Category: Consulting and Planning

A key premise of our marketing philosophy is that integration generates marketing leverage.

Leverage is a concept of physics whereby force is increased.  In the classic sense, leverage is a measure of the force amplification achieved by use of a mechanical device.

In marketing, that force amplifier can be produced by use of integration where coordinated tactics enhance the performance of one another.  These points of integration are found where marketing platforms, media and technology interact.

In a holistic marketing environment there are myriad integration points that can drive leverage. Evolving technologies and imaginative minds are generating new ones all the time.

And you’ve seen this in action – Creative advertising disrupts the attention of a consumer, drawing crowds to an event, generating PR coverage, producing Social Media buzz, driving web traffic, and online orders that lifts sales and profit.

To create leverage, the coordinated campaign strategies must be conceived together, with digital infrastructure to support it. Creativity in messaging is a constant, not a variable.

Just as in the physical world, it is possible to consistently produce greater lift, impact, or force by utilizing the leverage created by integration and creativity.  The proof point is simple in that the sum of production will always be greater than the efforts exerted.  That equates to higher KPI’s and return on marketing.

This concept is so central to our thinking at STIR that we’ve painted it on our walls to remind us at every turn what makes STIR truly unique.

The marketing industry prides itself on staying current with cultural trends and on top of communications technologies, yet some of the jargon we use is well behind the curve. Several years ago, as we were working on some self-promotional materials, we innovated by using the term “integrated messaging” to describe what we do. This ties to our unique agency strategy and positioning in an essential way. It’s our marketing methodology.

We, like many advertising agencies, were using the term “creative” to describe our work product. This was a reflexive reference born from the fact that when all that agencies produced was advertising, all of our work was generated by the creative department.

But times have changed. And while we pride ourselves on producing some amazing “creative,” we are an integrated shop that also develops myriad other published content. In fact, in some cases, the content needs to be highly factual and credible – anything but creative. We found that using the term “creative” actually encouraged the wrong type of thinking on the part of our staff and our clients.

At that time we elected to use the term “messaging” when describing the totality of the communications that we produce at STIR, because each platform in our integrated communications matrix seeks to perform a specialized function and communicate specific messages in highly specialized ways.

In fact, there are many exceptions to term “creative” that are absolutely essential to any marketer today and that have become a staple in our integrated advertising agency. We have no set rules within the agency, but this is a short sample of how we tend to refer to the ‘non-creative’ messaging that we produce by discipline.

Advertising = Creative

Promotion = Offer and incentive/artwork/graphics

Design = Layouts, word marks

Inbound marketing = Whitepapers, case studies, technical writing

Public relations = Story lines, pitches, news releases, fact sheets

Blogging = Content, articles

Social media marketing = Posts, tweets, updates, conversations , photos

Web development = Content

More examples of ‘non-creative’ messaging includes:

• Keywords utilized in tags, subject titles that are driven by SEO needs
• Documentary style videos that enhance and encapsulate reality
• Technical writing that artfully and accurately describes highly complex products, procedures or concepts
• Layouts of content for periodicals or case studies where the premium is on clarity and scannability
• Infographics where the design is intended to visualize a concept

Across this continuum of messaging STIR’s approach to communications is to look at each passage of communications in three ways:

1. The emotional appeal that tends to feature the product benefit and create targeted interest and engagement
2. The strategic element that supports the brand positioning and fulfills the specialized function required by the platform
3. Keyword delivery based on a ubiquitous brand designed strategy to fortify SEO

I must note that some of the folks that have been a bit confused by our use of the term ‘messaging’ have been some traditional public relations practitioners. The term ‘messaging’ historically has been used in the PR discipline to describe the baseline talking points or editorial priorities that would comprise the strategy behind the effort. That messaging in the PR world would be crafted into finished communications in many different ways depending upon the execution. We’ve essentially built upon this concept and applied it across multiple marketing platforms.

