3 Ways Event Marketing Betters Your Healthcare Brand

 

By Ronnie Higgins, Content Marketing Manager at Eventbrite

 

When popular retailers launch new products, they don’t have to do much promotion to capture people’s interest. Consumers are so eager to nab their goods, they’ll buy out their inventories in days, and sometimes minutes.

 

Healthcare “products,” on the other hand, rarely hold the same appeal. No one rushes to try the local hospital’s new MRI machine, posts on Instagram about routine doctor visits, or tweets longingly about potential surgeries. Unless they’re undergoing health crises, people don’t think much about healthcare services — period.

 

To make matters worse, many patients distrust doctors. Whether they’ve had a bad experience with a physician or believe doctors are motivated solely by profit, the result is often the same: Patients are reluctant to share their problems with providers.

 

The key to garnering trust with patients is to foster connections prior to illness — an approach most healthcare companies fail to apply. The majority of hospitals invest less than 1 percent of their revenue into marketing, while the typical retailer spends 10 percent or more on promotion. Those figures make it easy to see why smartphones and cosmetics outperform traditional medical ads.

 

But event marketing can turn the situation around. Community-focused events allow you to build connections and gather data on who your patients are and what they require. Here’s how to use event marketing to win people’s trust and differentiate your practice:

 

  1. Customize for your community.

 

Consider what your audience needs. Are diabetes diagnoses on the rise? Does a disproportionate number of people in your community struggle with obesity? Are too few people participating in regular cancer screenings? Identify common needs, and develop programming around those.

 

Classes on disease management, workshops on affordable healthy eating, and awareness-raising fundraisers are great ways to connect people with their providers. The conversations sparked by these events may put patients at ease about coming to the hospital when problems arise.

 

  1. Embrace email marketing.

 

Marketers see a 355 percent increase in conversion rates when they use targeted emails, so include this step in your promotion strategy. Segment your email list into demographics and create tailored messages for each group. The language used to invite teenagers to a breast cancer awareness event will differ from messaging targeted toward women in their 50s, but you want both to show up.

 

Begin the email campaign well in advance. Create regular emails that highlight all the relevant health tips, prize giveaways, and other unique benefits offered by your event to drum up excitement.

 

  1. Ask for immediate feedback.

 

Within 24 hours of the event, email a short attendee feedback survey of mostly multiple-choice questions. Ask attendees to rate the event on a scale of 1 to 10 and whether they would recommend your events to others. Give them space to write in comments, and take note of negative feedback so you don’t repeat any mistakes.

 

Event marketing transforms the patient-provider dynamic. Engaging, interesting events attach friendly faces to your hospital and assure community members that you’re invested in their well-being.

 

 

About the author

Ronnie Higgins works at Eventbrite, helping event planners level-up their registration game. Born and raised in New Orleans, he enjoys nothing more than helping people get together — whether it’s for a conference, class, or a citywide party like Mardi Gras.