CASE STUDY

Brand Repositioning and Digital Marketing Strategy

In a Nutshell

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In 2015, the college’s outdated brand identity and poor digital and physical experiences limited potential to attract and engage with target patients.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.

In the fall of 2015, I began building a strategy and team of cross-functional stakeholders and vendors to refresh and reposition the brand to gain share in new segments. The digital-first plan included a complete redesign of brand assets, website, social media and email marketing, leveraging persona-driven multi-media content and local SEO traffic building. I focused traffic building efforts on organic SEO vs. paid, through on-page optimization as well as inbound local citation improvements to significantly acquire targeted audience traffic from search and social media. A newly deployed CRM system automated conversion driving content (video, blog articles, infographics, ebook) matched to the customer journey. A new reputation management strategy boosted online review ranking and improve business listings.

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

Bevelroom Consulting

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.

Do you like these results?

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