Hospital marketers predict the future belongs to digital marketing, with online and social media advertising squeezing out radio, print and direct mail as the "core" strategy by 2013.

"Traditional and digital marketing channels will flip-flop in terms of importance," said Acsys Interactive, a Farmington, Conn.-based Web-marketing company which conducted an online survey of 101 hospital marketers last year. The results were shared last month.

According to the survey, just under 10 percent of respondents said online options - search-engine marketing, display advertising and social media - were their main channels. But by 2013, 37 percent said they would be.
Sixty-six percent said traditional approaches, such as mailings and radio spots, were the core, but in the next two years, only 12 percent predicted they would be the dominant channel.

A plurality of respondents - 50 percent - said by 2013, emphasis would be divided evenly between online and offline. Currently, about 23 percent said they were mix-and-match types.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, bigger hospitals were betting more online. By 2013, 41 percent of respondents from hospitals with more than 401 beds predicted that online would be tops, whereas only 28 percent of respondents from smaller hospitals predicted digital marketing would lead.

Online videos were deemed the most effective social media strategy, handily besting juggernauts like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. About 47 percent of respondents said videos were very or extremely effective. Only 32 percent said Facebook was so effective, 22 percent for LinkedIn and 20 percent for Twitter.

But even though many hospitals were starting to favor the online and social media approaches, many lacked plans for putting into place key features, such as mobile and patient portals, according to Acsys. The group said even though 80 percent of hospitals intend to invest in mobile over the next few years, more than half of all respondents had no plans for creating mobile strategies.

The 2010 Crowdsourced Survey of Hospital Marketers was conducted between August and October 2010.

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