Healthcare establishments as owner-operators of digital billboards: making the most of excellent roadside visibility and high traffic counts to better connect with patients

BACKGROUND: Given the importance of communicating effectively with current and prospective patients, healthcare institutions must direct considerable energies toward achieving associated excellence. Pursuits usually center on addressing the marketing communications mix properly, but in order to maximize communications prowess, attention also should be directed toward incorporating emerging communications innovations, when and where possible, to bolster opportunities to connect with patients. DISCUSSION: In pursuit of communications excellence, Willis-Knighton Health System’s executives reflected on campus dynamics in the context of modern outdoor advertising technologies, namely, digital billboards, which present electronic advertisements on-demand, around-the-clock. They surmised that, with Willis-Knighton Health System’s campuses being positioned in highly-visible fashion along highly-transited roadways, the institution could deploy this relatively new roadside advertising innovation to better engage audiences. This particular train of thought ultimately led to the installation of digital billboards at several of its locations. This article profiles the development of Willis-Knighton Health System’s new marketing communications asset and offers advice for healthcare establishments desirous of placing digital billboards onsite to better connect with patients. CONCLUSIONS: Opportunities affording enriched communications with patients should continually be sought by health and medical entities. Digital billboards, institutionally-owned and operated, supply one such opportunity, pairing a state-of-the-art, uniquely-capable advertising medium with the excellent locational characteristics possessed by many healthcare establishments. As Willis-Knighton Health System has observed, digital billboards offer an exceptional mechanism for engaging audiences, affording mutual benefits which ultimately foster patronage and prosperity.