Situation
St. Joseph Health has been part of the community in Bryan, Texas since 1936. Long considered as the healthcare hospital of choice in the region, they faced a setback when their biggest competitor, Scott & White, formed a partnership with Baylor Health Care and began to aggressively market as Baylor Scott & White. As a result, St. Joseph began to see a reduction in the number of out-patient procedures being performed in their hospital and associated clinics. We know that physicians have significant influence over patients with regard to hospital preference. The key to increasing the number of procedures performed at St. Joseph, relied on an increase in patient referrals from their affiliated physicians. The challenge was to identify which physicians had capacity and/or unique services that would attract patients. Then efficiently get in front of those potential patients with a compelling message
Drive patient volume to each affiliated practice within the St. Joseph Physician Group, and increase the number of patients served by St. Joseph Health acute care facilities.
Strategy
People like to associate a face with the physician who will be providing their care. Thus, the creative focus of the campaign was to feature doctors in the St. Joseph Physician Group who were new or offered highly specialized services, and were accepting new patients. This included offices in both the metro area, as well as the surrounding communities. While physician focused campaigns are not new, the creative execution was strong and projected a positive and progressive image that appealed to potential patients.
To simplify the response for consumers and to determine a KPI to evaluate the success of the campaign, all tactics would direct the consumer to call a centralized phone number. From there, they would be directed to a specific practice in order to make an appointment.
In this case, the success of the campaign was driven by the highly targeted media strategy. An integrated approach, using mass media (television) for overall awareness, along with geo targeted digital tactics was utilized. The geo-targeted tactics served ads for physicians to specific zip codes. In addition, we used a (then) new feature of Pandora: Click to Call. The audio of the Pandora commercials directed people to click on the ad which rang directly into the central appointment number
Execution
Broadcast Television
Cooper-Smith worked with the top news station in the market, CBS affiliate KBTX, to create “The St. Joseph Medical Minute”. There was a consistent open and close to each spot to establish continuity. Each week, the production crew for the station would film a physician from the St. Joseph Physician Group, speaking about a current health care topic. This footage was edited to fill approximately :50 of the total minute. The spots then aired in the local news programming, providing the feel of a news feature story vs. paid advertising.
Digital Tactics
All digital tactics were geo-targeted to the trade area for St. Joseph Physician Group.
Digital Video: We used :30 spots on Hulu and :15 pre-roll on select sites geo-targeted to reach our specific audience. Each video was accompanied by a companion banner ad. When possible, the creative for a specific physician was served based on the zip code of the user. All ads directed users to the central phone number.
Digital Audio: A mix of desktop and mobile ads, with companion banners and strong call to action were served. Pandora Click-to-Call was implemented on mobile devices, with the creative message directing people to “click on the ad” to make an appointment.
Results
Over a 4 month period, call volume to the central phone number increased by 19%. Click-through rates saw an increase that was 3x the national average.
Anecdotally, we know that the physician offices received an influx of new patients and over time, the number of out-patient procedures increased.
The website attracted 2,800 visitors per month.
When CHI acquired St. Joseph, various changes were made to their marketing creative strategy. However, the digital strategies implemented continue to drive consumers to a central phone number as well as a website to make appointments.