How Effective Branding Improves Patient Trust in Healthcare
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Trust in healthcare has plummeted over the past five years, from 72% of adults reporting high trust in physicians in 2020 to just 40% in January 2024, partially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, today's patients have more choice than ever in their healthcare providers — it’s a true "patient's market."
This perfect storm has put healthcare organizations in an unprecedented position: you have to compete for your community's trust while simultaneously standing out in a growing field of competitors.
Recent history has shown us how quickly the healthcare landscape can change. That’s why sustaining and growing your market share requires long-term thinking that goes beyond single marketing campaigns, healthcare advertising, or relying solely on patient care to "speak for itself."
As a healthcare organization, you should lean into what sets you apart … and become unforgettable and unignorable for it. In other words: it’s time to double down on your healthcare branding.
What Is Healthcare Branding?
The best healthcare marketing and patient experiences start with a distinct brand. Your brand is not limited to — and should not start with! — your logo. In fact, the visual elements of your brand should be among the last pieces to be implemented, following a deeper exploration of your mission and what your organization means to your patients and community.
As one researcher explains: “Branding is the strategic building of relationships between consumers and products, services, and organizations. In the commercial sector, brands create identities with which consumers associate — such as the fit, striving athlete (think Nike) or the young, fun-loving urban professional (Volkswagen).”
In healthcare, your brand encompasses every element that influences a potential patient's choice to trust you as their provider:
Values
Unique Value Proposition and Positioning
Messaging and Voice
Team
Design
Below, we’ll dive deeper into each of these components.
How Effective Branding Can Improve Patient Trust in Healthcare
The benefits of healthcare marketing are easy to see right away. But the benefits of branding can be less obvious. Ultimately, the power of healthcare branding comes down to this: Patients and plan members often make decisions based on perception, especially in the competitive US market. So your brand can become the deciding factor in their healthcare journey.
Research shows that effective healthcare branding drives patient trust and loyalty. For instance, a key study found that hospital brand image significantly increased patient loyalty when combined with quality service and competitive costs. Meaning, if you’re offering similar quality of care and costs, branding could be the edge you need.
In 2021, the American College of Healthcare Executives identified a "new healthcare consumer," noting that rising out-of-pocket costs have made patients more selective in choosing providers.
This choosier healthcare patient who spends more of their own money (vs. insurance) might function more like a typical consumer — and so, broader consumer data could be something to consider, such as the Edelman Trust Barometer, which points to the increasing role of branding in consumer trust. In its 2023 report, it was revealed that consumers are leaning harder into which brands they trust: 71% of people place increased importance on trusting the brands they use, with trusted brands enjoying higher purchase rates (59%) and customer loyalty (67%).
Key Components of Effective Healthcare Branding
There’s never been a better time to invest in your healthcare brand. But you’re probably asking, “Where do we start?” Consider the following six elements as your primer for building a strong brand.
1.Values
Every client we work with? We recommend they start here, with their values. It’s ground zero for building your brand, because everything else should bloom from your values.
As we’ve written about before, having clear values leads to better employee retention and higher patient loyalty … and it also makes staying consistent much easier because you have a guiding light.
Brand values are typically short phrases (or even single-word themes) that encompass what drives your organization’s mission. Common values we see in the healthcare market include:
Patient-centered care
Clinical excellence
Innovation
Compassion
Integrity
Collaboration
Equity and accessibility
Community commitment
Transparency
Safety
If you need a final nudge to carve out some time for your values, consider that as many as 64% of people reported “shared values” as a crucial factor in their healthcare brand choices!
2. Unique Value Proposition & Positioning
Your “unique value proposition” or “UVP” refers to what you’re promising your patients that’s different or special in some way. We love this list of what makes a good value proposition in healthcare:
It is true (key for ethical marketing)
The value offered is superior to the one of the competition (it’s different!)
It is important to the target public (it’s patient-centric)
It is memorable and easy to recall (uses simple language)
It is difficult to copy by the competition (uniquely yours!)
Positioning goes a step further to define how you stack up compared to other solutions and competitors. This step often requires research into your market (asking: “Why did they choose us?”) and into your competitors (through detailed competitor analysis).
3.Messaging & Voice
Your brand's voice and messaging translate your values and positioning into communication that resonates with your audience. Usually, your message includes your brand promise, messaging hierarchy, and clear audience definitions.
By contrast, your voice is more about the words you use to convey a certain tone or personality. For example, Children's Hospital of New Orleans uses casual, approachable language, such as "kids" instead of "children." In contrast, a large research hospital like Johns Hopkins more often maintains an academic, authoritative tone.
Regardless of your chosen voice and style, all effective healthcare communication requires simple sentences, genuine empathy, and transparent messaging. The challenge is to help your brand voice reflect your values while making complex healthcare information accessible to your specific patient population.
4.Design
Only once your values, position, UVP, message, and voice are established and agreed upon by leadership do your visual brand elements come into play. They should bring your brand to life.
