Cape Cod Healthcare
When Cape Cod Healthcare hired JH Communications to handle its annual marketing campaign one clear message came across: the hospital wanted something that would be trackable. The hospital expected to know the number of inquiries and requests for procedures that resulted from the marketing message.
“The days of branding only are over. They really wanted to track their investment and their ROI,” said John Houle, President and CEO of JH Communications.
JH Communications developed a marketing campaign to highlight Cape Cod Healthcare’s neurosurgery specialties. The campaign combined the latest marketing technology to target and track results with personalized videos featuring doctors describing their procedures.
“I thought it was important to get to know the doctor who was performing the procedure,” Houle said. Houle had a particular interest in the campaign since his brother, Dr. Paul Houle, was one of the neurosurgeons featured in the videos. Dr. Houle is one of two neurosurgeons in New England who performs a less invasive type of back surgery to fix herniated discs. Known as the Joimax procedure, it takes about an hour, does not require general anesthesia, and allows the patient to walk out the same day.
One of the key messages of the campaign was the quality of healthcare available locally in Cape Cod. While some patients in other areas may have to choose between seeing a hometown doctor or traveling to a city for specialized treatment, Cape Cod residents don’t need to travel. “One of the things that we wanted Cape Cod residents to know was that they didn’t need to go to Providence or Boston for top-level healthcare—they could stay home,” Houle said. The biographical videos explored what it was about Cape Cod that draws top talent. “They attracted the very best because of the quality of life that you can experience by living on Cape Cod,” Houle said.
JH Communications posted the videos on landing pages built on Cape Cod Healthcare’s website and emailed them out to a list of 60,000 contacts developed by the hospital. Responses were closely tracked and managed: any email that was opened or resulted in a click automatically got a follow-up email with a video in seven days.
“It was very targeted, and we could track everything,” Houle said.
JH Communications also used specialized software to ensure their videos were shown to online viewers most likely to be interested in the topic. For example, someone reading an article on ESPN.com about Tiger Woods’ back surgery would be shown an ad with a video about the procedure at Cape Cod Healthcare.
The campaign was so successful that it won a 2020 Lamplighter Excellence Award from the New England Society of Healthcare Communications (NESHCO). The award was among several out of 285 submissions from hospital and healthcare companies across the region.