STORYTELLING

Ramon Soto took the helm as chief marketing officer at Northwell Health in 2015 tasked with rebranding the organization and supporting that initiative with aggressive marketing and communications. One of his goals for New York’s largest health care systems was to launch an engaging, consumer-friendly website as quickly as possible.

As Soto and his team began the project it became apparent that they needed to take a step back and do a deep dive into evaluating the existing website, examining consumer and patient needs and considering the health system’s overall branding and strategic objectives. That meant a year of researching and preparing an action plan for launching a health and wellness website that would really make an impact.

In their research, they found that other sites were often stagnant, stale and not consistent with what health care is really like. “Nothing reflected the journey a person takes in real life,” said Julie Shapiro, editorial strategist at Northwell.

The sites were missing the most important thing in marketing, especially health care marketing: an emotional connection with the customer. So the team set out to create a website that was truly different and differentiating named The Well that featured the following sections:

• Dear Doctor. A new take on the age-old and still wildly successful advice column format.
• So You’re ... Profiles of people undergoing common and uncommon procedures from a first-person point of view.
• A Day in the Life. A photo-essay/diary entry of people with interesting stories to share.
• True Story. Personal essays or narratives from people in the community offering perspectives not commonly shared in health care.
• Well Informed. A forum for Northwell professionals to demystify health care-related topics.
• 5 Things I Wish You Knew About … What people who live with medical issues each and every day wish others knew about their challenges.
• Deep Dive. Features that tell the story behind the story through investigative and narrative journalism.

Key to gaining management buy-in in developing The Well was selling them on the site’s unique direction and approach and then maintaining regular touchpoints throughout the process. That included consistent updates and reassurances that they were making progress. “The team was aggressive about keeping the key stakeholders in the loop about what we were trying to accomplish. So by the time it launched, there was pure excitement because everyone was aware of how innovative the product was,” said Shapiro.

The launch of The Well included stories about an HIV advocate who was also a member of the LGBTQ community; a column about overwhelmed mothers; and an essay from a clerical support employee on the cardiac unit about what she learned the night a patient died.

It also featured a raw, emotional story about a woman’s journey through the first year of breast cancer, from diagnosis through mastectomy, treatment and beyond. A woman who wasn’t even a patient at the hospital.

The Well’s Mission Statement
“The Well is our commitment to the future of health care. In this time of information overabundance, much of which is inaccurate, unhelpful or even difficult to understand, Northwell Health is on a mission to make a difference as an honest, trusted and caring partner. We’re connecting with consumers to provide them with personalized content that reduces their stress, makes them laugh and ultimately feel more confident and capable on their health care journey.”

It’s Not Just About Pink Ribbons

The breast cancer story came about when Shapiro saw a post in a Facebook group from a woman about her breast cancer diagnosis and suggested her as a profile. “When I reached out to her, I learned that she wasn’t a patient at Northwell,” Shapiro said. “But our leadership saw the value in telling her incredibly poignant story because they understood the benefit it would provide so many people dealing with similar circumstances.”

The woman, Jen Rozenbaum, a writer and photographer herself, immediately agreed to document her journey. The team had a photographer shadow Rozenbaum for months, and posted raw, telling photos, including ones just before and after her mastectomy, accompanied by Rozenbaum’s narrative.

Shapiro’s approach was to show the realities of breast cancer in a way that’s never been shared before. “A woman’s story doesn’t begin and end with ‘I’m a survivor.’ It’s not just about awareness walks and pink ribbons. Those are important and give people hope, but these women still have to carry on while battling for their lives, dealing with painful treatments and body-altering surgeries. She still had to be a mother. She had to be a wife. She had carpools to drive, dinners to cook and a business to run,” Shapiro said.

The team remembers sharing the most intense photo with Soto, which showed Rozenbaum naked from the waist up, her mastectomy scars plainly visible. He reacted by saying he’d never seen anything like it before. They told him that Rozenbaum wasn’t a Northwell patient and then showed him more photos along with some of her writing. He was so moved by the articles and images that he supported their decision to launch the site with Rozenbaum’s story.

Reaping the Rewards

The team did a soft launch in December 2017 to test the site, and then did a major public relations push, including Facebook advertising, in the first quarter of 2018.

During the development phase, they had a “sizable” budget and a 20-person team. Today, all videos are still produced internally, but the department now relies on a combination of internal talent and freelancers, including nationally acclaimed journalists and award-winning photographers.

Facebook advertising has been not only successful in terms of drawing people to the site, according to Joe Leston, vice president of marketing at Northwell Health, it has been cost-effective as well. They saw a 10- to 20-times-to-the-dollar media efficiency of what they normally spent, with an average cost-per-click of 25 cents for The Well versus the industry average of $1.32. Click-through rates have reached highs of nearly 7% while the industry average hovers at only .83%.

An intricate dashboard to demonstrate return on investment was created with the help of the organization’s customer insights team. To date, the site has received more than 1.6 million page views and upwards of 800,000 unique visitors. The most important analytic? Eighty percent of visitors are women in the 25-54 age demographic, Northwell’s target audience.

Although there are no overt calls-to-action within the copy, click-throughs to the larger Northwell site are up considerably due to related links posted throughout the page. In 2018, for instance, clicks from The Well to the site’s “Request an Appointment” page increased 253% from the first to the second half of the year, while subscriptions to The Well’s e-newsletter increased 310%.

Personalization, tracking user patterns and targeting visitors with other content they might be interested in were key parts of the initial strategy. “Our goal is to engage and delight with interesting, meaningful content before a health event so consumers consider us partners when they need us,” said Leston.

His advice to other systems looking to expand their content marketing efforts? “It’s all about truth in storytelling. Be there with the audience. Find where they’re at and meet them there. Dealing with a health event is scary. We want people to know they’re not alone. We’re trying to put the human element back into health care,” he said.