Special for Spectrum, the Member Publication of the

Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development

It’s NOT Rocket Science –

Using the Web for Product Line Marketing

and Community Health Promotion

Ned Barnett, APR, Fellow – ASHMPR

A.     New Medium, Old Message

As a means of communications – or commerce – the Internet is exploding.  Web-related stocks are skyrocketing, fueling much of Wall Street’s remarkable sustained growth.  New commercial sites, from Amazon.com to Priceline.com to Travelocity – and of course, that grand-daddy of the commercial web, America Online – each generate millions of dollars of business.  Though all of these sites use online banner ads and other promotions, they also rely heavily on expensive paid advertising on television, radio and in print.  These promotions are proving effective in driving visitors and users to these sites – but at a cost out of reach for most marginally commercial healthcare-related and hospital websites. 

However, from the dawn of the World Wide Web (now almost six years in the past!), there are still-valid lessons for effective promotion of high-tech websites by using traditional, low-tech public relations.  And this approach is ideally-suited to local hospitals, other community-based providers and even systems or networks.  The net is not the sole preserve of the “big boys” – in fact, properly approached, the net levels the playing field and permits even small operations to meet their communications and marketing needs as effectively as the largest systems or corporations.

Today, at the dawn of the new millennium, the Internet – that newest of the “New Media” – offers many distinctive, even exciting, opportunities for hospitals to promote product lines or facilitate health improvement in their communities. A host of communications-driven programs can be enhanced by the effective development and use of online websites and services: 

·        CHIP-style community health education – these information-dissemination and consensus-building programs can be facilitated by information-heavy websites coupled with an online forum for member-to-member “conversation.”

·        Diagnosis-specific patient education – either using an existing system (Medical Net and Dr. Koop are two strong conventional health information systems, and HealthWorld Online offers the same depth for “complementary” health information) or by developing a hospital-specific database, hospital websites can become community health information resources.

·        Two-way hospital/constituent information exchange – with an online forum or e-mail exchange system, a website can invite patient information requests, and provide detailed, authoritative information.  This can enhance pre-registration and provide a heightened sense of security for patients – while reducing needed “face-time” for standard information exchanges.

·        Virtual affinity group relationship building – affinity groups are powerful relationship marketing tools for hospitals; the addition of a website, with information, calendars, a forum and related features can further tie key constituencies to the hospital – especially those members who lack the time for on-site programs or events.

·        Even product-line and service-line marketing – programs such as Chest Pain Centers, which routinely include heavy patient information distribution and live Q&A can be enhanced by an online presence, with archived information, an “ask the expert” Q&A forum and other communications features.  Amenity services (a virtual gift shop with delivery to patients) can also be promoted and offered online.

While the World Wide Web is no techno-miracle, it does offer a viable new medium for reaching target markets.  However, the purposes – and the results – of this New Media communications remain the same: to inform, educate, motivate, and ultimately generate measurable results.   Surprisingly, almost from the beginning, innovative healthcare communicators have used the net to reach new audiences with new information – and the lessons they pioneered remain valid today.

B.     Early Models

Early successful hospital and healthcare attempts at utilizing the World Wide Web – the commercial component of the Internet – began almost immediately after the web’s creation in July, 1993. 

Initially, these efforts tended to focus on linking the community of interested healthcare consumers with hospitals, physicians and healthcare resources.  In doing so, these early leaders set the pace for what is still one of the most effective uses of the web by hospitals.  By the spring of 1995 – when the net was still less than three years old – Newsweek confidently reported that the net featured more than 14,000 health-related websites; but tellingly, they reported that only five websites were really worth consumers’ attention.

C.     Event Programming Attracts an Audience

One of these early successful Internet innovators was Columbia/HCA, the hospital corporation giant which found an effective way of linking their corporate website with hospitals across the nation.  The net-marketers at Columbia quickly determined that, properly utilized, the Internet could build a bridge between potential patients and each of their then more than 400 hospitals.  Their solution was to model their initial efforts after television programming.  Columbia chose to host a weekly online event, an interactive “Ask the Doctor” program that permitted individuals to pose medical questions, online, to some of the world’s leading physicians – then added a dimension that would tie this online event to each of their hospitals in their own communities. 

Columbia used its market-leading position to attract world-class doctors who had widespread public name recognition.  These physicians’ names proved a near-magic draw to the online public. 

