True North Custom, an integrated content marketing agency, had a phenomenal year by helping healthcare organizations seize the opportunity to become a trusted voice for consumers looking for care. Their team’s hard work won them the coveted 2021 Medigy HITMC Award for Agency of the Year (Provider Focus).
We sat down with Eric Silberman, CEO at True North Custom to find out how they succeeded during the pandemic and what opportunities lie ahead for healthcare in the next 12 months.
Happy for Clients
“We are incredibly honored by the Award,” stated Silberman. “It was really meaningful and validating for the True North Custom team who put in so much hard work this past year…BUT…what meant more to us was that two of our clients won Medigy HITMC Awards for their work. That was tremendously satisfying.”
American Health Imaging, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging services in the United States and a True North Custom client, won the Award for Marketing Campaign of the Year. When the pandemic hit, they quickly pivoted all their campaigns to address consumer fears and reach more patients who might be delaying medical imaging. The results from the campaign were outstanding.
Beaufort Memorial Hospital (BMH), offers telehealth via their BMH Care Anywhere platform. Through an integrated campaign that educated consumers about telehealth, BMH and their partner True North Custom increased registration by 1,500% in just two months. This success won BMH the 2021 Medigy HITMC Award for Landing Page of the Year.
Success of Integrated Campaigns
“Our business has been successful at providing highly customized content,” explained Silberman. “We have found that by intersecting really precise digital targeting around what consumers are searching for with really good content – that combination makes all the difference in terms of outcomes.”
Silberman feels that the success of these integrated campaigns has been a notable surprise in the past year.
“The key is engaging consumers at the point they are thinking about care,” continued Silberman. “Not just the type of care, but IF they even need it and where should they get it.”
Being effective with these types of campaigns means creating materials that are educational in nature and designed specifically to help consumers make informed decisions about their care. Key to this approach is engendering trust – which means being fact-based, speaking in a tone that is appropriate to the target audience, and being culturally aware.
Opportunity for Healthcare Organizations
The topic of trust permeated the conversation with Silberman. He firmly believes that healthcare is riding a consumer wave of trust and it incumbent on healthcare organization to seize the opportunity to build on that foundation.
“Our opportunity is to look at market forces and consumption dynamics and figure out how healthcare can come alongside what consumers are searching for,” said Silberman.
This will be especially important as more competitors enter the healthcare market of the next 12 months. Amazon, Wal-Mart and other companies are implementing their own forms of retail health which could threaten traditional healthcare providers who fail to recognize the need to get closer to their patients.
Demand Transparency
As more and more healthcare organizations partner with marketing agencies, Silberman strongly recommends that marketing leaders demand and prioritize transparency from their partners. This doesn’t just mean transparency around results (which Silberman says is a ‘given’), but around market strategies and approaches as well.
Healthcare marketing is not meant to be a black box and healthcare organizations should have complete visibility into the tactics, approaches and thinking behind the strategies being proposed by agency partners.
Watch the full interview and hear:
- How marketing is moving up a few rungs on the on the “Trust Ladder”
- How Dr. Neuwirth’s book Reframing Healthcare predicted the current state of healthcare marketing
- Silberman’s hockey analogy
- Why a decentralized approach to marketing may be key to post-COVID recovery
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