Design includes your logo, color palette, typography, and image guidelines. Most effective healthcare design balances professionalism with accessibility to help patients quickly understand and trust your organization.
Finally, consider how your visuals will work across all touchpoints — from in-person signage to mobile apps and patient portals — while maintaining consistency with your brand foundation.
5. Team Alignment
True brand success requires your entire team to understand and embody your brand values — including clinicians, frontline staff, and administration, not just the marketing team.
Team alignment means everyone shares clarity on your audience, mission, values, goals, strategies, key messages, and brand guidelines. And this is where many organizations fail. Their hard work developing their values, positioning, messaging, and visual brand may show up in their marketing … but they’re hardly seen, let alone embodied by other team members.
As a result, the “brand” is gathering dust in a Google Drive. It’s not coming to life in patient interactions, so patient experiences can fall far short or vary widely from what your marketing promised, leading to high patient turnover.
That's why collaborative brand development is crucial. When teams help define the brand, they're more likely to implement it consistently across all patient touchpoints. Our Value-Mapping sessions bring teams together to create alignment so that your brand is infused through every one of your patient experiences.
Using Your Brand Beyond Your Healthcare Practice Marketing
It’s not enough to use your brand in your healthcare marketing strategy. Branding in healthcare also must be integrated throughout the experience with your organization, beyond referral and patient acquisition.
Even the best branding results in greater trust only when it aligns with what actually happens once someone is interacting with your organization.
Healthcare Branding in Your Patient Experience
Imagine if a person was drawn to your organization by your messaging, only to become a patient and find that reality doesn't match! That’s why your brand must carry through the entire patient experience, both virtual and in-person.
Get started by mapping your patient journey and intentionally infusing your values at each touchpoint, from first contact to post-care follow-ups. Everything counts: online scheduling, waiting rooms, assessment consultations, clinician interactions, outpatient programs, and more.
It's best to partner with patient experience experts on this one because evaluating your own patient experience can be challenging. At EnticEdge, we involve our in-house patient experience design experts to support our clients.
Healthcare Branding in Your Team Experience
Also known as "employee branding," this means getting real buy-in from your team (much easier with shared values!) and living up to it through the employee experience. For example, if you say you value mental health, show it — such as Wonderful does with free on-site medical care and 100 mental health sessions yearly.
Branding your team experience as much as your marketing helps create what Forbes calls "employee advocacy," where staff naturally become your best brand champions, which has been shown to increase brand reach by a huge 561%!
Healthcare Branding in Your Referral Experience
Referrals drive lots of your patient acquisition, so tailoring your unique value proposition to providers is key. They need to know what makes you different and likely need to see proof your care is top-notch.
We recommend you keep core messages consistent while adapting communication for each referral audience you work with — such as hospitals, physicians, and schools. When we work with clients, we start with key messages and then find relevant angles for each referral partner, leaving our clients with a breakdown of exactly what messages to use in communication with every type of referral partner.
Examples of Successful Healthcare Branding Strategy
When healthcare branding is done well, it lasts. Just consider some of the most well-known healthcare organizations and their recognizable brands:
Mayo Clinic: When you think of “medical excellence,” which organization comes to mind? Probably, the Mayo Clinic. This is not a happy accident. Mayo exemplifies trust-based branding through consistent actions and messaging about its medical excellence and patient-centered care.
Cleveland Clinic: The Cleveland Clinic’s popular slogan, “Every life deserves world-class care,” has rooted into the public’s consciousness with its ubiquity in their marketing and helped build trust in the way it shows up in their operations and experiences, like their (at the time) revolutionary same-day appointments system.
Kaiser Permanente: Kaiser’s integrated care model is reflected in their 2010s "Thrive" campaign, which connected preventive care to everyday wellness. They've maintained this message consistently for 15 years and are now best known for this care model, even with its adaptations along the way.
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP): Consistently ranked as a top children’s hospital in the nation, CHOP still manages to keep its brand focused on parents with sick children, not on their own accolades. This can be seen in everyday messaging like “We’re here for your family, when and where you need us” and iconic campaigns like their "Hope Lives Here" campaign.
Authentic Healthcare Branding Pays Off Today and Tomorrow
Leading a healthcare organization requires constantly juggling your long-term mission with your short-term goals. Branding is one of the few investments that helps you with both:
Long-term, a strong brand that truly reflects your care quality and mission will help your organization grow sustainably and withstand the pressures of market turbulence.
Short-term, your brand becomes a guiding light for decision-making, helping you move quickly while staying true to your values — and maintaining the patient trust you've worked so hard to build.
When your brand is infused throughout your organization (i.e., team training for engagement around brand messaging) and team members really stand behind it, your brand’s influence is elevated and becomes foundational to your goal setting.
Ready to align your team around a powerful healthcare brand? Start with our Value-Mapping session to uncover what makes your organization truly unforgettable.
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