However, as an innovator, Columbia was faced with an interesting dilemma – relatively few of their target prospects had access to the Internet.  Even today, household penetration of Internet access is barely 25 percent; more than three years ago, this penetration was in single digits – hardly a significant share of the hospital-patient market.  But, as with many innovators, Columbia saw the potential, and developed a plan to project their website onto hospital auditorium screens – then invite the public to attend these weeknight-evening sessions.  Remarkably, the public came out to Columbia’s hospitals in droves – across the nation, thousands of interested prospective patients could be found sitting in hospital auditoriums, watching the information transactions online and posing their questions for the doctor through on-site moderators.

However, there was more to their success than “build it and they will come.”  Columbia also invested in an effective online and off-line promotion effort.  In addition to a successful national launch blitz, much of this ongoing promotion was run effectively in local media in communities throughout the country, coordinated through Columbia’s network of local hospitals.  The result, quite clearly, was simple: For a period of time, Columbia’s weekly “Ask the Doctor” program made their website the most heavily trafficked site (during those 90-minute events) on the World Wide Web.

D.    Community Services Raises Health Awareness

Another early innovator in 1996/97 was an alliance involving the Seattle King County Public Health Department, the Community Health Centers of King County and the City of Kent, along with Bastyr College, in creating the King County Natural Medicine Clinic and its online analog (http://www.kentwa.com).  This was a two-pronged experiment – to blend conventional and alternative healthcare services for Public Health Clinic patients, and providing detailed health information online for those patients. Their experience, featured at the time on both CNN and ABC’s World News with Peter Jennings, remains a viable model for putting CHIP-style hospital community health education programs on the web. 

That coalition of organizations – whose efforts coalesced in the clinic and its website, was committed to the concept that widespread community access to useful health information improved the public’s health and well-being, one individual at a time – a very “CHIP” perspective.  Deciding that an informative website could be the source of that information – but also recognizing that, especially among target populations for public health services, Internet access was limited – the King County coalition took a two-pronged approach. 

Working with wellness leaders in both conventional and alternative healthcare, King County Natural Medicine Clinic’s website developers put together a remarkable blend of easy-to-access information on a wide variety of public and personal health topics. 

Recognizing that many among their primary target audiences – primarily the under-served population that looked to Public Health clinics in lieu of private-practice medical care – the King County Natural Medicine Clinic’s webmasters made sure that much of this information was focused on what came to become known as “self-care.” 

Beyond ensuring that content met the target users’ needs, the King County coalition also set out to create easy access – placing web-accessible computers in libraries, community centers and other public-access facilities.  The combination of diverse content and easy access proved successful – and, in the city of Kent, King County began to improve the level of public health via the Internet.

E.     Deep Content Makes Big Impact

One of the first healthcare-only websites that was established as a free-standing commercial enterprise was HealthWorld Online.  Unlike many sites that were “sponsored” by pharmaceutical companies or, like the Columbia/HCA website, by providers, HealthWorld Online (http://www.healthworld.com) – led by entrepreneur Dave Robertson and natural health information guru Jim Strohecker – was a self-contained, investor-supported business.  That alone set it apart from other sites.

Beyond that, HealthWorld Online set its sites on becoming the content leader in the fast-growing natural, alternative and “complementary” healthcare field. 

This took time and resources – nearly a year of programming effort and almost a million dollars in development costs went into creating the 25,000 pages of content that became the core of HealthWorld Online.  This content was divided into a dozen inter-connected sites – each focused on a specific function such as the library, the news media center, an alternative health lab, a “clinic,” the natural health food store and the bookstore. 

In defining its online presence, HealthWorld included a site that played host to more than two dozen consumer and professional association websites – these were provided at no cost to those associations, and immediately created a multi-professional “community” of thousands of individuals who were bonded to HealthWorld Online.  In addition, each association became a built-in promotion advocate, encouraging members, allies and supportive vendors to participate with HealthWorld Online.  Wisely, HealthWorld provided these associations with the communications tools and incentives they needed to more effectively reach and motivate their own constituent groups.

This depth of content, as well as sharing sites with allied health-related and support-group organizations, provides a useful model for community hospital websites.  Patients and prospects always want more information – a depth of content (self-developed or provided by vendors) is a valued resource.  Just as important in building an online community is HealthWorld’s concept of providing website space to allied groups.

For hospitals, this could be local support groups, community health and CHIP programs, and local health-related charities.  The key is to build the virtual community with the hospital as its hub and central focus.