Our attention spans and patience are short. We delete unopened emails, speed date, order food from smart phone apps to avoid waiting in line, pay extra for same day shipping, and even communicate using single letters, like “k”. Not only do these behaviors apply to our everyday lives, but also influence our attitudes towards advertising. We skip 15-second pre-roll ads on YouTube videos, hardly glance at print copy, and skip commercials. For us as advertisers, this is bad news.

Spend 125 seconds reading this blog and you can make, and save, a lot of money. So stay with me on this.

David Rock, Director & CEO of The NeuroLeadership Institute thought leader in the global coaching profession, says people are experiencing an epidemic of information overload. The amount of information our brain is exposed to is greater than the amount it can process. On top of that, our hyperactive brains operate at warp speed. In terms of processing language and speech, the average human brain can articulate 120-150 words per minute, and process around 350-500 heard words per minute.

What does this mean for us as advertisers? Your audience will instantaneously discard your message if it is not a direct hit. In order to directly communicate with them, you need to capture their attention. There are two types of attention that your advertisements should aim to capture:

1. Transient attention: a short-term response to a stimulus that temporarily attracts/distracts attention. For example, catching your audience’s eye with striking visuals is a good way to gain transient attention. Researchers disagree on the exact amount of human transient attention span; some say it may be as short as eight seconds.
2. Selective sustained attention: also known as focused attention, is the level of attention that produces the consistent results on a task over time. In advertising, oftentimes long form video is used to sustain attention through emotional appeal. Some state that the average human attention span is approximately five minutes.

If you reach the right audience in the right place with a relevant message, you have only eight seconds to really engage them. So make your eight seconds count.

In her book “Talk Less, Say More”, Connie Dieken’s examines three essential and inscrutable steps to capture the attention of an audience:

1. Connect: to connect with an audience, you have to respect the audience’s time and information overload. Give it to them straight and simple.
2. Convey: use clear, dynamic visuals, tell stories, and give your points in groups of three.
3. Convince: lead people to action by sounding confident, bringing the audience in and allowing them to own the solution.

The key to getting the transient and sustained attention of your audience is to know them. What are their wants and needs? What is their preferred communication style? Focus on connecting, conveying information, and convincing your audience. These rules apply to all communication whether it’s a speech, letter, email, web content or a print ad.

It’s all about talking less and saying more. Bonding with your audience and convincing them to take action results in you making more money: and it all starts with getting their attention.

Oh, and congratulations on reading this whole article.

Periodically, STIR is brought in to evaluate and recommend how a company can reposition itself for the future. Each circumstance and situation, while vastly different, has a set of commonalities.

This should be a highly collaborative process with the management team of the company or brand that needs the work. We want many stakeholders deeply involved as there needs to be consensus and buy-in across the board.

How long does it take and how much does it cost? That answer is highly variable. These factors are determined by the client company itself and its internal and external needs. We review these steps in detail and discuss with the client the best way to proceed based on their corporate culture. After that, we can project the hours and cost that go into the analysis.

We start with these seven steps to branding redesign when we assess the brand and recommend a new course:

