Western New England Healthcare Marketing Symposium – April 8, 2016

I’m excited to share that on Friday, April 8, 2016, my firm (Jennings) and our friends at Market Street Research, are sponsoring the first ever Western New England Healthcare Marketing Symposium. It’s a one day event taking place in Northampton, Massachusetts, and it will be packed with informative presentations from healthcare marketers. Our presenters include well know industry marketing consultants and practitioners from area institutions including Lawrence General Hospital, Baystate Health, Cooley Dickinson Healthcare, and Lahey Health.

Jill McDonald, APR
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Lawrence General Hospital

Jeff Steblea
Vice President, Research Analysis & Management, Market Street Research

Suzanne Hendery
Vice President – Marketing & Public Affairs, Baystate Health

Julia Sorensen
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, Cooley Dickinson Healthcare

John Looney
Executive Director of Marketing and Communications, Lahey Health

John Bidwell
Director – Marketing & Digital Strategy, Baystate Health

Dan Dunlop (Yes, they’re letting me present!)
Principal, Jennings Healthcare Marketing

This is a great opportunity to learn from your peers, without breaking the bank. The registration fee for the entire day is only $65. That includes breakfast and lunch. As sponsors of the event, our goal was to make this as cost effective as possible.

In my keynote, I plan to kick things off by challenging our notion of healthcare marketing. So much of healthcare marketing today is narcissistic and inwardly focused. So how do we break the mold? And what does the future of healthcare marketing look like? I’ll introduce my notion of healthcare marketing as online community building. It’s a model that works extremely well with our impending shift in focus to population health management. And it impact digital marketing, social media and traditional advertising. My hope is you’ll leave the presentation looking at your role (and perhaps our industry) in a different way. My presentation is based on an article I published in the November 2015 issue of eHealthcare Strategy & Trends magazine. I promise to give you $65 worth of content in my presentation alone! The rest of the day will be value added in a big way. You won’t be disappointed.

Here’s a quote I pulled from my Narcissism in Healthcare Marketing article:

“Patients value reliable, high quality health information. Marketers argue, aren’t we satisfying an important need with our marketing messages? Not exactly. Context matters. It is the difference between marketing “at” the individual versus marketing “with” the individual.

Healthcare marketing reminds me of that friend who only talks about himself. He never asks about you and how things are going in your life. Every time you get together it is all about him. Do you find people like that interesting? Yet this is how hospitals and health systems frequently come across in their marketing. Your content is far more likely to engage people if it invites conversations, questions, and sharing.” (eHealthcare Strategy & Trends, November 2015)

To review the agenda for the day, and to register for the event, use this link. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I hope to see you at the symposium!