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Lexington Medical Center Puts a New Spin on Video Testimonials

 |  By Marianne@example.com  
   October 06, 2010

The video patient testimonial is nothing new to healthcare advertising, but today multimedia campaigns enable testimonials to be richer, more informative, and more engaging. Lexington Medical Center uses many marketing elements to share patient testimonials it filmed for a recent women's services campaign. If you go to Lexington Medical Center's women's services microsite, the first thing you notice isn't a photograph of a physician or a list of offered services. The bulk of the page consists of a media player that hosts several-minutes long videos of patients telling their experience with the West Columbia, SC hospital.

One features a college student whose mother is a nurse at LMC, another features a newlywed whose whole family receives care at LMC, and a third features a grandmother and local business owner whose had a number of experiences with the hospital?from witnessing the grand opening to celebrating the births of her grandchildren.

The microsite also contains videos of LMC physicians talking about their practices and personal backgrounds. LMC marketers created both sets of videos so patients could really learn about patient experiences and women's services physicians before even setting foot in the 384-bed facility.

"The video interviews show the doctors talking about their philosophy and background and it gives an overview of their practice," Mark Shelley, director of marketing at LMC, said in the September issue of Healthcare Marketing Advisor. "It's the next best thing to sitting down with a physician and interviewing them before you ever come to the hospital."

The integrated campaign, which Shelley says is the most comprehensive the hospital has done in years, consists of print, TV, outdoor, and online elements. The print ads also depict real patients.

"We focused on real women that were patients in the print ads," Shelley said. "We picked women that represented different stages of a woman's life. We used them in the print ads and then we actually videotaped them telling their story and what they think of our hospital. Then we put that on the website so you get to know these women a little bit better."

LMC decided to create the campaign, which launched in April, to build on their reputation as a great place to have babies.

"The message is that we are here for the woman for her entire life?from having babies to all the other services they'll need as they get older," Shelley said. "It's a message that we really wanted to focus on and one we really invest our ad dollars into."

Shelley views the women's services effort as an umbrella campaign. The second leg, which launches in September, will focus on the many OBGYN practices affiliated with LMC.

"We have a number of OBGYN websites and rather than promote each individually, we promote them as a whole," he said.

This leg of the campaign will also feature physician videos.

Through the videos, "you get to know the physician as a person, which is rare," Shelley said. "How often do you get to go in and interview six doctors before you decide on one? Here you really get an idea of who they are because they get very personal and talk about why the practice medicine."

The videos are a crucial element of the campaign, because they help depict the real hospital experience.

"We use these women in the ads talking about the hospital, so it's coming from their own experience," Shelley said. "So when you come here and you've seen our TV ads or print ads or heard the radio, you're going to experience pretty much what we have portrayed."

Marianne Aiello is a contributing writer at HealthLeaders Media.

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