Your Brand is Your Promise
Posted by Mike Ferris on Friday, May 09, 2008 and posted in Home Health Care HospiceBrand loyalty is not just for the conglomerates and big businesses. Smart branding is the best way to maximize your results. Your brand is simply defined as the positive or negative inclination to select your home health or hospice agency over another. It is the aggregation of the sales presentations, stories and relationships with the community. It is the difference between being viewed as a commodity and not.
Selling a service vs. selling product is a much more difficult brand to build. There is no “widget” to use with varying degrees of customer satisfaction. There is no packaging to use to brand the product in the customer’s minds. At past NAHC Annual Meetings there have been incredible leaders from many industries as diverse as Ritz-Carlton and Harley Davidson. They have shared the essence of what they have built as their brand, their promise to their customers. In home care and hospice this is where we need to focus—our promise to the patients, their families and the community.
I believe that we should look at our companies as being in the hospitality industry. There are many correlations to our industry with the exception that we are delivering the service as a guest in their home. As a result, it removes the ability to charm the customer with decor and vista. I am sure that we have all had a less than stellar customer service encounter in a hotel that made up for it with ambiance. This is not to forgive bad service, only to point out that we have less control over environment in our hospitality model!
The brand is a major investment that must be nurtured and supported with a consistent image, message and customer relationship. Make it more tangible with stories and testimonials. Provide the people your agency touches an easy mechanism to spread the word in the community.
Branding is not solely logos and colors, and it is not an exact discipline. Every element of outreach, every “conversation” with the potential customer must be taken into consideration because branding happens at every point of contact.
Consistency of message and image are important to building a strong brand. Every time you use anything different you are “muddying” the water and making it more difficult for the consumer to latch onto your brand. For this reason, it is vitally important that all elements of your agency use the logo, message, color, look and feel on a consistent basis. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by using multiple looks in the market. Another element that causes some problems is when there is a name change. This is a process that requires a long-term approach. You must use the old name with the new for a period of two to three years to make sure that you do not lose customers for the wrong reason. Even then it is prudent to maintain the listing in the phone book, on the Internet, etc. for the old name—just to catch those that didn’t get the new one!
First impressions are part of the brand created in the customer’s mind but it is truly the collective impressions on the customer by the agency. These could happen through advertising and other outreach activities. There are certain times in each relationship where the branding occurs.
Hospice providers have the benefit and the challenge of serving the end of life patient and their families. There are two key seminal moments in the customer relationship for hospice agencies. The first occurs during the admission process and the latter when the patient is actively dying.
One example of smart branding would be the agencies that have licensed the 1800HOMECARE vanity phone number. The same principle that fueled the tremendous growth of 1800FLOWERS can work in our industry as well. According to the findings of a June 2002 study by Response Marketing Group of Burlington, Vermont, nearly 60% of participants recalled the vanity numbers they had heard after only one exposure to a radio advertisement.
Now that as an industry we have gone “from good to great,” the quest is now to go from great to greater! The consumer is becoming more educated about home care and hospice, the competition is pushing the envelope and the value of your brand has never been more important. The sales team has the chore of expanding the brand in the community; what are you doing to support them in this effort? Your brand is your promise; the sales team and the care delivery teams are building it everyday!
Want to know what your brand is in the community? Ask your customers and potential customers.
Until next week, Have Fun, Be Proud and Happy Selling!