by Steven R. Jolly | Nov 14, 2019 | Rural Healthcare Marketing Tips
National Diabetes Month happens to share the month of November with the most famous feast celebration in the US, Thanksgiving. For people with diabetes, it can be a real challenge to navigate the holidays while keeping insulin levels in check.
Connecting your marketing efforts with what is on people’s minds is important for building trust. Speaking to the challenge of diabetes during this time can create a strong connection with your community.
Speak to the concerns
Let your marketing give voice to what is on people’s minds. You can start with a headline like this.
Is diabetes raining on your holiday parade?
Then describe the kinds of challenges facing people with diabetes during the holidays. For those with Diabetes, holiday feasts can be a source of anxiety. It can create hard choices between participation and risking their health. They may worry that their disease gets in the way of their family’s fun.
Offering solutions
After showing that you understand the difficulty people face, offer helpful advice and practical solutions. There are many articles on the subject you can pull advice from or which you could share if using social media. Just be sure to vet them as you only want to offer the best advice. Here are a few simple examples.
Spread out the feast
Instead of fasting and gorging, make thanksgiving an all-day affair. Provide many courses over a long afternoon and evening to avoid spiking or crashing blood sugar levels.
Choose savory over sweet
Focus on dishes with savory flavors. Dishes that are rich in protein or fiber help buffer the carbohydrates and sugars. Pair each course with a sweet option to a savory or high fiber option alongside it.
Lower carbohydrate recipes
There are tons of diabetic-friendly recipes for every holiday classic dish. Do some research and practice them ahead of the holidays. You are sure to find some that meet or beat your old recipes.
Remember to make sure that if you share a recipe directly that you have permission to do so. The list of ingredients isn’t covered by copyright but everything else in a recipe is including descriptions, images, and instructions.
by Steven R. Jolly | Nov 7, 2019 | Marketing Tips for Success
There is never enough time
In a typical American rural hospital, there is never enough time. There is always more that needs to be done than there are time and resources to do it. Patient-care is always at the top. Paying the bills is generally next on the list, and it goes on and on. Where is marketing on your list?
We must find the time for marketing
If we want to keep rural healthcare in America strong and vibrant, we really MUST be marketing our services.
If you are out of sight, you are out of mind. Patients will continue to head for larger urban hospitals even when you have those same quality services closer to home. Too many rural hospitals are shutting their doors. You must lookout for the long-term health of your hospital.
What can you do?
Your first step is to choose a strategy to put your
marketing on track and keep it there
- Divide and conquer the work
- Dedicate the time and money to hire someone
- Seek
outside, professional help
Divide and Conquer
Many hands make light work. Everyone at your Hospital is
busy. No one has the time to handle all the work needed. By creating an
internal marketing task force and dividing up the work, you have a fighting
chance. It will take teamwork, good time management, and good communication but
it can be done.
Find the people in your organization with the right skills,
assign them tasks connected to those skills and you can get the work done.
Hire a Marketer and give them a budget
This may well be the most expensive option on this list, but it has advantages. With someone dedicated to the task, you know it will get the attention and focus it needs. As your organization grows, you have built the foundations of a marketing team that can grow with you. Perhaps most importantly, they will intimately understand your community and your hospital.
Outsource your marketing
If you have more money than time, you can hire an outside firm to handle your marketing. You can also combine outside help with other strategies. Use the marketing firm to handle what your staff finds most challenging. You will want someone who understands and has long experience with the unique market challenges facing rural hospitals. These folks can be hard to find, but if you are reading this, they just a phone call or email away.
by Steven R. Jolly | Nov 7, 2019 | Rural Healthcare Marketing Tips
It feels like there is never enough time
When faced with an overwhelming list of things to be done, good time management is essential. Marketing your business is essential for its long term health, but there is always a long list of immediate and pressing tasks when running a rural hospital. All too often if it isn’t at the top of the list, it doesn’t happen.
Strategies for time management
What you need is a strategy for time management. There are many proven methods to ensure that low-priority doesn’t become no-priority.
- Block time at regular intervals
- Set deadlines for low priority tasks
- Invest in optimization
Blocking time
This strategy is to make a deliberate decision about what
amount of time is right for your organization to focus on marketing. Make a
commitment that you will spend per month. Then, schedule that time on your
team’s calendar.
With experience, you can adjust the time allotted up or down to meet your needs, but always make a deliberate decision, don’t just react to the events of the moment.
