Messaging for a healthcare client

Messaging for healthcare is essential. Employees need to be celebrated, donors need to be talked to, doctors need to feel good, nurses need to feel that you care for them and understand them. Hospitals, end of life care, cancer centers, disease centers; all of them need to be using messaging. If you’re a marketing or development person, you need to come at everything from a messaging perspective. Messaging is what rights your ship.

Want to honor your workforce? You’re thinking maybe doing a social media campaign where you profile doctors. Great. What’s the message? What are the key themes you want to bring across? What makes doctors so special? How do you want to talk about them? How does the theme tie into all of it? Once you do that, you can really figure out what the look, feel, and text will be. Once you have the message, then you will find a ton of creative solutions. You won’t go for the same lip sync performance that people always do, or the same e-card that no one ever opens. Messaging makes you more interesting and lifts your thinking.

Where else can you bring in messaging for healthcare systems?

• Banner displays that showcase a new initiative, an opening ceremony for a new building, celebrating a nurse for an achievement he received, honoring great doctors with a keynote film, brochures that address end of life care.
• Do a weekly podcast that has doctors and nurses talking about working together, talking about great patient stories.
• Do a live Facebook video every week that has you chatting about issues relevant to the health of your community.

These are all options that could work for you.

If you run a healthcare system, you need to always think about messaging. Why? Because healthcare is in a perilous state at the moment. People are scared, people fear they will lose their healthcare, people doubt the government. People also don’t trust healthcare institutions. They feel they’re spending way too much. They feel that doctors aren’t listening to them. If you want to be a difference-maker in your community, then you have to think about how you’re talking about yourself.

Healthcare, every day, must talk to patients in new and unique ways. They must show that they’re listening, they must create materials for patients to navigate the website, they must talk to nurses and doctors who are burnt out, they must talk to donors about why giving is so essential, and they must talk to possible candidates who want to come aboard. If a healthcare firm is not thinking about the different messages they put out, then they are already five miles behind everyone else. Maybe less time on advancements and technology and more time on intimate, personal storytelling.

Messaging for your association client

Associations are a perfect example of where messaging is so needed. With some associations, you know exactly what they’re about. Other associations, it’s unclear. But messaging is what will separate your association from the crowd. This is where you can talk to members, tell them what you’re about, highlight what services you offer, and showcase why they mean so much to you. Whether you’re in aviation, sanitation, government relations, healthcare, toy manufacturing; associations have dedicated members that want to feel good about their membership. 

How do you message these members?

• Talk about what you do.
• Showcase content that speaks to the benefits of membership.
• Highlight folks who have been positively changed by the association. Create content that instills pride in them.
• Think about what makes you special, think about what kind of voice you’re trying to bring, think about who you serve and why you serve them, think about what you were founded upon and how those principles stay true to this very day.
• Think about what it means to be a member here. Think about what you do for your community at-large.
• Think about all the lives that have been touched by your association.
• Think about your ups and downs, your struggles, your challenges, and your triumphs.

This is how you get into your message.

Your members come from all walks of life. Most of them love your organization because it supports them in ways few organizations do. You have to think about how you are talking to them. How are you getting to their hearts? You have to have a clear message in all materials you put out; from events, to social, to newsletters, to outreach.

Messaging for your tech client

People need to know what your technology is and why it’s important. When you’re building your message, consider a few factors: what does it do, who does it serve, and why does the audience need this? But go even deeper than that. What will the technology do to make life easier for them? How is this technology currently being used? How is this technology going to serve a person’s life, a person’s story, a person’s sense of self? 

When I think about the tech I use, I will only be interested if I know how it’s linked to my life. For instance, I know what I am getting out of my food delivery app; I know what it is doing for me. The same goes for the ride sharing apps. When it works, they’re talking to me like I am friend, like they understand me.

Technology companies need to talk about themselves in ways that go beyond the bells and whistles. Even if you’re not a personal, lifestyle app, you still need to think of yourself as a company that makes people’s lives irrevocably better. You’re more than just the service you offer. How you message yourself is linked to how people feel about you when they take on your tech.

And what about your employees? You may have only 20 employees in your new startup, but how are you talking to them? Do they believe in your mission? Do they even know what your message is? How many tech firms put out the same message about making the world a more connected place, and how many of them actually abide by that message? We are seeing more and more of what can happen when tech companies don’t put heart and purpose behind their message. You need to think deeply about what your message is and how your product carries out that message. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when your employees jump ship. Don’t be surprised when customers stop trusting you and can no longer separate you from everyone else.