The power of storytelling for audience engagementAnother year about to end, a new year around the corner, and health care marketing and PR pros are at the drawing board again. What worked in 2014? What’s the magic formula that will make 2015 better? What are the right goals and metrics? How do we make sense of this fractured media landscape and connect with weary audiences who are more overloaded than ever with a barrage of competing messages from multiple devices and sources?
It’s easy to get stressed trying to sift through all the options and challenges to settle on a defined marketing and PR strategy and plan. Here’s one suggestion: Maybe it’s time for some storytelling to get you calmed down and back on track. Few business sectors have at their disposal more compelling opportunities to tell good stories than we do in health care.
Why Storytelling Matters
Great stories evoke emotion. And as Maya Angelou once said: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Therein lies the power of storytelling in health care marketing.
People relate to other people more easily than they do abstract concepts or ideas. We can say “Brand X stands for quality,” and that’s fine; but when we can deliver proof of that statement through a personal story, the power of the message is amplified.
The opportunities for personal storytelling in health care brand marketing are endless. Success stories about the people we serve, stories of dedication and selfless service among our employees and volunteers, moments of joy and laughter, even stories about the tough times – the moments of struggle, crisis and compassion – all of these can help bring marketing and public relations messages to life and leave a lasting impression.
A Fit for Digital and Social Channels
“Share-ability” is another benefit that accrues from good storytelling. People who hear a good story like to share a good story, and digital and social communication channels are all about sharing. Given the rising power of online communications and social media in the marketing mix, the share-ability factor becomes more and more important to marketers. A few recent statistics help illustrate this point.
• In terms of news consumption, the Internet has made steady gains over the past decade. Pew Research notes that more Americans these days get news in a digital format.
• Trust of the Internet and social media as an information source is on the rise:
• Crowdtap, a social influence marketing platform, found that millennials trust information gathered through user-generated content 40 percent more than information from other media, including newspapers and magazines.
• According to a report from Indiana University’s School of Journalism, 59.8 percent of reporters use social media to find story ideas.
Invest in Pictures to Tell Your Stories
Remember when you were a kid and story time came around? Weren’t you always more drawn to the books with lots of pictures? That doesn’t change when you grow up. When you can illustrate your human interest stories with compelling images and videos, your engagement will jump among your target audiences. Countless surveys and studies have proven that’s the case across all media – traditional, digital and social. Twitter recently analyzed more than 2 million tweets from verified users over a month, and found that photos give verified users a 35% bump in retweets. Yet many of us in health care marketing try to get by with phone cameras/video and stock photography. When preparing your marketing plans and budgets, consider budgeting for some professional photography of real people and situations at your organization to help tell your particular story. A picture really is worth a thousand words, and definitely worth the investment.
A Case in Point
What is the first hospital-related news story you are most likely to hear or read about in your local media in 2015? The odds are it will be a human interest story about the first baby born in the New Year. It will not be focused on the beautiful décor of a new birthing center, or the high caliber of the nursing and medical staff that attended to the mother and child. It will be about a happy family bringing new life into the world, and it will create a glow of positive awareness and sentiment about the hospital where it happened.
So what you can do to make 2015 a year of storytelling in your health care marketing and public relations program? Instead of marketing channel mix and metrics, start your planning process by thinking, “Once upon a time….” and see where it leads you.