Building a strategy for health communications
A successful health strategy isn’t just about communicating – it’s also about listening.
Promoting health messages can be tricky. The simple supply of information is no longer effective. People won’t become healthy because you’ve asked them to. What the modern audience needs is understanding and support.
In a recent report commissioned by the Department of Health, it was shown that social marketing is a powerful tool that can create and sustain positive behaviour. It follows that a thoughtful social marketing strategy will improve the effectiveness of health promotion.
“Social Marketing is a key tool for changing the WAY
people use the NHS – and the reasons WHY they do so.”
Dr Fiona Adshead
Deputy Chief Medical Officer - Department of Health
You can’t ‘sell’ good health. At ACW, we work with NHS organisations to help them foster the energy, skills and desire for good health that people already have. We believe that social marketing builds a deeper understanding of what health means to people. We can reach people who have been affected by health risks, and those who haven’t, and we can influence their daily decisions. Getting closer to the audience in this way will put people at the centre of policy thinking – and that’s good news for them and you.
The ACW team is extremely experienced in the health sector. We assign a team of specialists to bring the right skills to every project. Working alongside your team, we’ll help to create a measurable, integrated marketing plan that meets your budget and resources.
Our process goes like this:
- CUSTOMER ORIENTATION – we’ll start by understanding what people do and why they do it, based on market and consumer research
- BEHAVIOUR – next, we’ll analyse current behavioural patterns and trends
- THEORY – to inform development, we use an open integrated theory framework
- INSIGHT – we’ll focus on what moves and motivates your audience, in order to identify and develop ‘actionable insights’
- EXCHANGE – next we will analyse the cost to the consumer in achieving the proposed benefit. Incentives, recognition, reward, and disincentives are considered and tailored to match specific audiences
- COMPETITION – we never underestimate the pressures of competing internal and external influences
- SEGMENTATION – now, we’ll take deeper segmented approaches tailored to specific audience segments
- METHODS MIX – finally, we’ll select a range of methods to achieve synergy and maximum impact
- EVALUATE – after implementation, we’ll assess the impact of our interventions in terms of change in behaviour. If required, we’ll run further focus groups to inform the next phase of work.
