Marketing Sensitive Topics

Jenny: Hi friends, welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Bristow, and I’m also the CEO and founder at Hedy & Hopp, a full service, fully healthcare marketing agency. Today, I’m excited to be here to chat with you about competing for attention on sensitive topics. As healthcare marketers, we have the pleasure and joy of helping patients find the care that they need.

But what do we do whenever that care involves a sensitive topic? So these are my, this topic is for my friends that are focusing on service lines such as behavioral health, addiction treatment, oncology, bariatric or sexual health. Patients may be private about their needs and the services that they may be looking for, or they may be avoidant, looking out for services that are available for them at all.

So let’s talk a little bit about how you can approach it. First big takeaway is to shift your targeting from the condition to actually targeting the movement. So you shouldn’t, for example, try with all of your targeting tools online to target folks that fall into a category such as people with depression. But what you can do is you can build content around searches people actually make, say, at 2 a.m. so if they are a person with depression, they may be going online and searching for things like, why can’t I get out of bed?

Or if it’s a partner, how to help a spouse who won’t get help. So really thinking about that intent-based search that people with those sensitive service needs may be looking for is definitely a strong starting point to really sidestep a lot of those platform restrictions. On that note, market to the circle, not just the patient or the individual that may need services.

So for example, with addiction, behavioral health and memory care, the decision maker is often a family member and not the patient themselves. All of our friends in peds know this story, right? Campaigns have to be broader and more strategically focused at caregivers. And also, it’s important to remember that in sensitive topic scenarios, caregivers are likely going to face fewer stigma barriers, although there still may be some there depending on the topic.

But they likely will convert better because they may be more of a problem solving mode instead of actually being in the depths. So thinking about how you can modify your call to actions, or how you can create content that actually focuses on caregivers of the potential patient, is a strong way to be able to hit that objective. Third, lead with normalization, not services.

So, for example, content should speak in such a way that makes them feel like, hey, this is normal, this is common. You’re not broken. It builds the trust that is required before anybody is actually going to click through, or even consider submitting their information to potentially learn more or to schedule an appointment. Fourth, think about designing the landing page experience for privacy.

So clear messaging about confidentiality. Discreet contact options like text or chat instead of a phone call or even an email provides a lot of comfort for those folks, because it may be on a singular device that they feel like they have more control over. Absolutely no invasive form fields before someone is ready. So, for example, if it is a behavioral health scenario and you have a prospective patient “learn more” field, be very considerate and thoughtful about what fields are even included in that, let alone which ones are required upon submission.

And then always, always, always lead with empathy for the patient or the caregiver. And remember, the goal of health care marketing is really helping patients find the care that they need. So making sure that every step that you’re asking them to do, every piece of content that you’re putting out, view it through the lens of empathy before anything goes live, anything that is too clinical-reading or that removes the human experience from it, is not going to be helpful for these patients, you know, as they’re trying to be able to find care in a way that also feels comfortable.

I want to share, along the same topic, an eMarketer article. So just this week, eMarketer released an article that was titled Healthcare Marketers Can Make Patients Laugh If They Listen First. And this really goes hand in hand with our topic today of sensitive topics. And they have four core points that they shared that I think are really valuable and tie hand in hand with our topic.

Today, we’ll share a full link to the episode or to the article in the show notes if you want to learn more about it. But the first point that they made was to listen before creating. So in the case study they shared, they said that they spent 6 to 8 months listening to conversations within the diabetes community, including Reddit threads, before leaning into humor.

So something that may seem like humor when you’re first entering a community may not actually be humor. You need to make sure that you have a little bit of longevity of listening, instead of just taking things at face value. And then a reminder is, if you’re leaning in with humor, make the situation funny, not the patient. Humor can help build connections, but the patient should never, ever, ever be the punchline, right?

It should be the situation that they are in or that, you know, the shared group finds themselves in. Awareness doesn’t always drive action. In this case study that was highlighted, the group did two years of educational messaging. And then they recognized that emotional barriers, not a lack of information, was actually likely what was preventing patients from getting screened.

And that leads to our last point is trust comes first. So brands need to understand their audiences and earn the right to use humor, particularly when navigating sensitive health topics. All of these different pieces of advice really kind of go back to the heart of why we are healthcare marketers to begin with. You don’t get into this field just to be able to accomplish KPIs.

Those are real humans. Those are real actions. So really leaning in through the lens of understanding, compassion and going above kind of the basic tactics and thinking strategically about what that care circle looks like, how you can really assist in education, and creating a comfortable situation for the patient to be able to reach out is really going to lead to much more successful campaigns.

If you’re in one of these sensitive topic areas. And thank you so much for tuning in today. Very much appreciate it. If this topic was useful for you, or if you know a marketer that deals with a sensitive topic, send this over to them, hopefully it will give them a couple of little tidbits of ways to maybe view the work they’re currently doing differently, or come up with something additive to the work that they’re currently doing.

And as always, like and share the episode very much. Appreciate you, friends. Thank you so much for tuning in. We’ll see you on a future episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Cheers!