Immediate Release

Webcast: Proven Strategies to Market Women's Services

Women are a vital audience to reach—is your marketing cutting it? As the primary healthcare decision-makers and the key to unlocking additional service audiences, you need up-to-date, effective marketing strategies to win women’s loyalty—thus, business—and expand your market share. Join HealthLeaders Media on January 31, at 1 p.m. (EST) for this 90-minute Webcast, including Q&A, and learn from women’s health marketing experts.

Website spoofing targets hospitals' websites

The American Hospital Association is advising hospitals to police their website domain names to ensure that they are not victims of website spoofing for fraudulent or deceitful purposes after learning of a recent incident involving a hospital's website. Website spoofing is the creation of a fake website by a different person or organization with the intention of misleading users of an organization's true website.

Typically, the spoofing website will adopt the design of the target website using a similar website address or URL. Spoofing of a hospital's website creates potential risk for the personal information of patients and raises serious other legal issues for the hospital, including fraud, trademark infringement and cybersquatting (registering a website with the intent of selling it to the proper owner).

If a hospital discovers a spoofing or false website, it should promptly consult legal counsel. "We typically would advise the website owner who had been victimized to send a strongly worded cease and desist letter to the website registrant and, if a separate entity, a copy to the registrar," says Sherri Way, a Denver-based attorney who frequently advises organizations on a variety of business-related legal issues. "We also would advise the website owner to consider posting a notice on the true website advising patients, physicians and other third parties of the potential confusion. Further action may be necessary, depending on the particular circumstances."

MHA hosting webinar on how to efficiently and effectively create hospital websites for mobile devices and apps

On January 19, the Mississippi Hospital Association will host How to Efficiently and Effectively Create Hospital Websites for Mobile Devices and Apps from 1:30 p.m. until 3 p.m.

Mobile devices are quickly becoming major marketing tools for nearly all businesses, and health care is one of them.  However, regular websites and blogs are not designed for this medium, so those using mobile devices to access health care websites are growing impatient.

This session is directed toward those marketing and web managers who have little knowledge of mobile marketing but have a good grasp of general online advertising, including websites, landing pages, blogs, etc. It will first explore the incredible growth of smart phones and their use by consumers in everything from perusing websites to managing their social media statuses. Participants will learn what consumers seek in health care mobile websites and applications and will also be shown how to create these sites and applications - and even how to market them to their service areas. The instructor will be Charles Falls, president of Demi & Cooper Advertising.

The registration fee for this course is $155. You may register online here. If you have any questions, please contact Diane Clift at (800) 289-8884, (601) 368-3217 or dclift@mhanet.org. 

Carlton, Powell named Professionals of the Year

The Mississippi Hospital Association’s Society for Health Care Marketing and Public Relations recently named a Junior and Senior Professional of the Year for 2010. Tom Carlton was presented with the Senior Pofessional of the Year Award and Laurie Powell was presented the Junior Professional of the Year Award during the society's annual meeting in November in Madison, Miss.

These awards are given each year to an outstanding professional in the field of health care marketing and public relations. It is based on accomplishments and years of experience in the field, focusing on professionalism, creativity, contributions to the organizations and communities they have served, as well as a continued dedication to learning and furthering the field of marketing and public relations.

Hal Leftwich (right), administrator of Hancock Medical Center, presents Tom Carlton (left) with the Senior Professional of the Year Award.

Carlton has been with HMC since December of 2006 as marketing/development director. He has over 13 years of health care marketing experience. He is a member of the Rotary Club of Bay St. Louis (where he was honored as the Rotarian of the Year in 2009), the Lions Club of Diamondhead (where he was named the Melvin Jones Fellow in 2010), and Leadership Hancock County. He holds a B.A. in English from the University of Missouri.

Laurie Powell (right) is presented with the Junior Professional of the Year Award by Amy Sharpe, cancer services coordinator for St. Dominic Hospital (left)

Powell serves as a marketing specialist for St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson. She holds a B.A. in Communications and an M.S. in Instructional Technology from Mississippi State University.

She has also served as Jackson Chi Omega Alumni Panhellinic Representative (2008-10), Jackson Area Alumni Panhellinic Association Vice President (2009), a member of the Marketing Committee for WLBT Great Lengths Cancer Campaign (2010), and a member of the Marketing Committee for Drive to Inspire Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign (2008-10).

Social media’s changing role in health care

Despite patient privacy and some resistance, social media has taken hold as a vital part of our everyday lives in the world of health care and hospital communications. Its humble beginnings may be traced back to something as simple as a Mayo Clinic video of an adorable couple who played piano in the atrium. I don’t think anyone, including Lee Aase, had any idea that this would grow into something as big as it is, with now over 7 million views.

Read more from the Hospital Impact blog here.

10 tips to get your health brand fit and healthy

As a health care marketer, do you know whether your brand is engaging its best customers? Take a look at this handy checklist of questions that we should all ask ourselves when it comes to branding.

Growing Number of e-Patients an Opportunity for Marketers

The Internet might enable cyberchondriacs, but it can also help healthcare marketers target key patients and track campaign ROI. Making your organization's website a health resource will only become more critical in the next few years, as e-health expands.

Read more from Marianne Aiello of HealthLeaders Media here.

Branding in the digital age: You’re spending your money in all the wrong places

Consumers still want a clear brand promise and offerings they value. What has changed is when—at what touch points—they are most open to influence, and how you can interact with them at those points. Touch points have changed in both number and nature, requiring a major adjustment to realign marketers’ strategy and budgets with where consumers are actually spending their time.

Read the full article from the Harvard Business Review.

Stark law and physician marketing

The Stark law is a monster that strikes fear in the hearts of many hospital marketers. It’s a murky mashup of gray areas that don’t apply to what most hospital marketers do on a daily basis. Many hospitals avoid putting physicians in their campaigns because of Stark concerns. To help you build the case and comfort level for using your physicians in campaigns, here are some rules of thumb to keep in mind.

Read the full post from Franklin Street’s Junto blog.

SHSMD shares marketing principles and practices

On Nov. 30, the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development shared a new resource with its members, Principles and Practices for Marketing Communications in Hospitals and Health Systems. Recognizing that significant changes have taken place in marketing communications strategies and messaging, the SHSMD Healthcare Advertising Task Force developed this new resource for members seeking guidance on current practices.

The advisory, which can be found at www.shsmd.org/marcomadvisory, emphasizes the need for all health care information to meet the highest ethical standards and to be presented to the public in a readily comprehensible manner, no matter what the purpose of the communication or the vehicle used. SHSMD is an American Hospital Association personal membership group.