1. Executive meetings: We will meet with key individuals that drive the direction of the company to create an understanding of what they believe can and should be accomplished.
   • We begin by creating that list and schedule.
2. Workshop: We will work together in a group to gain broad consensus in the vision and key steps in the process.
   • The discussion guide for this event will be developed and agreed upon in advance.
3. Marketing plan review:We need to gain an understanding of the components of the current direct marketing plan. We will need to understand the implications to the current business of any recommendations made and determine whether any synergies or efficiencies can be gained.
4. Messaging audit/evaluation:We will need to have a complete understanding of the content, value direction, and capability of all customer/consumer touchpoints. A brand launch requires comprehensive change. We can also begin a keyword analysis at this point.
   • Website
   • Collateral
   • Design
   • Copy
   • Blog
   • Email
   • SEO/SEM
   • Media marketing spend
5. Market research:This element may be optional but is advisable for a business that is established.
   • Possible research groups (directional up front)
   • Communications testing (during development prior to launch)
6. Strategic development presentation:Before we move to detailed planning and execution, we summarize our actionable findings in directional strategic planning documents. This will allow us then to go in and generate specific plans based on our findings. We call this strategic communion because we gain consensus among the key stakeholders.
   • Positioning statement
   • Marketing and messaging objectives
   • Broad strategic objectives (and investment levels)
   • Creative brief
   • Segmented audience personas
7. Integrated tiered marketing plan:Once we have agreed on what we want to achieve, we can lay out our specific plans for executing our objectives in detail. This will include detailed budgets and proposals. This is the time to assess and plan in an integrated way against all relevant marketing platforms (listed below). We may advise augmentation or shifts in spending patterns or internal efforts based on our revised set of objectives. These plans may be tiered in phases of execution.
   • Media plan (traditional and digital)
   • PR launch plan and ongoing efforts
   • Social media launch plan and content/creative plan
   • Logo/identity recommendations
   • Design updates to all current branded pieces
   • Advertising creative development
   • Inbound marketing efforts
   • SEO
   • SEM

As an account executive at an ad agency, much of my time revolves around monitoring budget requirements, internal time and material due dates, and keeping timelines and production schedules moving along. These tasks are necessary to the success of a campaign and in keeping the client happy.

As vital as it is to showcase the capabilities of your agency through all this great client work, it’s just as, if not more important, to have a strong internal brand. What good are the skills of your agency if you can’t apply them to your own brand?

You might be curious, what’s a good way to do this? Sure, your company has awesome social media accounts and a killer website. These are both great tools, but what is something that can really set you apart?

At STIR, we’ve implemented a robust blogging strategy that complements our other STIR brand efforts. We have a melting pot of employees whose hobbies and interests influence and help us understand what they do.

So what makes a successful internal blog and internal branding strategy? As the account executive on the STIR account, I’ve come to understand there a few key factors involved:

Know your audience

Knowing your audience is important. Your audience should influence your tone, language, context and even the use of slang when and where appropriate. It’s important to tailor each post to a specific brand persona and identity.

Each blog post fits the personality of the employee writing it while also providing informational, entertaining content.

Stay organized

I treat STIR like any other client account, meaning I have a streamlined organizational system that keeps it running smoothly. We use a system that ensures all employees are aware of when their blog is due and how to produce content that best fits their knowledge and expertise.

Creating a campaign is a collaborative effort that involves each department in the agency

It requires all hands on deck to ensure that the STIR brand is represented through our work in the best way possible. Not only do campaigns showcase the capabilities of our agency, but they help clients attain the ROI they want. The same goes for establishing an internal brand. Collaborate with your employees.

By treating our internal blog like we treat client work, we’re not only able to strengthen our brand but also showcase the creative content and personality of our agency.

Most brands can’t define their true culture. Can yours? If your answer is no, fear not — this is where opportunity lies. Follow these five steps to separate yourself from the pack and develop marketing campaigns with meaningful resonance. If you want brilliant marketplace success, you must develop your brand culture and build your marketing plan around it.

CMOs are looking for the silver bullet — the angle, offer or ad that’s going to light up sales and create buzz around the brand. Traditionally, they hire advertising agencies that will throw conceptual spaghetti against the boardroom walls trying to find it. But that silver bullet is found by looking at the brand culture from the head down. Start by examining the leadership of the organization and find what’s good. From there, a more meaningful connection can be made to the interests of your target audiences.

Hot air doesn’t rise in marketing. Marketing messaging must reflect the true brand culture. Without a marketable culture, marketing tactics can only create short-term interest. The consumer will find no connection between the promise that was made in the ad and what is delivered by the product, service or brand experience. This is not about semantics or brand talk. It’s about anchoring messaging in brand substance. Talk (aka hot air) is cheap and won’t create long-term success.

