MARKETING

In today’s landscape where consumers are bombarded with up to 10,000 marketing messages a day, health care marketers are increasingly looking for ways to break through the “noise.” At OhioHealth, one strategy that is working effectively is experiential marketing — creating personal experiences that engage the consumer in your brand.

That’s the approach the central Ohio-based health system took when it opened seven freestanding emergency departments (EDs) throughout its geographic area in 2018. The goal was not to drive patients to the new EDs; but to ensure that the patients who did go to the facilities were choosing the right level of acuity between primary care, urgent care and the EDs based on their medical needs. The marketing and events team believed traditional tactics such as the classic open house, direct mail, etc., just wouldn’t cut it.

“We knew we had to create high-level buzz and awareness and get a deeper level of engagement with residents of these seven different, diverse communities if we were going to get them to understand the appropriate place to go for the type of care needed,” said Kara Coates, OhioHealth’s director of events and sponsorships.

Results from Experiential Marketing Research

Research from Condé Nast’s Event Track 2017 Study highlighted several data insights that served as a catalyst for implementing experiential marketing:

• One in four people are more likely to recommend a brand to their friends after attending an event.
• Seventy-two percent of consumers say friends’ posts about branded experiences makes them more likely to purchase that brand.
• Seventy percent of consumers say they feel more positive about a brand after viewing content from experiences and events.

“So they don’t even need to be present at your experience to have a positive impact from it,” said Coates. “That’s an incredible return on investment and incredible reach.”

Pop-Up Event at Festival a Big Success

After months of research and brainstorming, the team came up with its plan: an experiential pop-up event throughout the region. The first one, held at a community festival, attracted 10,000 people a day in the parking lot of a busy shopping center. They set up a large blue-and-white OhioHealth tent, said  senior director of marketing communications Lewis Sanderow, “In just a couple of hours in we had people packed around the place.” It was, he said, “a way of meeting people where they were and weaving ourselves into the community.”

The “experience” started with a game card. Visitors received the card with a stamp for participating. Then they needed to get three of the other five options stamped. They could download the OhioHealth app or demonstrate they already had it; play an electronic game designed to provide education about the right level of care and promote player competition; take a selfie and use the OhioHealth hashtag on social media; or visit the emergency medical services within the tent to learn CPR. On the back of the card they could fill in their contact information and be entered into a drawing for a Fitbit, thus adding names to the system’s database.

Coates said the event met all expectations, noting that it was cost effective, nimble and employed the tactic of surprise and delight to engage consumers. “Using competition and achievement coupled with education, we created a really fun environment that translated directly into results.

Afterward, the health system’s annual brand-tracking study around emergency services showed a statistically significant difference between the preference for OhioHealth’s emergency services versus the competition’s.

The events not only helped the hospital meet its annual budget goal for the standalone ERs, but also helped the system accomplish its annual goal of more than 100,000 downloads of its app. In addition, visitors answered more than 25,000 questions on the game. Because they had built in tracking options, the team knew that 20 percent of the responses were incorrect – providing them with a pathway for additional education.

“We can try and understand how we need to refocus our messaging to address the areas that are stumping people,” Sanderow said. “That’s been a real game changer for us as marketers.”

Most important is that, to date, acuity levels at the free-standing centers match what would be seen in a typical community hospital ED, he said. “This has been a really big achievement for the organization, both from a marketing standpoint and a business objective standpoint.”

“This journey is just getting started for us,” he said. “We want to start think about this how this can help us tell stories, further engage with our community and really evolve what we started.”

OhioHealth Tips on What Makes a Great Experience?

• It should add value. The customer should know what’s in it for them.
• It should share a message about the brand.
• It should clearly express the benefits of the brand.
• It should be unique and stand out.
• It should be scalable and shareable throughout the brand.

 

This article features interview with:
Lewis Sanderow
Senior Director, Marketing Communications
OhioHealth
Columbus, Ohio

Kara Coates
Director, Events & Sponsorships
OhioHealth
Columbus, Ohio