CASE STUDY
Brand Repositioning and Digital Marketing Strategy
In a Nutshell
- Challenge: How to reposition an academic health brand to attract patients competitively.
- Solution: A customer-centric strategy to leverage organic and paid digital channels to engagement audiences to improved value propositions.
- Results: 10X growth in digital conversions through content and conversion optimizations.
Overview
The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry is a worldwide leader in oral health education, clinical care and research that is patient-centered and evidence-based, with a foundation in preventive and public health sciences. As part of UIC and the UI Health system, UIC College of Dentistry is the largest dental school and dental care provider in the state of IL, as well as a top 20 oral science research institution. The college serves over 35 thousand patients annually and graduates over 230 DMD and post-graduate students each year.
Challenge
In 2015, the college’s outdated brand identity and poor digital and physical experiences limited potential to attract and engage with target patients. There was little awareness of the college’s strengths in research driven advanced oral disease care, and the community impacts. This was made worse by low online reputation ratings driven by negative reviews. A clear value proposition and patient focused content was needed to complete in high growth services such as dental implants, advanced oral disease care and clear aligner orthodontics.
We introduced a ‘rapid design thinking’ approach to bring all of these perspectives together into a coherent picture of the overall problem, and harness the collective wisdom of the team to decide on the best solutions – as quickly as possible.
FROM 'INSIDE-OUT' TO 'OUTSIDE-IN' THINKING
Solution
A customer-centric approach. A key to our success was switching organizational thinking from ‘inside-out’ to ‘outside-in’, i.e. to be more customer focused. I led a highly inclusive approach including hands-on persona and content development workshops, usability testing, video production and analytics story telling to drive change while communicating marketing priorities.
New brand slogan. To rally the entire organization around a new brand slogan “changing the future of oral health”, I worked closely with executive leadership and peers to embed marketing best practices into a wide range of business activities from student admissions and clinical care, to administrative functions such as HR and finance.
Results
10x
Digital Conversion Growth
Optimized conversion path through improved value proposition and persona-matched content.
$350k / yr
Digital Channels Revenue
Grew target patient acquisition 12X over 4 years (MQL)
20x
Marketing
ROI
CRM / email performance. Focused digital-first investment, test and learn approach.