Step one – Identify your brand

Start by asking these questions and seek specific examples to support your premise. Involve your entire orientation, starting at the top and including people who work day to day with customers:

• What do we stand for?
• What are the brand values?
• How do we make peoples lives better?
• How do we behave?
• What causes do we support?
• How are we different from competitors with regard to experience, product features, and support systems?

Step two – Find the consumer connection

Based on what you’ve learned about your brand, start to find common ground with the target consumer. To do this, you must open up the lines of communication. You’re looking for similar values and priorities, and you can gather this information in multiple ways:

• Casual observation during brand interaction
• General secondary research
• Focus groups – formal or informal
• Social media interactions
• Surveys and quantitative research
• Syndicated research on behaviors and buying habits
  • Psychographic analysis
  • Panel survey data

Step three – Develop the assets

Take your top customer observations and think about how you could use them in the marketplace.

You want to shine the spotlight on these attributes by developing brand positioning and conceptual marketing programs that feature them. The objectives are to raise awareness, improve perceptions, create engagement and capture contact information. How will you do this? By adding value to the consumer experience. You’ll want to consider the full range of possibilities on every marketing platform:

• How can we educate or entertain the consumer?
• How and where can we share information or insights?
• How can we generate awareness in an affordable way?
• How can we include the consumer in our actions and activities?
• Who else shares these values (other companies or institutions)?

Step four – Connect culture to commerce

Now you can create the silver bullet campaign that is built on a meaningful culture — one that drives commerce. This is where you create a brand image and connect to promotional activity that enhances interest and brand value. Now you can budget and develop key performance indicators. Remember to balance the short-term expectations with long-term benefits. It takes some time to develop a values based campaign. The sincerity and integrity of your brand image is critical to success, and that will be demonstrated to the market over time. Consistency and commitment is key.

Step five – Integrate your brand within the marketplace

Remember that your brand/company must illustrate its adherence to its culture and core values at every turn. Your first marketing campaign must be within your organization. You must sell the idea to your employees and reinforce it regularly. Look at every customer touch point and make certain you’ve injected demonstrable culture at every opportunity. The stronger your own culture, the higher the standard you’ll be held accountable to. Your public will hold you accountable, so be certain that you are compliant with your own standards.

This is a high-level overview of a process that requires a significant investment of time and energy. Conducting this kind of corporate soul searching is difficult for most companies. Find a third party partner with the objectivity, capability, and vision to build and guide the plan. The CMO must have a vision for the process and drive the overall process. The right integrated advertising agency can help. Be certain that they don’t have a particular agenda or service line that they are pushing. Ask them for their thoughts on the process, start to finish.

So simple that very few can do it.

There are many complexities in the marketing world. CMOs need to stay on top of trends and technology, manage a myriad of marketing platforms, juggle internal resources and agencies, and build and execute visionary marketing strategies that integrate them all. But when it comes down to a brilliant marketing message strategy, it’s just so simple.

Simplicity is what makes a message strong and memorable. When a message is clear and easy to grasp, and the positioning is stated powerfully, it allows the marketer to own an idea, even though it may not be based on anything proprietary to the brand.

Make no mistake; “simple messaging” is not easy to do. In fact, “simple,” in this respect – a clear, concise, idea wrapped in a likable identity that represents a highly complex business and creates marketplace disruption – is particularly hard to achieve.

The job of the expert marketer is to decode a complex situation and come up with a simple solution. This is no different than what consultants in so many other categories do. The best of them solve complex problems with straightforward insights and appropriate actions. The more complex the company/brand/category is, the more difficult this level of thinking is to achieve. At the same time, simple messaging is essential to success. When presenting to our clients, the first reaction of most marketers is that this is a tremendous idea that can’t work for them. They believe that their particular situation is too complex for it to work. We face this regularly in the health care, education and tourism industries – virtually all categories. Yet when the client is willing, there is clear and simple/brilliant solution every time.

