Whether you’ve had a heavy COVID-19 case load or not, the financial impact of this pandemic on health systems has been dramatic. Re-engaging health consumers is critical to the financial survival of many organizations, and care deferral is beginning to have serious consequences for the health of many Americans.
As you plan to open service lines, this white paper will help you:
Create a process that embraces uncertainty
Manage expectations for consumers, employees, and providers
Move your marketing focus from crisis communication to declining threat and transition to service line marketing
Utilze messaging pillars to promote what you care able to safely deliver today
Chart a course for content marketing, content strategy, and digital marketing based the phase your orgnaiation is in
Download our White Paper
Bringing Patients Back to the Doctor’s Office After COVID-19
Reversing a Trend
Your healthcare organization has spent months delaying elective procedures, restricting visitors, and shifting some appointments to telemedicine. As the number of COVID-19 cases starts to fall in some areas, your organization may be ready to spread the opposite message: Come back in for care.
It feels like a tall task, as it does for all industries trying to encourage the return of consumers who’ve been told for so long to stay home. But the stakes are highest for healthcare. Emergency departments have seen fewer patients come in with life-threatening stroke and heart attack symptoms — which professional medical societies believe is due to fear, not fewer emergencies. Since the pandemic started, there’s been an 18% drop in healthcare spending, according to MarketWatch.
Some healthcare organizations are planning for a potential surge of patients as restrictions ease on nonurgent procedures. But some people, especially those who don’t have life-disrupting symptoms, may wait and see how their community’s initial return to public life plays out. Or, having managed their symptoms at home for the past few months, they may decide they no longer need professional help. Many patients almost certainly won’t seek timely care.
What You Can Do
Information was key to changing public behavior to control the spread of COVID-19. Knowledge will also help consumers feel confident returning to in-person health services.
During the height of the pandemic, your organization may have seen record numbers of website visitors, email subscribers, and social media followers eager for updates on COVID-19. Harness your new reach to educate people on the need to get medical care.
Some valuable information to share:
Measures you’ve kept in place to continue preventing the spread of infections. Patients will feel safer knowing some precautions are still in place:
Sanitization efforts in offices
Phone screenings of patients before in-person visits
Social distancing guidelines in waiting rooms
Face masks for staff and patients
Separate entrances for immunocompromised or high-risk patients
Maintenance of separate care areas for patients with contagious illnesses
Highlight even the routine safety measures you’ve always taken.
Risk to patients’ long-term health of avoiding medical care. Cape Cod Healthcare wrote a cautionary blog post on this topic, citing a patient whose delay seeking care for appendicitis resulted in a weeklong hospital stay. Another hesitant patient, who felt chest pain, had to hear that “the actual risk of having a heart attack was worse than the theoretical risk of getting COVID-19” at the hospital.
The value of getting evidence-based care in your established medical setting. When hospitals restricted visitors and cared for coronavirus patients, some expectant moms planned home births. Forced to put off elective procedures, other patients may have explored unproven alternative remedies.
Any guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the World Health Organization on the safety of returning to public life. Consumers have gotten used to relying on these sources over the past few months. Support your advice with their trusted information.
How to Get the Message Out
Take advantage of the same channels you’ve used for other information related to COVID-19. Consider:
Using your website’s alert panel or homepage banner for timely content urging patients to resume routine and elective care, and linking to a blog post with the information above
Asking a respected or well-known doctor to let you record a video of them explaining why patients shouldn’t delay care
Encouraging individual providers to deliver customized messages to their patients via the patient portal, mail, or email
Publishing a blog post with questions for patients to ask their provider before coming in for a visit
Profiling patients who came in for elective care and recovered successfully
Reaching out to the media for help spreading the message; news outlets will be covering the effects of the pandemic for months
Engaging with skeptics or hesitant patients on social media
Accommodate Nervous Patients
If you’re like many organizations, you ramped up telemedicine offerings in response to the pandemic. Continue promoting these for all patients, especially those who aren’t ready to return to a clinic. Expanded virtual care will be part of the new normal after COVID-19.
If your organization has concierge medicine doctors who make home visits, consider giving this service more promotion as well. It’s an option for patients who want in-person primary care without having to worry about the perceived risk of coming to a doctor’s office.
