Consistent branding, and creating brand recognition, can become a challenging task for healthcare providers with multiple locations. It often begins with internal debates about practice names including ones to keep and ones not to consider. Multisite healthcare branding can also involve internal politics that leads to inconsistent branding across all locations. Multi-location branding can often be a daunting goal as many medical professionals involved in practice and hospital branding are not always contemplating how their decisions translate in terms of marketing. To help keep things on track, let’s take a look at a checklist of items to consider when branding for multi-location healthcare providers.
Create a Goal For Your New Brand
For multi-location practices, the need for better healthcare branding often starts when a healthcare provider is facing a current challenge that prevents the organization from presenting its brand consistently and accurately to the public. As an example, imagine having 20 practice locations with five of those practices branded with different names that don’t reflect their location. They might be located in Nevada, for example, but the parent brand name includes the word, “Arizona.” It should come as no surprise that this creates confusion among consumers thanks to the lack of alignment.
Devising and delivering one cohesive brand, using standard naming, color palettes and graphics, for every location is the goal. Instead of different names, including the geographic area of each location is part of the name for the franchise is a good goal for multi-location practices.
Research Possible Brand Names for Your Practice
When deciding on a name for your healthcare organization, there are many branding considerations to keep in mind. Proper research will help prevent you from hitting a roadblock down the road that could send you back to the drawing board. Research and due diligence makes for a smooth branding process for your healthcare practice. Keep these questions in mind when deciding on a brand name:
- Is it unique enough that it won’t be confused with another practice or business?
- Does the name represent all locations, or will you require a naming convention to reflect individual locations?
- Does the brand name align with your business vision and values?
- Does the branding create a positive image that will benefit your target audience?
- Is the name available to trademark? Can you purchase it online as well as secure the domain names and social media handles?
- Can the name grow with your organization and remain relevant?
Selecting the Brand Architecture For Multiple Locations
Once you have identified your branding goals through research and insights from those with a stake in the business, you can decide on the best branding architecture for your multi-location practice. Brand architecture has four main approaches and they define the relationship between your various locations (including brand naming).
- Branded House: In this approach, your firm is the brand and any services and practice areas are all segments of the primary brand. In healthcare and hospital branding, think of Kaiser Permanente as a branded house since it is a multi-location practice that is viewed as a single brand. The branded house model is an excellent goal for healthcare organizations with a strong audience and reputation.
- Endorsed Brand: This brand architecture model covers individual and distinct brands that are linked together by an endorsing parent brand. In other words the parent brand plays a supportive role that links the brands along with a shared high-level promise to target consumers. An endorsed brand allows for independent naming structures, minimal changes to established practices, future expansion opportunities, and an easier transition for existing patients.
- Sub-Brands: This branding method is when the main brand creates a subsidiary/secondary brand. For example, Apple has sub-brands such as iMac, iTunes and iPhone that allow them to reach a new audience as well as build and sustain relationships loyal to those brands.
- House of Brands: In this architecture option, the branding efforts are focused on the subset brands and little attention is paid to the parent brand. Proctor and Gamble has a house of brands architecture that includes brands such as Bounty, Charmin, and Crest. This branding approach requires dedicated resources because each brand needs its own brand messaging and marketing efforts. For example, in the healthcare industry, Pacific Dental is a dental service organization with hundreds of locations and community-based names, but the house of brands approach gives them a local presence with a community feel.
Finalizing Your Brand and Overall Message
Once you identify your preferred brand architecture, you will need to fine-tune your multi-location healthcare branding identity and messaging. This task helps you better understand the organization’s purpose, practice vision and mission, the core values of the business, and brand messaging. Besides developing a brand personality, developing and clarifying the organization’s visual identity is essential. This includes your logo, images, typeface and colors. Visual elements define the brand, so every element should have a clear purpose in presenting the brand.
Healthcare branding for multi-location providers can be tricky at times so keep the tips in this blog in mind when developing and executing the organization’s branding strategy.
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