Marketing plays a bigger role in healthcare than we like to think. It shapes our sense of what will make us ill, what will make us healthy and who to go to for help. So in this episode of Leading with Health, I explore how to use marketing for good, not evil.
Highlights include:
2:06 – JM: “COVID-19 is truly a textbook example of how public perception affects public health. Because if you really think about it, what is going on right now is a huge, huge public health issue – and it is entirely being run by marketing. Unfortunately, it’s not being run by a good approach to marketing.”
2:18 – JM: “If your business is helping people with their health, whether you’re a hospital, research group, health IT company, medical device or nonprofit, doesn’t matter, there’s a right way to do your marketing. And that is about connecting with people.”
5:30 – JM: “I read a quote from someone in an article about COVID this weekend and she was saying something like she just doesn’t think it’s real. And if masks work, why do you need to socially distance? And if social distancing works, why do you need a mask. And if both of those work, why do we need a vaccine? She just thought it was all nonsense. And I was shaking my head reading that and thinking, my God, that’s like saying seatbelts don’t work because nobody ever dies in a car crash. But of course what it should be isn’t does it work, but does it help. Masks help. Social distancing helps. A vaccine will help. All of them together will help a lot.”
7:00 – JM: “The healthcare story that should have been told here is: We can band together to fight this. We can support one another and we can come together for the sake of our community. And the biggest trope that should have been played on here is patriotism.”
13:01 – JM: “In terms of connection marketing, you might address fear but you wouldn’t use this denied fear where someone’s not even realizing that they’re feeling afraid and that you’re playing on it.”
13:56 – JM: “The difference is that connection marketing is about connecting and helping instead of exacerbating a fear in order to just get a response.”
Leading with Health is hosted by Jennifer Michelle. Jennifer has a Master’s in Public Health and Epidemiology and is a certified EMT. As President of Michelle Marketing Strategies, Jennifer specializes in healthcare marketing. She is on a mission to create a healthcare system that actually cares about the patients and the providers.
Photo by Merakist on Unsplash