Integrated Digital Marketing Campaigns Drive Growth for Beaufort Memorial Hospital

For Beaufort Memorial, an integrated digital marketing strategy guided by True North Custom has proven to be effective in driving patient volumes and consumer engagement. In today’s post-pandemic environment, capturing and maintaining consumer relationships is a mission critical task, and one that Beaufort and True North have bravely tackled together.

Dis­cov­er how a growth mind­set and respon­si­ble dig­i­tal strat­e­gy has been instru­men­tal in both guid­ing the com­mu­ni­ty and gen­er­at­ing leads for key ser­vice lines.

THE ORGANIZATION

Serv­ing a tri-coun­ty area in the Low­coun­try region of South Car­oli­na, Beau­fort Memo­r­i­al includes a 197-bed, acute care hos­pi­tal, a free­stand­ing out­pa­tient surgery cen­ter locat­ed on the hos­pi­tal cam­pus, a full-ser­vice can­cer cen­ter, three urgent care loca­tions and mul­ti­ple out­pa­tient med­ical office buildings.

THE BACKGROUND

“True North is a true partner
in every sense of the word.
We com­mu­ni­cate open­ly and
fre­quent­ly; there is no problem
we can’t tack­le togeth­er; they
are extreme­ly cre­ative and
respon­sive; and, they think
about our needs proactively
and responsibly.”
— Court­ney McDermott,
Direc­tor of Mar­ket­ing at
Beau­fort Memo­r­i­al Hospital

Beau­fort Memo­r­i­al turned to True North in 2019 to re-think dig­i­tal strat­e­gy and build effec­tive con­tent and cam­paign plans designed to dri­ve growth across key ser­vice lines like ortho­pe­dics, vas­cu­lar, OB/GYN, oncol­o­gy and access care. COVID-19 cer­tain­ly had oth­er plans in mind for 2020, but agili­ty and ded­i­ca­tion to serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty by both Beau­fort and True North drove con­tin­ued engage­ment to build loy­al­ty and set the stage for an effec­tive rebound strat­e­gy in 2021.

Togeth­er with True North, Beau­fort Memo­r­i­al devel­oped an inte­grat­ed dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that includes paid search, dis­play and social media adver­tis­ing, email mar­ket­ing, retar­get­ing, SEO and organ­ic social media plans.

These tac­tics were designed to tar­get the right con­sumers with the right mes­sage at the right time to encour­age them to engage with Beau­fort Memo­r­i­al for var­i­ous health­care concerns.

THE RESULTS

COVID 19 Response Strategies

From late 2019 — March 2020, cam­paigns had just begun to ramp up and prove suc­cess. The pan­dem­ic upend­ed our plans togeth­er, requir­ing piv­ots in how we pro­mot­ed ser­vices and engaged with the com­mu­ni­ty. Here’s a sum­ma­ry of our suc­cess­es from March — August 2020.

Telehealth: BMH Care Anywhere

Beau­fort Memo­r­i­al offers tele­health via their BMH Care Any­where plat­form. Like many oth­er health sys­tems in 2020, expand­ed uti­liza­tion of tele­health was a major pri­or­i­ty for Beau­fort in an effort to con­tin­ue serv­ing their community’s health needs while min­i­miz­ing phys­i­cal con­tact. Through just paid search, in March and April, BMH Care Any­where reg­is­trants increased by 1,500% with a cost per lead that fell from $12 to $3. New reg­is­tra­tions con­tin­ued to grow from May — August, and cost per lead stayed under $8.

COVID-19 Communications

As a trust­ed local health­care provider, we also believed it would be crit­i­cal to stay in touch with con­sumers about the evolv­ing sit­u­a­tion. True North and Beau­fort quick­ly devel­oped a land­ing page high­light­ing Beaufort’s response to the pan­dem­ic that encour­aged con­sumers to sign up for week­ly COVID-19 updates via email from the health sys­tem. The cam­paign gen­er­at­ed 1,000 leads in just the first 2 weeks at a $0.72 cost per lead. As of August 30, 2,050 leads total had been gen­er­at­ed at a $1.61 cost per lead. The ongo­ing week­ly emails shift­ed to bi-week­ly in the fall of 2020, but con­tin­ue to per­form well with open rates con­sis­tent­ly over 30%, with many par­tic­u­lar­ly time­ly mes­sages with open rates over 60%.

Post-Pandemic Service Line Growth

In the fall of 2020, Beau­fort and True North turned atten­tion back to dri­ving vol­umes across key ser­vice lines like pri­ma­ry care, OB/GYN and ortho­pe­dics. By lever­ag­ing the engage­ment and trust build dur­ing COVID-19, we were able to quick­ly prove suc­cess in our abil­i­ty to dri­ve rev­enue for Beau­fort Memorial.

Note: As you review these met­rics, check out our post on best prac­tices for patient acqui­si­tion cam­paigns to under­stand what these num­bers mean, and what the aver­ages in health­care look like. For paid search specif­i­cal­ly in Pri­ma­ry Care and Women’s Health, our met­rics com­pared to indus­try aver­ages of a 3.3% CTR, 3.4% CVR and $78 CPL are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of our abil­i­ty to con­nect the right con­sumers with the right mes­sages at the right time to dri­ve cam­paign per­for­mance and efficiency.

