7 Strategies for Successfully Launching New Healthcare Initiatives

Marketing plays a pivotal role in introducing new healthcare providers to your community and expanding access to medical care. An effective launch of a new facility or location, a provider, or service offering helps referring providers and potential patients be well-informed about the new healthcare professional and their services, building a solid patient base and establishing a practice within the community.

It can be challenging to fill schedules initially for new providers or locations because there may not be an established reputation or patient base in your specific market. Use marketing resources to make referring providers and potential patients aware of the new services you offer. These seven strategies will help you build a solid patient base and establish the practice in your community.

1. Introduce your brand to the community on the right footing

The goal of all new initiatives is to increase awareness about your organization, and eventually, increase patient volumes for priority service lines. Your initial launch should include a variety of integrated channels to effectively introduce a new or expanded offering. A comprehensive approach that covers all stages of the customer journey keeps you prepared and equipped for the challenges of launching new providers or service lines, making you feel confident in your strategies. 

We want to maintain some fundamental principles regarding digital marketing and advertising and the funnel concept. At the top of the funnel, it's about creating awareness, fostering engagement, and educating people with high-quality content on how you can be a valuable resource. As we move toward the bottom of the funnel, it's about capitalizing on active search volume so your brand comes to mind when seeking a primary care provider or specialty care services.

Highlight the significance of this program for the community and explain how we want people to take advantage of this new service. This message will be adapted into different advertising formats, including TV spots, traditional advertising materials, and digital assets. The impact of the service line on the bottom line of your health system will determine the scope of your campaign efforts. 

2. Expand geographically

Launching new locations enhances community access to healthcare services and extends your geographic footprint. Facility expansion often brings the challenge of low brand awareness in these new areas. 

A strategic and proactive marketing approach is essential to raise awareness and adapt to market dynamics previously unexplored by your services. Consider a direct mail campaign to help the community learn about your services.

Additionally, expand demographic and geo-targeting to reach regions, counties, and zip codes that are part of the long-term growth strategy. This strategic approach will help engage the community and plan for future expansion into targeted areas.

3. Enhance brand presence for new offerings

When expanding horizontally, it’s crucial to establish a strong brand identity for new services, especially if they significantly differ from your core offerings. This is particularly important when venturing into services where the public commonly associates another brand with that service, as it helps to overcome brand loyalty challenges. 

Start by defining the brand strategy, taking any existing brand campaign guidelines into account, and then applying them to the new service.

4. Collaborate between marketing and operations teams

Successful program launches greatly depend on seamless integration between marketing and operational planning. Aligning go-to-market strategies with internal stakeholders is a shared responsibility. Effective collaboration ensures all parties are informed and in agreement with the proposed initiatives, making everyone feel involved and integral to the success of the launches.

Starting to promote a program and fill provider schedules can be a challenge. At the front end, planning and setting up processes and expectations are crucial to creating flexible, agile and predictable workflows. This includes: 

• Determine your main priorities. Factors like the type of photography needed, the time investment from the provider, and specific stories or highlights to be shared are all important considerations. 
• Establish expected turnaround times. It's essential to know about a new clinic or provider in advance so that everything is in place when it's time to start advertising.
• Fill in the missing gaps. Confirming critical information, including contact and lead recipient information and other necessary details, can help prevent hurdles during launch time.
• Map out operational needs. Do you need certain collaboration with clinical teams? How much lead time do your centers or practices need prior to a campaign launch? Figuring out these answers, such as key dates of campaign start dates and when patients can be seen, can prevent headaches in the future. 
• Understand key information. Having a plan for reimbursement costs and typical campaign deliverables is crucial to establishing readiness to attract new patients.

5. Prepare teams and providers for ongoing patient acquisition

Once you launch, transition into ongoing acquisition and sustaining momentum for that provider. This process can evolve quite a bit. 

Some service lines require minimal marketing support, while others, like urgent care and certain access care marketing initiatives, need a constant flow of patient acquisition and lead generation-focused advertising strategies. Regardless, we typically scale back to just PPC strategy and some strategic engagement strategies through social media, direct mail and other upper funnel tactics.

Continue to monitor reputation, locations and listings to make sure the basics are covered. Your practices may experience growing pains trying to handle increased call volumes. To prevent this, open up lines of communication to practice managers and listen to their pain points. 

6. Take an omnichannel approach to promoting your health system 

Strategic analysis of your patient leads and strategic list building within your CRM can help inform patients with certain health conditions about new services that might interest them. For example, to support a women’s health campaign, you could email women who have recently given birth about new pediatric services. It's important to manage your contact list carefully and be mindful of anyone who may have had a negative experience. Encourage those people to take advantage of expanded offerings.

These are effective ways to promote related services to people who need support and would prefer to continue receiving care within your health system. Additionally, broader new services can be promoted to potential patients and existing patients through email and direct mail campaigns. This could include promoting a new urgent care practice, telehealth services, and other offerings that are highly recommended in certain clinical situations.

7. Measure success with reporting tools

Track performance through specific KPIs to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns. Setting up metrics to measure success helps optimize strategies throughout the campaign. Using these tools prevents throwing resources into the wind but, instead, investing in results-driven actions.

The bottom line for healthcare marketing teams

To embody these strategies into your operations, follow these practical steps:

• Take a collaborative approach. The success of integrating healthcare provider marketing and new services and locations into the community heavily relies on a unified approach between marketing and operational teams. This creates a go-to-market strategy aligning with clinical offerings and patient needs.
• Introduce comprehensive, new initiatives into the market effectively. Building a patient base requires well-planned, integrated marketing campaigns. When launching new initiatives, leverage digital and traditional channels to communicate unique value propositions and establish a strong brand identity in new and existing markets.
• Use historical data for targeted engagement. Track marketing strategy performance with KPIs so your team is making the most data-driven decisions. These findings are crucial when adjusting tactics, refreshing creative assets and maximizing ROI. Feedback loops from stakeholders and the community are essential in refining and improving outreach efforts to better serve healthcare needs.

Finding a creative healthcare marketing partner

At True North Custom, we distill key consumer insights to help healthcare professionals navigate the complex process of successfully bringing new services to market.

True North is an integrated marketing agency with 50+ creative, digital and account specialists dedicated to healthcare marketing. Our passion lies in making a meaningful impact on individuals' health and well-being. As a Google Premier Partner, we have worked with numerous hospitals and health systems to enhance marketing efforts and broader healthcare initiatives to drive brand awareness, patient volumes and fundraising. 

Ready to launch your next healthcare initiative with impact? Contact us to discover how True North Custom can support your team with strategic insights and integrated marketing solutions tailored for healthcare success.

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