Speaking of Plaid, they recently helped Danbury Hospital in Connecticut launch a cardiology micro web site with a blood pressure and exercise log that allows potential patients to track their risks, and progress, between doctors' appointments. The site works brilliantly to identify potential patients, differentiate the hospital, build a relationship between visits, and establish switching costs. It's also frankly helpful to give patients a simple way to track their health on a timeline continuum, vs. the point checks physicians typically make months apart.
Too bad no one can find the web site on Google, since the hospital marketing team apparently isn't running pay-per-click Adwords. Search for "heart care Danbury" and you get a series of press releases but no link to the main Danbury Hospital heart sites:
Geez. You also see none of Danbury Hospital's competitors are advertising here, either. NO ONE is managing Google in this space in western Connecticut, and the first cardiology docs who do will rule for pennies a click. Please, please, health marketers, print out the Pew study and take it to your next board meeting -- and explain to them that today, consumers start searching on Google, not on yourhospitalname.org.
Pew reports 113 million (that's right, MILLION) Americans search for health information online each year, and most start on a search engine, not a specific web site. For now, few will find Danbury Hospital.
UPDATE: Danbury Hospital marketing team, if you'd like to fix this problem, get a credit card and sign up directly at Google here. Be sure to select the geo-targeting option, pick 100 words related to cardio, and link to the new site. It will take you about 10 minutes, and for $20 a day, you can put your heart site on the top of Google's rankings 40 miles around Danbury to start getting heart patients. Merry Christmas.
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