While the first genius of HealthWorld was its unparalleled depth of content, its ultimate success owed much to its innovative approach to marketing promotion – a promotion that saw HealthWorld’s visit-volume soar from zero to 1.2 million hits per month in just six months.  In perspective, with the Internet’s online population roughly 10 percent of today’s regular users, this hit-rate represented more than 300,000 individuals – the equivalent of the subscriber base of the most popular natural health magazines on the market at that time.  The secret of HealthWorld’s success was not an innovative, online approach to promotion – rather, it was a reasoned adaptation of traditional, proven off-line public relations techniques.

While both HealthWorld and the Columbia/HCA website also used aggressive, and effective, online promotions – and while HealthWorld pioneered new territory through its use of online “guerrilla” promotions – both succeeded by effectively using and adapting media public relations tools and techniques.  HealthWorld Online makes for a particularly compelling case study.

Because of its long development lead-time, HealthWorld was able to craft and refine a detailed marketing communications plan – then create the press kit tools and begin to network with targeted media months in advance of the site’s official debut.  Because few reporters had work-station access to the net in early 1996, HealthWorld created a detailed “tour” on three diskettes (today CD/ROM disks would be more appropriate, though most reporters now have easy online access) – complete with embedded search engine – that was widely circulated prior to the launch.  This created intense media interest, laying the groundwork for early widespread coverage.

The launch promotion plan was built around a “marquee media” approach – HealthWorld’s goal was to generate quick coverage from credible, high-visibility media.  After a month-long “beta” period, HealthWorld Online went public the first week of April, 1996 – and in its first day online, it was named “Hot Site of the Day” by both USA Today and USA Today Online.   That distinctive honor became grist for a widely-distributed press release, which, when coupled with the site’s official launch release, gave the site great credibility with influential mainstream and online media.  That same week, HealthWorld Online debuted at #32 on the “Internet Top 40,” and the site was favorably reviewed by the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. 

Subsequently, the site was written up three times by both of those national leaders – validating the site to the media and, through those newspapers’ syndicates, reaching millions of prospective users across the country.

Every success, every favorable review, every online or off-line honor or site award became the subject of yet another press release.  This drumbeat of success prompted Newsweek to list the site among it’s five healthcare sites worth using, and encouraged leading national media such as the Washington Post and the Chicago Sun-Times to run lengthy features about HealthWorld, its founders and underlying philosophy promoting “Self-Managed Care.”

This press activity was supported by the then-innovative use of a “press room” within HealthWorld – a site that had several features designed to meet the information needs of working reporters.  These included posting both press releases and links to substantial supportive documentation, including downloadable illustrations.  This depth of material, easily accessible by reporters, made it possible to generate coverage by distributing brief, provocative press briefings – an approach ideal for faxed announcements – rather than mailing out longer press releases and full-blown press kits.  Research indicated that, in addition to controlling the costs of press release distribution, this approach actually improved press interest – and coverage.

During the entire six-month launch phase, HealthWorld purchased just one single ad, in a leading Internet magazine. 

While the ad drew – hits spiked sharply upward during the first three days of distribution – the interest was not sustained.  More important, careful tracking validated the more sustained (and lower cost) impact of effective public relations efforts.

The keys to this successful launch can be applied to any comprehensive website – or indeed, to almost any new-program launch:

·        Have a legitimate, newsworthy story to tell

·        Create media interest (teasing) prior to launch

·        Create widespread mainstream credibility via the marquee media (market leader) approach

·        Generate early coverage then disseminate clips widely to other media

·        Sustain media awareness and motivate coverage by announcing every milestone success

·        Support releases with depth-materials located online on the site

The end result, as both HealthWorld Online and Columbia/HCA discovered, was widespread, credible press coverage that effectively drove visitors – users – to the websites.  These approaches proved themselves at the dawn of the World Wide Web, and they remain the most effective low-cost means of marketing health-related websites today.

- BMC -

About the author: 

Ned Barnett, APR, Fellow, ASHMPR, is co-Founder of Barnett Marketing Communications, and a public relations/marketing communications specialist with more than 30 years’ experience.  Barnett began working with dot.com and Internet promotion services in July, 1995 – just two years after the opening of the World Wide Web.  He played a personal role in developing and implementing each of these case studies.

• It’s Not Rocket Science – Using the Web for Product Line Marketing and Community Health Promotion – Spectrum Magazine

• Pitching the Media in the Electronic Age

• Self-Promotion Through Your Chamber of Commerce

• Turning Local Media Contacts into National News

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