How to do it

Getting to the simple idea is a process that requires considerable thought, strong instincts, and a little courage.

• Be customer centric. Focus on the benefit to the consumer rather than features of the product or service. The closer you can get to an emotional need, the better. Don’t work entirely to satisfy internal critics.
• Search for and find the common denominator that all of your brand’s offerings provide. Since they may be quite different, you’ll need to think in broader terms. Good, simple messaging is often very broad in scope.
• Resist the temptation of restating stereotypical messages that are obvious and germane to an industry, such as “we care” in the health care industry. Have the courage to lead your industry with fresh statements rather than to try to fit in with traditional messages.
• Craft your message in a way that it is friendly, confident and in a voice that reflects the best of your internal culture.

You might ask if this is so easy, why don’t more marketers do it? Because the simple thought is easy prey for bureaucrats who think in traditional ways. Rather than seeing the potential in its elegance, they will concentrate on what isn’t said. They would rather be safe than successful. Our response is to describe the point of a spear. It is very narrow and focuses energy, and because of this, it will penetrate deeply. A broad object will disperse energy over a large area and its impact will be minimized. In the same sense, by trying to say everything, you will communicate less.

Below are some examples of this work in action.

This campaign for Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) recently won gold in the higher education category of the Paragon Awards – a national honor. The entire campaign features one headline with just three words: “Turn pro sooner.”

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MATC has hundreds of programs that lead students to amazing careers. There is a list of eye-popping statistics on the benefits of a two-year degree from MATC, yet the public often misunderstands the benefits associated with “technical colleges.” But the appeal and the benefit to potential students is one in the same. They can land a great job in the field of their choice and get in and out of college a lot sooner (and usually at a much lower cost) by attending MATC. The message is developed to appeal to the target audience, 16-to-18-year-olds. Its simplicity and the quality of the creative make the messaging disruptive in the marketplace.

The below campaign for the Wisconsin State Fair has been recognized by the International Association of Fairs and Expositions (IAFE) as the “best advertising” campaign in North America for three of the last four years. In this campaign, we featured the ultimate benefit – a fun and unpretentious escape from the humdrum of everyday life. For a full case study, click here.

The Wisconsin State Fair is one of the most successful major expositions in existence. The entertainment is abundant, exceptional and tremendously diverse. Others in the industry promote long lists of attractions and events. Our strategy was to sell the benefit: family fun featuring animals, food, midway entertainment and iconic images. By finding the right voice and featuring the benefit in bold and simple ways that tie to emotion, the Wisconsin State Fair became culturally cool and the place to be. Attendance has grown every year and has set all-time records in the last two years, outperforming the entire industry.

The last word

The positioning of your brand and the image marketing that stems from it is the point of your marketing spear. It should be simple and focused. It will make an impact with the target consumer. Once you have their attention, there are many other opportunities to tell the rest of your brand story.

Building a marketing plan and fully activating a marketing plan are two completely different things, but it can make the difference between moderate and outstanding brand performance and ROI. The difference is what we will call “Marketing Plan Activation.”

Marketing Plan Activation requires equal parts effort and imagination. Usually, a small incremental investment will give your brand an incredible boost. Fully activating your marketing plan requires a coordinated effort that may test your resolve, as well as the relationships you have cultivated within your organization. It will also provide huge dividends. Do yourself a favor, plus out your plan with Activation in mind.

Manufactured Fame

In the practice of True Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) the strategic plan will call for a wide variety of marketing activity across multiple marketing platforms. The centerpiece of the plan tends to be high-ticket, high-profile investments. This takes the form of paid advertising and sponsorship of media and events, promotions experts, endorsers, strategic partnerships with companies and brands, and many internal programs such as major customer rebate or incentive plans.

