Branding Behavioral Health: Why You Should Care

The following is excerpted from our White Paper.

If you’re marketing a brand to a broad and disparate audience, a distinct, healthy brand will identify and differentiate you, and promote engagement and connection. It’s been that way for thousands of years. If you believe your behavioral healthcare organization is immune, or that a healthy brand offers little value, that belief is an obstacle to success.

Brand History

The word “brand” has many roots. It derives from the ancient North Scandinavian term “brandr,” meaning “to burn.” It is a reference to the practice of using branding irons to burn a mark into the hides of livestock, and may also refer to the practice of craftsmen engraving brand names into products, tools, or personal belongings. Its practice dates back to at least 2,700 years B.C.E. in Egypt, and was a key component of religious teaching and identification.

Branding can be found everywhere in ancient societies – on signs, coins, artwork, weapons, crafts, and professional services. Artists and craftsmen signed their work in unique fashion, often creating unique symbols, to ensure authenticity and to differentiate from imitators and purveyors of products of lesser quality. Recognition promoted trust. Since most people were only semi-literate, the brand symbol became a primary way to communicate, educate, and engage. Brands were also used to let people know who was in charge – through faces and symbols on currency.

The definition of brand expanded, as did its benefits.

The definition we like:

A brand is a multi-layered consumer experience represented by a collection of images and ideas. Often, it refers to a symbol, name, logo, slogan, design scheme, and voice. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the accumulation of experiences with the specific product or service, both directly relating to its use and through the influence of conversation, design, and media exposure.

Behavioral Healthcare is a Consumer Industry

More often than not, when speaking to a behavioral health organization about their brand, the response is that they are not a consumer brand. Therefore, the reasoning follows, they do not need to invest much into it.

Today, healthcare brands are consumer brands. The consumer segments they need to engage are distinct and varied.

In a strategic approach to healthy branding, an organization effectively self-identifies and knows its audiences and their needs and wants. They know what makes their organization special and know how to communicate it, and they create a plan for every brand interaction.

Like most every consumer business, behavioral healthcare organizations face competition. But they compete for more than a share of the market. They also must compete for funding, for physicians, for attention, for staff, and for referrals. In the non-profit world especially, they also face increasing payer control that includes reimbursements tied to volume and outcomes.

A website is not a brand. It is a highly important element to the digital brand, and the primary way consumers engage and connect. It is, however, a marketing tactic, not a long-term brand strategy.

A brand is more than a logo, a slogan, or a website. These are branding components. The heart of a brand connects with its audience when it conveys the essence of an organization, its origins, its reason for being, its unique nature, and its promise.

Brand Attachment

Creating brand attachment is a key issue in today’s marketing world. The strongest attachments are emotional – connecting a good feeling with the mere sight, mention, or thought of a particular brand. We all have them. An effective way to foster these attachments, while maintaining integrity and authenticity, is to match the brand’s personality with the consumer’s self.

With a behavioral healthcare brand, however, the interaction is more complex. You must know your audience, have a good idea of their sense of self, and be able to authentically connect with them over time. Your unique self must be communicated through symbol, speech, and action, and understood by each audience. Your promise must be fulfilled at every point of interaction. This includes advertising, web site imagery and messaging, how you answer phones, the nature and tone of your conversations, and the support you show for their belief, trust, and ongoing relationship.

The resulting attachment is also more complex and less easily broken. Deliver on your promise as a behavioral healthcare provider, and over time you develop brand evangelists and ambassadors; they will influence countless more loyalists.

You can’t deliver, however, if you’re not aware of who you are and the promises you are able to make and keep. 

It is a powerful thing, to build and market a healthy behavioral healthcare brand. Evidence shows that you are a consumer brand and, done right, branding will lead to an energized, unified organization; effective strategic planning; increased brand awareness and attachment; and sustainable success.

The attachment and loyalty a healthy brand creates can last for generations. The good it does in the world will last lifetimes.

If you would like to read our White Paper in its entirety, you can download the PDF.