Primary Care

A major empha­sis for Beau­fort Memo­r­i­al has always been pri­ma­ry care and fam­i­ly med­i­cine ser­vices. From Sept. 1, 2020 — April 31, 2021, our teams have effec­tive­ly dri­ven vol­umes these providers as evi­denced by the fol­low­ing performance:

Paid Search

• Over 4,000 ad clicks at an 11.2% click-through rate (CTR)
• 22.84% land­ing page con­ver­sion rate (CVR)
• 885 qual­i­fied new patient leads at an aver­age cost per lead (CPL) of $9.63

Paid Social

• Over 8,400 ad clicks at a 1.1% CTR
• 11.2% land­ing page CVR
• 946 qual­i­fied new patient leads at a $5.63 CPL

Women’s Health

As the pri­ma­ry health­care deci­sion mak­er in the home, cap­tur­ing the loy­al­ty of women in the Low­coun­try is time and resources well spent. From gen­er­al women’s health to mater­ni­ty care to healthy aging, True North and Beau­fort have exe­cut­ed effec­tive patient acqui­si­tion cam­paigns for these key demographics.

Paid Search

• Over 4,000 ad clicks at an 14.24% CTR
• 27.23% land­ing page CVR
• 1,036 qual­i­fied new patient leads at an $8.06 CPL

Paid Social

• Over 5,400 ad clicks at a .9% CTR
• 5% land­ing page CVR
• 274 qual­i­fied new patient leads at a $18.84 CPL

Orthopedics

With the steep decline in elec­tive vol­umes dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Beau­fort Memo­r­i­al ortho­pe­dic providers were chomp­ing at the bit to see patients again. In Jan­u­ary 2021, we re-imple­ment­ed a dig­i­tal strat­e­gy designed to cap­ture vol­umes that ignit­ed an uptick in momen­tum for joint replacement.

Paid Search

• Over 1,000 ad clicks at an 8.16% CTR
• 7.73% land­ing page CVR for joint replace­ment consults
• 81 qual­i­fied joint replace­ment can­di­dates at an $84.77 CPL

Paid Social—downloadable guide strat­e­gy to cap­ture mid-fun­nel leads

• Over 2,500 ad clicks at a 1.16% CTR
• 8.2% land­ing page CVR
• 206 guide down­loads at a $9.63 CPL
• 42.72% aver­age email open rate with 39 bot­tom of fun­nel con­ver­sions from email tactics

Blog and Organic Social Strategies

Lever­ag­ing Beaufort’s engaged providers and con­sumer base, True North and BMH believed in the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lever­age blog and organ­ic social media mar­ket­ing as a strate­gic brand effort.

We began our work togeth­er on this effort in ear­ly 2021, and from May 1, 2020 — April 30, 2021, we’ve made sig­nif­i­cant progress:

• 64% year over year increase in blog sessions
• 500% increase in blog ses­sions dri­ven by organ­ic search—indica­tive of suc­cess in dri­ving SEO performance
• 1,371% increase in social post reactions
• 1,783% increase in social post comments
• 350% increase in social post shares

While COVID-19 relat­ed con­tent cer­tain­ly drove some of this impres­sive improve­ment, hall­marks of non-COVID relat­ed con­tent that’s per­formed well include:

• Periph­er­al Vas­cu­lar Dis­ease vs. Periph­er­al Artery Disease
• Know your lemons: How to do a breast self-exam
• Home reme­dies for bug bites
• Symp­toms of per­i­menopause: what you need to know
• Your colonoscopy prep diet

What’s next?

The True North and Beau­fort Memo­r­i­al teams con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate on new ways to engage with tar­get con­sumers and dri­ve rev­enue across pri­or­i­ty ser­vice lines. As dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing evolves, we’re con­tin­u­ous­ly test­ing new chan­nels as well as new tac­tics for old chan­nels. We’re also thought­ful about the evo­lu­tion of Beaufort’s brand, and how that extends to tra­di­tion­al marketing.

Here are a few things we’ll be excit­ed to report on in the com­ing months:

• Brand cam­paign launch with updat­ed tra­di­tion­al media cre­ative and TV spots focused on Ortho­pe­dics and Can­cer, specif­i­cal­ly, with mes­sag­ing extend­ing across ser­vice lines
• Inclu­sion of Pan­do­ra, Spo­ti­fy and YouTube adver­tis­ing to sup­port brand cam­paign roll out and test the effec­tive­ness of these dig­i­tal brand channels
• Com­pre­hen­sive ortho­pe­dics cam­paign with a microsite expe­ri­ence to engage with con­sumers with a vari­ety of joint health con­cerns and con­nect them with the right provider
• Expan­sion of native adver­tis­ing to sup­port ser­vice line growth initiatives
• Addi­tion­al down­load­able guides for women’s health to cre­ate more mid-fun­nel con­ver­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties unique to spe­cif­ic demo­graph­ics and health­care needs
• Opti­mized web­site con­tent to dri­ve organ­ic traf­fic and con­ver­sions and boost SEO performance