These programs are vetted by you, your management and staff and written into the plan/budget because they deliver visibility, brand association, and opportunities for the introduction to new ideas to new audiences. This is manufactured fame, paid for with the cash your company allows you to set aside for marketing. This effectively builds awareness and is convenient because you don’t need to originate the program, you simply write a check and place your logo on it, then step back and reap the rewards. And because many of these properties are effective and efficient, your small marketing staff can create significant impact; you have performed your function as a brand steward. This is the usual case and is considered right and proper.

But, this is also a trap. Most marketing plans are chock full of expensive sponsorships, but a great deal of their value remains unrealized by the brand.

Why? Why would highly competent marketing professionals walk away from value, theoretically squandering the resources of their company?

The answer is that marketers fall into the trap of seeing themselves as program facilitators rather than creative program originators and designers. The traditional advertising agency tends to be complicit in this crime. They have facilitated the transaction and received their compensation; therefore, they consider their job completed. Unfortunately, this is the norm rather than the exception. It is accepted by management and staff, and it is often how we are trained.

To Activate: Develop an Original Marketing Program

To break the cycle and realize tremendous untapped marketing power, you must fully activate your marketing plan. A change of mindset is necessary.  Do not simply purchase manufactured fame. Utilize the luxury of the media/sponsorship budget as the foundation, and then cultivate your original program through the myriad creative opportunities these investments afford you. When fully activating your marketing plan, the purchase of media/sponsorship is where the work really begins, not where it ends!

This is where a strong a case for the employment of an integrated agency can be made.  An agency that practices integrated marketing can see the full playing field and value in event, PR, promotion, CRM, and social marketing, and will seek out and connect these opportunities to magnify the brand’s potency.

When looking to activate your brand, consider that the level of activity surrounding your media properties will increase and in many cases you may be faced with manpower issues. Who will administer these programs? Explore involving your sales and service personnel. They often will derive great benefit from involvement, and you will be contributing positively to the cultural growth of your organization.

Consider also, in evaluating purchases, that you may not need as many high-ticket/high-profile properties and that more resources should be poured into the activation (as much as 3:1 ratio) than in the original purchase. This often increases ROI by driving highly efficient and measurable activity. Fewer, better utilized programs may be called for, and the budget may need to be realigned. That likely translates into tapping into the media budget, and reallocating those funds to PR, social media, and event marketing expenditures.

Questions to Ask When Evaluating Media / Sponsorships

Each company should go into the activation process with a clear understanding of what their brand’s challenges are. Tailoring incremental programs to the areas of greatest need will always produce the best results. But there are some starter inquiries that will work for virtually everyone regardless of the media, the category or the product:

• Look at the production schedules with an eye toward product placement and alignment with your promotional schedule.
• Probe into social media activities. How can the brands be cross-promoted?
• Develop efficient registration and promotion onsite or through alternative media that provides opt-in identities for CRM/email.
• Consider what added value signage or advertising might be negotiated.
• Look into non-competitive corporate sponsors who would be interested in a co-promotion – Media often can make introductions.
• Look at possible video opportunities. Can you get incremental footage or reuse footage such as testimonials or endorsement on your website?
• Notify all relevant media of your involvement and engage each, sharing original insight and perspectives that are consistent with what they want to cover.
• Ask about free surveys or research, or lists that you might acquire.
• Consider how you can tie exclusive new product news announcements or promotions to this.

Marketing Plan Activation can take many forms. The key is to fully leverage your investments and to create an integrated system that continually drives the audience to higher levels of engagement with your brand.

Many marketing managers are at a loss as to how to incorporate new messaging methods.

They know the tried and true methods of marketing their brand and/or company may now be obsolete. They hear about many new methods of marketing but are rightfully suspicious of fads and trends in web and social marketing. They know certain elements are credible, yet have no track record with the techniques which represent incremental cost and risk. They want to build their brand, but aren’t sure where to start when incorporating new marketing strategies.

Develop a plan

It starts with a brilliant plan.  A solid plan will identify new business-building opportunities. It will revitalize the brand story. It will increase engagement with your consumer and relevance of your creative message.

