Extend Hospital Brand Reach with a Premium Virtual Tour
Imagine being able to provide tours 24 hours a day, seven days a week, of your newly renovated women’s center. Imagine allowing women from all walks of life the chance to see for herself the investment you made in not only space, but in technology and the staff of dedicated nurses and physicains that are there to care for her.
A premium virtual tour (PVT) is a great way to allow potential patients and even potential referring physicians and donors a way to try your brand when it’s most convenient to them and in their own setting. A PVT is essentially an online, 360-degree view of your facility and the team working there in which the viewer moves at her own pace. Unlike a traditional virtual tour, the PVT allows viewers to interact with the environment, such as clicking on a piece of technology or on staff members to learn more about them. The PVT also allows viewers to jump through the parts of the tour that are most relevant and important to them, while skipping the rest.
An all-access, behind-the-scenes look allows the user to experience you at their own pace. Just as virtual tours are used in real estate when people are making that first decision whether to schedule a tour with their agent to see a new home, PVTs are used by moms to see who, where and how their child or loved one will be cared for, or by patients who need reassurance before an upcoming procedure.
We are all looking for that silver bullet these days on how we can stand out in the cluttered landscape that is hospital marketing. Traditional advertising outlets still have a purpose, but we want to, and candidly need to, get the potential patients closer inside our hospital walls. A PVT, if done at the right level, can help evoke the emotions and make the brand connections that we used to only achieve with TV or video.
Unlike traditional TV shoots inside a hospital that can take over entire floors for days on end and disrupt patient care, a PVT is executed similarly to a print shoot with minimal equipment and crew. That means quicker in-and-out and more time to care for patients. And if people featured in the tour leave your organization, you can easily swap them out or even make other visiual changes similar to retouching a print ad. PVTs also allow you to repurpose existing content, such as your CEO welcome video so you can present it in a fresh new way. The PVT is a cost-effective tool you should definitely consider.
For an example of a PVT, come tour Mercy Hospital’s maternity ward.
Jessica Schmidt
As Executive Vice President, Jessica is responsible for day-to-day management of client services, with oversight of both the account management and project management departments. Obsessed with client satisfaction, Jessica has been instrumental in revamping the agency’s processes, resulting in higher client retention, faster turnaround times and decreased costs. Since joining BPD five years ago, Jessica has served as the key client liaison for several major health systems, including HCA, the largest healthcare provider in the nation, and Florida Hospital, the largest single hospital in the U.S.