As a vehicle for your hospital content marketing, print is as strong as ever. Even as mobile devices become seemingly ubiquitous, readers still love the portable, engaging format of print magazines—and they love to share them.

Whether it’s a complementary piece of your marketing program or the centerpiece, a print magazine can drive powerful results that will help you meet your marketing goals and satisfy stakeholders at your hospital or health system. Here are 11 reasons why print could be the perfect solution to your marketing needs.

1. Build brand awareness

How do you position your hospital as a health leader in your community? By exposing your audience to powerful, engaging content over and over again. A high quality community newsletter is an effective tool for improving public perception of your hospital’s staff and services and winning the hearts and minds of your community.

2. Stand out in a competitive market

Keeping on top of the latest trends isn’t always enough to stay ahead of your competitors, especially if some of those competitors are bigger health systems with greater resources and more substantial budgets. Whether you’re neck and neck or a David facing a Goliath, print pieces get noticed and set you apart.

3. Get results

Print doesn’t just get noticed—it gets results. Print is more effective at reaching influential healthcare consumers than any other media, including the Internet, and those readers are more likely to take action when they see your content. It’s a great way to acquire new patients for a new department or bring in new donors for your hospital foundation—or both.

4. Engage with your community

Print is a flexible medium that allows you to mix and match editorial content to maximize engagement. Magazine readers typically spend over 50 minutes reading each issue of a title, and an editorial staff that knows your community and its needs will be able to choose the perfect content that keeps them coming back.

5. Educate and promote at the same time

Educating the local community about important health topics is a goal for any hospital, and a print magazine lets you do just that while positioning your physicians and facilities as the best around. Share tips from your top doctors or explain procedures and equipment that patients can find exclusively at your hospital.

6. Create content readers want to share

Magazine readership is typically much higher than base circulation numbers as copies get shared with friends and family members as many as three and a half times per issue. Timely, relevant information like how to avoid the flu or how to stay safe in the sun and healthy lifestyle tips will increase the likelihood that your marketing message has legs and reaches far beyond your recipients’ mailboxes.

7. Profile doctors and donors

Publishing write-ups of your top physicians is a great way to keep them happy with what you’re doing to market their services, and it shows their human side to prospective patients. Profiling donors is a fantastic incentive for those who are on the fence about donating and could be just what they need to take the next step.

8. Promote events

Health seminars, support groups, holiday celebrations, and fundraisers can all benefit from promotion in your new magazine, and by promoting the print piece at the events, you can start a circular chain of increasing awareness.

9. Design a custom vehicle for your message

With print, you don’t have to worry about how you’ll fit a particular promotion into your content management system or what’ll happen to it when someone visits it on a mobile device or an older desktop computer. Every page can be customized to deliver your message exactly the way you want it every time.

10. Save on other print expenses

If you’re already mailing other print reports or brochures, you can cut costs by bundling them together with a magazine or other print marketing piece. Design them as department pages in the magazine or just mail them together in a poly bag.

11. Build or improve your marketing database

Over time, you can use your distribution list to get detailed pictures of your recipients and further tailor your marketing efforts for them. Include special offers for readers and track those leads or generate reader surveys to see exactly what they want to read. If it’s thorough enough, this kind of database can give you a huge advantage over other hospitals in your region.