MedMarketLink
Building a Healthcare Brand on the Web & Beyond
The good news: every medical practice has a brand. The not-so-good-news: very few know what it is; even fewer promote it.
What is a brand? It is simply a claim of distinction with emotional impact. And it's that magic ingredient that makes people not just think differently but act with devotion.
Don't confuse a brand with a name. Wal-Mart has a name. Target has a brand. Wal-Mart is memorable mainly because it's everywhere. Target is memorable for something – namely, a look and feel and a distinctive experience inside its stores.
Virtually every organization – not just corporations the size of Nike and Microsoft – has a brand. Even some non-profit organizations are legendary for strong brands: Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, the Sierra Club, to name a few.
Other famous brands:
- Apple computers
- Harley-Davidson
- Swiss Army knives
- Andrew Weil, M.D.
- Deepak Chopra, M.D.
The science of medical branding
Branding takes work and special skill. That's why most organizations don't succeed at it, particularly private medical practices.
Under the MedMarketLink program, branding starts with an intensive process of uncovering a medical practice's competitive distinctions and nuances. The strategic findings are then interpreted into a distinctive package of visual and communications standards.
In turn, these visual and verbal messages are repeated throughout all MML marketing and PR programs, communicating and delineating the practice's brand distinctions on the Internet, in brochures, in the news media – even on a fax cover page.
After all, it takes a lot of repetitions to make a name memorable. But it takes only one clear difference to forever recall a brand.