Address Financial Barriers
For some patients, the obstacle to care isn’t fear, but finances. Pandemic-related job losses have cost many patients not only income, but also health insurance. That means more members of your audience will need information about financial assistance programs and free or low-cost clinics. As long as the insurance providers you work with waive copays for video visits, publicize this information as well.
Get Communications Advice From Experts
Post-pandemic healthcare marketing is relatively new ground for many professionals. Get advice from strategists and content writers who’ve worked with other organizations in your position. Contact us to learn how Geonetric can help.
Introducing the “New Normal” at Your Hospital
As your organization develops new approaches to caring for your patients in the coming weeks and months, consider your website a helpful vehicle to deliver information to your patients, visitors, and community, as well as a way to assure nervous patients that it’s safe to come back for care.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported an increased use of telemedicine services during the pandemic. One leading telemedicine provider, Teledoc Health, reported a 50% increase in visit volume in March, with more than half being first-time users.
Telemedicine isn’t only a helpful alternative during outbreaks of illness, but also an accessible option for patients who don’t have reliable transportation, physical disabilities, or face other barriers that make it hard to visit your facilities for in-person care.
After the pandemic, telemedicine may become a staple to keep in touch with your patients on a regular basis, whether it’s for urgent care or post-surgery follow-ups.
How You Can Support Telemedicine
Conversations about this service are likely ongoing in your organization, but it’s important that any changes to telemedicine offerings are communicated clearly on your website, so patients know:
Which service lines offer telemedicine
When telemedicine is a good option for care
How to make a telemedicine appointment and what technology they need
How to prepare for a successful virtual visit, such as choosing a quiet room with good lighting
If telemedicine becomes a regular part of your service offerings, be sure it’s represented as a service line. Likewise, link to your telemedicine page on service lines that offer it as an alternative.
Continue Offering Online Classes
Like telemedicine, there is room to continue to reach people with technology, and this includes your classes and events.
Your organization might have already moved some of your classes and events online; don’t shy away from keeping online options after the pandemic.
(If you haven’t moved classes and events online yet, learn how birth care classes are a great place to start for online event offerings.)
How You Can Support Online Events
If you have online classes, follow up with participants to learn about their experience. Consider a survey that asks:
What did they like most?
What was challenging?
How was the online experience?
What was the experience of registering like?
How did they learn about the class?
For some service-specific classes, ask participants if they hope to have a procedure, treatment, or service at your organization to learn about their path to care.
This gives you an opportunity to improve your user experience for future online classes, and also review the viability of online events being a permanent offering. The benefit? You can get more participants, more registrants, and reach more people from the comfort of their homes. You might also reveal opportunities for:
Revising website copy to better explain how to access online events
Adjustments to promotion strategies for online events
Measuring, reporting, and improving ROI for online classes
Reimagine Your Clinic Spaces
It’s standard practice to keep your clinic spaces safe by disinfecting surfaces and community spaces, but in what other ways does the “new normal” change your waiting rooms?
Most waiting rooms have chairs and tables close together. But, as your facilities open back up to a more typical number of in-person visits, separating chairs by 6 feet or more – per social distancing guidelines – might mean you have reduced waiting room capacity.
How You Can Support Clinic Safety
You’ll want to communicate these changes to facilities clearly on your location profiles. This helps set expectations for patients about what to expect, should they need in-person treatment.
As you return to normal operations, it might be necessary for patients and guests to use protective equipment and materials. If so, be clear about these changes on your website and in your patient communication. Before visiting your facilities, patients and guests need to know if they’ll have to use:
Face masks
Hand sanitizer
Rubber gloves
As your facilities welcome more in-person visits, you may also implement or continue the practice of temperature checks for health and safety. Let patients know if this is something required before their visit.
Share this information in your website’s patient and visitor section and location profiles, email marketing, and patient portal communications.
You’ll want to evaluate the vendor visit requirements, too. The pandemic likely changed the number of vendors you allowed on campuses. As your facilities open up to business-as-normal, let your vendors and partners know if there are permanent changes and requirements for on-campus visits.
