Why is Brand Identity Important?
Strong medical branding is vital to the success of any healthcare practice. Without proper marketing tools, it is very difficult to individualize your brand and set it apart from competitors. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this – but the most important factor is ensuring that potential patients can connect with your brand in a way that makes them feel valued.
Healthcare branding consists of many mediums, and you must maintain your unique branding. This includes your website, social media, and any other marketing tools your practice may use.
When potential patients recognize consistent healthcare branding throughout your marketing, they are more likely to be familiar with your brand and be more willing to create connections.
Although this array of marketing channels is beneficial, knowing where to focus your efforts is sometimes tricky. Therefore, it is marketing professionals like NewGen who come in with an organized marketing plan to build your patient base and community reach.
Are you trying to expand your practice? Allow these six tips to guide you through healthcare brand building.
1. Share Your Values
Making your values widely known is essential to brand building in healthcare. A strong brand identity allows your patients to dedicate a personality to your practice, therefore making them feel more connected.
To do this you must first clearly define your healthcare brands identity with each touchstone of interaction for your audience. From the first interaction with your brand, on your website, to your brochures, in-house documents, social media channels, blog posts, and video content- articulating your core values as a brand is the number one way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
2. Individualize Your Practice
When it comes tbrand identity for B2B companies, it is important to distinguish your brand from the competition and keep your user base in mind. If you are exclusively marketing to surgeons and medical staff make sure you are using language that directly targets your intended audience, and that is curated in a way that defines your brand while standing out.
Defining your healthcare brand is about making sure you have distinct qualities that will individualize your practice and radically set you apart from the other companies that do the same things you do.
For example, let’s look at the distinction between these two children’s hospitals:
UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital compared with the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital.
Although many of the services offered overlap and have the same goal of treating children with conditions and helping them to get back into a place of wellness- they have very different healthcare brand representations. Keep this in mind when you are implementing new strategies when individualizing your brand.
As a healthcare marketing agency, New Gen Marketing has seen many different types of healthcare practices, from B2C or B2B brands and we can help all your needs based on the type of healthcare brand you want to be.
3. Stick to Your Brand Identity
Brand identity is one of the most important aspects of healthcare marketing. With so many different kinds out there, making your brand stand out can be difficult but crucial. When branding, there are many aspects to consider.
These can include the types of colors you use, the overall aesthetic of your content and how it matches your healthcare brand and the type of content you want your brand to be associated with.
Another aspect to consider is your website. Is it outdated, and if it’s not, does the content on your website reflect your brand properly? These are important questions to ask when you are branding your content.
Let’s say, for example, you make a social media post that does really well, however, if it is not properly branded people won’t know your brand is the one creating the content they are consuming. So although you’ll have more social media growth, your brand as a whole won’t have the same growth.
4. Connect with Patients
Connecting with your patients is a great way to engage them with your brand but it is not as a clean-cut concept as you may think. The phrase time is money rings true in this case. People are busy, it’s as simple as that and if their initial interaction with your brand is negative it can affect how your brand connects with patients.
First impressions are vital when it comes to patients connecting with your brand. With this in mind, make sure that any first interaction is as friendly, engaging, and educational as possible.
New patients need to feel welcome and understood if you want them to remain patients. Healthcare is scary, especially for those who feel they have no one to turn to. Being there for those individuals will help establish your brand as a brand people can trust and connect with.
5. Strengthen Your Socials
Whether you want to believe it or not, social media is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. It serves as a platform to connect with patients all around the world. It can showcase your brand’s values, ideas, content and so much more. Social media also helps with engaging new and old patients.
If you don’t have social media or haven’t kept up with it, now is the time to do so. Whenever anyone comes across a new brand, almost always their first thought is to check their socials. If your brand is active on social media this will give a good first impression and show your brand’s legitimacy.
6. Your Mission
Having a mission shows that as a brand you are focused on helping people, rather than the money aspect. This will make your brand seem more approachable and convey an overall friendlier environment. You want people to understand that your brand is here to help in any way shape or form.
Patients want more than anything to feel heard and to feel like they are more than another number in the system. Having a mission that conveys that whatever it is they are going through is important and warrants attention, will not only make a patient feel better about their overall health, but it’ll promote your brand positively.
NewGen Can Help
All these tips can help improve your brand’s image and make you stand out from the competitors. With that in mind, it can be overwhelming having to keep track of all these things.
Times are changing and so is healthcare. It is easy to fall behind when everything seems to be changing so fast. Luckily, NewGen is here to help.
We can keep track of all the things that would be difficult to do on your own. We can handle your content and expertly market your brand to promote organic growth. If you have any questions or would just like to chat, contact NewGen today!