Digital Mammography Campaign Clears Competition

Firelands Regional Medical Center was the first healthcare provider in its northern Ohio service area to provide full-field digital mammography. That distinction ended in summer 2009, when a local multi-specialty physician group also began offering the same service. Firelands Regional marketers quickly crafted an integrated marketing campaign to secure their position as the leading organization for digital mammography.

"With only a short window of opportunity to get a foothold in the market and take advantage of being the first in the market with this new service, Firelands needed to create visibility, awareness, and utilization of this new service before the competition enters the market,"marketers wrote in their 2009 HealthLeaders Media Marketing Awards submission form. "Additionally, because the procedure is relatively new, we knew that potential patients would require education on the procedure and the benefits of digital mammography versus film mammography."

The campaign consisted of print, outdoor, and TV ads and ran for four months.

"The billboard was created to establish visibility and awareness of the new procedure,"marketers wrote. "The coordinating newspaper ad provided the patient with further information about the technology and the benefits to the patient and encouraged patients to schedule their appointment. The cable ad further emphasized the importance of having mammographies and the benefits of the digital mammography technology."

During the four months of the campaign, Firelands performed 239 more mammographies during the same months of the previous year when no marketing campaign ran, representing an 8.6% increase in volume. Additoinally, more than 244 new patients used Fireland's Women's Imaging Center.