Share Giving Opportunities and Protocols
During the pandemic, your community members and neighbors supported you and your staff. They also sought ways to help support you, whether through sewing face masks or sending food and meals to front-line staff.
From volunteers to blood donors, you have many people looking to assist your organization. Consider what information they need to know – especially for protocols that have changed.
For example, perhaps you’ve changed your:
In-kind material donation rules. Are there restrictions on what you can accept? Are there new requirements before someone donates? Should donations be sent to a new location?
Blood donation process. Are temperature checks required for blood donors? Have you changed the location of your blood donation services?
Volunteer opportunities. Where can volunteers be most useful after the pandemic? How do you train and prepare new volunteers with the changes in your organization?
Engage All Marketing Channels
Your expertise as a healthcare marketer takes on new value in today’s world. It’s essential to provide next steps and reassurances to patients and guests so they know your staff and facilities are safe places to receive care. Communicate using all your channels and tools, including:
Ask your social followers, email subscribers, and community what questions or concerns weigh on their mind as your hospital services return. This information can help drive content marketing, messaging, and advertising strategies to answer concerns and build a smooth path for hesitant patients to get care.
Ask for Help
Juggling these important updates along with other ongoing marketing projects puts a lot on your plate. If you need a partner to help you organize and strategize your post-pandemic communication, contact Geonetric for help.
You’ll partner with digital marketing experts in healthcare, ready to help you get the most important information to patients when they need it most.
2019 Healthcare Digital Marketing Trends Survey: Academic Medical Center Edition
Geonetric’s annual collaboration with eHealthcare Strategy & Trends delivers the most comprehensive look at the digital evolution of healthcare organizations available. Now, we’ve done a deep dive into the data provided from AMCs so you can better understand your unique opportunities and challenges.
Use this planning tool to learn how AMCs are:
Approaching staffing – now and for the future
Investing in digital as a part of the marketing budget
Attacking challenges unique to complex organizations like AMCs
Planning for redesigns
Tackling business listing management
And more
COVID-19 Editorial Style Guide
You’ll find guidance on:
Voice, tone and readability
Language that counters stigma
Official disease and virus names
Trending terms that may be confusing or tricky
Need help updating already published content? Review our quick tips for content governance during a crisis, or reach out to Geonetric’s expert healthcare writers for assistance.
Download our Guide
Ready to Rebound: Next Steps for Healthcare Marketers
Geonetric’s Chief Strategy Officer, Ben Dillon, will be joined by experts from a range of healthcare marketing disciplines to provide guidance and actionable recommendations for the road ahead.
Attendees will learn:
The current state of healthcare marketing, including strategies for moving forward.
Key principles of agility that help leading organizations respond more quickly and effectively to uncertainty.
Approaches to engaging your local communities and building confidence in your organization and brand.
Methods for promoting available services and educating patients on the risks of delaying care.
Strategies for bringing services back online and filling schedules in a controlled approach while juggling multiple priorities.
Answers to your live questions and those of your peers.
Use Empathy to Guide COVID-19 Home Health Care Marketing
Follow our COVID-19 communications pointers for strategic, empathetic messaging in your website content and other marketing assets.
Affirm availability of home visits. Reference trusted and credible sources, such as AARP®, that encourage continued services with increased precautionary measures.
Answer common questions. What concerns are your home health caregivers hearing from patients and their family members? Use those questions to generate ideas for your content marketing assets and other communications.
Communicate when and how patients with symptoms of or potential exposure to COVID-19 should inform your organization. Instruct your patients not to wait until their provider comes to their house for a visit to inform them.
Explain how your policies have changed due to the virus. Emphasize new and existing safety protocols that prevent the spread of infection, such as frequent hand-washing, wearing of masks and gloves, between-visit disinfection, checking staff and patient temperatures, and other practices.
Highlight the benefits of your services. Your organization’s home health care providers play a vital role in the well-being of your patients and their loved ones. Many patients who receive home care have health conditions that put them at higher risk if they get the new coronavirus. Support from home health providers can keep patients safer and healthier at home, prevent trips to the emergency room that could lead to exposure, and provide reassurance to anxious loved ones unable to visit in person.
