Do you already have a logo, but want to extend your corporate brand identity with new business cards, letterhead and more?
Healthcare branding is the process of shaping how a healthcare organization is perceived.
Your brand is the way your organization is perceived by those who experience it. That includes your doctors, your nurses, your board members, but most of all, your patients.
Healthcare branding helps organizations ensure they are perceived the way they want to be. As trusted, caring, knowledgeable, experienced, etc.
More than simply a name, tagline, logo, or messaging, your healthcare company’s brand is the recognizable feeling that these elements evoke.
Healthcare branding ensures that these elements come together in a cohesive system informed by positioning and personality that is consistently executed across your brand’s many touchpoints.
There was a time when healthcare branding didn’t matter so much.
Patients had little choice as to which healthcare provider they used. Their provider was determined by insurance, which was in turn determined by their workplace. And those without insurance, if they were lucky to get care at all, sought treatment at emergency rooms and community clinics.
As every healthcare professional knows, however, times have changed—in a big way.
Millions of previously uninsured patients now have access to the health insurance marketplace and are playing an ever-increasing role in managing their own health. Even those without insurance can access a growing array of out-of-pocket online providers and pharmacies.
Performance metrics have shifted to value-based assessments like patient satisfaction; emphases are now on prevention over treatment; and a growing crop of digital healthcare brands is redefining the direct-to-consumer healthcare market.
As a result, the balance of influence in the healthcare brand-consumer relationship has swung dramatically to the consumer.
As patients have become empowered consumers, the benefits of healthcare branding have grown to the point that healthcare companies simply can’t afford to ignore them.
Effective healthcare branding, informed by research and driven by strategy, has a range of valuable benefits for any healthcare organization.
Healthcare branding can help your organization.
Trust, however, isn’t enough for healthcare brands in the modern age. Gone are the days when a healthcare organization could be content to be judged on the reputation of its medical practice alone.
As patients have become ever more empowered consumers, the competition to treat them has become increasingly fierce.
The reality is your healthcare brand is just one of many from which informed, digitally savvy patients can choose. And their decisions, like the decisions of every consumer, are based first and foremost on emotion.
Branding gives you the power to identify unique opportunities for differentiation in the competitive landscape—and capitalize on those opportunities with unique positioning and powerful storytelling.
As in most industries, there’s little actual difference between the services offered by similar healthcare brands. And there are only so many ways to say that your outcomes are better than your competitors’.
How, then, can your brand stand out amongst the competition?
The following are 3 important opportunities to do just that.
Positioning your healthcare brand is the most fundamental strategic effort you can make in healthcare branding.
Central to positioning is competitive brand research. It’s only by studying the competitive landscape in which your brand operates that you can hope to identify opportunities for differentiation.
The ongoing wave of mergers and acquisitions has created an industry landscape that is confusing and constantly shifting. Establishing a brand that is consistent and reliable amidst the chaos is an important opportunity to ingratiate your organization with its patient base.
At the end of the day, the goal of positioning is to differentiate your brand in the mind of your patients. To accomplish this, you first have to define what makes your brand unique.
This requires consensus among key stakeholders on things like your target audience, competitive advantage, and brand promise. Purposeful answers to each of these questions lead to genuine differentiation.
One of the most obvious ways to make your healthcare brand stand out is by refreshing your brand’s visual identity.
When refreshing your visual identity, it’s important to remember the power that a good identity can wield.
The best identities stand for something. Nike’s “swoosh,” for example, is emblematic of the winged goddess of victory and all the swift and triumphant values she represents. By utilizing symbols to convey positioning, your identity is the most immediate way you have of expressing your brand’s distinctiveness.
Your visual identity tells your customers why you are different from your competition. To ensure this message is compelling and effective, your identity should be built to stand the test of time.
An enduring logo represents an enduring brand. Finally, your identity should be deployed with the utmost consistency so as to instill trust in the minds of your customers.
When it comes to healthcare branding, content is king. Not just any content, though. Compelling, engaging, and, most of all, useful content.
Luckily for healthcare brands, there will never be a dearth of inspiring and educational stories to tell. Heartrending stories of patients whose lives have been changed by your brand are a powerful way to connect with customers on a deeply human level.
And while it’s wise to be aware of the everchanging legal and ethical regulations surrounding healthcare branding, there are many acceptable ways to inform consumers on vital health topics, as well. This type of educational content is both relevant and useful to a broad spectrum of audiences.
The volume and complexity of healthcare topics means that no brand within the industry should have a lack of effective content to populate their channels.