Doing consumer research before a major rebranding campaign is worth the expense. A year after focus group testing prior to launching its campaign, one Philadelphia health system is tracking double-digit increases in call volume and website traffic.
Catholic Health East's Mercy Health System in Philadelphia is reporting success with the revamped brand the four-hospital system launched in 2012. A closer look at the preparation and execution of Mercy Health's strategic marketing plan illustrates how key research can be to positive end results.
Before a major rebranding campaign, quantitative consumer research is usually one of the first boxes checked off on the to-do list. It makes perfect sense to find out reach, audience, and preference data those surveys can provide. Mercy Health took this step with approximately 800 participants in a telephone survey that used the same questions from the previous surveys in years 2007 and 2010.
The results revealed an increase in market share and awareness, but a decrease in preference, which was troubling since Mercy Health's service area is the Delaware Valley. Patients who live in this area have access to highly acclaimed hospitals and health systems in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.
Gabrielle DeTora, principal of DeTora Consulting, who was acting interim chief marketing officer for Mercy Health during the development of the campaign, says that in addition to market pressures, the hospital was faced with launching a campaign on a thin budget.
"Mercy probably has a marketing budget for all four hospitals equal to one competing hospital," she says, noting that the competition includes academic medical centers, such as Penn Medicine, who have monster marketing budgets, and as such, big campaigns.
Knowing that, DeTora focused on Mercy Health's target market of households with income $50,000–$100,000, to find out what they wanted from a hospital.
"In this campaign, we really tried to understand what was more important to the consumer first," says DeTora, who says the hospital held focus groups with consumers in the fact-finding phase of the rebranding and also in the test marketing phase.
What emerged from the consumer focus groups was surprising, says DeTora. There was a gap between the consumer's and hospital's definition of a top doctor. Leadership believed that consumers identified a top doctor as someone affiliated with one of the nearby academic medical centers. But focus group research revealed that its target audience defined a top doctor differently.
"They defined top doctors as someone who is going to take the time to listen to them, to understand their medical issue, which was totally different than how the administration defined a top doctor," she says. "That changed the language associated with the campaign."
DeTora says she shared some of the quotes from consumers to convince leadership that the branding needed to be on point with what patients wanted. Without having that kind of insight, Mercy Health might have been on a completely different brand trajectory that would have no chance of resonating with their audience.
Consumer focus groups are not totally uncommon in rebranding research, but they are also not used as much as they could be, particularly when it comes to test marketing the campaign an organization is launching.
DeTora says Mercy Health took the extra step and test marketed four ideas developed by ad agency Swanson Russell, and tested on a group that mirrored the demographic and geographic make up of the previous focus groups. It was above and beyond the marketing budget she was given, but fighting for the extra resources was important to the success or failure of the brand messaging.
"In the past, they launched campaigns, funded them, and then after the fact, we reported that it didn't work," says DeTora. "We now have the opportunity to see evidence that a campaign will or will not work before we even go to launch. It was not in the budget, and I did sell it as the opportunity cost of not doing this research."
The message that consumers responded to the most was one that identified Mercy Health as a hospital system that would take the time to get to know patients and their individual issues. DeTora notes a key component of the campaign even came from its focus group research with consumers.
"The idea that the consumer defined a top doctor as somebody who would spend time with them, not treated like a number, became the tag line, "You Deserve More," she says.
The revitalized brand was rolled out during subsequent service line campaigns, the first being cardiology in 2012. In year-over-year results, call volume is up 40%, its website traffic has increased 50%, and all areas of cardio services have increased in volume by 10%, which makes leadership happy.
"We are very pleased with the campaign," says Daniel Bair, FACHE, administrative director, cardiovascular and radiology services for Mercy Health System. "Even with our limited resources and a highly competitive market, the results have been within expectation on most fronts and exceeding expectations on many others."
Going beyond the standard consumer preference survey may mean extra money upfront, but as DeTora points out, for systems with limited resources, it pays off because the organization knows the consumer better and can craft a meaningful message instead of just a catchy one.
Jacqueline Fellows is a contributing writer at HealthLeaders Media.