Setting deadlines
Deadlines are the go-to means for getting something done. Deadlines for lower priority work should allow more time than you would for higher priority tasks. This offers the flexibility to react to other, more critical tasks while keeping your marketing efforts on track. That said, treat these deadlines with the same seriousness off any other in your organization or this strategy won’t work.
Investing in optimization
Like any task, Marketing can be done efficiently, and it can be done inefficiently. If you spend time upfront investing in streamlining your process, you will get great returns down the line by getting more done in less time. Make process improvement a goal, not just a desire.
And if you can’t invest the time, then consider investing a little money. SRJEasyHealthcare.com is designed to make the most of your staff’s time by doing as much of the time-consuming work for you as possible.
by Steven R. Jolly | Oct 31, 2019 | Marketing Tips for Success
One of the most powerful public relations tools for small healthcare facilities is the press release. These tools go beyond advertising by providing valuable and actionable information for your community.
Why is the press release powerful?
It has been shown that press releases are often three to five times more impactful than an advertisement. If the newspaper is quoting your provider, it’s news! What you say carries the authority and trust of the paper and that trust is now associated with your organization.
Furthermore, many people reflexively avoid anything they think looks like an advertisement. If information about your company and services is instead part of the news content, you stand a much better chance of having it read.
Designing Press Releases
The first thing to consider is to provide your press release in a format that is easy for your target organization to consume. Most papers will accept press releases using standard templates but it pays to find out exactly what they prefer.
You need to be mindful to create a press release that is more than just advertising. The release should be of interest to the readership of the paper. It should provide information that is interesting or helpful. That said, you want to connect this information to your brand and services.
Timing Press Releases
Because people often need to hear a message several times before they pay attention, it is important to stay in front of your audience. It is a good idea to have articles in the paper about three times a month. Having relevant, timely information at the ready can help you develop a strong relationship with your newspaper and ensure you get published.
by Steven R. Jolly | Oct 31, 2019 | Rural Healthcare Marketing Tips
November is National Diabetes Month
Each November the National Heat Lung and Blood Institute promotes National Diabetes Month. The focus for this year is linking diabetes to heart disease. Now is a good time for your rural hospital to do educational outreach to the community and to make them aware of your related services.
According to the Southwest Rural
Health Research Center “Diabetes prevalence is approximately 17 percent higher
in rural areas than urban areas, with previous studies (also) showing that
rural adults were more likely to report a diagnosis of diabetes than urban
adults.” Rural Americans also suffer from higher rates of heart disease and
stroke. These are health topics vital to the health of your community.
Teaching the connection
Adults diagnosed with diabetes are twice as likely to die
from stroke and heart disease as those without it. The excessive glucose levels
damage the blood vessels and the nerves that regulate heart function. For these
reasons, diabetes prevention is intrinsically linked to preventing cardiovascular
disease.
Of course, even for those with diabetes, there is a great
deal they can do to lower their risks. Proper management of diabetes is a good
start. Fighting the other risk factors for heart disease which are common in rural
communities is another.
Delivering clear and actionable information to the members
of your community can go a long way to helping them achieve better health. Ideally,
you want to connect with the community face to face to teach and answer
questions about diabetes and heart disease.
A focus on risk factors
The risk factors for diabetes and heart disease cover a lot of ground. This means there are ample opportunities to connect your hospitals’ health services with National Diabetes Month this November.
Diet and Exercise are among the most significant risk factors for Type 2 diabetes. There are also a number of personal risk factors from family history, poly-cystic ovaries, abnormal cholesterol, and others.
For heart disease, you can also focus your promotion on efforts to quit smoking, management of cholesterol, or blood pressure testing and treatment.
Seek out local partners
Consider all the risk factors and think about other popular
local businesses or services that you could partner with for promotion and
education. Restaurants that promote healthy eating or a local gym could make
great partners for pairing medical information with a means for better diet and
exercise.
You could create a genealogy workshop at the local library.
This would be a chance for people to discover more about their family’s medical
history while you share vital health information. Any opportunity to bring your
expertise out of the hospital and into the community goes a long way to
building awareness of your brand and services.
All these events can be promoted using social media, press
releases, or local advertising.
Don’t Wait
Now is the time to get started with planning your outreach. You
don’t want to miss this opportunity to care for your community and build
awareness of your healthcare services.
