A Case for Digital : An Interview with Eisenhower Center

In December 2020, Surf Rider Media was tasked with helping Eisenhower Center find qualified applicants for their Direct Care Staff roles. Before working with Surf Rider Media, Eisenhower Center employed traditional media like print and billboards to try to raise awareness for these open positions. 

Eisenhower Center is Michigan's premiere brain injury rehab facility with 4 locations, over 450 employees and annual revenues north of $32 million.  Yet they struggle to fill these positions due to high turnover and lack of awareness for the openings.

We interviewed Dan Bogosian who is the Director of Quality Assurance at Eisenhower Center to learn more about how recruiting and marketing has changed since dipping their toes in digital.

Dan Bogosian is the Director of Quality Assurance at Eisenhower Center

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with digital and working with Surf Rider Media.  Can you tell us a little bit about Eisenhower Center and your role there?

At Eisenhower Center, we are a long term rehabilitation center for traumatic brain injuries, behavioral health and mental health issues. I am the Director of Quality Assurance, and as a result I manage quality improvement initiatives throughout our facility. Which include operations, customer and staff support.  One of our biggest challenges is finding enough staff since we are a 24 hour facility.  Not enough people know about us and our Direct Care positions, so finding talent can be challenging.  

How is Surf Rider Media helping Eisenhower Center? 

SR Media is helping our company with recruitment, we are a 24 hour staffed facility and in need of staff, direct care workers.  They have implemented a data driven digital marketing campaign that helps us target and speak to potential staff actively looking for work in the South East Michigan area.  SR Media is helping drive applications and increasing the number of people entering our training program.

What were you doing before you started working with Surf Rider Media?

We were using traditional billboards, magazines, and radio. We had limited, to no success.  In addition to a huge upfront cost, one of our biggest challenges was we were not sure who was seeing our ads, and we weren't even sure people were applying as a result.  With SR Media we have data that shows a direct correlation between our media and job applications.  

Did you have any initial reservations for running digital?

Neither myself, nor my co-workers knew how to run or execute a digital marketing campaign. Spending money on something we aren’t confident on how it works is a hard choice, but with SR Media and their ability to simplify the ins and outs of how digital works, as well as handle the heavy lifting of our campaign setup, it made everything easier. 

What is the biggest difference between digital and the more traditional methods you mentioned?

I love numbers and digital allows real time data collection of how it’s working. With a billboard, you hope 1,000’s of people drive by every day and see it, but beyond that you have no clue who took action. With digital you learn more about your audience. Who is interested, the gender, the age range, the time a day they are interacting, etc. In addition to getting applications, we are gaining insight into who is applying. You know exact numbers, there’s no guessing and assumptions. This allows for further tweaking of our internal systems, and allows us to optimize in on exactly what we are looking for.

What is your main goal with digital?

Our main goal with digital was to test it to see the success rate of use. After spending $3000 in a print magazine and getting nothing out of it, I figured it was time to try something new. We had been interested in digital for a while, and figured some efforts in digital could pay off.  Running a digital campaign is more complicated than traditional media, and our team is not currently set up to manage and execute.  I’m happy I found SR Media to manage and act as a guide as we continue to evolve our digital strategy.

What is the biggest benefit you have gotten from digital?

The biggest benefit is the numbers, the reports SR Media gives us to examine and tweak our marketing and recruiting system, help to perfect it. As I said earlier, I love numbers, and data.  Surf Rider Media not only speaks my language when it comes to data, they provide actionable data from our media campaigns that we can use inside our organization to make more informed decisions.

What is the biggest advantage of working with Surf Rider Media?

The speed of getting an ad running, as well as the data and analytics they provide pre and post campaigns. With a print ad or billboard there are many steps in order to finally see your ad ~3 weeks later.  Then once it's live we have to track everything with pen and paper, plus use a bit of guessing to get a sense of ROI. With SR Media, our ads were up in a matter of days, with immediate analytics that gave us a real time sense of performance and ROI.

What are your hopes for digital in 2021 and beyond?

Recruitment is going well, so we want to continue to optimize our spend and strategy there. We are opening up a new program at our facility soon and are looking to use SR Media to reach new patients in need.  The medical field is full or guidelines that have to be followed, and SR Media is helping us stay compliant. I know bigger health care facilities in the state have been using digital, so it’s about time we level the playing field and access some of the same tactics to compete. I am really starting to get a grasp for how powerful of a tool digital can be when data is used strategically, and am excited for how else we can maximize the medium.