When you’re looking to improve current patient and provider engagement, identify and cultivate relationships with potential patients, employees, and donors, and enhance your overall brand awareness and presence, incorporating testimonials into your marketing strategy is key. These compelling accounts showcase your hospital or healthcare system’s expertise, compassion, and patient focus and demonstrate your humanity. Here are five ways testimonials can supercharge your marketing strategy.
1. BUILD TRUST
When potential patients, employees, partners, or donors hear from people who have had positive experiences and interactions with your hospital or healthcare system, they can better understand how you’re impacting real people’s lives. The impressions and opinions of one’s peers are often seen as more genuine and trustworthy than traditional advertising. A testimonial from an orthopedic surgery patient who could barely walk before his treatment and is now running half-marathons or a nurse’s story of how your supportive work environment has helped her career blossom humanizes your brand and demonstrates that you deliver on your promises.
2. SHAPE BRAND IDENTITY AND PERCEPTION
Trust in the healthcare industry is not universal. Whether due to past negative experiences with other hospitals or health systems or perceptions of healthcare as expensive and impersonal, both prospective patients and employees need to know you are different. Positive stories and experiences shared by people who trusted their personal health, family members’ care, or career trajectories to your organization can do wonders for showing that your hospital or system excels in providing compassionate, patient-centered care, maintains the highest standards for care safety and quality, and cares about promoting wellness and career opportunities for staff.
3. ATTRACT NEW PATIENTS
Facing a new diagnosis, researching surgical or treatment options, or preparing to have a baby can be stressful, especially when uncertainty surrounds the decision-making process. Knowing what kinds of experiences they should expect and who they might encounter in their journeys is essential – and happy patients who can speak to the quality of care they received and the support and compassion they were shown can make all the difference. Positive outcomes speak volumes, and testimonials from current and former patients can vividly illustrate how your providers, technology, and support services contributed to their recovery and improved quality of life.
4. RECRUIT PROVIDERS
If your current providers and staff can speak to your organization’s supportive, innovative, and fulfilling work environment, it can set you apart from other hospitals and health systems that may offer similar salaries, benefits, and professional development opportunities. When potential providers and staff can see firsthand how others in your organization have grown and thrived, they can begin to picture themselves enjoying those same opportunities. Employee testimonials can highlight your organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, as well as employee wellness and work-life balance.
5. ESTABLISH EXPERTISE AND LEADERSHIP
Sharing testimonials from physicians providing specialized and innovative care, clinician-scientists engaged in potentially life-changing research, or patients who have benefited from these innovations and improvements positions your organization as a destination hospital or healthcare system. Not only is your organization the place to go if you want access to the latest, research-backed treatments, but it is also a trusted source of information and education for a variety of healthcare topics.
HOW TO MASTER TESTIMONIAL MARKETING
Incorporating patient and provider testimonials into your healthcare marketing strategy is not just about producing content; it is about crafting a narrative that illustrates your hospital or healthcare system’s trustworthiness, compassion, expertise, and commitment to excellence in all that you do. When you are ready to make testimonials part of your marketing plan, consider these strategies for success:
- Embrace Diverse Perspectives: Feature testimonials from patients of different ages and backgrounds who face various health conditions and have different health and lifestyle goals. Choose providers in a variety of specialties with diverse career journeys and patient experiences. This ensures that your testimonials resonate with various audiences and show the breadth of what you have to offer.
- Be Authentic: Ensure that testimonials are genuine and reflect real patient and employee experiences. Stay away from scripted testimonials; they can come across as insincere. Authentic stories and honest feedback build credibility and trust and will always be a boost to your marketing efforts, no matter your audience.
- Use Various Formats and Channels: Testimonial blog posts or quotes, video interviews, and social media posts are all effective ways of sharing these firsthand accounts, and video can be particularly powerful as your subject’s facial expressions and tone can convey sincerity and emotion. For maximum impact, share testimonials across various channels, including your website, social media accounts, email newsletters, publications, and even in your physical locations.
- Encourage Participation: Ask patients, providers, staff, and even donors to share their own experiences and perspectives. You never know where you’ll find the next inspiring story that can help build your hospital or health system’s reputation and engage new patients seeking care.
- Refresh Regularly: Update your testimonials regularly to keep them current and relevant. As your organization evolves and grows, so should the stories you share. New testimonials can reflect recent advancements in care, new or enhanced service lines and facilities, your hospital or system’s response to timely health topics, or changing patient and provider experiences.
In today’s healthcare environment, showing your human side is critical to building trust and reaching new audiences. If you’re too busy to launch a new testimonial campaign or you’re not sure where to start, LIGHTSTREAM is here to help. Contact us today to learn how we can help you find the people and stories that will help you achieve your marketing goals.