Whether you are the CMO at a major corporation or you are an entrepreneur, you are responsible for the commitment of critical resources – cash, people and time – and you will be held accountable to the results. You need to craft a smart marketing plan before you spend. That marketing plan is, in many ways, the future of your company.  It must be brilliant.

Take a fresh look

Shooting from the hip or doing what’s been done in the past make for a short career in marketing. The communications world and consumer marketplace change too rapidly to get away with that. In the era of micro-marketing there is even more need for integrated strategic planning. This ensures that only the most productive means are used to reach the highest priority audiences. You need to take a fresh look at your industry to craft a vision for the future.

Apply a new approach to planning

As you sit down to the daunting task of crafting a new course for your brand and your company, you may find you don’t have the time or resources to take the classic textbook approach to marketing planning.

Open a marketing textbook or downloaded a marketing plan template and you’ll find the old, top-down marketing plan format that includes the formal processes:

• Review all sales and earnings data
• Pull secondary research on the industry
• Do a competitive analysis
• Develop SWOT matrices
• Build bubble charts, Venn diagram and bar graphs, etc.

What often results are voluminous books of data and endless formal objectives and strategies.

Unfortunately many classically developed, well-researched plans result in the status quo.  This is because all the research and analysis in the world will not necessarily generate a valuable new insight or a courageous break from corporate culture.

Establish Guiding Principles

Long-form planning does have merit, but there are times you need to cut to the chase. Here are three guiding principles to this planning process:

1. CHALLENGE INPUT AND ASSUMPTIONS. A brilliant plan must be built upon strong insights and input. Take this opportunity to reassess what you know about your / your client’s company. Get a fresh perspective. As hard as it may be, look at your company and the industry like a newcomer. (This is the benefit of bringing in an outside agency or consultant – particularly one from outside the industry.)
2. PROBE. You are looking for strong logical links to lay down core strategies.  Opportunity often resides behind disconnected or an undeserving assumptions — often the unwritten “rules” of the industry. These are insights that can lead to a strong new marketing idea. When you find a curiosity, chase it down.
3. USE THE K.I.S.S. RULE. Think in terms of big broad concepts. Take a complex situation and make it simple. Write a simple statement, no more than fifty words summarizing your observations.

Many midsize and rural communities with one dominant hospital see local providers as inferior to “big city specialists.” They need to build confidence in the quality physicians that they employ to retain them. These systems need to focus on keeping profitable procedures local.

Urban hospitals in larger, more competitive markets need to increase relevance and positive perceptions versus their local competition. They will want locals to bond with the facility – seeing it as a source of health information and a center that supports wellness in their area. This will build affinity with the organization that will be rewarded by maintaining their fair share of procedures.

Here are 4 things you can do to build a better brand and create brand equity for your healthcare or hospital system:

1. Prioritize | Understand what truly makes your system special. Feature that in your messaging. Focus on those audiences that will benefit you the most. Become more important to them by being a more important part of their life.
2. Develop Loyalty | Loyalty is based on successful interactions. Create engagement with your audiences. Reward them with positive experiences. Help them live a healthy life & they’ll trust you when they’re sick.
3. Defend Your Turf | Large health care systems feed on growth and expansion. The best defense against intrusion is a good offense. Be proactive in your approaches and engagement.
4. Retain Physicians | Physicians want your support. They need you to maintain positive perceptions and top of mind awareness of your hospital. They often want to be featured in your advertising. Do this artfully and you will create a win-win for everyone involved.

STIR is an expert at leveraging existing healthcare marketing programs and resources to make a larger impact in the community. Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) want brand stewards who can help develop a marketing plan that strengthens the brand voice, avoids fragmentation and integrates beyond just promotions. With a strong marketing background we cultivate true, holistic business solutions for our clients that are grounded in sound marketing and ad strategies. We invest heavily in our client relationships by taking the time necessary to get the job done right. Let’s collaborate together on increasing the value of your healthcare brand.