If any services have moved online, give clear and detailed instructions on how patients can access their providers via virtual visits or phone calls. Cover how patients benefit from check-ins with their home care providers. Explain the specific services a provider can offer electronically or by phone, such as safety assessments, management of chronic conditions, rehabilitation services, emotional support, and more.
Share the firsthand experiences of your patients and providers. Stories about how your organization has adapted services due to COVID-19 and what patients are experiencing may be picked up by local media covering the pandemic. Telling your provider’s stories can also create greater empathy and understanding for the processes you’re putting in place to face this illness. These stories can help prospective or current patients feel more comfortable with home health services.
Review the hours and contact information listed on your website, location profiles, and Google My Business listings, and update them if needed. If your hours or other business information has changed, make sure your content accurately reflects these changes, to prevent patient confusion or frustration.
Voice & Tone
In all your communications during this challenging time, make compassion the centerpiece of your messaging. There will be a time for more traditional marketing when the threat of the pandemic passes. What’s always true — yesterday, today, and tomorrow — is content that recognizes its audience’s emotional state and responds to it with a positive tone and helpful solutions not only leaves readers feeling more at ease, it can increase brand loyalty.
Your Source for COVID-19 Digital Support
Check out Geonetric’s free COVID-19 resources or contact us today for content strategy and development services and SEO support.
Tips for Using Social Media During COVID-19
More Eyes on Social Media
During a public health crisis like the COVID-19 virus pandemic, people want to learn how to stay safe and healthy, and how to get care when they need it. Many are turning to their local hospitals and health systems for that information.
In fact, a Geonetric consumer survey, 33% said their trust in their local health system has increased or strongly increased during the pandemic.
Part of where this information seeking and trust is happening is on social media.
According to a New York Times analysis, social media, in particular, has seen a rapid increase in use during the social distancing, shelter-in-place, and self-isolation of the pandemic. More specifically, Facebook has seen a 27% traffic increase in desktop users and a 1.1% traffic increase in Facebook app users.
Answer Your Audience’s Questions
Social media gives your team a direct-to-consumer channel to engage audiences. Tools like Facebook and Instagram let you use images, videos, stories, and text-based posts to connect in real-time with people who have questions and concerns you can address.
As you engage your audience on social, keep an eye on the trending questions and concerns from your community, such as:
When to wear a face mask or use protective gloves – and how to use them correctly
Where testing is available
What common symptoms are
Healthy foods to make from pantry basics
How to exercise safely and effectively when quarantined
Questions coming from real people also open doors for other content marketing for your audience, and provide a supportive, educational perspective that people need.
If you aren’t sure what to post, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has created a free social media toolkit with copy, images, and infographics to share with your followers.
Lend an Empathetic Ear — and Voice
During a crisis like this, your community and colleagues are facing uncertainty and anxiety. This puts you – as a healthcare marketer – in a distinct position to guide, educate, and help. In times like this, it’s more important that you act as a neighbor, not as a brand.
Beyond sharing health and wellness tips, evolving updates, and other newsworthy information, you can foster empathy with social media marketing by sharing stories inside and outside your walls, including
Donations and gifts to your staff and front-line clinicians
Celebrations of your colleagues and patients in the hospital
Stories from doctors, nurses, and staff who are helping your community
Stories from patients and families
Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, shared photos of staff wearing donated masks across their social channels. The posts also linked to their website for more information about making donations.
Delivering Content with Empathy
The language and images you use in your posts are important to your audience. Engage tips on how to write for the web and use social media, and apply them to your posts:
Keep posts meaningful, write in the present tense (if possible), and use short paragraphs to make the posts easy to read and scan
Use empathetic images – even if they’re stock photos – that avoid anxiety and convey empathy and healthy tips
Cross-link to relevant content on your website, such as blog posts or content marketing, service line pages, or your crisis resource hub
Make posts actionable, to lead people to helpful information or next steps
Strategize Your Social Media
According to a study from Sprout Social, the optimal day and time to post vary by platform. It’s important to note that these recommended times to post on social platforms are based on pre-pandemic circumstances but can be used as a good benchmark to begin with and optimize as times proceeds.
