I recently visited a friend of mine at the hospital and realised, how one of the biggest mediums for marketing is yet to be fully utilised by hospitals.
It’s is common place to have a TV in hospital rooms. However, these Tv’s only show the standard programs.
Given the available technology today, these Tv’s can be used as a medium to engage the patient as well as their visitors. Hospitals, Pharmaceutical companies and Insurance companies can leverage this to market their products to viewers.
Let's closely look at the benefits each party can gain by leveraging in-house Tv's for marketing.
Hospitals
- Educate about facilities and services: A separate dedicated channel can be used to showcase the facilities and services provided by the hospital. It can also include news that is relevant to patients.
- To Build Trust and Awareness: Patients and close family members are keen on the illness. This translates to a sea of questions that medical professionals need to take the time to answer. Having a series of education videos will save up medical professionals time, which can be utilised elsewhere.
A web portal with relevant content can be made accessible through the Tv, allowing the patient to go through a detailed description of the illness. It could also feature the success rates and success stories that would help the patient to trust more in the doctors, hospital and its facilities.
- To Educate about offers: Hospitals tend to create different products for the elderly, pregnant women etc. These offer can be easily advertised. This can also be a great platform to advertise partner offers such as discounts on credits cards etc.
Pharmaceutical Companies
- Advertising: Hospitals can offer Pharmaceutical companies to advertise on thier in-house Tv. It can be made to cater relevant personalised ad's since the hospital already has information about the patient and their illness.
However, this will be more relevant to companies that sell personal health tools rather than medicine. Medicine is mostly marketed to doctors and doctors are given incentives to prescribe a certain brand of drugs.
Insurance Companies
- Advertising : Hospitals can offer insurance companies to advertise with their in-house tv channels. These ad's can be very personalised relevant ad's since the patient information is available at the hospitals end.
- Educating about policies : A web portal made accessible through the tv can hold content that will help the patient decide, which insurance scheme is best suited for his or her needs.
- Educating about offers: Offers can be advertised or can be offered through a web portal. This will help the patient be fully engaged with his current insurance and the companies will hold an opportunity to upsell or cross-sell products to the patient.
Even though Sri Lankan Private hospitals do a good job at marketing it has so much more potential to be unearthed. Let's look forward to some exciting times ahead with hospitals adopting digital to its fullest.