Through our extensive work with a variety of health care organizations across the country, we’ve consistently come across trends health care brand leaders can’t afford to ignore. Here are a few tips to help you capitalize on these trends in 2016.

Trend #1:

People’s expectations around health care delivery are increasingly based on the high-quality experiences they receive from other brands.

If you’re focused on patient experience, you’re already behind. Throughout the health care journey, a person is only a patient for a short time, but they are customers before, during and after treatment. Many touchpoints influence people beyond hospital walls. Patient experience is becoming a familiar term for health care marketers and leadership teams, but the real opportunity lies in a more holistic approach to how people experience your brand — think brand experience instead of patient experience. A journey map can help you understand the patient journey, so you can reshape the customer experience.

Contact Kim Hofland for a worksheet to guide you in creating your own experience map.

Trend #2:

People are shopping for doctors and hospitals the same way they shop for movies and hotels.

When it comes to consumerization, health care leaders can borrow from best practices in service-driven businesses outside health care. The trend of health care consumerization shows no signs of slowing down, so health care strategists need to take the lead from consumer organizations and be more flexible, find scrappy ways to gather insights and fail forward fast. The orientation to being nimble and taking quick action is new, but necessary, in health care. With a relentless focus on knowing, understanding and responding to customers, you can forge deep engagement that drives behavior.

Learn more about the emancipation of health care consumers.

Trend #3:

Shaping the brand is no longer one department’s responsibility.

Health care strategists must evolve from brand cop to brand concierge. By adopting a brand concierge mentality, health care strategists can retire their role as brand police and can clear the way to capitalize on the fast pace that’s dominating the industry. It’s no longer about whether the logo is in the “right” place. Now, it’s about enabling and empowering a diverse group of brand leaders and employees across the organization to use brand to move the world around them. It’s now everyone’s job to build the brand.

Learn how leading companies use online resources to help communicate, educate and activate their brands.

Kim Hofland is Monigle’s Senior Marketing Director and one of our health care branding experts.

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Kim Hofland
January 15, 2016 By Kim Hofland