Such benchmarks can help you reach more people by posting on the right channel at the right time – and take advantage of specific features and tools.
Facebook
For the healthcare industry, Facebook sees the most engagement on Wednesdays from 10:00 a.m. to noon. The typical business workweek also gives reliable times for engagement from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Facebook implemented features for business pages to publish business hour updates and service changes. As Google My Business and Bing Places have done, Facebook lets businesses make updates including:
Making temporary closures
Offering online classes
Offering telehealth services
Instagram
The best time to post on Instagram for the healthcare industry falls on Tuesdays at around 8:00 a.m. Incorporate trending crisis-related hashtags, such as #flattenthecurve, #stayhome, and #quarantineandchill, into your content in an appropriate and tasteful way.
Use Instagram to provide educational content that points viewers to your website for up-to-date and credible information. Don’t shy away from using Instagram to share inspirational content to give viewers that glimmer of hope they need.
Twitter
Top times in the healthcare industry to post on Twitter are on Wednesdays from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Other weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. have also proven to show reliable engagement.
Twitter recommends using images and videos to attract users and reach a wider audience. Consider using threads for status updates and restrictions that just don’t fit into Twitter’s allotted 280-character posts.
LinkedIn
With LinkedIn’s target audience being primarily professional users, the best times to post occur during the workweek, Tuesday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, LinkedIn has increased efforts to assist organizations and communities dealing with the impact of the pandemic, including offering free job postings. This service — available through June 30, 2020 — receives additional promotion from LinkedIn to highly relevant candidates through the “Urgently Hiring” job category.
YouTube
The best time to post on YouTube falls during weekdays from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Views tend to peak during the weekday evening hours, so by posting in that window, you’ll have plenty of time for your video to be processed and indexed by Google.
Optimize your videos with accurate titles, descriptions, tagging, and transcription. When possible, include relevant keywords in the video title and description to attract search users.
Video content that is educational, inspirational, and helpful is a great resource for viewers.
Monitor Your Social Traffic
Posting on optimal days and times is a good starting point for any organization to engage on social media. After you’ve built a solid foundation of followers and engagement, check your channels’ insights and analytics.
These data points help you analyze when your page’s target audience is engaging most with your content. This strategy is especially important to utilize during the COVID-19 virus. With limited data right now on optimum times to post, it’s more important than ever before to look at your own social media metrics. Take these findings and adjust your schedule and content calendar.
Social media marketing metrics you should measure fall into three primary categories:
Audience – Shows gender, age, location, and other demographic information to help you determine who’s engaging with your content
Content – Allows you to spot patterns in engaging and less-engaging posts, including link posts, images, videos, and text-based posts
Engagement – Provides benchmarks to gauge performance, including likes, comments, clicks, shares, views, and more
You can typically find this information through each social platform’s insights/analytics tool. Tools like Google Analytics and UTM parameters aid in tracking how social media drives traffic to your site. UTMs allow you to tag links to track which social platform is bringing the most visitors and how those visitors are engaging with your site.
The Most Important Thing is Empathy
Your social media presence can be a source of relief for some or a source of hope for others. Take your position in times like these as an opportunity to connect with your community beyond providing care in your clinics. This is a perfect chance to extend empathy and provide outstanding support during a difficult time for everyone.
If you’re not sure how to set up your social media analytics and tracking, or you need help building social posts and campaigns during the pandemic, reach out to Geonetric to get started.
COVID-19 Healthcare Consumer Survey
The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially changed daily life. To help healthcare marketers across the country better understand how this new reality intersects with people’s healthcare experiences, Geonetric conducted an online survey of 600 internet users across the U.S. The surveys were completed April 3, 2020.
Learn how COVID-19 has affected consumers’ decision-making around healthcare as well as how they are responding to different types of communication from health systems. See data on how COVID-19 has:
Impacted consumers’ decisions and plans around seeking care for non-COVID-19 concerns
Changed content topics consumers want to learn about
Affected content format preferences by age segment
Impacted consumers’ trust in their local hospitals and health systems across different demographics
Download our White Paper
6 Tips to Improve Email Communication During COVID-19
Your health consumers need information from you right now. Whether it’s details on symptoms, treatments, telehealth, making masks, how to clean their home, protecting their families, making donations … the list goes on. And they need information from a source they can trust – you.
