pronged approach that may include an educational component with campaigns relating to prevention or health initiatives, such as HIV prevention, cancer prevention, ways to access healthcare, and more.

A marketing team develops messaging designed to attract and engage customers with the goal of generating awareness and interest in a company’s products or services and to build customer relationships by using multiple strategies to reach potential customers.

“What services does your healthcare system offer that meet the needs of different communities?” Molinet asks. “You need to provide information not just about your system but about different disease states. For example, Holy Cross Health provides an electronic newsletter that is sent to different constituencies based on demographics. Older men get information on prostate cancer, women are educated about breast cancer awareness, while the LGBTQ community is provided information to meet their own specific needs.”

He notes that a marketing campaign around breast cancer, for example, must also be promoted via different methods, ranging from print to radio to social media.

“If your message is geared toward the older generation, you may want to use print or radio,” he said. “For the younger generation, investing in social media, even TikTok and YouTube, may be better. People laugh, but TikTok is one of the places that the younger generation gets its news and healthcare information.”

He notes that the Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic are both masters at targeted marketing, reaching out to those of a certain age with information on Medicare and health conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and prostate cancer that affect people over 65 or targeting women with information about breast cancer.

“In my opinion, the more targeted the message is, the more successful it is,” said Molinet. “If I’m 23 and get an email from a healthcare system about aging in place, it won’t resonate with me. A 70-year-old woman doesn’t need information on pregnancy. When you don’t micro-target, you’re just throwing stuff out there.”

Marketing these days is also data-driven, which provides organizations with a way to target customers better. “Marketing should not be what an organization thinks it needs, but what the consumer needs, based on data,” said Molinet. “Oftentimes, when a person swipes a credit card at the store, that data gets sold. Hospitals’ infection rates are reported to Medicare and graded based on that data. Medicare estimates how many days in the hospital an appendectomy requires. All of this data is aggregated and drives decision-making in healthcare marketing and more.”

Public Relations

While marketing is targeted to a specific group, public relations reaches an audience in a broader sense and is more about being present physically in the community. This can be done through speakers’ bureaus, press releases, health fairs and more.

“In public relations, we’re trying to create an image or brand, support an image, or change a negative image, so we’re casting a wider net,” said Molinet.

Holy Cross, for example, has created a very deliberate marketing and public relations campaign to reach the LGBTQ community to assure them that as a faith-based hospital, it is a safe space for LGBTQ patients and families.

“It’s important to note that what’s even more vital than the message is what’s behind the campaign,” said Molinet. “There has to be substance behind it. Holy Cross has worked really hard internally to make sure that their brand promise of being a safe space for all is happening by investing money in community outreach, opening more offices to provide access to care, and training staff.”

While there are many different ways to reach potential customers, it’s important to add that organizations should test what they use to ensure their messages are being heard.

“Every time a new ‘shiny object’ hits the market, approach it with a degree of skepticism,” said Molinet of new programs that claim to make marketing easier. “Dig deep into the data, read the reviews, check for references, and talk to other organizations that have used it. These programs are not cheap, so find out how it’s working in the real world before you make that leap.”