You’re probably creating some of this great content, but are you emailing it? People are turning to their inbox now more than ever. According to research by Paved, open rates were up 15% worldwide through March.
As you get ready to hit send and share vital information via email, here are six tips to make sure you are being as effective as you can in this new landscape.
#1: Test What You Think You Know
Ask any email marketer (experts at Litmus and MailChimp included) and they’ll tell you – email marketing best practices are changing and changing fast. For example, your old send times and days may not be the most effective anymore, now that many people are working from home and looking for information from experts at different, more varied times. For example, according to WorldData, before March, 8:00 – 9:00 a.m. was the best time to send email, but from March 20 to April 1, that time has moved to 2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Also keep in mind is that although your instinct may be to stop email communication, people are turning to their inbox now more than ever – they want to hear from you there. It’s important to keep your communication cadence, while paying attention to your analytics to make any needed adjustments.
#2: Use the Words Your Subscribers Are Using and Looking For
Pay close attention to the words your subscribers are using on your site as well as Google Trends data and keep an eye on the changing use of words that are making an impact in the broader email landscape.
For example, using COVID-19 is not recommended in subject lines of emails. Not only are users burnt out after all of the commercial emails providing “A Letter From Our CEO on COVID-19,” but also there’s already spam being spun up utilizing that term. Using this term scarcely in subject lines and instead using terms like Coronavirus, pandemic, epidemic, etc., will help you avoid getting flagged as spam. This is just one of the new terms that you need to pay attention to trends on. Resources like subjectline.com are a great way to check on recent trends and help you improve deliverability and open rates.
#3: Consider Asking Your Subscribers What Information They Want
Believe it or not, surveys are also popular during this time! Users want to understand how they’ll benefit from giving you their time to take the survey more than ever. So consider asking your subscribers what information they want from you and make it clear that their feedback will inform the details you’re sharing with them.
If you already have a regular newsletter, consider reaching out to those subscribers and asking them directly to complete a short survey about the types of information they’re looking for you to share. Maybe your subscribers are burned out on hand-washing information but they want to know how to stay mentally healthy while at home. You can use their responses to plan your content marketing mix to meet those needs and send out new, requested content to your subscribers.
#4: Don’t Forget to Segment
Segmentation has never been more important for your email subscribers and you. Your new and expectant mothers, for example, have totally different needs than your foundation donors. Meet each of your audiences where they’re at and provide the information they will benefit most from hearing.
For example, if you do have an email segment for your foundation donors, consider telling them how donating now directly impacts your ability to address COVID-19. Whether it’s funding PPE or making sure there’s little to no interruption of care, this audience will want to know how their contributions are helping in this challenging time, and it may even spur them to give more.
#5: Reassure Your Subscribers
As a healthcare marketer, compassion is probably top of mind for you frequently. That’s more important now than ever. Language, images, phrasing, it all goes into reassuring your subscribers that, while taking COVID-19 seriously is necessary, we’re in this together and we will find a way through.
One way you can do that is providing content that helps them make the best of their new normal. Consider stories on topics like:
Options to get exercise and staying fit at home
Meal planning for healthy eating
Tips for cooking together with kids
Ways to reassure kids during COVID-19
DIY tutorials on making masks for personal use or donation
Ways to safely donate blood
You can address the new needs of your subscribers and assure them they can rely on you.
#6: Share Your Reasons to Celebrate
Have you been seeing success with treating COVID-19 cases? Are you recognizing your hard-working frontline staff? Has your community made generous donations of meals or PPE supplies? These stories of connection and encouragement are all happening, despite how hard things are right now. Take the time to recognize and celebrate all the wonderful stories happening in your community and share them with your subscribers, too.
Use Email to Engage and Connect
Email is an important part of your crisis communication plan. As you create new content for your social and website platforms, don’t forget to use email to connect and engage with subscribers who want to hear from you. Do you need help figuring out your email mix or want some help reviewing your email plan? Or are you just getting started with email marketing? Contact Geonetric and get support from our experts.
